Combined arms warfare is one of the most difficult things to pull off successfully. The Russians “trained” for it for decades, but it was all for show. Ukraine on the other hand started in the same place as the Russians, but have taken to heart what the West has been teaching them. Pushing decision making as far down the chain of command as you can is key. Out think and out act your opponents and you have a huge advantage.
Yes, Ukraine embraced the chaos by making their units more autonomous and are deep inside Russia’s OODA loop. The Russia commanders are unable to respond quickly and it appears their units don’t have the freedom and/or will to do so.
Ukraine uses a fusion of Western and Russian military doctrine.
While I fully agree, there’s a danger here; that America is failing at this – failing at American military doctrine.
To give an example, Russian forces have been complaining that their ossified, stratified command structure results in artillery fire support missions being insanely slow; hours, if they occur at all.
In Afghanistan, there are plenty of examples of artillery fire support missions being exceedingly slow (hours) due to requiring approval from military lawyers in Washington.
It’s basically the same problem. This worries me greatly.
Fighting on your own soil tends to focus the mind. Our mission in Afghanistan (and previously in Iraq) wasn’t simply to win, but to build a nation. For that we had to win hearts and minds.
Those aren’t military missions.
And the nations we were trying to build were being designed by anti-American Progressive Marxists.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were nation-building exercises. The Bush administration was quite explicit about that. Both were to be quick punitive expeditions. Neither, of course, turned out to be anything of the sort. Considering how long we wound up being in both places, setting a goal of nation-building from the start would likely have produced notably better outcomes. But the initial mistake of failing to set up military occupation governments in both places pretty well rendered that impossible.
Yes, our military leadership is crap, certainly as a system but also individually as they climb the ranks. So is our civilian leadership in this area due in large part to Progressive Marxist capture and indoctrination of leadership in the government workforce.
I suspect it’s easier to take such lessons to heart when you can apply them in realtime and see the effect.
The Russians trained; the Ukrainians have had to fight.
It’s hard to tell from the video, but it looks like they were using drones to direct indirect fire from the tanks and that the Russians had ammo but weren’t able to find targets. A lot of Russian fail behind the Ukrainian success.
Whatever problems the Russians have, lawyers in the chain of command probably isn’t one of them.
“A lot of Russian fail behind the Ukrainian success.”
Combined arms warfare is one of the most difficult things to pull off successfully. The Russians “trained” for it for decades, but it was all for show. Ukraine on the other hand started in the same place as the Russians, but have taken to heart what the West has been teaching them. Pushing decision making as far down the chain of command as you can is key. Out think and out act your opponents and you have a huge advantage.
Yes, Ukraine embraced the chaos by making their units more autonomous and are deep inside Russia’s OODA loop. The Russia commanders are unable to respond quickly and it appears their units don’t have the freedom and/or will to do so.
Ukraine uses a fusion of Western and Russian military doctrine.
While I fully agree, there’s a danger here; that America is failing at this – failing at American military doctrine.
To give an example, Russian forces have been complaining that their ossified, stratified command structure results in artillery fire support missions being insanely slow; hours, if they occur at all.
In Afghanistan, there are plenty of examples of artillery fire support missions being exceedingly slow (hours) due to requiring approval from military lawyers in Washington.
It’s basically the same problem. This worries me greatly.
Fighting on your own soil tends to focus the mind. Our mission in Afghanistan (and previously in Iraq) wasn’t simply to win, but to build a nation. For that we had to win hearts and minds.
Those aren’t military missions.
And the nations we were trying to build were being designed by anti-American Progressive Marxists.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were nation-building exercises. The Bush administration was quite explicit about that. Both were to be quick punitive expeditions. Neither, of course, turned out to be anything of the sort. Considering how long we wound up being in both places, setting a goal of nation-building from the start would likely have produced notably better outcomes. But the initial mistake of failing to set up military occupation governments in both places pretty well rendered that impossible.
Yes, our military leadership is crap, certainly as a system but also individually as they climb the ranks. So is our civilian leadership in this area due in large part to Progressive Marxist capture and indoctrination of leadership in the government workforce.
I suspect it’s easier to take such lessons to heart when you can apply them in realtime and see the effect.
The Russians trained; the Ukrainians have had to fight.
It’s hard to tell from the video, but it looks like they were using drones to direct indirect fire from the tanks and that the Russians had ammo but weren’t able to find targets. A lot of Russian fail behind the Ukrainian success.
Whatever problems the Russians have, lawyers in the chain of command probably isn’t one of them.
“A lot of Russian fail behind the Ukrainian success.”
How much of this is correctable?
On the evidence to-date, none.