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talkpolitics"War is organized chaos," these words belongt o one of the deputy commanders to Gen. Eisenhower after the Normandy landing in 1944. Now I'd say the battlefield in Ukraine is a good example of this rule. One of the most striking features of the current war is how ill-prepared the Russian military has been. No Plan B in case things don't go according to plan. The other thing that sticks out is how slow the Russian military has been to make adjustments and adapt.
This, according to an analysis published by the Royal Joint Services Institute, a leading British defense think tank. Those analysts cooperate with the General Staff of Ukraine in preparing operational analyses for the Ukrainians and therefore are privy to details, some of which are still classified:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/documents-publications/library/library-blog/posts/think-tank-reports-on-the-invasion-of-ukraine/
The authors note that from the very beginning of this war, the Russians have brought disaster on themselves with their confidence in a quick victory. Perhaps misled by his own intelligence and some Moscow-funded pro-Russian activists within Ukraine, such as infamous oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin appears to have believed that the Ukrainians would welcome his army with open arms and that only a minority of them would support the "Nazi" government in Kiev.
This tragically wrong prediction reflects the lack of corrective power in Russia. Russian intelligence chiefs are trying to please the president by presenting him with data that confirms his own expectations and views, just as the Soviet-era KGB too often told Soviet leaders only what they wanted to hear. That's a huge disadvantage, because it doesn't allow the Russian leadership to assess things soberly.
The initial plan for the "special military operation" in Ukraine was formulated primarily by Russia's special services and a core group in the presidential administration, supported by senior officials in the Department of Defense. The plan called for a blitzkrieg offensive and the use of deception maneuvers to keep the main Ukrainian forces away from Kiev while the Russian army would seize and occupy Ukraine's capital and oust the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In all fairness, the deception largely worked, as most of the Ukrainian army was concentrated in the Donbass region and near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city.
Zelensky himself commented the day before the invasion that even if Russia invades, it would be a limited operation in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. As a result, the Russians achieved a 12 to 1 advantage over the Ukrainians to the north of Kiev. But this proved to be insufficient. Things started going wrong for Russia with the failure of their special forces to take control of Gostomel Airport, located on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. It was supposed to provide quick access to Kiev. However, after a tough battle, the Russian landing force, supported by fighter jets and attack helicopters, was repelled, and the runway was destroyed by Ukrainian artillery.
It was as early as this point that the main shortcoming of the Russian army became apparent - the lack of coordination between the individual branches of the army. At a high level, everyone is accountable to Putin, but further down the hierarchy everyone acts for themselves in a general climate of mistrust.
It wasn't just the Ukrainians who were misled, the officers and soldiers of the Russian ground forces were also left in the dark. The orders were issued to most units less than 24 hours before the attack. As a result, Russian troops lacked ammunition, fuel, food, maps, properly established communications and, most critically, a clear understanding at a simple tactical level of how their actions would fit into the overall plan.
In many Russian units, all but the highest commanding officers believed that they were conducting exercises on the territories of Russia and Belarus, not an invasion of Ukraine. As a result, individual military units had no tactical ability to react when things went wrong. The Russian army was completely unprepared a for mass Ukrainian resistance.
According to the analysis, at this initial stage of the invasion, the Ukrainians' options for countering were too limited, but the very determination to resist surprised the Russians. Putin's biggest weakness is the lack of back-up plans. As a result, when the rapid offensive failed to produce the desired results, the Russian forces found their positions permanently deteriorating as Ukraine mobilized ever further.
A significant role was played by the use of drones by the Ukrainians for reconnaissance and attacks. In addition, Ukraine had dispersed its fighter jets to different airfields, applying a random rotation, a tactic that largely preserved its air force and prevented Russia from establishing air superiority. Thus, although the initial wave of Russian guided missile strikes did hit 75% of its static defense sites in the first 48 hours after the invasion began, most Ukrainian fighters survived.
So this "special operation" has evolved from a blitzkrieg to a war that requires large initial supplies and significant additional military capacity. A development for which Russia was never prepared. Early on, the Russians had a nearly 2-to-1 artillery superiority over the Ukrainians. 2,433 barreled artillery systems vs. 1,176 and 3,547 rocket launchers vs. 1,680. But Ukraine achieved artillery parity in the first month and a half before starting to run out of ammo. However, thanks to modern weapons supplied by the West, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian strikes has increased significantly.
Over the past few months, Russia has launched nearly 10 times more missiles and shells at the front, but with much lower effectiveness. The Russian military currently operates with a unified combined force hierarchy in which the ground forces have priority and the military as a whole is subordinated to the special services. This model is deeply flawed. It assumes a unified combined force but lacks mid- and low-level commanders to tie the whole structure into one. Thus forcing a culture of reinforcing failure unless orders are changed at the higher levels.
In addition, since all intelligence and tactical information is collected and processed centrally, it is relatively easy for the enemy to deceive the Russian armed forces at the battlefield. Often, individual officers compete for the approval of their superiors because they are completely dependent on them, and so they're tempted to distort information in their reports to gain an advantage. This competition also increases the possibility of "friendly" fire.
Also, the procedures for identifying friend and foe and establishing control measures are inadequate. There are a number of cases where the Russian army has continued to advance after suffering a tactical loss, paying with heavy casualties because there was no order to change tactics and regroup. Any surprise action by the Ukrainians effectively leaves the Russian armed forces paralyzed, waiting for information to be processed, a plan to be drawn up, and then an order to act.
In reality, the way the Russian command structure functions has changed little since the time of the USSR and even World War II. Logistics is also a huge problem. The Russian military is often unable to carry out large-scale logistics operations in a dynamic environment. Supply lines reach the terminal rail depots, but then there is chaos in supplies to the front.
Logistics is also made extremely difficult by the culture of corruption that thrives due to the lack of public financial control. Theft has reached an all-time high. Often scrapped or disassembled equipment is counted as working. The amounts of equipment, uniforms, weapons, food and medical packages are also written down. This allows officers not only to embezzle funds, but also to report better than actual results to their commanders, with the effect of fraud multiplying up the chain of command. However, this culture also operates at the highest level. You won't see Armata tanks, PAK FA stealth fighters or Okhotnik drones on the battlefield in Ukraine, because Russia doesn't really have combat-capable ones.
When Putin announced a partial military mobilization in September, it quickly became clear that the 1.5 million new uniforms that were supposed to be available in military warehouses existed only on paper. Mobilized Russian soldiers are forced to buy their own uniforms, shoes, underwear and even assault rifles. A number of campaigns are being held on social networks in Russia to raise funds for the equipment of the servicemen sent to Ukraine.
Although on paper Russia had more than 10,000 tanks at the beginning of the invasion, about 3,000 were actually functional, most of them obsolete T-72s. The situation was similar with the planes, and this was one of the main reasons why the Russian military has failed to achieve air superiority over Ukraine. The other is that the training of Russian pilots is limited and the main objective is usually to demonstrate readiness to the high command. The average flying hours of combat pilots in Russia is five times less than that of their counterparts in the US and Western Europe.
In realty, the Russian GLONASS satellite navigation system does not work, which is why pilots usually use civilian GPS devices or even mobile phones instead. Such can be seen in a number of videos officially published by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Paradoxically, until the war in Ukraine, this state of the Russian army used to fit well into Putin's concept. "We are not planning to go to war with anyone, our goal is to create a perception of strength so that no one will go to war with us," the Russian president said in an interview before the invasion. Now things have changed, and all the shortcomings of the Russian military are starting to show, and cost them dearly.
This, according to an analysis published by the Royal Joint Services Institute, a leading British defense think tank. Those analysts cooperate with the General Staff of Ukraine in preparing operational analyses for the Ukrainians and therefore are privy to details, some of which are still classified:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/documents-publications/library/library-blog/posts/think-tank-reports-on-the-invasion-of-ukraine/
The authors note that from the very beginning of this war, the Russians have brought disaster on themselves with their confidence in a quick victory. Perhaps misled by his own intelligence and some Moscow-funded pro-Russian activists within Ukraine, such as infamous oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin appears to have believed that the Ukrainians would welcome his army with open arms and that only a minority of them would support the "Nazi" government in Kiev.
This tragically wrong prediction reflects the lack of corrective power in Russia. Russian intelligence chiefs are trying to please the president by presenting him with data that confirms his own expectations and views, just as the Soviet-era KGB too often told Soviet leaders only what they wanted to hear. That's a huge disadvantage, because it doesn't allow the Russian leadership to assess things soberly.
The initial plan for the "special military operation" in Ukraine was formulated primarily by Russia's special services and a core group in the presidential administration, supported by senior officials in the Department of Defense. The plan called for a blitzkrieg offensive and the use of deception maneuvers to keep the main Ukrainian forces away from Kiev while the Russian army would seize and occupy Ukraine's capital and oust the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In all fairness, the deception largely worked, as most of the Ukrainian army was concentrated in the Donbass region and near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city.
Zelensky himself commented the day before the invasion that even if Russia invades, it would be a limited operation in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. As a result, the Russians achieved a 12 to 1 advantage over the Ukrainians to the north of Kiev. But this proved to be insufficient. Things started going wrong for Russia with the failure of their special forces to take control of Gostomel Airport, located on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. It was supposed to provide quick access to Kiev. However, after a tough battle, the Russian landing force, supported by fighter jets and attack helicopters, was repelled, and the runway was destroyed by Ukrainian artillery.
It was as early as this point that the main shortcoming of the Russian army became apparent - the lack of coordination between the individual branches of the army. At a high level, everyone is accountable to Putin, but further down the hierarchy everyone acts for themselves in a general climate of mistrust.
It wasn't just the Ukrainians who were misled, the officers and soldiers of the Russian ground forces were also left in the dark. The orders were issued to most units less than 24 hours before the attack. As a result, Russian troops lacked ammunition, fuel, food, maps, properly established communications and, most critically, a clear understanding at a simple tactical level of how their actions would fit into the overall plan.
In many Russian units, all but the highest commanding officers believed that they were conducting exercises on the territories of Russia and Belarus, not an invasion of Ukraine. As a result, individual military units had no tactical ability to react when things went wrong. The Russian army was completely unprepared a for mass Ukrainian resistance.
According to the analysis, at this initial stage of the invasion, the Ukrainians' options for countering were too limited, but the very determination to resist surprised the Russians. Putin's biggest weakness is the lack of back-up plans. As a result, when the rapid offensive failed to produce the desired results, the Russian forces found their positions permanently deteriorating as Ukraine mobilized ever further.
A significant role was played by the use of drones by the Ukrainians for reconnaissance and attacks. In addition, Ukraine had dispersed its fighter jets to different airfields, applying a random rotation, a tactic that largely preserved its air force and prevented Russia from establishing air superiority. Thus, although the initial wave of Russian guided missile strikes did hit 75% of its static defense sites in the first 48 hours after the invasion began, most Ukrainian fighters survived.
So this "special operation" has evolved from a blitzkrieg to a war that requires large initial supplies and significant additional military capacity. A development for which Russia was never prepared. Early on, the Russians had a nearly 2-to-1 artillery superiority over the Ukrainians. 2,433 barreled artillery systems vs. 1,176 and 3,547 rocket launchers vs. 1,680. But Ukraine achieved artillery parity in the first month and a half before starting to run out of ammo. However, thanks to modern weapons supplied by the West, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian strikes has increased significantly.
Over the past few months, Russia has launched nearly 10 times more missiles and shells at the front, but with much lower effectiveness. The Russian military currently operates with a unified combined force hierarchy in which the ground forces have priority and the military as a whole is subordinated to the special services. This model is deeply flawed. It assumes a unified combined force but lacks mid- and low-level commanders to tie the whole structure into one. Thus forcing a culture of reinforcing failure unless orders are changed at the higher levels.
In addition, since all intelligence and tactical information is collected and processed centrally, it is relatively easy for the enemy to deceive the Russian armed forces at the battlefield. Often, individual officers compete for the approval of their superiors because they are completely dependent on them, and so they're tempted to distort information in their reports to gain an advantage. This competition also increases the possibility of "friendly" fire.
Also, the procedures for identifying friend and foe and establishing control measures are inadequate. There are a number of cases where the Russian army has continued to advance after suffering a tactical loss, paying with heavy casualties because there was no order to change tactics and regroup. Any surprise action by the Ukrainians effectively leaves the Russian armed forces paralyzed, waiting for information to be processed, a plan to be drawn up, and then an order to act.
In reality, the way the Russian command structure functions has changed little since the time of the USSR and even World War II. Logistics is also a huge problem. The Russian military is often unable to carry out large-scale logistics operations in a dynamic environment. Supply lines reach the terminal rail depots, but then there is chaos in supplies to the front.
Logistics is also made extremely difficult by the culture of corruption that thrives due to the lack of public financial control. Theft has reached an all-time high. Often scrapped or disassembled equipment is counted as working. The amounts of equipment, uniforms, weapons, food and medical packages are also written down. This allows officers not only to embezzle funds, but also to report better than actual results to their commanders, with the effect of fraud multiplying up the chain of command. However, this culture also operates at the highest level. You won't see Armata tanks, PAK FA stealth fighters or Okhotnik drones on the battlefield in Ukraine, because Russia doesn't really have combat-capable ones.
When Putin announced a partial military mobilization in September, it quickly became clear that the 1.5 million new uniforms that were supposed to be available in military warehouses existed only on paper. Mobilized Russian soldiers are forced to buy their own uniforms, shoes, underwear and even assault rifles. A number of campaigns are being held on social networks in Russia to raise funds for the equipment of the servicemen sent to Ukraine.
Although on paper Russia had more than 10,000 tanks at the beginning of the invasion, about 3,000 were actually functional, most of them obsolete T-72s. The situation was similar with the planes, and this was one of the main reasons why the Russian military has failed to achieve air superiority over Ukraine. The other is that the training of Russian pilots is limited and the main objective is usually to demonstrate readiness to the high command. The average flying hours of combat pilots in Russia is five times less than that of their counterparts in the US and Western Europe.
In realty, the Russian GLONASS satellite navigation system does not work, which is why pilots usually use civilian GPS devices or even mobile phones instead. Such can be seen in a number of videos officially published by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Paradoxically, until the war in Ukraine, this state of the Russian army used to fit well into Putin's concept. "We are not planning to go to war with anyone, our goal is to create a perception of strength so that no one will go to war with us," the Russian president said in an interview before the invasion. Now things have changed, and all the shortcomings of the Russian military are starting to show, and cost them dearly.
(no subject)
Date: 14/12/22 19:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/12/22 11:33 (UTC)