I’m calling this Part 5, but it’s really just a continuation of Part 4, as I chopped that article in half due to length, having got a bit carried away.

Please note, I’m going to be writing the word “salient” a lot in this article, get used to seeing that word.

The Kursk Endgame: Rubicon’s Guillotine

This might seem confusing, as I’d already written about Kursk in this series, but bear with me.

I’d previously declared the Kursk offensive as the second best in the war, but I also caveated that by saying I was referring to the opening of the operation, the offensive itself. That is an important stipulation, because what I’m about to describe is the conclusion to the Kursk campaign, which ended as a major victory for Russia and an embarrassing defeat for the Ukrainians, demonstrating some brilliance by the former and some real stupidity by the latter.

As I mentioned previously, the Kursk Offensive should be broken down into the following phases:

1. Aug 2024: Initial Ukrainian offensive

2. Sep-Oct 2024: Ukrainian failed attempt to expand westwards

3. Oct 2024: Major Russian counterattack in the west

4. Nov 2024: Start of large-scale Russian counteroffensive

5. Jan-Mar 2025: Russian efforts to cut the Ukrainian supply lines

6. Mar 2025: Supply lines are cut, Ukrainians retreat

One of the biggest problems for the Ukrainians after the first phase was that they had a deep salient that wasn’t deep enough to achieve any decisive results, but possessed frontages that were still too large to defend properly. More so, despite the frontage of the salient being too wide to hold properly, the salient they created was still not wide enough, lacking enough roads leading inside.

Logistics, logistics, logistics. I can’t stress enough how important that topic is in warfare. When one thinks of logistics during ground operations, rails are overstated, especially below the the higher operational levels. Mostly, logistics is about roads. While dismounted troops and most wheeled and tracked combat vehicles can off-road to some degree, most everything else requires roads. In the case of Kursk, the Ukrainians needed supply routes to move the manpower, equipment, and supplies as far away as 25 kilometers inside the salient, but there were only two proper hardball roads to use.

(Map courtesy of United24 media)

When the fourth phase of the Kursk campaign kicked off with a broad-front offensive to retake lost territory, two axes in particular are worth discussing, and both of those were simultaneously directed against the “neck” or “shoulders” of the salient, the base that connects to the otherwise straighter front line. Historically, that sector is sought after to reduce a salient, to “pinch it out,” as taking it from both sides can create a massive encirclement of enemy forces inside the salient. Due to that risk, the defender knows the dangers too, and so the neck/shoulders are often heavily defended.

In May 2024, the Russians did something marvelous for their war effort. Russia’s long-serving Minister of Defense Shoigu was fired “promoted” and, astonishingly, the individual who replaced him seems to have been chosen on merit. In my opinion, the new Minister, Belousov, was not empowered enough to enact necessary reforms, but he did perform two that were quite impactful: the MOD greatly invested more into attempts to dominate drone warfare, and Belousov created a roughly regimental-sized (or larger) drone unit called Rubicon, serving as a testbed for drone tactics and technology while serving an elite combat unit.

It’s hard to tell when and where Rubicon made its combat debut, but they were involved in the Russian’s Kursk Counteroffensive. Most notably, they were used in the efforts to “pinch off the salient” with a dual concentric offensive against the neck/shoulders of the Kursk salient.

The Russians appeared to have created a tactical template where Rubicon played the decisive role. Dismounted infantry or mechanized attacks would advance to take new ground, allowing Rubicon drone teams to advance further forward to create new drone launch sites. Once set, those drone teams would interdict the Ukrainian tactical-level “Last Mile” supply lines and attrit Ukrainian forward defenses. With the Ukrainians weakened, further ground attacks would take new ground, which would pull the offensive drone line forward again. Etc. Picture a boxer’s step-drag footwork technique.

Rubicon also benefited from the heavy Russian investment made in the second half of 2024 for fiber-optic cabling used for FPV strike drones, in lieu of radio control. The downsides of fiber-optic control were slower speeds, less agility, and a reduced payload, but the benefits meant the drones were effectively immune to electronic warfare jamming, had extended range over most radio-controlled FPVs, and had no loss-of-signal problems typical during the terminal dive when most FPV footage would cut out for the operator due to line-of-sight issues relating to the curvature of the Earth.

Additionally, because the signal was never a problem, fiber-optic FPV drones could land and be put in low-power standby mode before again being activated and launching. Suddenly, large numbers of fiber-optic FPVs were dotting the Ukrainian supply lines, sitting on or near the roads, ready to spring into action to fly out to ambush Ukrainian forces as they appeared.

By early January 2025, the few Ukrainian communication lines leading inside the salient were being interdicted to such an extent that vehicles were rarely used. From that point on, most Ukrainian infantrymen moving in or out of the salient needed to walk, judged safer than driving, despite the days-long, 15-25 km distances. Mind you, we’re talking about a salient that still encompassed about 500 km² at that point, with the personnel from probably a dozen or more maneuver battalions inside the salient. Yet they could barely use motorized transportation, as vehicles were so easily targeted as they traversed the contested chokepoints leading into the salient, defined by those two hardball roads.

Still, while fiber-optic FPVs were dangerous, the Russians still hadn’t yet fully locked down the Ukrainian supply lines, and enough traffic was still getting through to maintain the salient. That changed in late February when the Russian tactical formations performing their step-drag infantry-drone attacks against the neck/shoulders of the Kursk salient had advanced far enough that it wasn’t just a few fiber-optic FPV drones that could range the Ukrainian supply lines. At that point, the Russians had gained legitimate “Fire Control” over the neck of the salient.

“Fire Control” is a term used a lot in this war, and I’ll be honest, early on, it was confusing. In the US military parlance, “Fire Control” literally just describes efforts to control fires. Years later, I found out that, like many other terms used frequently in the Russo-Ukraine War by Western media, the term is not based on anything in Western military doctrine but is an English translation of Soviet Union-Russian-Ukrainian military doctrine. And in this case, their doctrine believes it is possible to control terrain using fires.

Per US military doctrine, “control” of a set piece of ground occurs when the enemy can’t move through it but can still shoot into it, whereas the terrain is secured if the enemy can’t move or shoot into it. Controlling ground to prevent the enemy from moving through it typically requires a physical presence. However, I agree that control can be done from afar with fires, but only if observation over that area is persistent, 24/7, while accurate and responsive fires can be used to hit targets as soon as they appear.

For example, say there is an infantry fireteam overwatching an area inside the effective range of their small arms. At any given time, at least one soldier in that fireteam is scanning that sector. In such a situation, they can be said to control that area with fires, as no enemy can move through it without serious risk of getting hit.

However, there have been lots of proclamations in this war by internet experts that allege that because x territory is inside the max effective range of y weapon system, often accompanied by a digital map with a range fan superimposed over it, then “Fire Control” has been established. That is dead wrong. At best, one side might have the ability to harass and interdict the enemy’s rear, but they don’t actually control it.

But times have changed. The evolution of drone warfare in the Russo-Ukraine War has led to the extremely pervasive use of ISR/ISTAR drones, the battlefield has never been as transparent as it is now. While all the older highly lethal weapon systems to hit targets at long range are still around, they’ve been augmented by huge numbers of strike drones whose ranges and lethality have only increased. Add in mechanisms to perform fire direction using a very high-functioning reconnaissance fires complex that has only improved with age, and the result is that “Fire Control” is now being established at much longer ranges than in the past, well beyond the line-of-sight of ground forces.

Thus, the drone “Kill Zone” was created. Once established, a zone is created as far back as 10 kilometers (or more) from the forward line of troops where it becomes extremely risky for the enemy to exist outside of cover or concealment.

Such was the case in February 2024 in Kursk. Once Rubicon gained “Fire Control” over the neck/shoulders of the salient, the Ukrainians were doomed. Already, they suffered major difficulties for months moving troops in and out and performing resupply, but by late February, routine movements in vehicles or on foot became next to impossible, near suicidal. Maybe calling it a guillotine isn’t accurate. Rubicon didn’t so much cut the head off the head of the Ukrainian salient, but they definitely sliced open the carotid arteries, and the result was that not enough blood flowed to and from the head. Death was sure to follow.

Then, the Russians did something that was both impressive and kind of dumb. They launched an attack against the city of Sudzha by way of an infiltration effort using an oil pipeline leading into the city. Hundreds of Russian stormtroopers performed a Hellish week-long journey through 16 kilometers of a disgustingly dirty, poisonously fumed, 1.4-meter-wide pipe to spill out into the city with surprise. Once the Ukrainians realized what was happening, units panicked, and despite no plan or orders, they started retreating from most of the Kursk salient. As the Ukrainians routed, the Russians reclaimed nearly all of the Kursk salient.

Operation Potok as it was called by the Russians, was brilliant in many ways, tactically and operationally, but not strategically. Why the rush?

My guess is that Putin wanted Kursk retaken ASAP, especially as Trump was signaling that he was going to push hard to end the war quickly through a negotiated settlement forced on Russia and Ukraine. In that scenario, Putin wouldn’t want Kursk being held hostage as a literal bargaining chip by Zelensky, who had previously boasted of that very same intention. As such, all the commanders involved in reducing the Kursk salient would have been under pressure to wrap things up ASAP. Nevertheless, the near-complete severing of the Ukrainian supply lines leading in and out of the Kursk salient had created a perfect opportunity for the Russians to bleed the Ukrainians.

Per standard operating procedures of the Ukrainian military, retreats aren’t authorized unless there is absolutely no chance they can hold, and even then, they are still often denied. Think about the implications of that as it relates to Kursk. Many thousands of Ukrainian soldiers inside the salient needed a constant flow of supplies. Fireteam or squad-sized Ukrainian defensive positions lost to Russian strikes along the perimeter’s “zero line” would need to be replaced with new troops. Exhausted units would need to be relieved by new ones entering the salient. All of whom would need to pass through Rubicon’s “kill zone” at the neck/shoulders of the salient, covering those two roads leading in and out.

Militarily, Ukraine’s greatest strategic weakness is its manpower crisis, especially among its infantry. If Russia ever truly hopes to collapse the Ukrainian military, or to come close enough that Ukrainian political leadership is willing to make major concessions to end the war, Russia must turn that manpower crisis into a manpower disaster.

Opportunities like Kursk had arisen a few times before for Russia, at Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and some other smaller-scale semi-encirclement battles where the Ukrainian supply lines were partly or wholly cut, and yet the Ukrainians inside the “bag” were still ordered to “hold at all costs.” For the Russians, to better support an attritional strategy, they ought to practice some operational patience, don’t rush to reduce any partly or wholly encircled salient, and instead attempt to prioritize maximum attrition inside the fire sack as the Ukrainian leadership ensures it’s constantly kept filled with new troops, for as long as they can maintain it.

Instead, time and time again, the Russians impatiently waste the strategic opportunity to reap the benefits of taking more territory by reducing the cauldrons created in their encirclement battles. That’s all well and good for PR, but retaking parts of Kursk Oblast isn’t going to win the war. However, destroying the Ukrainian units inside, more so, the Ukrainian infantry manpower, the very ones needed to hold the line in all the future battles to come, that is something that could win the war.

How many missed opportunities can Russia afford? Still, the end of the Kursk Incursion was one of Russia’s best showings in the war, and one of Ukraine’s worst.

The Liquidation of the Dobropillya Salient: A Breakthrough Too Far

Following the loss of Avdiivka in early 2022, the Russians were able to keep advancing westwards in central Donetsk Oblast at a consistent rate. Part of that had to do with the Russians consistently performing well at the tactical and operational level, able to find and/or create gaps in the Ukrainian line using what one expert describes as the balance shifting approach.

But as I wholeheartedly believe in the tenet that “the enemy gets a vote,” the Russian successes in the Donbas required the Ukrainians to play a big part in their own defeats. The Ukrainian screwups included a general apathy in terms of strategic focus to commit the necessary resources to that front, leading to too few defending units with too many of them being in a very weakened state. Additionally, up until early 2022, the Ukrainians suffered a criminally negligent lack of fortifications on a strategic level. Also, the Ukrainians had some truly awful commanders leading the tactical and operational level forces efforts in holding that front, some really incompetent morons.

The screwups in the Donbas allowed the Russians to advance a straight line distance of about 40 kilometers in about six months, reaching the gates of Pokrovsk, a key city with legit operational level importance as it was a major communication hub, a crossroads of numerous major highways that all led to key locations. At that point in Fall 2024, the Russians finally gassed out, and the Ukrainian leadership was publicly chastised enough to commit more resources to reinforce the region, to fortify it, and to fire the incompetent crony commanders and appoint some competent leaders. At which point the front largely stalemated.

As Kursk collapsed in March 2025 and the spring approached, it was decision time. The strategic main effort would again be the Donbas. But the Ukrainians were strong there. However, the Ukrainians had a large number of forces, especially good ones, who had been committed to the Kursk front. With that operation ending, the Ukrainian leadership would have the opportunity transfer those units elsewhere to “put out fires.” And so, for the Russians to succeed in the Donbas, they needed to pull as many Ukrainian units away from the Donbas as possible to weaken their defenses there, to not just keep the Kursk forces bottled up somewhere outside of the Donbas, they needed to pull even more combat power away. So they launched an offensive across from Kursk Oblast in Russia into Sumy Oblast in Ukraine.

And the ploy worked. Despite not at all seriously threatening Sumy City or any other important regions inside Ukraine, the Russians advanced enough that it created a media shitstorm, at which point the Ukrainian leadership doubled down on Sumy and committed reserves there to reverse the situation. “Sumy Holds!” was trending, and it was working, at least through the early summer of 2025.

Meanwhile, not a coincidence, the Russians again started making more progress around the city of Pokrovsk, as well as its neighboring city of Myrnograd, hooking around Pokrovsk from the west and Myrnograd from the east, in what looked to be a very large encirclement battle in the making.

(Map courtesy of ISW)

By mid-summer 2025, the Pokrovsk direction was clearly the Russian main effort. As their Sumy diversion was working and they were advancing more around Pokrovsk, the Russians pulled more units from Sumy to reinforce Pokrovsk. In reaction, the Ukrainians reinforced the Donbas again, pulling reserves from Sumy, plus from all over the rest of Ukraine, to reinforce Pokrovsk. At which point, probably the greatest showdown in the war had started, both sides never massed more forces for a single battle. One way or another, the Pokrovsk campaign was going to be a blood bath.

Owing to the innovation in drone warfare and the rollout of the Ukrainian defensive “Line of Drones” operational template designed to turn the front lines into a giant empty “kill zone” devoid of living Russians, the Russians started innovating with tactics to counter the new tactical reality.

On the face of it, Russian offensive innovations were very extreme. Instead of squad-sized advances as before, to avoid detection and to limit losses when they were spotted, the Russians were performing dismounted infantry advances down to the fireteam level at the largest, often done at the individual level, where individual soldiers walked alone for a dozen kilometers or more to later meet up with each other at a prearranged link-up point.

Instead of prioritizing the reduction of Ukrainian forward infantry defenses, Russian infantry would largely forgo assaults and attempt to bypass the very dispersed Ukrainian infantry forward defenses. If that succeeded, the Russian infiltration teams would either harass the Ukrainian tactical rear area, attacking drone launch sites, ambushing “Last Mile” resupply, threatening forward command posts, etc., or else they would “seed” new defensive outposts as deeply as they could. And like the Ukrainians too, due to Line of Drones, those small infantry outpost positions would necessitate resupply by unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) or aerial drones, as it was just too dangerous to rely on traditional manned resupply.

Despite the Ukrainian Line of Drones, in July 2025, a roughly battalion-sized infiltration attack using the abovementioned TTPs allowed the Russians to gain a foothold in the south of the city of Pokrovsk. Or did it? The attack seemed to have worked initially, though over the next month, reports from the Ukrainians suggested that most of the Russian infantry that had made it inside Pokrovsk were killed by Ukrainian drone strikes or counterattacks.

Shortly afterwards, in early August, a neighboring Russian unit found a gap in the Ukrainian lines to the northeast of Pokrovsk, north of Myrnograd, and another battalion-sized infiltration attack was performed. And like the previous one that got inside Pokrovsk, the attack commonly associated with the city of Dobropillya (though actually nowhere near it) also initially succeeded. In the matter of a few days, the Russian 132nd Motorized Rifle Brigade from the 51st Combined Arms Army (CAA) created what many called the Dobropillya Salient, breaking through the Ukrainian lines and advancing about 10 kilometers before they ran out of juice, with the salient being about 5-6 kilometers wide.

That drive caused major problems for the Ukrainians. For one, it added more pressure that they’d be encircled in Pokrovsk-Myrnograd, as a key northern supply line leading was nearly physically cut. Plus, just like Kursk, Rubicon was in force around Pokrovsk and already working to interdict Ukrainian supply lines; losing that highway would only make matters worse.

But the deep drive that created the Dobropillya Salient also caused a major problem for the Russians. The previously mentioned “step-drag” technique of infantry attacks that enable the advance of drone teams wasn’t working the same as it had before at Kursk.

The problem started even before the August breakthrough, as the Russians had not even fully taken control of the larger salient that was actively outflanking the Pokrovsk/Myrnograd pocket from the northeast. In essence, the Dobropillya Salient was jutting out from another unsecured salient.

The situation is easier to explain when considering how Line of Drones works. Drone teams tend to operate no closer than 3-5 kilometers back from the forward line of troops, often further back. Theoretically, they can operate closer, but they’d increase risks attempting it, more difficulties launching drones while remaining undetected, more resupply problems, and more difficulty infiltrating and exfiltrating undetected from very forward drone launch sites.

Now consider that for drone teams to advance, they can’t just remove the enemy’s infantry defensive positions, they must also pressure the enemy’s drone-directed recon fires complex. IE, to advance one side’s Line of Drones, they need to push back the enemy’s Line of Drones. How? Enemy drone teams can either be eliminated by fires or forced to retreat because of increased risk of fires or infantry assaults. Once the enemy drone teams are pushed back, then friendly drone teams can move forward, step-drag style.

But that must happen on a wide enough frontage that friendly drone teams trying to advance don’t end up moving deeper into an uncontested drone “Kill Zone” of the enemy’s Line of Drones. And that’s exactly what happened inside the Dobropillya Salient.

(This map was modified by me from the original provided by Suriyakmaps)

In that map, the Dobropillya Salient is A, and the larger base salient labeled B is centered around the settlement of Novotoretske. The red line is roughly 3-5 km from Russia’s legitimate forward line of troops for territory that they mostly control, while the blue line is 3-5 km from the Ukrainian FLOT.

As you can see, the Russians in the Dobropillya Salient were effectively surrounded. Not just by Ukrainian maneuver elements that could counterattack from shorter distances using infantry and tanks, but specifically surrounded by Ukrainian drone teams.

While it’s possible the Russians infiltrated some drone teams into the Dobropillya Salient, they couldn’t in sufficient numbers to push the Ukrainian Line of Drones away from their flanks. Nor were the Russian drone teams operating in the Novotoretske Salient strong enough to push back, degrade, or suppress the Ukrainian Line of Drones that surrounded the Dobropillya Salient. Leaving the Russians in a very dangerous position.

Effectively, the Russian thrust to create the Dobropillya Salient was too narrow. There were too few Ukrainian drone teams destroyed or disrupted by the advance. All the Ukrainian drone teams on the flanks of the Dobropillya Salient would have been fine, easily able to target the nearby Russians in the salient as they were closer and more vulnerable. Inside the salient, there would be more coverage by recon drones, more strike drones could range it with shorter flight times, and the Russians would be more vulnerable to Ukrainian infantry and tank counterattacks with short advances. Reducing that salient would mean less risk than normal for Ukrainian counterattacks. So, not surprisingly, the Ukrainians committed everything and the kitchen sink to reduce the Dobropillya Salient.

But as they did so, they were ignoring the slow encirclement of Pokrovsk itself, and the efforts to frontally assault the city, which it would turn out to be the real threat. It seems that the earlier reports that all the Russians from the July infiltration attack that made it into southern Pokrovsk all being eliminated had been exaggerated. Some survived, more came, and by early September, the Russians were firmly lodged in the south edge of Pokrovsk. By October, they controlled at least the southern half of Pokrovsk and were already advancing into the north side. And so followed a weird situation, over the Fall 2025 the Russians kept advancing deeper into Pokvosk and Myrnograd, while at the same time they were losing more and more of the Dobropillya Salient, and vice versa for the Ukrainians.

At first sight, it might have seemed like the Russian effort to hold the Dobropillya Salient was a deliberate trap to divert more Ukrainian resources away from Pokrovsk and Myrnograd. Some Ukrainians even believed that was the case as well. But I don’t. I believe that for the Russians, those two operations were separate.

Reports emerged in early September that numerous Russian Naval Infantry brigades and regiments were transferred from the Sumy area to the Pokrovsk direction. There was a big question about what they’d do. Starting in early October, they were committed to battle.

Where and especially how the Russian Naval Infantry reserves were used proved that the Russian effort to hold the Dobropillya Salient had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of diversion, as those Russian “elite” units were used to perform what I can honestly describe, with no bias or political agenda, as the clearest evidence in this war of “Human Wave Attacks” or “Meat Waves.”

Some might note that in my Meat series of articles, I stated that the Russians hadn’t actually used Human/Meat Waves, and that, if the stories of Russian unsupported attacks done in waves were even true, they lacked the required numbers, as occasional squad-level or smaller infantry attacks aren’t waves of humans.

However, having watched the battle for the Dobropillya Salient play out, now I can say that, without a shadow of a doubt, that Human Wave/Meat Wave attacks were absolutely, definitely used in this war by the Russians.

In fact, lots of them were performed. These didn’t happen once or twice. For a bit over a month, every 4-5 days or so, the Russians launched a series of mostly mechanized attacks that were nearly all done in waves. Most of these waves consisted of tanks in the lead with lots of infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) and/or armored personnel carriers (APC) following, filled with infantry. The attacks were done pure battle taxi-style, tanks up front to clear paths through mines so IFV/APC could ferry infantry to dismount in large enough groups to secure a village in a single attempt. Each wave was at least platoon-sized (≥3 vehicles), often company-sized (~10-12 vehicles), occasionally battalion-sized (~30 vehicles).

And nearly every one of those many many waves was smashed to smithereens by Ukrainian drone-directed fires. Most well before they ever came close to their objectives, lost while still traversing their own tactical rear areas inside the Novotoretske Salient.

What objective could have been deemed so critically important that the Russian military leadership threw caution to the wind to attack in such a reckless manner, having never previously taken such risks?

The purpose seems to have been to conduct a series of northern-directed assaults to reduce the Ukrainian-held Shakhove Salient, a Ukrainian pocket just to the east of the Russian-held Dobropillya Salient. And the pressure was on the Russians because it was a race, the first to reduce the enemy’s salient and physically take the ground wins.

For reasons that can only be guessed, the Russians couldn’t/wouldn’t retreat out of the Dobropillya Salient. And yet, they couldn’t support it properly either. Besides the Line of Drones range disparity problem mentioned above, the neck of the salient was just too narrow, a literal chokepoint, way too easy for the Ukrainians to cover. The Ukrainians had “Fire Control” over that whole salient, especially the neck, they had no problems interdicting the flow of reinforcements and resupply.

The only recourse for the Russians to improve the situation inside the Dobropillya Salient was to widen the salient, and they chose to do that by reducing the Shakhove Salient. On paper, it makes some sense. If it had worked, they’d open up new supply lines and infiltration routes inside the Dobropillya Salient from the east and southeast. Also, that would allow the Russian Line of Drones inside the Novotoretske Salient to push further northwards without undue risk, further pushing back the Ukrainian Line of Drones in the process.

But the Russians didn’t have the luxury of time, they were under the clock. The Shakhove Salient needed to be retaken before the Ukrainians destroyed the Dobropillya Salient, which they were attempting by attacking all sides at once, especially at the neck, trying to break it up into smaller chunks to destroy piecemeal.

Regrettably for the Russians, Ukraine won the race. In mid-November 2025, the Dobropillya Salient was destroyed. The Ukrainians had taken the neck earlier and over a course of weeks, whatever number of Russian infantry and drone operators still inside, probably a battalion at least, were killed, captured, or forced to retreat individually or in small groups.

And that butcher’s bill didn’t include what was lost in the months-long effort to keep feeding Russian troops into that salient, nor did it include the very hefty cost the Russian Naval Infantry took trying to save the salient, which would have been frighteningly high, as each failed attacking wave was a separate mass casualty event, and so few waves succeeded.

In an old blog article I wrote, I had a section titled “Mass Kicks Ass Is Ass”, where I hypothesized why it was so risky attempting a large-scale mechanized breakthrough without having successfully degraded/dismantled an enemy’s drone-directed reconnaissance fires complex. I wrote this:

Will increasing the size of the attacking force increase the chance of success? If so, what mechanism causes that, when the defeat mechanism for earlier failure was drone-directed fires? Is success based on an assumption that the enemy can’t kill everyone attacking? But what if they do have enough ammo to kill everyone? Is that a chance any commander should make? How many times can field commanders afford to take that risk, fail, and not be relieved for cause? How can their personnel induction system, necessary to replace losses, survive that?

We ended up seeing that exact scenario play out in the Russian effort to try to save the Dobropillya Salient.

The Russian leadership took the risk and gambled that the Ukrainians couldn’t destroy all the IFV/APC necessary to deliver enough infantry through the drone screen to grab Shakhove and the surrounding villages, which would ultimately pay off by opening up the Dobropillya Salient. But that gamble failed. It turned out, Yes, the Ukrainians could kill nearly all the attacking Russians.

What a waste. Not just a waste of the lives and equipment the Naval Infantry took performing what amounts to suicide missions. Not just the waste of lives from the various motor rifle and tank units forming the assault detachments of the 51st CAA that were used to create and hold the Dobropillya Salient for months. But the wasted opportunity too, if the Russians had fought smarter in the Fall 2025, maybe they could have achieved something decisive there.

Here are some facts. By Fall 2025, the Ukrainians were suffering their absolute worst from their infantry manpower shortage. And yet despite that, Ukrainian leadership were doubling tripling quadrupling quintupling down on “Pokrovsk Holds!”

By mid-July, Pokrovsk-Myrnograd was already 3/4 physically encircled, and was already operationally encircled courtesy of the air interdiction efforts of Russia’s Rubicon drone units. And yet, the Ukrainian leadership was force-feeding more Ukrainian troops into the proverbial wood chipper, aggressively attempting to “Hold at all costs,” and even crazier, ordering major counterattacks to retake Pokrovsk after having lost half of it.

I noticed the potential for a decisive battle in early September 2025.

I’ll admit it, I was a few beers deep when I wrote that Reddit posted, obviously the alcohol had warped my brain into believing that maybe Gerasimov and the Russian military leadership would smarten up and use that opportunity to their advantage, to “go all in for the kill.” Time and space had laid the foundations for what could have been a climactic showdown in the making.

However, as I sobered up a bit before going to bed, I edited the post and inserted another potential explanation, one far less decisive but still worth considering. Especially considering the reality of the shitshow operational art typical in the Russo-Ukraine War, my post required the caveat.

*EDIT: I’ll include this thought, because it’s a possibility and I won’t rule it out. The Russians might be ignoring the possibility of a decisive attritional battle in Pokrovsk and only reinforced it to maintain a positive force ratio to keep attacking, keep taking more ground, in their quest to take Donetsk Oblast. Knowing the politics of this war, how Putin and Gerasimov operate, that contrary to popular opinion territory is very much a goal of the Russian strategy, their desire to keep moving forward despite the AFU reinforcements could very well be the justification for this VDV/Naval Infantry troop transfer (if its even true).

My slightly more sober assessment pretty much nailed how things ended up playing out.

Gerasimov hadn’t reinforced the Pokrovsk campaign to create the ultimate meat grinder battle to cause unsustainable Ukrainian losses in an attempt to win the war through attrition. He did it to increase the odds that more advances could occur against greater opposition after the Ukrainians reinforced the sector.

What a waste.

The Second Liberation of Kupyansk: When a Victory Celebration is Premature

Have you ever watched those video clips on Youtube where athletes in different sorts of races are winning, but for some reason think they either won the race already or have such a lead that they can’t lose, so much so that they start celebrating early, at which point at least one person passes them to reach the finish line first, if not more?

That happened during Russia’s latest efforts to take Kupyansk in 2025.

Truthfully, I don’t even know what to call that battle. Kupyansk has been fought over so many times in this war, I can’t think of any other city that changed hands more often. The Russians took it in the invasion, lost it during the Ukrainian 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive, and have been trying to take it back ever since.

Not a surprise, the city’s location makes it quite important, tactically and operationally. It straddles the Oskil River, a major waterway running north-south through Kharkiv Oblast all the way down into Donetsk Oblast. Whoever holds that river controls a dominant defensive terrain feature in that region, as well as many supply lines due to the roads nearby and crossing points over the river.

From where Kupyansk sits, in terms of road traffic, controlling the city means having access to a major east-west road heading from Kharkiv City to the west to eastwards into Luhansk Oblast and then eventually to the key Russian city of Volvograd. Also, the only real north-south road hugging the western bank of the Oskil River in that area passed through Kupyansk. Which meant if the Ukrainians lost Kupyansk again, they would lose everything on or east of the Oksil for about 20 kilometers south of Kupyansk, at least.

The current battle for Kupyansk is a continued effort that dates back to late 2023. Previously, in their Winter 2023 Offensive circa February 2023, the Russians attacked westwards in the general direction towards Kupyansk, but their offensive didn’t last long or accomplish much, they were still nowhere close to it.

Further Russian attacks took a hiatus during the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive, where the Kupyansk sector wasn’t exactly quiet but was nothing in comparison to other sectors in Ukraine. Once the Ukrainian offensive culminated in Fall 2023, the Russians began an ever-increasingly scaled-up offensive against Kupyansk that hasn’t stopped since.

The Russians did slowly approach Kupyansk from the east through 2024, but their only real meaningful territorial successes occurred north of the city, such as when they managed to cross the Oskil River in early 2025. But even that didn’t lead to much, the Russians couldn’t exploit it, still couldn’t reach the edge of Kupyansk, let alone take it.

Things changed for the better for Russia when they pulled off yet another pipeline infiltration operation. Russia’s first reported use of an empty pipeline to perform a clandestine infantry infiltration happened at Avdiivka in early 2024. As previously mentioned in this article, a more notable one occurred at Sudzha in Kursk in 2025. And in September 2025, the Russians did it again.

It seems they found another unused oil pipeline and used it to infiltrate troops and supplies out of view of Ukrainian drones. Russian troops, mostly infantrymen but probably some drone operators too, entered the pipeline at a city called Lyman Pershyi, roughly 8 km northeast of Kupyansk, and exited it at Radkivka, a roughly 7 km journey that left them just 2 km directly north of Kupyansk. Very shortly thereafter, the Russians were inside Kupyansk.

That was more bad news for the Ukrainians. Who through the summer and early fall of 2025 were already struggling with far too much bad news.

The strategic main efforts of both sides had aligned at Pokrovsk and most of the Ukrainian reserves had been transferred there. There were quite a few other major operational-level emergencies besides Kupyansk going to shit, as the Donetsk Oblast city of Siversk was failing, Vovchansk in the north of Kharkiv was lost, and the Russian offensive axis that started in Vulhedar in early 2024 had managed to advance near unchecked in the previous year, moving about 70 kilometers westwards, and was then threatening the cities of Pokrovske in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

For the Ukrainians, while Kupyansk got some reinforcements, it was still a low priority in the grand scheme. And as a result, Russia’s pipeline infiltration seemed to be paying off. Seemed.

Having grabbed a foothold in the northern edge of the city, and with what seemed then like a secure supply line, the Russians continuously funneled their infantry into Kupyansk using the same infiltration tactics that became all the rage in mid to late 2025, bypassing Ukrainian positions and going as deep as possible before halting to defend or serve as rally points as jump off positions for future advances.

(Map courtesy of Deep State Ukraine)

Through November, the city seemed to be collapsing, a Russian victory seemed just weeks away. Seemed.

I mentioned previously about the Pokrovsk campaign about a race defining the outcome, which would be reduced first, the Dobropillya Salient or the Shakhove Salient? A similar race played out in Kupyasnk.

There, it was less important for the Russians to take full control of the Kupyansk itself, what they really needed to do was turn eastwards to link up with the other Russian tactical formations attacking westwards towards Kupyansk that were still nowhere near the city. Until that link-up occurred, the whole of the effort to take Kupyansk from the north could only be supported by that single thin strip of land serving as their line of communication, one that was quite vulnerable as it ran parallel to the overall line of contact, and was closer to the Ukrainian lines than it was to the Russian lines. If the Ukrainians cut that supply line before the Russians in Kupyansk could tie in with their forces to the east, most of the Russians inside Kupyansk were screwed. Again, the race was on.

And its not like the race was a surprise. There were some very visible attempts in October and November by the Ukrainians to cut the Russian supply line to Kupyansk that made it to the open source news, a few high-profile platoon- to company-sized mechanized columns attempting to reach Radkivka and the Oskil River that got mauled by Russian drone strikes. And while that was happening, the Russians were flooding into Kupyansk in greater numbers.

Then, around the second week of December, like an early Christmas gift to the Ukrainian people, the entire operational situation totally unraveled for the Russians. Suddenly, the news was reporting of a large-scale Ukrainian counterattack that cut the Russian supply line and was actively clearing the city of Russians.

Okay, what the fuck just happened?

The battle for the city culminated when none other than President Zelensky himself donned his body armor to perform a daytime photo-op inside the western edge of Kupyansk to celebrate the win. By the end of December, Kupyansk was effectively free of Russians, all dead or captured.

So I’ll ask again, what the fuck just happened?

All seemed to be going well for the Russians. Seemed. But looks are deceiving. It turns out that the local Ukrainian tactical leadership had realized how precarious the Russian supply line situation really was, about as soon as the Russians started using that direction to advance into Kupyansk. At that point the Ukrainian tactical leadership created a multi-phase counteroffensive to capitalize on it.

Those failed Ukrainian mechanized attacks in October-November that got schwacked by Russian drones performing a “Leroy Jenkins” style bum-rush to reach the Oskil weren’t indicative of a failed and desperate effort to stave off the inevitable. It turns out those were just a few of the assault missions performed during the counteroffensive that spectacularly failed.

However, due to incredible operational security that kept the whole counteroffensive out of the media eye until the very end, nobody knew until later that most other missions involved in the early phases of the Ukrainian counteroffensive had actually succeeded, they’d been able to infiltrate quite a number of forces undetected to eliminate Russian tactical rear area staging areas, drone launch sites, command posts, etc, plus had launched a large number of devastating drone strikes too.

But due to OPSEC, that wasn’t visible. It didn’t become visible until that second week of December, once the last of the Russian positions in the rear areas were destroyed, when the supply line was cut, that the next phase of the counteroffensive started. That one was more overt and impossible to hide, involving a large number of attacks to mop up the Russian presence inside Kupyansk, who were legitimately surrounded and isolated.

Since at least early 2025, being encircled isn’t that big of a deal anymore, at least in the lower tactical level. Due to the drone threat, both sides in this war are now primarily performing resupply using drones, using UGVs or aerial type like FPVs or heavy lift-quadcopters. Which means, if a small group of enemy troops, highly dispersed from others, gets behind your small group that is highly dispersed from others, what’s the danger? As long as you still have comms with your tactical rear areas and are still at least occasionally resupplied by drone, you can keep holding out. It’s like being a paratrooper, being encircled is part of the job.

But in the case of Ukraine’s Kupyansk Counteroffensive, the Russian tactical rear was effectively destroyed in the early phases of the counteroffensive. All the Russian infantry small unit outposts inside Kupyansk, all the forward drone launch sites just north of the city that were enabling the operations, all the various small unit command posts, rally points, supply caches, forward aid stations, etc, they no longer possessed a tactical rear area to support them anymore. It had been wiped out.

That meant Russians inside Kupyansk had nobody to perform drone resupply, nobody performing the ultra-critical radio relays and retrans to extend their communication range so they could talk to the tactical rear areas, nobody on the other side of the radio to even talk to them even if the radios did work. Almost overnight, the Russians inside Kupyansk became deaf, dumb, blind, and toothless, and became easy pickings Ukrainian assault units who were on the hunt for Russian isolated, unsupported, small unit outposts.

I got to hand it to the Ukrainians, that was a badass operation. Kuddos to them.

Based on reports about how that operation was performed, the local tactical leadership recognized a weak point in the Russian lines, asked for and got permission from the operational level leadership responsible for the larger front to perform a larger counteroffensive, then received a little bit of extra support to pull it off, and that was it. A perfect case of a properly run operation that wasn’t micromanaged by the ultra-top Ukrainian leadership.

The local Ukrainian forces even created entirely new effective combined arms drone-assault tactics nicknamed “Search and Strike” during that counteroffensive meant to find Russian positions, isolate them, and reduce them by fires or assault in a manner dominated by the use of drones. Those ended up being so successful they copied by most of the Ukrainian force structure.

The Kupyansk Counteroffensive was exactly the type of operation the Ukrainians ought to be doing while performing an Active Defense strategy, using every opportunity presented to them when the Russians exposes themselves, and striking back to retake ground and cause damage to the Russian war machine.

The Ukrainian mistakes come when they order offensives or defensive operations to take or hold territory at all costs, especially when they are in a bad tactical situation. Such episodes leave the Ukrainian military slamming their head against a brick wall because “orders are orders.” And those orders are generally politically driven, against sound military doctrine and operational art.

And yet, I’ve noticed that the rare moments where the Ukrainian military does something really smart, like at Kupyansk. Not top-down directed and forced on the tactical leadership, but originating from the bottom-up, when subordinate tactical units find a weakness and beg to exploit it. That’s the right way to fight! And when those smart battles are won, those still manage to score the major PR points that the political leaders demand.

But such offensives require a complicit opponent. To capitalize on an enemy weakness, that weakness needs to exist. It’s like a quintessential Judo throw, the opponent must be overextended and off balance to pull it off. And the Russians were definitely overextended and off balance at Kupyansk.

They relied on a line of communication that was way too exposed. Where it was located made it dangerous, but they could have gotten away with it if their supply was completely locked down, impenetrable to a counterattack or interdiction. Instead, it seems the Russians weren’t even aware that the Ukrainians were nibbling away against it for almost two months before they finally bit through it.

Also, they completely ignored the key aspect of the race for Kupyansk. Taking the city quickly wouldn’t help at all to secure their supply line, they needed to push eastwards and expand the resupply axis to the north, and best of all, they needed to link-up with Russian units to the east. They didn’t, instead they prioritized the rapid conquest of Kupyansk. Which means they were in a race they didn’t even recognize, they were going the wrong direction, out of bounds, and yet still thought they were going to win the race.

In late October 2025, Gerasimov was already publicly telling Putin that Kupyansk was encircled, and it definitely wasn’t true then. On November 20, Putin threw on a military uniform and traveled to Ukraine for a command post photo-op press conference, and there, Gerasimov told him some great news:

“Units of the ‘West’ grouping have liberated the city of Kupiansk and are continuing to destroy Ukrainian armed forces units surrounded on the left bank of the Oskol River.”

That was complete bullshit. Even Pro-Russian milbloggers were pushing back online against that narrative, saying that Russian forces still didn’t even have a legitimate presence in the southern part of the city, let alone control over all of Kupyansk.

I wonder, was Gerasimov knowingly lying? Or was he fed bullshit optimistic lies by his subordinates?

On one hand, Gerasimov surely got that job and held it for fourteen years under Putin by telling the boss exactly what he likes to hear. And yet, I can also see subordinated Russian tactical and operational-level commanders, under tremendous pressure to advance, telling their boss, Gerasimov, what he wanted to hear. Let’s not ignore that we’ve heard constant reporting throughout the wars that the Russian officer corps suffers a major honesty problem as subordinates lie up the chain of command to report what senior commanders want to hear, versus the truth.

In Kupyansk, the truth was that the Russian supply line was far from secure. For months, the Ukrainians were successfully making progress disrupting the Russian supply line, and yet the Russian top military leadership seemingly didn’t even know it was happening, and instead were focused on what they thought really mattered, taking the city for a propaganda win, to appease impatient bosses.

Was it worth it? Can you imagine Gerasimov’s reaction after being told Kupyansk was lost? Or Putin’s? Putin wouldn’t only need to be told that the Ukrainians retook the city, but that Zelensky himself was inside Kupyansk itself to announce the victory.

Did they ever even tell Putin? I don’t think they did, I think they’re still feeding him bullshit. Because, as of the day of the posting of this article, five months after the city was lost to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Gerasimov is claiming that the Russians have advanced past Kupyansk to the west.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt…

If you made it this far, you’ll see that I’ve once again gotten carried away. I won’t guarantee this will be the last article I ever write in this series, but I’m done for now. My hunger to describe past campaigns of the Russo-Ukraine War seems to have been sated, and I hope yours has been too.

What follows in parts 4 and 5 of this series will be in a format a bit different than the previous. There will be some offensives too that didn’t make the original cut, but I’m also going to be including some defensive-centric operations that are worth discussing. Campaigns will be listed out chronologically, some being well-performed, others being total shitshows.

And like before, I don’t feel the need to cite my sources. Thucydides didn’t, he’s called the “Father of History,” so I’m taking his example.

Micromanaging Severodonetsk: When “Not a Step Back” Backfires

Before the 2022 Spring-Summer Donbas Offensive unfolded, I knew the Ukrainian top political leadership had performed horrifically in the leadup to the war, effectively ignoring the war warnings and putting Ukraine in a position where its survival hinged on Russian incompetence and poor preparation. But I was still giving them the benefit of the doubt in that first year, figuring that political leaders would stick to politics and they weren’t going to sabotage their own war effort to try to get likes and clicks on social media. Then the battle for the Luhansk Oblast city of Severodonetsk started…

Let’s set the scene. The Russians had biffed the invasion and then shifted forces to mass for a major offensive to take the Donbas, even going so far as to announce it weeks before as if it were an upcoming sporting event and they were desperately trying to sell tickets. Not surprisingly, the Ukrainians took the hint and reinforced the Donbas just as much as the Russians did.

The battlefield can best be described as a fight for a salient. The Donbas region, aka Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, had been fought over heavily in 2014-2015, where the Russians held about a third of both oblasts before the invasion. During the invasion phase, the Russians took the southern part of Donetsk and most of the remainder of Luhansk, except a sliver of the western side. The Russian operational aims for the 2022 Donbas Offensive seem to have been two-fold: to territorially conquer the highly coveted region, while simultaneously delivering a death blow to the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) by way of attrition in the process as they attempted to defend it.

(This excellent map is courtesy of Jomini of the West)

The Ukrainian defensive line to stop the Russians primarily hinged on the Siversky Donets River, which hooked eastwards and then south. At that point, the defensive line veered away from the river to the southwest and met with the pre-existing Joint Force Operation (JFO) “Line of Contact” fortifications, the Donbas War-era highly entrenched front line, home to the only prepared defenses in Ukraine at that time, which the Russians had some great difficulty frontally penetrating.

While resisting this offensive, the most dangerous course of action for the Ukrainians was being outflanked on an operational level, which could have resulted in a massive encirclement and the destruction of a significant portion of the AFU’s fighting brigades. The Russian plan seemed to favor a double envelopment, with one pincer originating from north-northwest from the Izyum direction to outflank the key Donetsk Oblast cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north, while a southern pincer was supposed to originate from a Russian penetration through the older JFO fortifications, which would allow all the defenses hugging the Siversky Donets River to be outflanked from the south. If those jaws closed, something like a dozen or more Ukrainian brigades would have been trapped inside, plus they’d have lost nearly all of the Donbas.

At the furthest east of the salient angle was Severodonetsk, a middling city with a pre-war population of around 40,000, situated in low ground on the eastern side of the Siversky Donets River. Some other key points about the city: it held no key industry, was not a major logistical or transportation hub, and had not been fortified before the war. Additionally, on the western side of the river was its twin city, Lysychansk, even larger, and positioned on high ground that dominated the riverbank.

As the battle for Severodonetsk neared, thanks to early advances made during the invasion, the Russians were already very close. Then they crept further along through April and May, the Russians were already simultaneously advancing against Severodonetsk from three directions.

So why even defend Severodonetsk?

The Ukrainian defense in that sector of the Donbas hinged on the Siversky Donets River, and Severodonetsk sat on the wrong side of that river. It also sat in low ground, overwatched by domineering high ground on the west side of the river. And it was already being effectively encircled before the battle even started, requiring the Ukrainian defense of the city to form a ∩-shaped perimeter, extending their frontage to cover three sides, which meant more units were needed to defend than if the line was straight. Militarily, it didn’t make much sense.

And yet, the Ukrainians seemed intent on defending the city. In fact, the big showdown in Severodonetsk was discussed weeks prior to the start, with lots of anticipation and many expecting it to turn into another urban meatgrinder for the Russians, similar to Mariupol. Maybe that’s what the Ukrainian leadership had in mind, to create a deliberate attritional battle using the city’s urban landscape to their advantage. Or maybe they felt politically required to put in an effort to fight for the city before abandoning it to the Russians.

For the Russians, I truly can’t envision the taking of Severodonetsk as anything other than a fixing action. It definitely wasn’t their main effort. From mid-April through May, the Russians were primarily developing their Izyum-Lyman pincer to outflank Sloviansk from the north, as planned. Things were going horribly for Ukraine in the southern part of the line, as earlier in May, the Russians had successfully broken through the JFO line at a key city called Popasna.

In that sector, the Ukrainians had set up a hasty defensive line behind Popasna, but the Russians broke through that around May 21, which ended up creating a legit breakthrough that ruptured the southern half of the Ukrainian Donbas line, creating a salient into the Ukrainian rear that threatened to encircle all Ukrainian forces holding the Siversky Donets River. The most dangerous course of action was happening! The operational situation was already going to shit before the battle for Severodonetsk even started.

And things didn’t improve when the battle for Severodonetsk began on May 27, 2022, it would be no repeat of Mariupol. It seems the Ukrainians greatly overestimated their ability to hold the city, because within four days, the Ukrainians were driven back to the western edge of Severodonetsk to the Azot factory, a large Soviet-era industrial complex on the river’s edge.

Having already lost nearly the entire city, regardless of the initial justifications to hold Severodonetsk, the militarily correct decision considering the larger operational situation would be to cut their losses. Retreat out of Severodonetsk to Lyschansk, blow the bridges across the river, shorten the line and perform an economy-of-force defense to hold the elevated high ground along the riverbank, and transfer the excess Ukrainian forces initially used to hold Severodonetsk somewhere else where they were needed more, mainly to plug up the threat to their southern flank after Popasna was lost.

Instead, after losing nearly the entire city, the Ukrainians reinforced Severodonetsk with the limited mobile reserves they had available and counterattacked. Supposedly, in a single day, the Ukrainians reserves managed to retake about half the city, but that success only lasted for a few days before the Russians again pushed them back to the Azot plant.

And there the Ukrainian defenders remained for almost three more weeks, until well into the third week of June after the last bridge across the river leading to Severodonetsk was blown up by a Russian Iskander missile, at which point the Ukrainians on the far side of the Siversky Donets were finally allowed to retreat to Lyschansk.

By then, while the northern shoulder defenses around Sloviansk was holding out against the Russian Izyum-Lyman axis, the Ukrainian southern line had completely buckled as a result of the Russian breakthrough created after taking Popasna. By late June, only days after retreating from Severodonetsk to Lyschansk, the Ukrainians had to abandon that city plus all other holdout positions along the Siversky Donets River defensive line to avoid a grand encirclement, forced to fall back about 20 kilometers westward to the high ground east of the cities of Siversk and Bakhmut.

One shouldn’t need hindsight to know that the forces, supplies, and energy used to foolishly defend Severodonetsk for the better part of a month could have been used to greater effect doing basically anything else. For example, wouldn’t it have been nice for Ukraine to have had those forces to defend Popasna or the defensive positions established behind it?

That campaign was fishy from the start, and the smell didn’t improve with age. The decisions made were militarily unsound, violating all sorts of principles of warfare, leaving a field of red flags waving. Such as the Ukrainian president constantly talking up the battle to the media, ranting about the importance of the city, or providing lame military justifications why they wouldn’t retreat.

Severodonetsk remains the epicenter of the encounter in Donbass ... Largely, that is where the fate of our Donbass is being decided now…

…About Severodonetsk, if it is better to leave, because we have better positions there. You should also know: if you go to the better positions, it will be very costly for you to return, in terms of the number of killed people, the number of losses.

Those comments are asinine. Militarily, both are just plain wrong and suggest a totally amateur understanding of military affairs. And those statements point toward another problem: why was an entertainer turned politician discussing military affairs in such a way?

Even without hindsight, the disastrous battle to hold Severodonetsk “at all costs” reeked of political interference. Throughout modern history, at least since midway through WW1, similar episodes involving orders to perform a rigid positional defense without solid military justification nearly always originate from political interference. Such was the case in Ukraine.

Some months later, the British defense think-tank RUSI released an in-depth report on the 2022 Donbas Offensive and stated that the Ukrainian top military brass had wanted to perform a maneuver defense in the Donbas, aka an elastic defense, aka a fighting retreat, However, they were denied for political reasons. Not a surprise.

In the grand scheme of things, considering all the blood spilled and damage done in four plus years of war, the battle of Severodonetsk was a speck of sand on a beach. But it firmly established a precedent, politically directed “Not a Step Back” policies started then and haven’t stopped since. Severodonetsk was the first proof in this war that the Ukrainian military was being micromanaged down to the tactical level by political leadership, but it had only just begun.

The Second Battle for the Kherson Bridgehead: The Dress Rehearsal for the Worst Offensive of the War

Take a top-down driven general offensive hinged on a faulty intelligence estimate that doesn’t consider any real enemy resistance, add in a major national PR campaign that signals when the offensive is expected and where its aimed, include a half-baked operational scheme that only considers a rapid armored breakthrough, sprinkle on a highly entrenched enemy with a defense in depth devised by a clever general named Surovikin, and what do you get?

If you say the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive, you’d be correct. But that description also accurately describes Ukraine’s August- November 2022 Kherson Counteroffensive to liberate the bridgehead on the “Right Side” (western) of the Dnieper River, encompassing roughly half of Kherson Oblast, including Kherson City.

For background, after the initial invasion, when forces from Russia’s Southern Military District flooded out of Crimea through the Isthmus of Perekop nearly unchecked, one part turned eastwards towards Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts, the other westwards. That westward heading force managed to pull off a barely contested crossing of the Dnieper across both the Kakhovka Dam and the Antonovskiy Bridge with barely a fight. Then, part of that force headed northwards towards the city of Kryvyi Rih and another element headed west with the ultimate destination seeming to be Odesa via Mykolaiv.

The Russians managed to reach the outskirts of both Kryvyi Rih and Mykolaiv before the Ukrainian defenses solidified and the Russian advance stopped cold. After the invasion failed and Russia decided to strategically refocus on a massive offensive in the Donbas region, Southern Military District’s units across the Dnieper retreated away from Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih and formed a smaller operational sized lodgment area on the “Right”/Eastern side of the Dnieper, defined by the Inhulets River on the west and the borders of Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the north side.

Just like how the famous September 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive was not Ukraine’s first counteroffensive there, the August to November 2022 Ukrainian Kherson Counteroffensive also wasn’t the first counteroffensive in Kherson either. While the First Kharkiv Counteroffensive in April-May 2022 went nearly as well as the second, the First Kherson Counteroffensive in May-June 2022 went about as badly as the second.

Then, the main effort was poised to perform a breakthrough around a city called Davydiv Brid after having crossed the Inhulets River, then to head eastwards to the Dnieper River to cut the salient in two and effectively encircle the upper half of the Russian bridgehead, having cut them off from the two fixed crossing points.

However, the efforts to cross the Inhulets and take Davydiv Brid failed, and while the Ukrainians saw some successes in the south and north of the overall bridgehead, the offensive ground away for most of a month before the Ukrainians called it off. But the top Ukrainian leadership wasn’t about to give up after one failure.

(Map courtesy of Militaryland.net)

I previously described in detail the origin of Ukraine’s strategic-level 2022 Counteroffensive in my retelling of the 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive, but the key point to consider is that the original concept of operations, the Melitopol axis direction, was canceled due to the high risk, and only the Kherson Bridgehead offensive axis remained. That then became the main effort while the Kharkiv offensive would act as a supporting operation to fix/divert Russian forces away from reinforcing “the South.”

If the previous Ukrainian offensive to reduce the Kherson Bridgehead gave sufficient forewarning to the Russians on the need to reinforce their defensive efforts, they received an even greater motivation when, starting in early July and running through August, about the time that the Donbas front was going to shit, the Ukrainian political leadership started aggressively talking up an upcoming massive offensive aimed at “the South.”

Was that legit? Was it just a feint? All signs point that it was not a feint and they were telegraphing exactly what was expected to happen with a dual Kherson-Zaporizhzhia. But more so, the Russians believed the intelligence, enough so that they transferred a significant force presence from Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblasts to reinforce Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, including most of the units from the Eastern Military District plus the VDV airborne brigades and divisions. In addition, the infamous General Surovikin, who was commanding the forces of the Southern Military District, spent months preparing a deep, heavily mined defense in depth.

There was one big difference between the Second Kherson Offensive in 2022 and the 2023 Counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia and that was the efforts made in late July through August 2022 to “isolate the battlefield” by targeting the Antonovskiy Bridge and the Kakhovka Dam using American-provided, satellite-guided GMLRS rockets fired by HIMARS. While those didn’t outright destroy the crossing points, they did disable then to most vehicle traffic. From the Ukrainian viewpoint, they probably were hoping to degrade the Russian supply line across the Dnieper River, to limit Russian effectiveness to stop the upcoming field army-sized mechanized offensive.

And truth be told, I kind of understand why the Ukrainians might have thought the offensive would be a cake walk, as it really doesn’t make much military sense for the Russians to be defending the Kherson Bridgehead so tenaciously, if at all. Politically, sure. Putin was planning to annex Kherson Oblast and that territory included much of ground in the Kherson Bridgehead. Also, for PR purposes, by successfully defending against a Ukrainian offensive, Russia could show how weak and futile Ukraine was in its attempts to win back lost territory.

But militarily? If the Donbas was the strategic main effort, and all evidence suggested it was, then why devote so many resources to defend on the wrong side of the Dnieper River when instead they could retreat to the east side and defend it with an economy-of-force effort? After all, there was no real strategic importance to hold that ground, considering Russia was unlikely to ever be able to seriously threaten Western Ukraine? Especially after the Antonovskiy Bridge and the Kakhovka Dam were disabled and Ukrainian use of long range precision fires meant resupply was going to be an effort?

However, as I’ve said before, the Ukrainians and Russians make so many of the same stupid decisions for the same stupid reasons. Politics routinely wins out over sound military theory. So fixed crossing points or not, the Russians were going to go all in defending the Kherson Bridgehead.

That was unfortunate for the Ukrainians, as like the May-June attempt, the second battle to liberate the Kherson Bridgehead was to start out poorly. The Ukrainians experienced some gains on the north side of the bridgehead, but there was little to show but heavy losses from the operation’s main effort, again attempting to cross the inhulets River nearby to Davydiv Brid to drive to the Dnieper banks.

What was reported by the Ukrainians was the epitome of the difficulties attacking a prepared defense in depth, with enemy observation unimpaired, with a fully functioning reconnaissance fires complex, with ample kill zones supported by lots of mines, ATGMs, and artillery, even by Russian fixed wing aviation performing lofting bomb and rocket attacks.

The Ukrainians anticipated little to none of that, the Russians were expected to make the smart call and retreat, and the Ukrainians were supposed to score a clean penetration and exploitation, with a panicky and poorly supplied enemy routing to Kherson City and the river. Instead, the campaign ground away for months.

While no doubt the strikes on the Russian supply lines crossing the Dnieper were painful for their logistical situation, it seems the Russians had prepared in advance for just such a contingency. Shortly after the crossing points were disabled by GMLRS strikes, the Russians bridged the river with a fixed pontoon bridge, and augmented that with constant back-and-forth ferrying of manpower, equipment, and supplies using individual segments of pontoons being motored across, lashed to powered boats or using outboard motors. Whatever level of supply tonnage the Russians managed to get across to support defensive operations, it was enough. The Russians held.

The offensive went bad enough that in early October, the Ukrainian commander of Operational Command South and also responsible for the offensive, was removed from the command of the Kherson Bridgehead offensive, with a new general being given operational and strategic command. That commander came in ripping and roaring, not surprisingly under a bit of pressure to get results, and he did achieve some, in mid to late October. Though they were minor in the grander scheme, as most of the Kherson Bridgehead was still in Russian hands.

Lucky for the Ukrainians, while their main effort in Kherson fizzled, their supporting effort in Kharkiv had been a smashing success. The Russians there had been in mad retreat since the initial Ukrainian breakthrough in early September. Their attempts to counterattack had failed, they barely evaded a massive encirclement threat and only just managed to hold a new hasty north-south defensive line thrown up around the Luhansk cities of Svatove and Kreminna. Russia’s next problem in the series of emergencies was finding the reserves to man their new defensive line, as the cupboard was bare.

The situation was quite dangerous for Russia. If the Ukrainians broke through the Svatove-Kreminna Line, they could potentially outflank all of the Donbas on the western side of the Siversky Donets River, bypassing the whole of the Donbas Industrial Zone as it had been done throughout the 20th Century, potentially liberating most territory lost in the Donbas since 2014. But where could the Russians find about 30,000 troops, including a whole bunch of really good units (VDV), to hold the Svatove-Kreminna Line?

In early October 2022, due to the shitshow that was the Russian war effort, the infamous and capable General Surovikin was placed in command of Russia’s SMO. His relatively short tenure was known for many things, including a strategic shift to defensive operations and the building of the so-called “Surovkin Line” of defenses, which really started in Spring 2022 when he was commanding the Southern Grouping of Forces. It’s widely assumed by many that upon his new appointment, one of Surovikin’s suggestions to Gerasimov, Shoigu, and Putin was to abandon the defense of the Dnieper Bridgehead and to shift those reserves eastwards. Whether that was Surovikin’s idea or not, that’s what happened.

Starting around mid-October and lasting until mid-November, Russian forces slowly retreated out of the Kherson Bridgehead. After arriving on the secure left/eastern bank, some forces remained in place to hold the banks of the Dnieper in an economy-of-force defensive operation, while most of the forces used to defend the Kherson Bridgehead, including all of the VDV, were transferred eastwards where they were used to stop the Ukrainians along the Svatove-Kreminna Line. And thus, as the Russians finally did the sensible thing and retreated out of the Kherson Bridgehead, the Ukrainians “won” the Kherson Counteroffensive, chalking up another major victory in the Fall of 2022.

Funny enough, while pretty much the entire OSINT community was reporting the Russian retreat from the Kherson Bridgehead as it played out in real time in mid-to-late October, the Ukrainian government and military were saying that the Russians were actually reinforcing the Kherson bridgehead with even more troops. Afterwards, the Ukrainians played like they were being cautious and were following bad intel, but I don’t buy that.

My guess is that the Ukrainians knew the Russians were retreating, but due to the withdrawal being done competently, they also knew they couldn’t trap the retreating Russians on the right/western bank, couldn’t even seriously attrit them as they were withdrawing. Meanwhile, they were probably perfectly content with the prize of retaking the Kherson Bridgehead, especially without any further slog, especially a massive urban battle in Kherson City, as they’d already taken far more losses than they had ever planned for. Instead, they created a talking point that would deflect from the obvious question asked to them if they announced that they did know the Russians were retreating before it was finished, which would be “What are you doing to trap them?”

Amazingly, the same Ukrainian commander put in charge of the Kherson Counteroffensive halfway through would go on to lead the Melitopol axis effort in the 2023 Counteroffensive. And there he would encounter a situation near identical to what he had previously experienced while suffering great difficulty less than a year before. As the 2023 Counteroffensive played out, it demonstrated that not a single lesson was seemingly learned from the 2022 Kherson Counteroffensive in terms of positional warfare, that commander didn’t have a single plan in place to overcome any of the near identical tactical problems he’d faced in Kherson while trying to breakthrough an even deeper and more prepared Russian defense-in-depth in Zaporizhzhia.

More the pity…

The Dnieper Crossing at Krynky: Operation Tethered Goat

Occasionally in warfare, there are campaigns where, from start to finish, there is hardly anything positive to say about either side’s contribution, where the whole operation can be best described as “when idiots collide.” Such was the battle of Krynky, fought from October 2023 to July 2024.

Watching the operation play out in real time was baffling, it made no sense then. Some information was revealed afterwards in the normal way, military insiders talking to the media, but those revelations didn’t make the operation any easier to digest.

It seems that early on during the planning phase for the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive, British military brass advising the Ukrainians had acted as the ultimate “Good Idea Fairy” and pitched a really audacious operation: in conjunction with the Zaporizhzhia thrust towards Melitopol, the Ukrainians would use the Ukrainian Marine Corps to launch a cross-river offensive along three points of the Dnieper River in Kherson Oblast, creating a secondary axis to reach the Isthmus of Perekop and directly threaten Russian-controlled Crimea, while the Melitopol axis cut the Land Bridge further to the east.

The initial concept of operations seems batshit insane in hindsight, but theoretically, it was possible but only if the Russians were as weak, incompetent, and demoralized as early Ukrainian planners suggested and hoped for. If that was the case, and the cross-river offensive was done in conjunction with the rest of the 2023 Counteroffensive, and especially if the Zaporizhzhia offensive worked as advertised and achieved a clean penetration and rapid exploitation to reach Melitopol, then a Dnieper-crossing would really only have been a supporting effort, resistance would have been minimal to resist the crossing, counterattack the foothold and growing lodgement, or slow down a competing operational level drive towards Crimea.

However, there were two problems. For one, the Ukrainians had a significant lack of amphibious capabilities to cross the Dnieper in force and establish an operational-sized lodgement on the “left” eastern side of the river. It’s one thing to have large numbers of low-ranking private soldiers who had graduated from an abbreviated, rushed, and inadequate five-week basic training course run by the British Royal Marines that included the bare minimum of how to paddle an inflatable raiding craft. It’s quite another to execute a division-sized ‘wet gap” crossing never done before, never having been rehearsed previously either, without even really knowing what would go into such an operation in terms of planning, due to pure inexperience. Note to readers, river crossing operations are VERY difficult to perform if one doesn’t know how. Also, if the Russians weren’t as hopeless as the Ukrainian intelligence assessment was in the lead-up for the 2023 Counteroffensive, where the planned hinged on one of the worst examples of underestimating an opponent in modern history, then no matter how well prepared the Ukrainian Marine Corps was, it still wouldn’t work.

Not that the Dnieper crossing offensive happened during the 2023 Counteroffensive. While at some point it does seem to have been approved by the Ukrainian General Staff, at some point later it was cancelled. But in my opinion, the story and timeline behind the cancellation, per the Ukrainian media, doesn’t add up. They say the plan was still on right up until the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed on June 6, 2023, just before the general offensive began, which flooded the Dnieper River region south of it, scuttling the offensive and leading to the Ukrainian Marine Corps brigades meant to perform the cross-river operation to be transferred eastwards to perform an offensive along the Velyka Novosilka-Berdyansk axis in Donetsk Oblast.

However, numerous sources describe those Marine brigades already on the attack along the Velyka Novosilka-Berdyansk axis at the very start of the 2023 Counteroffensive, with some reports as early as June 3, at least by June 8. That location is a roughly 360-kilometer march from the Kherson rear areas, and they didn’t have to just move multiple mechanized equivalent brigades but also all support infrastructure and supplies. Something like that takes many weeks, not a few days. And yet, the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed on June 6. So regardless of the stories presented, the planned crossing of the Dnieper was cancelled at least since mid-May and that decision had nothing to do with the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam and subsequent flooding.

Having scrubbed the operation initially, the Ukrainians weren’t done with the plan. Instead of performing it in conjunction with the 2023 Counteroffensive, they waited until their general offensive had failed and ended before some total retard(s) decided to attempt a contested crossing of the Dnieper.

How utterly bizarre. Say what you will about the seemingly batshit insane initial plan, but it was only supposed to happen in conjunction with four other concurrent operations happening along a massive broad front: 1) the main effort aimed at Melitopol, 2) the supporting effort competing main effort at Bakhmut, 3) a major partisan uprising near Melitopol led by Ukrainian SOF, 4) the Belgorod incursion performed by armed Russian ex-pats fighting for Ukraine. Insane or not, the Russians would have been hard-pressed to deal with all five of those operations at once.

Instead, the riskiest of all the proposed 2023 Counteroffensive plans was executed in October 2023, the efforts to push to take Tokmak along the Orikhiv-Melitopol axis had nearly entirely ended as an abysmal and costly failure, after the Velyka Novosilka-Berdyansk axis had been closed for a month, after the Bakhmut offensive had already ended as an abysmal and costly failure, after the Belgorod incursion had ended as an abysmal and costly failure, and with the Melitopol partisan uprising had never really started at all.

By that point, strategically, the Ukrainian military had reached its culmination point and was utterly exhausted. In fact, credible reports suggest the only real reason they called off the 2023 Counteroffensive at all was that the “offensive-capable” brigades meant to perform it were basically out of infantrymen to attack with.

Meanwhile, the nationwide manpower crisis was further exacerbated by an ever-worsening mobilization problem, primarily caused by poor morale. To make matters worse, just as the Ukrainians were strategically culminating due to exhaustion, the Russians were strong enough to not only have stopped the Ukrainian general offensive but went back on the offensive themselves, kicking it off with the third battle of Avdiivka also starting in October 2023.

Then was the time for the Ukrainians to assume the strategic defense, catch their breath, sort out their manpower problems, make necessary mobilization reforms, and in the meantime, try to conserve lives as best as possible as they reconstituted battered formations. Instead, the Ukrainian political and military leadership decided it was the best time to perform a “wet gap” river crossing, one of the most difficult types of attacks there are, without any competing supporting efforts. Lunacy.

Miraculously, the Ukrainians managed to get across the Dnieper in one piece. It seems they didn’t fully recycle the original operations order, instead of three crossing points they performed only one, carving out a foothold toehold on the eastern bank of the Dnieper in the small settlement of Krynky, home to less than 1,000 people before the war started.

(Map courtesy of Militaryland.net)

I have no idea what the Ukrainians were hoping to achieve with that operation. It seems they chose the single crossing point at Krynky because they could only support one landing site versus the original three, probably due to the losses the Marine brigades had suffered in Donetsk over the summer. Effectively, they would support the Krynky toehold by rotating through the existing infantry from the three active duty and one TDF Marine brigade and those pushed to those units having recently finishing basic training.

Let’s be clear, that was not some grand amphibious operation with lots of landing craft meant to land platoons, companies, or whole battalions at a time, including tanks and other heavy equipment. The Krynky operation was basically done with inflatable raiding craft and other small watercraft of the type capable of moving a squad or less of dismounted infantry, bringing with them only the equipment they could carry by hand and move by foot.

What could that have accomplished? The post-battle revelations to the Ukrainian media suggest the Ukrainian leadership still harbored ambitions to reach Crimea, but I just can’t believe that was true, the decision makers would have to be out of their minds to believe that. As a rule, I try to give others the benefit of the doubt when contemplating their motives, as it’s a dangerous game to always assume gross incompetence and ineptitude.

Here is the only plausible justification I can find for the Ukrainians to have launched that operation. Like big game hunters in Africa and India of old, the Ukrainian Marine Corps in Krynky would act as the tethered goats to be staked out in a clearing to bait dangerous game animals to exit the treeline so the hidden hunter could have a clean kill shot once the predator was in the open.

It’s no secret that the entire Ukrainian political and military leadership are infatuated with defeating the Russians through attrition, specifically through manpower losses. Not since the Vietnam War has any military focused so heavily on McNamara-style “Body Count” as the Ukrainians have. Simply put, they believe if they create enough irrecoverable Russian personnel losses then the Russians will quit, Ukrainians plan to kill their way to victory. Zaluzhny outright admitted it in interviews, Syrsky has talked it up endlessly, many others from the General Staff and other senior military brass, not to mention both Ministers of Defense, Zelensky and his entire administration have all talked about it, endlessly.

My belief is that the Krynky operation was designed to land Ukrainians Marines on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, in relatively small numbers to limit their total number of losses, where their presence would draw Russian counterattacks into a preestablished “kill zones” through the wide-open grounds to the east-southeast of Krynky that would be under observation of Ukrainian ISTAR drones, then leading to the Russians being whittled down with Ukrainian fires. Throughout the whole operation and afterwards, the Ukrainian leadership did little but talk up the positive kill ratios at Krynky, and I doubt that was only Information Operations/propaganda. Considering how the Ukrainian top leadership also treats their infantrymen as cannon fodder, I don’t think there would be any ethical reasons to avoid using their men as “meat” to bait a trap.

If that were the case, it’s pretty extreme, ruthless as all Hell, but had the potential to be a pretty ingenious attritional battle as long as two conditions were met.

First, it required the Russians to take the bait. They needed to be oblivious of the trap and to attack recklessly and stupidly, regardless of the losses, trying to retake the tiny and unimportant village of Krynky to alleviate the sting of Russian pride being wounded having lost a tiny sliver of meaningless ground along a massive riverbank. However, if the Russians didn’t take the bait, at best, the Ukrainians would be left holding a tiny unimportant village on the wrong side of a major river obstacle that they couldn’t exploit further. Or worse, the Russians could avoid attempts to retake Krynky by assault but still reduce the Ukrainian presence by pounding the Ukrainian toehold from a distance with heavy fires of their own, to attrit away the Ukrainians while suffering few Russian casualties themselves.

The second condition, the Ukrainian personnel serving as bait absolutely couldn’t be conscripts performing that mission against their will. As that operation unfolded, the Ukrainian Marines openly complained to everyone listening, both Ukrainian and foreign media, that they were performing what amounted to a “suicide mission.” And in all truth, that description was quite accurate. But occasionally, military operations require what amounts to suicide missions. However, participation in a “Forlorn Hope” type mission is always supposed to be voluntary, never compulsory, because, not surprisingly, forcing subordinates to kill themselves is bad for morale. And the Ukrainian war effort could no longer afford bad morale. It was possible they could have supported the Krynky operation by rounding up volunteers from among the force structure after having incentivized them however was required to find motivated individuals willing to perform suicide mission (high level medals, promotions, permanent tax breaks, massive payouts to families if they are lost, etc). Or otherwise the Ukrainians could have replicated the Russians earlier than they did with the recruitment of convict volunteers to serve in extremely dangerous, high risk assault units to “earn” their pardons. Either would have sufficed.

And yet, the Ukrainians foolishly didn’t use volunteers, nearly all of the Marines that crossed that God-forsaken river to either be hunted during the crossing or to be struck inside Krynky by artillery, glide bombs, drones, or Russian assaults were mobilized conscripts.

The Ukrainian infantry manpower crisis was exacerbated by a failing mobilization system, triggered by poor societal motivation to serve in the junior enlisted ranks as a “grunt,” which is where most would go, mainly because the remainder of the Ukrainian military-aged-male population eligible for mobilization was very worried that the exact scenario happening to the Marines at Krynky would happen to them: they’d end up as cannon fodder.

In a situation like that, even if Krynky killed far more Russians than Ukraine lost, and even if Ukraine ended up indefinitely holding Krynky, at best it would have been a Pyrrhic victory that only weakened Ukraine’s long-term combat sustainability.

But none of that was even guaranteed when the Ukrainians launched the operation, such a bloodletting was only possible if the Russians took the bait. Fortunately for the Ukrainians, the Russians did. Hook, line, and sinker.

Having watched eight and a half grueling months of that operation play out, it’s obvious the Russians aggressively counterattacked for all of it. And yet their messaging was so inconsistent and odd that it really lends evidence that there is a huge disconnect at the top levels of the Russian political and military leadership, lies are being reported up the chain, dishonesty and confusion reign supreme.

First things first, with the Ukrainians landing some small units to take Krynky from a small number of Russian outpost positions that were never of the size or type that could withstand a concerted attack, the Russian reaction was to fire the Dnipr Grouping of Forces commander, the general running the ad hoc command sitting under the strategic OSK military district level but above the combined arms army level was formally relieved of command. I won’t even guess as to the exact reasons why he was replaced, but his replacement stands out, none other than Colonel General Teplinsky, one of Russia’s best general officers.

But things didn’t improve under Teplinsky. The Russian SMO HQ and General Staff released a press release stating that after the Ukrainian landing in Krynky, they were going to restructure the defensive front-lines and transfer some Dnipr Grouping units away to the East. Okay, makes some sense, that sounded like the Russian leadership had decided not to take the bait, were retreating away from the riverbank a bit, not counterattacking, going as so far as to transfer away unnecessary units that were already there but not needed. Wow, the Russians are acting responsible for a change!

However, within hours of that press release, another followed, cancelling out the and stating nothing was actually changing. And then another press release after that one apologizing for the miscommunication. Ugh, okay…

Then followed months of bloody Russian counterattacks, which didn’t retake Krynky and yet still resulted with the obvious, lots of Russian troops getting hammered as they crossed the wide-open grounds to the east-southeast of Krynky. The Ukrainian Marines weren’t exactly having fun, at that point it became clear that the operation was a suicide mission for them. But so too for the Russian troops.

And then, in late December 2023, Putin was delivering his end-of-the-year update on the war to the Russian media and said this:

Now about Krynki. The enemy announced a big counteroffensive but nothing came of it anywhere. The last attempt – at any rate it looks like the last attempt for now – was to break through to the left bank of the Dnieper and ensure the movement towards Crimea. Everyone is talking about this, it is common knowledge, and it is nothing new. What happened in this section?

The Armed Forces of Ukraine focused its artillery shelling on a very narrow section of the left bank. To keep our men alive and not to subject them to excessive risk, not to sustain losses, the military command decided to retreat for several metres (I will tell you and as a war correspondent you understand what I am talking about). They are hiding their personnel in the forest to save it from unnecessary losses.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine walked into this section. It is small – about 1,200 metres long and some 300 metres wide. I do not even understand why they are doing this – they are simply pushing their people into death. The Ukrainian military say themselves that this is a one-way trip. To get the personnel there – about 80 people were there the whole time, but now the number is somewhat smaller – they are using only boats, and the boats are under fire from artillery, drones and other weapons. The sanitary losses among our personnel are two or three people, and there were six wounded three days ago. The enemy has dozens of dead. They were simply caught in a “fire bag.” They are throwing their men into it only for political reasons – I believe it’s just for political reasons.

LOL, what the Hell was that?

Putin was either under the illusion that Russia didn’t take the bait, or he was lying to the Russian public that their military forces were smartly pounding the Ukrainian toehold in Krynky from afar, not risking their own troops, which would have been the most dangerous course of action for the Ukrainians, but was definitely not what the Russians were doing.

The messaging got weirder. In February 2024, none other than the Minister of Defense Shoigu was openly boasting that the Russians had retaken Krynky by assault. That turned out a bit premature by about five months, as it wouldn’t be until July 2024 that the Russians retook Krynky.

Who won that campaign? The only winners were those who didn’t participate.

I have no idea how many losses the Russians took at Krynky. It’s known that at least one VDV division was transferred there to participate in the counterattacks, not to mention whatever else. Surely it was a lot, eight and a half months of constant assault and failing assault attempts to retake the city requiring advancing through that kill zone to the east-southeast would have been tough, especially considering the Ukrainians had drone dominance due to the opposing heights of the western bank of the Dnieper and being closer to Krynky, so had range overmatch.

The famed “Magyar’s Birds” strike drone unit was supporting the Krynky operation from the start of it, and during that campaign they were enlarged from company to battalion to regimental-sized by the end, and I doubt they managed that rapid without achieving a buttload of Russian kills in the process. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if Robert “Magyar” Brovdi got the idea for the Line of Drones concept with impenetrable “kill zone” from Krynky.

And yet, so what? From October 2023 to July 2024, the Russian strategic offensive only enlarged in scope and scale, and despite the hefty cost the Russians kept replacing losses while reportedly growing their force structure. So whatever losses the Russians suffered in Krynky, they were sustainable. Stupid, wasteful, unnecessary, but still sustainable.

Can the Ukrainians say the same thing? I don’t at all buy the official casualty figures the UA govt and mil supplied to the media, suggesting a butcher’s bill of approximately 250 killed and less than a thousand missing (and presumed dead). But whatever their actual Ukrainian losses, (supposedly many thousands were killed, according to some Ukrainian military insiders), the psychological effect was far worse than the physical.

That battle didn’t just occur during the manpower crisis, during the breakdown of the mobilization system, just as the AWOL epidemic started getting out of control, it was campaigns like Krynky that caused all of those things to worsen. Ukraine had no sustainment system in place to suffer and replace heavy losses, so whatever the losses they suffered at Krynky were unsustainable. And in the end, they lost the ground they took anyway, so Krynky was a defeat in every conceivable way.

Not to say the Russians should get a prize for victory. Like their Ukrainian peers, those on the Russian side responsible for that shitshow operation should also have been required to wear a dunce cap for the foreseeable future until they somehow redeemed themselves.

None have ever since, those same idiots keep colliding…

Once again, I got carried away. I had meant to fit at least six campaigns in one article, but alas. So I am cutting it in half, George R.R. Martin style, and releasing each half separately.

Time to exercise some tactical patience until Part 5 is released.

Do you have any insight on why the Southern Military District seem to have performed much better compared to the others during the 2022 invasion (and maybe conversely, why Western Military District seemed to have performed the worst)?

One explanation I heard of for the disparity of performances between Russian Military Districts (or OSKs, however you want to describe them) was that because the Southern Military District (SMD) was more involved with most of Russia’s recent conflicts (specifically the Donbas War in Ukraine and Syria), they were at a higher state of readiness before this war started, at least in comparison to other military districts. More combat experience, more training, bigger budgets, etc.

If true, that would be surprising to many in the West in particular, as that honor was thought to have gone to the Western Military District (WMD), tasked with fighting NATO, was thought to possess Russia’s premier units. Could that still have been true?

Maybe. While I heard a lot of complaints about the WMD and praise for SMD, there could be simple explanations to justify the complaints of WMD’s poor performance and the praises of SMD without really factoring in competence. Namely, opposition.

As I mentioned in this article, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was supposed to be a cake walk. The Russian FSB was supposed to perform the heavy lifting to undermine Ukrainian resistance from within, while every Russian military unit, regardless of the military district, seemingly expected to just convoy to their intended destinations with limited resistance, if any.

For units of the SMD invading Ukraine from Crimea into Kherson Oblast, the invasion didn’t go perfectly to plan for Russian forces but went far more smoothly than elsewhere. I think it helped that the Ukrainians barely had any military forces in the Isthmus of Perekop to defend the Kherson border with Crimea. Supposedly, there were only a couple of battalions of Ukrainian Marines in the general vicinity that weren’t at all prepared to stop the Russians, with no minefields, no charges prepared for the limited number of bridges and causeways the Russians needed to cross, no prepared positions to fight from, and not deployed tactically at the start. That area was a massive chokepoint, historically it was used to defend invasions to or from Crimea, and yet the Ukrainian military barely held for minutes, let alone the days they probably could have. There is still a raging controversy in Ukraine as to why, with nobody in the Ukrainian govt will to give any real answers, probably because the real answers will be incriminating.

But it wasn’t just Ukrainian active-duty military that Russian forces had to contend with. A little-talked-about but very impactful reason the Russian invasion failed was that, despite a strategic lack of Ukrainian military readiness, Ukraine was essentially rescued by a nation-wide unplanned and unorganized “militia” type resistance, where lots of motivated, patriotic citizens took up arms to defend their nation. Some were in some Far Right militias, others were just groups of friends who planned to fight just in case the Russians invaded, others already signed up with the newly raised Territorial Defense Forces, some just answered the call when word came that an invasion occurred. And they were quite well armed too, many possesed more than just assault rifles, they had access to quite a bit of heavy weaponry too, to include “alternatively acquired” AT weapons too.

Those quasi-militia sorts were known to have played decisive roles elsewhere in Ukraine, not limited to, but the most well-known being Kyiv. But where were they in the South when the 58th Combined Arms Army was crossing the Isthmus of Perekop, blowing past the very limited active-duty military resistance they encountered?

It seems the FSB actually had some legit successes in that region, undermining resistance through espionage, as it was revealed by the Ukrainian govt afterwards that not a few compromised Ukrainian officials had either refused to pass along orders that would have increased their defensive capabilities, while some outright gave “stand down” orders.

The result was that combat units of the SMD barely even ran into any serious resistance. With some units heading westwards, they barely had a fight to cross the Dnieper River, which is insane considering how far away it was from the border with Crimea (about 90 kilometers). The Dnieper is the most defensible barrier in Ukraine, and yet there was almost nothing prepared to defend it, and that had nothing to do with the SMD’s abilities and everything to do with Ukrainian fuckups. Eastwards, the SMD units barely faced any resistance to take Melitopol (110 km from the border), or on the long drive towards Mariupol (340 km from the border).

It was only after nearly reaching the city of Mykolaiv, well past Kherson City, and moving northwards to the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is north from Melitopol, and attempting to complete the encirclement of Mariupol (HQ of Azov and a Marine Brigade), while also simultaneously heading northwards into Donetsk Oblast, where the units of the SMD coming from Crimea finally ran into Ukrainian resistance heavy enough to stop their forward progress. And just going by those distances and the inherent supply difficulties involved in mobile warfare, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to stop the Russians at that point.

In comparison, units of the Western Military District faced much stiffer resistance right from the get-go. While there wasn’t much organized Ukrainian resistance at the border, there were a few active-duty Ukrainian units that were permanently garrisoned nearby cities that happened to be close to the border. Plus, plenty of local Ukrainians took up arms to stop the Russians, and those held long enough for some military units to arrive often without units of the WMD getting very far inside the borders, at least in comparison to SMD’s joy ride.

And what about Ukrainian reserves? Go back and look at that map I linked earlier about RU invasion objectives. The Combined Arms Armies and Tank Armies of the WMD were supposed to perform some very deep drives to accomplish some very audacious objectives, to encircle the Donbas and most of Ukraine east of the Dnieper.

But consider the Ukrainian force disposition on the eve of the invasion. Reports that I’ve heard about suggest that something like 3/4 of the Ukrainian active-duty tactical force structure were located in the Donbas, manning the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) Line of Contact. That was the result of another major Ukrainian fuckup, the AFU General Staff reinforced it before the invasion, believing the threats to Kyiv and Kherson were only elements of a deception plan, that the real target of an invasion, if it happened at all, would only be the Donbas region (whoops).

However, the Ukrainian military leadership corrected that deployment error immediately after the war started, transferring units away from the Donbas to everywhere else in Ukraine that needed them, resulting in a large number of Ukrainian units transferred westwards from the Donbas. And what would be the closest threat area for them to reach? Sumy, Kharkiv, and Luhansk Oblasts, exactly where units of the Russian WMD were attempting to punch through, making that area the simplest to defend in terms of reaction time. Which means, good or not, WMD was doomed to fail.

Having said that, at the tactical level, I’m not so sure who performed better, as legit historical accounts aren’t available. To know that, we’d need to know every tactical formation and every skirmish and battle they fought, and know the real and non-propaganda level of Ukrainian resistance, and none of that information is public knowledge, at least to my knowledge.

Should hot war break out in the near future between EU and Russia (e.g. expeditionary forces from France, Poland, Germany would enter Ukraine, or Russia would attempt an attack on the Baltics), would Russian experience in drone warfare be a huge issue and likely defeat/cause large attrition to EU forces at least short/mid term (until they learn/reform) or would you expect EU forces to be able to pull off maneuver warfare due to their better training/equipment?

While I think Russian drone usage would be a problem, regardless, Russian abilities would be far less decisive in the second scenario, a future invasion of NATO in the Baltics, versus the first example, with some NATO-partner militaries intervening directly into the current Russo-Ukraine War.

For the latter, if combat maneuver brigades from France, Poland, Germany, etc were inserting some into the current front lines, I think the NATO brigades would probably perform terribly at first, as they just are not set up for this sort of fight. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because the current front-line situation is a direct byproduct of four years of ultra-static warfare in Ukraine, and that battlefield situation is just so unique that any outsider would find it alien.

Consider WW2, how very experienced combat units that fought in one theater performing one type of routine operations often struggled greatly after being transferred to another sector in the same theater to perform a slightly different type of operation in a slightly different environment; despite fighting the same enemy, it was almost as if they were novices fighting for the first time, in terms of having to relearn everything, often painfully. That is because the situation matters greatly, and the situation in Ukraine is NOT one that anyone in NATO is planning for. Truth of the matter, it wasn’t even one that Ukraine nor Russia took serious before this war started. It’s positional warfare at its worst, with four years of adaptations made to the specifics of this unique conflict. Especially everything involving drones.

I can’t stress enough that nobody planned for this sort of warfare before, nor was ready for it. Prewar Russian doctrine did have greater emphasis on usage of drones than most NATO militaries, but they still focused near entirely on highly fluid mobile operations on a “fragmented battlefield,” where the fog of war dominated, where there would be massive gaps between units, where bypassing resistance was the order of the day, where highly armored mobile Battalion Tactical Groups with their own organic artillery and drones would win meeting engagements with overwhelming fires and then “keep on truckin’” to go deep as fast as they could. And the Ukrainians followed a near-identical doctrine as the Russians, as both were just slightly tweaked versions of older Soviet doctrine.

Then that blew up in both of their faces in March 2022, namely because both sides were nearly equally unprepared for the realities of the Russo-Ukraine War. The Russian military wasn’t ready to perform a contested invasion, and the Ukrainians definitely weren’t ready to resist a major invasion in the manner they would have preferred. The result was both of them gassing out enough in mid to late March 2022 that the lines froze, the gaps of the “fragmented battlefield” got filled in, and positional warfare set in. And by and large, for the next four years, neither side has had much chance to break out of positional warfare, minus the occasional Ukrainian successes that they couldn’t exploit strategically (Kharkiv 2022 and Kursk 2024). Meanwhile, the Russians have never broken out of positional warfare in four years.

Long story short, positional warfare is a byproduct of failure. Nobody sane plans for failure, losing or doing so badly in the first fight that they get stuck indefinitely in positional warfare, needing to go to a total war economy and attempt to win by way of a horrifically expensive attritional strategy.

That’s like trying to win a knife fight by letting your opponent repeatedly stab you as you stab them, in the hopes your opponent bleeds out first. Wouldn’t you rather win the knife fight with finesse so you barely get cut? That’s the essence of “Maneuver Warfare.” Better yet, wouldn’t you rather avoid getting cut at all and use a pistol to shoot your opponent who is only armed with a knife? And that is the essence of “Air Power,” which was also created and made popular as an alternative to avoid horrifically costly attritional positional warfare.

US-led NATO militaries are basically designed to fight and win the “First Fight,” so something closer to defending against the Russian invasion of Ukraine than anything afterwards. I say basically, because most of NATO sucks and don’t take defense seriously at all, and are not at all prepared even to win a “First Fight” campaign to stop a legit Russian invasion of the Baltics. Since the Russo-Ukraine War started, I don’t think most of them are much better prepared than they were before.

That said, if NATO took an invasion threat seriously, more seriously than Zelensky’s Ukraine did in the run-up to the February 2022 invasion, then I think NATO would have still done a better job than Ukraine did, not only because NATO (with the US) was far more capable than the pre-war Ukrainian Armed Forces, but also the Ukrainians were caught flat footed by the invasion, and suffered as a result.

In terms of the ultra-static positional battlefield in Ukraine, four years of adaptations have tweaked each side’s command, control, comms, fire direction, and logistics in such a way that is night and day different from before. But also in a way that couldn’t even work in a more mobile war. Nearly all of their current tactics, techniques, and procedures are not doctrine, are not codified or even really known by the higher-level commands, they are just day-to-day standard operating procedures of tactical units that constantly change as the battlefield situation changes.

Take a top-tier Ukrainian or Russian unit from early 2023, and use a time machine to gather them up to drop them in the current battlefield, and they’d almost certainly do badly. But take a top-tier unit from 2026 and drop that into February 24, 2022, and they’d probably do awful on a highly mobile battlefield, because nearly everything they routinely perform wouldn’t work anymore. Their command, control, comms, and fire direction all rely on systems and networks they wouldn’t be able to assemble elsewhere, especially not while moving much. Their centralized command system with ultra-static higher tactical command posts micromanaging the battlefield, fully embracing net-centric warfare, would be next to impossible. The coordination that the ultra-static battlefield allows, where units will know weeks ahead of time where exactly they will be operating, with whom, and able to plan so far ahead, that wouldn’t be possible, so comms, EW deconfliction, etc, would all suffer greatly. And their current logistics absolutely wouldn’t survive.

Picture the typical Ukrainian or Russian strike drone team. They receive a mix of commercially acquired and state-issued drones that still remain effectively non-militarized in that they arrive unready for combat ops. The end-users themselves must modify them for combat, adding modified or “home-made” explosives akin to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) made by insurgents. They typically often must also modify them with parts they buy off the internet that are shipped to them separately through official means, otherwise those drones will have less effectiveness. Only then do they have a combat-ready munition.

How would that work during notoriously confusing fluid, mobile operations? How would their communication systems work in that new situation? How would the coordination work? In my opinion, they’d barely work, if at all. Which means the drones would barely participate in comparison to how they do now.

That is actually one of the biggest reasons I believe the lessons learned from this war need to be understood in the context in which they are happening. Judging armies based on this war is like someone looking at the Western Front of 1918 and saying that all other armies need to be able to succeed in that type of trench warfare. Some militaries did that, notably France. Others, like the Soviet Union focused on breaking out of positional warfare. And others, like Germany, focused on avoiding trench warfare altogether.

And that is probably the best lesson to learn for this war too. Not how to succeed in the Year 4 battlefield situation of the Russo-Ukraine War, but how to avoid the shift to positional warfare that happened early in the war from even starting. Or working on means to quickly break out of positional warfare if it does start, so a lengthy and horrifically costly attritional positional war isn’t necessary, the economy doesn’t need to be mobilized, the population doesn’t need to mass conscripted, etc.

If you would have to make a list of generals from best to worst in Russia and Ukraine, how would that look like? (Not a list of all military leaders of course, just the well-known ones or the ones that you want to specifically mention)

Fair warning. I don’t hold general officers in very high esteem (or admirals, but I’ll stick to land warfare for now). In my opinion, they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt that they are competent, they need to prove it to me before I’ll hold them in high esteem.

That includes US military generals as well, I know enough about my country’s military history to recognize that our generals are far from perfect specimens of martial excellence. And yet, as bad as many US generals have been or currently are, ours are nowhere near as bad as the Ukrainian and Russian general officer corps. I’ve put a little bit of time looking into the recent politics and history of both militaries and nations and what I learned was enough to become disgusted by them.

That might not seem fair, but hear me out. Everyone with stars on their shoulder boards in the RU or UA military has had military careers dominated by the absolutely worst times in their respective military histories. The 1990s to 2010s were not good times for the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, defined by bad morale, terrible funding, corruption, and general inefficiency. The current senior officer corps spent almost their entire military careers not just surviving through those dark times, they thrived to be promoted ahead of peers. Which means they aren’t the crème de la crème of their respective officer corps, they are the nastiest turds who floated to the surface of a shit-filled toilet bowl.

Having got that off my chest, here is how I feel about the top generals in the Russo-Ukraine War:

Zaluzhny

I don’t think he is a very good general at all. Not the worst by far, but definitely nowhere near what his reputation suggests.

I looked into Zaluzhny’s history, his bio is not impressive at all. I’ve not found any evidence that he is any sort of military scholar or deep military theorist, minus the strategic and operational musings in the occasional media articles that are published in his name.

He didn’t seem to have a very impressive resume for past commands or staff jobs. His service in the Donbas War didn’t seem very impressive in comparison to some notable others, he didn’t hold any key command or staff positions, nor did he come out without any high honors.

He didn’t have any real partnership experiences with NATO or other Western partners before the war started. In comparison, not a few AFU officers served in combat alongside Western militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan or served with them during various peacekeeping ops. Many did joint tours with NATO, or attended Western military education courses like command/staff colleges or war colleges. In fact, in terms of education, Zaluzhny’s advanced degrees (including a PhD in law earned in late 2023, WTF?) have really nothing to do with the job of leading armies.

In my opinion, Zaluzhny also wasn’t very good at management and administration. During his stint as C-in-C in the early years of the war, he was ignoring major problems in the AFU, while personally committing some major mistakes strategically and operationally well into the war.

And yet Zaluzhny’s reputation was and remains stellar. Why?

I think Zaluzhny’s real strength points to why his reputation remained stellar, and why he got the job in the first place, and why he lost it. Because Zaluzhny is top-notch at Public Relations, he is first-rate at promoting the Armed Forces of Ukraine to Western partners and Ukraine itself. And that seems to be the exact ability that the President’s Office on Bankova Street would have valued, especially Zelensky, because one consummate showman would appreciate another with the same talent, knowing how vital that could be. But being first-rate at PR means he’s very good at promoting himself, too. Too good, as his downfall showed; he outshone Zelensky and therefore needed to go.

Here’s the problem as I see it. If Zaluzhny was little more than a showman, then who was really running the AFU? The answer seems to be nobody. And the Ukrainians suffered for that.

Syrsky

I really hate this guy. To me, he is the epitome of nearly everything I find despicable in any general officer in history.

He’s ultra-loyal to the political leadership, the consummate Yes Man. Some believe that is a positive virtue for general officer, they need to be team players and follow orders, that is their duty, yadda yadda, but I disagree. Though most disagree, general officers rarely need to exihibit physical courage to impress their subordinates. This isn’t the 19th century anymore. But there is no rank where moral courage is more important when it comes to being a good leader, the requirement to act for righteous causes despite the risk.

And in that Syrsky has always been a complete coward. He proved that throughout the Donbas War, when he took point in micromanaging the largest Ukrainian defeats, dress rehearsal for the later encirclement battles where politically directed “Not a Step Back” orders prohibiting retreats, to hold the ground at all costs, were ordered multiple times by numerous political leaders before Zelensky, and Syrsky obeyed to the letter, and got promoted as a result. Then he did it nonstop in this war, and while that behavior got him promoted and empowered, those decisions were among the most disastrous for Ukraine.

I think ultimately, the problem is that Syrsky does not give a shit about his subordinates. He has earned the nickname “General 200,” given to him by the rank and file, aka General Killed In Action, which isn’t good. That nickname was earned, Syrsky views the lives of his soldiers as expendable commodities in a way that seem like Nazi propaganda of a Red Army general. To Syrsky, people are things meant to be expended to accomplish the mission, and the mission is whatever he says it is, as long as it appeases his bosses and leads to him getting rewarded.

Syrsky is also a notorious micromanager, quite possibly the worst in modern military history. Is that the byproduct of his many years as a Soviet officer, where he fell in love with their overly centralized command system? Did that get worse when he started “mainlining” the opportunities presented as the Ukrainian military embraced net-centric warfare, which allowed Syrsky to see and control military operations down to the squad level? Did his chummy relationship while appeasing the highest political leadership, despite their unsound military decisions, require Syrsky to take direct control of military operations to ensure subordinate military commanders didn’t try to do the right thing and disobey political orders? As the Magic 8 Ball says, “Signs point to yes.”

I really don’t like Syrsky, and I look forward to the day he is finally fired as C-in-C and “allowed” to retire. If a legitimate history of this war is ever written, and the historians don’t rip him to pieces, then it’ll be a travesty of truth.

Drapatyi

In my opinion, he should probably be the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But he won’t be and probably never will.

He’s way more junior than many other 2-star generals of the AFU, he was only a brigade commander when the war started four years ago. But he has a stellar reputation for competence, and seems like he earned it.

And he seems to have legitimate moral courage, and that goes a long way with me. Due to his popularity, his stellar reputation, and the worsening strategic situation, through 2024-2025, Drapatyi kept getting promoted to higher positions, and then defying the Peter Principle and continuing to excel.

And then he got appointed to command Ukrainian Ground Forces, Syrsky’s former job, running the Army, which included mobilization, training, and much more. He went in with a mandate to fix the Training Centers in particular, to make Ukrainian basic training better, safer, etc. And he failed, so he resigned. And when he resigned he specifically noted that other senior officers within the AFU were deliberately sabotaging him (cough, Syrsky’s loyalists, cough).

Afterwards, Drapatyi ended up finding a new home running a senior field command on the front lines again, but by resigning he showed that he wouldn’t accept the status quo just for the benefits, he wouldn’t play ball. And in my mind, that makes it all the more important as to why someone like him needs to be put in charge. But that unwillingness to play ball is exactly why his military career will be limited, he is nowhere near the Yes Man he will need to be in order to be the C-in-C of the AFU, at least under the present political leadership.

Gerasimov

Since 2012, Gerasimov has been the Chief of the Russian General Staff, holding the top command position running the Russian military. That’s fourteen years, the longest stint since the mid-19th century Czarist periods. He not only is performing that ultra-difficult job, but since January 2023, over three years ago, Gerasimov has been the commander of the “Special Military Operation” (SMO), effectively double-hatting as the theater commander responsible for this war.

My question: Is there any indication that Gerasimov is so good at the first of his full-time jobs that he can and should be given a second full-time job? Mind you, running militaries isn’t easy, especially not at 70 years old, already reaching the legal retirement age for the Russian military. Even if Gerasimov was as energetic as an 18-year-old, he’s doing two full-time jobs. And let’s face it, he is failing at both of them. That is because all evidence points to Gerasimov being a failure.

The manner the Russo-Ukraine War started and the poor Russian performance early on proved most of the New Look Reforms didn’t take, and that’s all on him. The blatant incompetence and corruption of Russia’s top military leadership is entirely his fault. Their lack of preparation for this war was entirely his fault. Their fuckups during the invasion were entirely his fault. All the fuckup since, and there have been so so many, that’s on him. And not only does he still have the original job he started with, he has even more responsibility after fucking up. Why?

Because Gerasimov is like Syrsky, he’s a loyal Yes Man to the political leadership of Russia, not a threat, somebody who gets along well with the military leadership, someone who can be trusted with the “keys” to the military without organizing a coup or assisting others in overthrowing the state. And for that loyalty, like Syrsky, a whole lot of Gerasimov’s day-to-day shitty performance will be excused, because in Putin’s Russia loyalty has to account for a lot more than a government that isn’t constantly worried about whether or not the military will remain loyal.

The best thing to happen for Russia in their SMO is if Gerasimov retires.

Teplinsky

I’m sure there are many other top-level Russian general officers that might or might not be competent. But one of them, whose name has routinely come up in the war, is Teplinsky.

A long-serving VDV airborne commander, Teplinsky performed very well before the “SMO” and since. He’s moved around a lot during the war, being shifted from position to position often to “put out fires.” Currently, he commands the “Dnepr Group of Forces” fighting in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts.

He seems seasoned enough to take command if Gerasimov’s heart should explode someday, having exerted himself too hard kissing Putin’s ass, but I’m not sure Teplinsky would be trusted enough.

Then again, he played ball in Krynky, and during the rest of the war. And he’s a 3-star general in the Russian military, and nobody gets to that rank without having played ball extensively in the past. He apparently joined up in 1991, the start of the bad times, which means his entire service is connected to corruption, incompetence, and inefficiency in the Russian military, he couldn’t have remained active duty without some degree of being tainted. So maybe he does have what it takes after all to succeed Gerasimov.

Ukrainians should pray Gerasimov remains safe, sound, and healthy, because they probably wouldn’t like how things turned out if someone like Teplinsky took charge.

What is your opinion on Ukraine’s decentralized recruitment and unit transfer systems? Essentially that Ukrainian brigades(most notably 3rd assault and Azov) can recruit volunteers directly, which has led to a small handful of contract dominated units that attract motivated people, but this seems to have led to a heavy imbalance between the best and worst brigades. What are your thoughts?

I won’t touch on the transfer part of the question, as the only real system the Ukrainians had to allow for those involved going AWOL, and that policy just ended.

But for the rest, I think it touches on an incredibly important subject that almost nobody ever discusses, even inside Ukraine, one that has very real repercussions.

The Ukrainian military has a dual induction system to bring in new enlisted rank troops. Before this war started, it relied largely on conscripts, males aged 18-27 serving for 12-18 month terms of service (depending on the branch of service), while also possessing a contract system where anyone up to 64 years of age could voluntarily sign a contract for 2-5 year durations to serve in the branch, unit, and often job of their choice. Once this war started, legally, Conscription was replaced by Mobilization, which is really just conscription by another legal name, but with different ages for eligibility, men aged 27-60 years old, later lowered to 25-60 years in mid-2024.

On the face of it, this dual induction system to find new soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, national guardsmen, etc., seems like it would be efficient. After all, the contract system is helping support the conscription/mobilization system so it isn’t overwhelmed, and it provides an alternative pipeline into the military specifically for motivated individuals, incentivizing them with contracts that offer some pretty good options. It seems like a win-win for those signing contracts and the units they sign with, and that is very true. But it’s actually a lose-lose for everyone else, because Ukraine’s dual induction system is contradictory, unfair, and quite destructive.

Military recruiters in Ukraine don’t represent branches or the overall service but instead represent specific units. The better the unit’s reputation, the more funding it receives (often through patronage by political leaders, top generals, or oligarchs), the more manpower they already possess, then the greater their outreach will be to find and onboard new recruits. As such, servicemen who sign a contract will sign for a specific unit in a specific branch of service, and are often able to pick their military occupational specialty/job too.

Which means all the best jobs, especially in the best units, will almost certainly be taken by motivated volunteers. What’s left? What about the worst jobs in the worst units, who does those? Mobiks, who by and large, are not motivated.

Like Russia and all the other Soviet successor states, Ukraine has a long-standing tradition of avoiding military service, dating at least back to the late 1970s when Soviet society realized that military life as a junior enlisted conscript was not something most wanted to do. In fact, one can say that “draft dodging” has become the national pastime in Ukraine since then. Over the years, they struggled with conscription avoidance problems, tried a few reforms here and there to fix the problem, but it got bad enough that in 2013, the Ukrainian govt ended conscription and went to an all-volunteer contract system. However, when the Donbas War started, they were back to needing conscription to make numbers. And from the start of the Donbas War to the start of this war, there were no meaningful reforms. Then this war started…

After Russia invaded, Ukrainians were flush with motivation to join the fight to defend their country. Poor morale leading to conscription avoidance was not a problem, quite the opposite. By the second half of 2022, the Ukrainian military grew by a factor of 300-400% and they were still turning people away, telling them they needed to wait if they wanted to serve. However, time and losses caught up with Ukraine, as did the negative stories from the “Front” about excessive losses, callous treatment, incompetence, etc., and suddenly it was harder to find motivated new recruits. Essentially, by 2023, most of those who were already motivated were already serving, or already casualties.

At which point, who was left? Those who weren’t all that motivated to serve, those who deliberately didn’t sign up in 2022, those who would only join if mobilized. And where were the Mobiks going to end up? Until recently, not in units like Azov, which had really good domestic and international reputations, had very effective intra-unit recruitment programs running, had commanders that were respected for their competence, which were sometimes even offering their own basic training because the standardized one run by Ukrainian Ground Forces was judged too ineffective. It wasn’t just Azov, there were probably a few dozen similar brigades throughout the various branches of the Ukrainian military with reputations good enough that they could fill their quotas for infantrymen with contract volunteers, as well as their non-combat jobs.

Note to reader, the term “elite” is used extensively in regards to military subjects, but the origin of the word and the truest definition of an elite organization is one that can choose its personnel, because that dictates everything. An organization filled with shitbirds is never going to be great because no matter how hard they try they don’t have the personnel talent to be great, while an organization that is allowed to pick and choose who joins it can ensure they possess the talent necessary to be great if they do everything else correctly. Thus, the Ukrainian combat units that could pick and choose who entered them were some of the most “elite” units in modern history that weren’t actually tasked with “Special Operations” type missions, being conventional and yet special nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Ukrainian military isn’t elite, nor are they very capable, legitimately rated as mediocre to poor in terms of leadership, combat effectiveness, and the rest. While a few dozen units can be classed as elite, about a hundred plus can’t be. And yet those units are still required to hold critical sectors of the front line while defending, and still routinely ordered to attack too.

But because those lower-tier units that make up the majority don’t have superior intra-unit recruitment programs, and don’t have stellar reputations for competence, they are not going to draw many contract troops wanting to serve with them, especially in the infantry billets. And yet, it’s the infantry that has taken the vast percentage of casualties in this war, it’s they who have the highest turnover. Add to that that, the lower-tier units often take more casualties and suffer more AWOL than the elite units, so their demands are that much greater.

And so that is where most conscripted “Mobiks” end up. Whether they go willingly when the TCC find them, or they require being “busified” physically, most of them know they will end up as infantrymen in lower tier combat units. Or worse, to be used as Meat in Assault Forces.

Hence, it shouldn’t really be surprising that there is a worsening mobilization crisis, their induction system guarantees it. Not to mention an AWOL epidemic, as it would have been infantry most demoralized by the nature of this war, the most likely to either desert in all but name, or to use the opportunity of going AWOL to switch units and jobs, especially trying to do a support role in an elite unit.

What’s the solution?

Well, first and foremost, good leadership from the top down, politically and militarily. If that existed, they’d have solved many of the problems causing excessive infantry casualties, they’d have raised societal morale, they’d have found and implemented solutions to the mobilization crisis, etc.

But no matter the leadership, this type of war can’t be sustained properly with volunteers. Frankly, Russia gets away with their use of volunteers only in Ukraine ONLY because Ukraine’s manpower system is so jacked up that Russia’s doesn’t have to be good either to be better than Ukraine’s, as Russia’s population is 4-5x larger than Ukraine’s, so their flawed system is still better than Ukraine’s worse flawed system.

What Ukraine should have done very early in the war was to take full control over the induction of manpower, remove nearly all the choices available, remove most opportunities to volunteer, make everything about “needs of the service,” while also making the process as fair and equal as possible to make sure nobody was getting screwed. Now, its took late, such an option can’t wait for the darkest time periods to do that, they should have passed a law to do that very early in the war, when societal morale was high, when Zelensky could have taken a stack of papers covered in his own shit and gotten that signed into law near unanimously.

Instead, the UA leadership dawdled indecisively, and everyone suffered except the elite units. And even those elite units, like Azov, now need to rely more and more on conscripts for their infantry needs, which would have been unheard of earlier in the war. And it’s a sad day in Ukraine when they must rely on mobilization to make ends meet.

How developed is NATO’s concept of recon-fires and similarly, how prepared would they be for a war with Russia on the strategic and tactical level, assuming Ukraine bows out tomorrow as a neutral?

I won’t get into all of NATO because I just don’t know about them all. NATO varies. For example, Romania is NATO and their military capabilities are different from Latvia, which are different from France, which are different than Greece, which is way different than the US.

From my understanding, the core concepts of the reconnaissance fires complex, an integrated sensor shooter loop to minimize kill chains, has been implemented in certain militaries, namely the US and UK, for a very long time. After all, while we didn’t even really have a snazzy name for it, the US in particular (and the UK too) have been using advanced fire control for artillery and air strikes as far back as WW2. Kill chains weren’t as short as in Ukraine, and munitions weren’t as accurate, but as anyone can tell after watching this very informative video about the US Army’s artillery in WW2, especially the parts about the creation of the Fire Direction Center, then its pretty clear that it possessed all the elements that need to exist for a basic recon fires complex to exist. And a similar one in WW2 existed for tactical air support too, especially famously created during the Normandy campaign in 1944.

We had it then, and we have developed it since. The UK too, as the British Army copied a lot of what the US did. I believe so did the Germans in the Cold War. The thing was, we never created a specific term for that integrated sensor shooter loop because it wasn’t anything novel past the 1940s, it was just the way we fought already, using a fires-centric doctrine that relied heavily on artillery or air support, always working to improve the kill chain process, and as technology changed, we updated tactics.

The big difference is that the older US system wasn’t nearly as drone-centric in terms of sensors, nor tied into a battlefield tracking netcentric warfare app that combined situational awareness/command and control and fire direction, which the Russian and Ukrainian apps can perform. And nobody in NATO has yet relied heavily on drone-delivered fires, if at all. Though, from my understanding, there has been more investment in that in recent years (including before the Russo-Ukraine War started).

Now, while the US in particular had what I am comfortable enough to call a Recon Fires Complex, it didn’t have a Recon Strike Complex, the operational level system, until fairly recently. That was the “Revolution in Military Affairs” that the US defense industry hyped so much in the early 1990s. Then, for the first time, minus nukes, the US military had a legit integrated sensor shooter kill chain to quickly and accurately hit targets at the operational or strategic level, specifically using air power with new advanced precision guided munitions. Before that, we’d never possessed that capability.

What the US and other NATO militaries definitely lacked was a coherent written doctrine anywhere as developed as the Soviet Union-Russian-Ukrainian. I got to hand it to them, while they are incredibly corrupt and incompetent in terms of actually doing the job, they do a really good job on writing about it at a theoretical level. Russia’s operational art is actually quite good.

Your thoughts on body armor from ~2003 till 2026.

I had thought I’d write a standalone blog article on this topic but decided against it, I didn’t have enough to say to do the topic justice. So this question was a perfect opportunity to voice my opinions.

Of which I have many, as I find the topic interesting, especially through the lens of my past military service, where body armor played a major role in my day-to-day lifestyle. And following the trends in the West to focus on “Large-Scale Combat Operations (aka, big ass conventional wars with other great powers), as well as the current Russo-Ukraine War, where many lessons were learned by me and others.

First, helmets. I think the MICH/ACH style helmet, with the Kevlar Nape Guard, is probably the pinnacle of a good combat helmet. I wore it in Iraq including with Peltor-type electronic earmuffs to plug into for communications, and its doable, especially if the earmuffs use behind-the-head bands versus over-the-head. While the “high cut” versions make for easy wear of bulky electronic earmuffs, I’m not sure they are worth it considering how much protection is lost. The entire side of the head is exposed, and if that’s okay, earmuffs or not, then why even wear a helmet at all? I definitely don’t think those types should be mass-issued like in Ukraine and Russia, especially considering almost none of the wearers are using radios regularly plugged into electronic earmuffs through push-to-talk devices.

Here is something to consider for helmets. Why are there no extra protection Kevlar flaps like with the body armor? Like the Groin Protector (aka the Cod Piece) or the Lower Back Protector, those just dangle. Why can’t a High Cut helmet have an attachable Kevlar panel that protects the wearer’s side of the head like this, that can even dangle down the back of the head and neck too, like a French legionary kepi.

In terms of body armor, I like the modern type that aren’t velcro’d up the middle like a traditional jacket, like the older PASGT or IBA, and instead use an over-the-head and cummerbund type closure system, as those distribute the weight much better instead of having all the weight sitting on the wearer’s shoulders.

In all honesty, the US Army’s IOTV was pretty good in terms of Kevlar protection and came with some pretty good added protective accessories. Though the Kevlar collar/neck guard armor attachment was terribly designed. And I’m not sure about the validity of a well-protective collar/neck guard, while they are definitely valuable to protect the wearer’s neck, they seem cumbersome to say the least, and I’m not sure they ought to be worn often, though I guess it would be nice if they were included with the package.

When I was in Iraq, we pretty universally attached our pouches to our armor, since we pretty much always were required to wear our armor. In hindsight, I recommend a good vest or load-bearing equipment of some sort to carry most of the day-to-day essentials, namely because attaching everything to your armor means you can’t switch out weapons or other shit with someone else without switching out armor.

Ballistic plates are overrated. Front-back plates should never be mandatory, as they were commonly during America’s Global War on Terror (GWOT), aka Iraq and Afghanistan. In my opinion, only the baseline Kevlar armor should be mandatory, if that, since in every war (including the GWOT), fragmentation accounts for the vast majority of wounds. In some conflicts, specifically in some locations and doing some jobs, maybe plates are justified more than others. Iraq was notorious for snipers in particular, but only for those who were “Outside the Wire,” so support troops on the large forward operating bases don’t need plates. Afghanistan was renowned for the half-day-long extreme range harassment ambushes where soldiers would regularly be on the receiving end of PKM fire from across valleys, so for infantrymen and other combat arms forces in places like that, I’m sure they appreciated their ballistic plates. And for the front-line “stormtrooper” in Ukraine, or those defending against them, they probably valued plates too. Most support troops shouldn’t even be issued plates let alone wearing them, they don’t need them, the likelihood of them being shot from small arms is incredibly low.

Why are ballistic plates so valued? I think the chief benefit of ballistic plates is as a psychological aid, giving confidence to the wearer who feels bulletproof, despite the vast majority of their body not being protected against small arms fire, including the torso vitals from any angle except full frontal or rearwards. Feeling invincible, then maybe the wearer is more willing to expose themselves in combat, maybe they will take cover less often and be harder to suppress, maybe their morale will be better. Front ballistic plates remind me of the Roman Mid-Republican Hastati’s pectorale armor that seemed to follow the same mindset. But if it’s for psychological sake, which it seems to be, then military commanders need to know when to say enough as enough. A front ballistic plate is probably enough, considering the weight and bulk. I doubt I’d bother with back armor except in urban warfare or COIN when threats are truly 360 degrees.

Side plates, as used by the US, are just stupid and need to be tossed in the trash. They were issued for stupid reasons, they are badly designed for what they claim they want to protect. I hate them now, I hated them when I wore them. Fun fact, you can tape up MRE ration cardboard to the exact size of a side plate and it’ll fit the pouch and weigh less than a pound and nobody in your chain of command will know the difference between them and the real thing, and you just saved 5 lbs.

Part of me hates the idea of high cut helmets and minimalist plate carriers as the new norm, both being carry-over from GWOT era Special Operations Forces who then performed completely different missions and faced totally different threats, and now still face very different realities than combat arms personnel especially in LSCO type conflicts. And yet part of me, the one who wore all that crap by fatwa of risk averse generals, can understand the desire to go with the minimalist approach. This old mountaineering mantra definitely applies to military operations: “ounces equals pounds, and pounds equal pain.”

The reality of modern warfare is that servicemen and -women, especially in the infantry, are being asked to carry more equipment than ever before. More accessories on our weapons, more ammunition of all types, more communication devices, more batteries, more optics, more water, more everything. And that doesn’t even factor in the weight and discomfort of body armor. And that has been well known for over a century to be a major military impediment.

Excessive combat loads, especially with added body armor, notoriously hinder combat effectiveness. Troops get tired faster, move slower, and outright can’t perform certain functions they normally can, like sprinting, jogging long distances, climbing, etc.

They also get injured far more often. No matter how strong your muscles are, no matter how good your cardio, your ligaments, tendons, and disks can only take so much weight, and all it takes is twisting or turning slightly in a way that the body isn’t intended to do, and with all the added weight, wham, something is sprained, strained, torn, or ruptured. That doesn’t just lose a soldier for a few minutes or hours to physically recover from, like basic exhaustion, but it might take weeks to months to recover, if ever.

I think the cost analysis is done improperly. Like how US senior leadership did it during the GWOT. Casualties were extremely visible. For example, during the unpopular Iraq War, both the Washington Post and the New York Times famously ran weekly articles with the names and/or pictures of those that died that week, to pressure the war to end. Commanders were therefore under pressure to keep casualties as low as possible. That risk-averse had them seek out easy solutions, and none was easier than “make them wear more personal protective equipment,” IE. the OSHA answer.

However, how many casualties happened because of armor? How many enemies lived to fight another day because US troops were too exhausted or ineffective to fight properly? How many missions that could have been contemplated weren’t because they’d have been near impossible due to the impossible physical demands of the combat loads we carried?

In my first Iraq deployment, for shits and giggles, I weighed myself just in PT gear (t-shirt, shorts, sneakers) and then added only my IOTV body armor that carried my day-to-day combat load. That vest weighed 85 lbs. That didn’t even include the extra shit I’d often carry on my body armor, let alone my uniform, weapon, helmet, and sometimes an assault pack. So, no shit, I have had significant back, knee, and ankle problems since then, and why just walking in combat was a challenge.

I routinely look at the combat loads carried in Ukraine and they seem even greater than mine, carrying more ammo, more grenades, more water and food, plus often larger rucksacks. And they are often older men in poor physical shape, who weren’t even given the opportunity to get into shape. I truly pity them, that job is physically demanding enough not to be set up for failure by your own chain of command.

And so, my recommendation would be to drop ballistic plates in particular until solutions can be created to lighten armor substantially, as well as other items of the combat load. If it were up to me, you’d go into combat with Kevlar only, to address the greatest threat of fragmentation, and otherwise carry as little as possible to gain the edge in mobility by fighting as light as possible.

Not everyone agrees, for example, the US Army is famously heading in an opposite direction, deliberately choosing to go much heavier for stupid reasons. Sucks to be them…

I’m not calling this an AMA as I am going to be pretty particular about what I will answer. Nothing that will violate my personal security, and nothing that requires a +2,000 word respond to deal with the complexity (though good questions might end up as ideas for future blog articles).

Is there something I’ve already written about that you’d like me to answer publicly with a few paragraphs? Something different that you’d like my opinion on?

If so, reply to this post with your questions, I’ll pick some of them and write an article where I answer them.

EDIT: I am going to answer some questions in the comments, but others will get answered in detail in a separate article.

Then I got halfway through Part 1 before realizing I couldn’t do justice to the best offensives of the war while including the worst.

Then I got halfway through describing the worst offensives of the war in Part 2 before realizing I couldn’t rip on the worst shitshow in the manner it deserved and also include the second worst.

Finally, here is the delayed Part 3. Sorry it took so long.

Worst Offensive of the Russo-Ukraine War: Runner-Up

Allow me to introduce the Runner-Up for the Worst Offensive of the Russo-Ukraine War!

The 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine

I didn’t time it as such, but the publication date of this article is fortuitous. I finally have the pulpit to properly denounce one of the worst planned and performed invasions in modern history, which deserves every bit of criticism it gets. And only a week after the fourth anniversary of the war.

Some might ask, why beat this dead horse even more than everyone else has? Well, there are plenty of lessons to be learned about the operational level of warfare, especially of what not to do. The Russian invasion of Ukraine didn’t just fail in terms of demonstrating sound operational art, it forced Russia into a hugely costly military quagmire that has now entered its fifth year, with no real end in sight.

Understanding its history is important, and yet so much of the invasion of Ukraine isn’t known. For example, military operations nearly always have codenames assigned to them, such as Barbarossa, Mars, Bagration, Desert Storm, etc. What was this one called? Just like all the other offensives of this war, we don’t know the codename of the invasion of Ukraine because nobody who knows it has openly talked. How are we supposed to credibly discuss a historic military operation without even knowing its name? Doesn’t that speak to our ignorance of the critical details? In many ways, yes, it’s a bit premature to declare the history settled.

But for all the ignorance we, the open source community, possess about the invasion of Ukraine, there is plenty of information that has become available, giving us some pretty good clues as to what happened.

So, what happened?

Prelude to Shitzkrieg

I am going to avoid the politics, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine didn’t just spontaneously happen one day out of the blue. The two countries had been in a quasi-state of war since 2014. The years before the invasion saw lots of political quarrels, and the Minsk 2 ceasefire agreement, which had ended the fighting in 2015, was basically dead. Both sides were stepping up rhetoric, building up their militaries, and making gestures to prep for war. And then the inevitable happened. Russia massed forces on the Ukrainian border….

And nothing happened. How many forget the April 2021 invasion scare? Some say that it was a threat by Russia trying to scare Ukraine into compliance. Others say it was a dress rehearsal for the eventual invasion, and acted as a deception plan designed to lull Ukraine into a false sense of security that a future invasion wouldn’t occur. Whatever the real truth, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that after the Russians didn’t invade in Spring 2021, they sent away part of the force structure back to their home stations, tensions cooled slightly, but not for long.

The political situation deteriorated further, and by Fall 2021, the Russians were once again building up on the Ukrainian border, in even greater numbers than the first invasion scare earlier in the year. While the Russian government was talking tough, they were wholeheartedly denying any evil intentions to invade. Then, in December 2021, the bombshell dropped, the US government openly declared they had access to intelligence that divulged the Russian war plans: in January, the Russians would invade Ukraine with invasion axes along their entire Ukrainian border with Russia and Belarus.

January came and went with nothing yet happening. President Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine, denounced the US warnings, as well as United Kingdom confirmations, admonishing the US/UK for causing unnecessary panic with false intelligence. While there were something like 175,000-200,000 Russian troops camped on the Ukrainian border, the Ukrainians were not mobilizing, not assuming a higher alert status, not really doing anything to prepare for a possible invasion.

Through early to mid February, the US govt offered more war warnings and the Ukrainian govt kept ignoring them. Then, finally, on the eve of February 23, 2024, the Ukrainian government finally acknowledged the obvious when they had irrefutable evidence that every possible block that could signal a potential invasion had been checked. Intercepts of radio checks, check. Russian formations moving to assembly areas right near the border, check. Medical aid stations are setting up close to the border, check. And so, Zelensky finally authorized a partial mobilization. Too late, as within hours the Russians crossed the border, enmasse, using a combined arms land, air, and naval operation designed to effectively conquer Ukraine in something like 10-14 days.

Ten Days to the River Danube

Russia’s invasion plan didn’t make much sense, militarily. It didn’t follow any real doctrine, definitely not the highly detailed and famous Soviet theories on warfare that current Russian doctrine is based on.

Ukraine was Europe’s second-largest nation after Russia. Ukraine had the second-largest military in Europe after Russia. Ukraine’s military was technically already in a quasi-state of war with Russia since 2014, they’d been scaling up their size and capabilities for nearly a decade. So it’s a big ass country supporting a big ass military, which is officially organized to fight the Russians. That was a threat that should have been taken seriously.

When contemplating the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler reassured a subordinate that “We only have to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” And yet, despite grossly underestimating the resolve of Soviet society, the Wehrmacht still believed the Red Army was going to fight back. Sure, they didn’t plan for the level of resistance they ultimately ended up facing, but they still expected a brawl. But the Russians didn’t expect a brawl at all when they invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The Ukrainians weren’t supposed to fight back.

How can that be? All evidence points to the Russian invasion plan hinging on an assumption that the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) would ensure the Ukrainians didn’t fight back. Because the invasion was supposed to be an intelligence-centric operation with the FSB operating as the main effort in undermining Ukrainian societal resistance, support, government, and military command-control-communication-computers, and all the rest.

As such, the Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine relied on a strategy of dislocation.

Aka a Coup de Main, aka “Shock and Awe.” The FSB would sow chaos and confusion, while the Russian military would roll in with limited resistance, if any, exploiting the collapse in Ukrainian societal morale and resolve, relying on surprise and shock.

At that point, the Ukrainian government was supposed to collapse, flee Ukraine, while the Ukrainian military would either desert enmasse or be too confused to fight properly. Together, that would allow for a quick takeover of most, if not all of Ukraine. At which point, Russian military and paramilitary forces would drive to population centers and immediately shift to security operations to consolidate power, “liquidating” adversaries as they occupy Ukraine in tandem with a friendly/puppet government they install, probably led by Viktor Medvedchuk.

Pure regime change. Start with an adversarial Ukraine and turn it friendly with a quick and easy military invasion. Think of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Or better yet, think of the eight other times the Soviet Union or Russia did the near-exact same thing: Poland 1939, Finland 1940, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Afghanistan 1979, Chechnya 1994, Georgia 2008, Crimea 2014.

Amazingly, for a military culture that created some of the best theories on offensive warfare ever penned, pretty much every time the Soviet Union or Russia kicked a war off with an invasion they did it as a Coup De Main style “Shock and Awe” operation, where largely unready Soviet/Russian military forces basically walked or drove into enemy territory as fast as possible, with as much surprise as possible, expecting little to no resistance. Of the abovementioned invasions, some went as planned. Some had some hiccups early on. Some had hiccups later on. And some immediately and disastrously blew up in the faces of the Soviet-Russian troops, who were welcomed with lots of lethal resistance. A shockingly large number of Soviet-Russian invasions blew up in their faces.

Such was true of Ukraine in 2022. If the FSB had done their job properly, if the Ukrainian spies they recruited inside Ukraine had done their job properly, then Ukrainian resistance would have been minimal, a larger-scale version of Crimea 2014, allowing the Russian Armed Forces to play their supporting role without issue.

But to quote the Lacedaemons responding to Philip II of Macedon, “If.”

“If” didn’t happen. Apparently, too many spies recruited by the FSB either weren’t really loyal to Russia, or maybe they had been compromised immediately before or early in the war, or maybe they changed their minds shortly after it started due to very public Russian military failures and a surprising Ukrainian resistance, which changed the odds of the outcome. However it happened, when the FSB-run invasion plan largely went to shit, when the Ukrainians tenaciously fought back on a scale never contemplated, the Russian government didn’t have a Plan B prepared and was forced to rely on its military invasion plan, which, as I previously mentioned, didn’t make much sense.

When Broad Fronts Are Too Broad

Check out this awesome map created by the OSINT analyst Jomini of the West.

To call that invasion plan audacious is an understatement.

To pull it off, the Russian military invasion force of Ukraine consisted of something like 175,000 personnel operating in approximately 125 battalion tactical groups (BTGs), equating to about thirteen tactical divisions.

In terms of force ratios, the prewar Ukrainian standing military, deemed the “Defense Forces,” had something like 250,000 servicemen, with something like 90-ish battalion-sized tactical maneuver formations. In addition, by activating their Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) and mobilizing their reserves, they were able to at least double that figure in weeks.

Not only were the attacking Russians grossly outnumbered by the defending Ukrainians, but the Russians further violated raped the principle of warfare of concentration by dispersing their invasion front over the widest frontage imaginable.

The curves throw it off, but the width of the invasion front, from the Chernobyl area across from Belarus to the Isthmus of Perekop across from Crimea, was nearly equal to the Eastern Front of WW2. To put Russian order of battle and 2022 invasion frontage width in perspective, the siege of Berlin in 1945 alone included about 2.5 million Red Army soldiers in over 20 field armies, each of those having a half dozen divisions or more, and that was just what was committed to Berlin.

With that meager force the Russians used to invade Ukraine, look at how many separate strategic objectives they were pursuing! They had four separate axes just committed to Kyiv, another four meant to chop off Ukraine east of the Dnieper, and another meant to head to Odesa via Kherson-Mykolaiv. And each of those involved numerous tactical-level axes, most not mutually supportive of each other.

But even that map doesn’t do it justice for how strung out the Russian invasion really was. This map, courtesy of Nathan Ruser, is what it really would have looked like.

Most of you reading this article are probably more familiar with the early war maps where the Ukraine lines are solidly colored on both sides. Those were made taking a map of Ukraine and marking the reported locations of the Russian front-line trace of known advances and then connecting them laterally to form a solid front. When the war turned positional in late March 2022 (and especially afterwards), the front lines were in fact largely connected, at least with narrower gaps between units. But not so in the first weeks of the war, all those independent tactical axes were greatly separated from one another as they followed pretty much every road leading to inland objectives, with gaps aplenty.

Not that they had a choice but to follow the roads. Considering the invasion started in late February, the winter frost was wrapping up, the thaw beginning, leading to Ukraine’s infamous Spring Rasputitsa, the “Time Without Roads,” aka the biannual mud season. If the Ukrainians didn’t resist, the mud wouldn’t have been a problem, as there would have been no need for extensive off-roading. But alas, the Ukrainians did resist, and that weather caused a major problem, because the Russians were largely round-bound.

Offensively, traveling by roads is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, roads make for the fastest and most secure modes of ground transportation, especially to key locations, so they are critical for strategic and operational mobility. On the other hand, defenders know their value and will defend them. In fact, defensive operations are usually focused on defending roads, especially during mobile warfare, where defensive stands are typically made near or on roads passing through important terrain features, like before critical road junctions, along chokepoints, etc.

Normally, using roads isn’t too big of a deal during mobile warfare because once enemy contact is expected or occurs, the tactical maneuver forces can peel off the road and fight off-road. Hence, most tactical formations designed for mobile operations possess tracks, not wheels. Because if the maneuver forces are stuck on the roads, they are channelized.

To quote King Leonidas in the factually correct documentary 300, describing why his Spartans planned to fight at Thermopylae, he said they’d exploit the terrain because “in that narrow corridor, [Persian] numbers will count for nothing.” That axiom applied to the invasion of Ukraine. Thanks to the weather, Russian wheeled vehicles would have had horrible off-roading capabilities, and even tracked vehicles would have faced heavy risk attempting to off-road without testing the ground first, as proven by the number of Russian tracked armored fighting vehicles abandoned during the invasion after being stuck in the mud.

The Russians being largely road-bound at the tactical level would have been a gift for the Ukrainians. To halt each tactical axis, blocking positions could be set up in restrictive terrain, most notably the urban landscape of the countless settlements and cities the Russians would need to drive through to reach their operational objectives. AT rockets or ATGMs would be used to take out the lead vehicles in the Russian armored columns, preferably the rear vehicles too. Then artillery and/or mortars could be called in to rake the rest of the column, in conjunction with more ground fires. If that was impossible, too few forces to form a strong enough blocking position, the Ukrainian defenders could at least delay and slow down the advances of the Russian mechanized columns, giving time to form an even stronger blocking position further down the road. Or at least performing an ambush as the Russians drove by. Which is exactly how the Russian invasion was defeated.

Not to suggest those specific tactical problems are insurmountable. But the answers to those problems all come down to preparation, which was another major fuckup involving the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure”

If the Ukrainians set up a defense along an important road, how are the Russians supposed to know about it?

Reconnaissance, of which the Russian Armed Forces had lots available. They had dedicated ground reconnaissance units in every maneuver formation. They also had conventional motor rifle or tank units they could have used to advance ahead of the main body to perform recon-in-force. And they could have used their vast array of Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) drones, as the Russians were already following a very drone-centric tactical template before the invasion of Ukraine.

After recon elements discovered the Ukrainian defenses, the Russian main body could have deployed for an attack. Artillery pieces could have been set up to fire on known, likely, or suspected targets, to provide suppression at a minimum. Advancing Russian armored columns could have been fired their cannons and coaxes at all known, likely, or suspected targets once in range. And at some point, Infantry Fighting Vehicles could have dismounted all their infantry to begin the outflanking and assault process to overcome the defenders, in conjunction with supporting fires.

But all of that needs to be planned and coordinated ahead of time. They’d need to have recon units assigned to patrol forward of the main body. They’d need to have prepared battle drills, so accompanying artillery was ready to quickly deploy to fire in support of the maneuver elements. They would have needed to have sufficient dismounted infantry who were in sufficient number and trained to perform assaults, who would know how to overrun platoon and company-sized enemy hasty defenses.

Unfortunately for Russia, it had none of those things ready to go. Partly, because their plan didn’t require them to have any of that ready when they invaded. After all, the Ukrainians weren’t expected to resist, remember? But also because the Russian military was not in a high state of preparedness before the war.

Which is insane. Some of the units involved in the invasion of Ukraine had been camped on the borders for the better part of a year. The rest were there for months. Why didn’t they prepare for the invasion? What the Hell were they doing? What the Hell were they thinking?

I made the comparison already between the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, because they really are shockingly similar in many ways. Both were meant as a rapid coup de main to perform a regime change. Both were pushed down from the highest levels of political leadership. Both used far too few forces necessary for operations that large. And both came with intelligence assessments from top leadership that the enemy wouldn’t fight back. However, in 2003, despite what the White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the CIA were saying about the lack of Iraqi willingness to fight back, from the point of view of the US military, from Central Command leadership down to the fireteam-level, none of them really believed that intelligence assessment, and so they planned for the worst. When the worst didn’t happen, they were as shocked as everyone else.

But the Russians invading Ukraine didn’t plan for the worst. More so, they didn’t really plan at all. Partly because they were told not to worry about it. But also partly because the time period when they should have been planning and prepping, they were oblivious to the fact that they were about to invade a foreign country.

When OPSEC Goes Both Ways

Imagine being a Russian commander running one of those battalion tactical groups.

You might be an infantry officer or a tank officer, but you are also expected to expertly use attached artillery, air defense systems, electronic warfare, etc. Already, you are deficient in your ability to do your job, because you were never given the training to master all those arms your BTG possesses during the years and months running up to the invasion. Sure, you’ve been camped on the Ukrainian border for months, but you’re not being told anything, not expected to perform arduous training. Your own government is overtly saying that it is definitely not going to invade Ukraine, and you and your troops believe that to be the case.

Then, sometime between February 21 and 23, you are finally told the truth. Your battalion is to move forward to an assembly area very close to the Ukrainian border, and then cross the border as part of the lead elements of the invasion at zero dark thirty hours on Feb 24, with a mission to head to x location deep inside Ukraine, hundreds of kilometers inside the country, make it to that location by y timeframe, and then perform security operations once you reach it, then wait for new orders.

That’s the reality of the vast majority of the Russian invasion force. If Ukraine didn’t capitulate to pre-invasion political demands, it was going to get invaded. The Russian top political, intelligence, and military leadership planned the invasion months before, and that plan was basically identical to that which the US and UK intelligence agencies reported back in December 2021. However, hardly anybody under the rank of 3-star general was told about it until shortly before the invasion was ordered.

The average Russian tactical formation got 24-72 hours’ notice, the VDV airborne units involved with the Hostomel or other air assault operations got a week, and the VKS got two weeks to prep to perform their massive air campaign. That’s not a lot of time to prep, especially considering everything necessary to perform what amounted to two hundred-kilometer opposed marches deep into Ukraine.

Why keep them in the dark?

It was all done as part of a deception campaign to preserve operational security (OPSEC). And as I will get into a bit later in this article, it mostly worked. However, it worked too well, that OPSEC campaign didn’t just trick the Ukrainians into believing an invasion wouldn’t happen, it also tricked the Russian military too into believing it wouldn’t happen. So when it did happen, they weren’t ready.

All the stories that came out about screwed up Russian logistics. About how their comms were terrible, many units operating “in the clear” using unsecure radios, or needing to confiscate Ukrainian cell phones to talk to each other. About paramilitary units like OMON and Chechens in the lead echelons ahead of legit combat units. About massive traffic jams. About Russian tactical air defenses not having their radars turned on for days. About Russian drones were barely used, artillery barely fired in the first week, about their famed “reconnaissance fires complex” nowhere to be seen for months. Etc. All of that was the result of an inability to properly prepare.

“If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again”

With an invasion plan that required little to no resistance, with a force unprepared for hard fighting, when the Russians burst into Ukraine and ran into a shocking level of resistance, what could they do in response? Well, for most of a month, they kept following their horrible invasion plan.

At the time, I thought that was very stupid, and hindsight hasn’t changed my mind. What were they trying to accomplish after it became clear the Ukrainians were going to fight back? Their invasion plan didn’t even make any sense to follow it, considering it was all meant for a rapid coup de main regime change.

The Kyiv axis wasn’t “a feint,” it was the main effort because the Russian leadership believed taking Kyiv would help topple the Ukrainian government. Despite the Kyiv front allocated the largest concentration of the force structure from the Russian invasion order of battle (four Combined Arms Armies, more than any other single objective), it was still far too little to overcome stiff resistance.

The same goes with every other operational area. The Russians were weak everywhere, too weak to overcome heavy resistance. While they made decent gains after the first week, here and there, that was still largely due to a lack of Ukrainian organized resistance. Once the resistance was organized, what Russia could mass in any one location was just too little.

Soviet Deep Battle/Operations doctrine is all about depth. Sure, the Soviet military could get away with both depth and a broad front, because the Soviet military was absolutely massive. But they still always prioritized depth. At the tactical level, they’d concentrate a very large mass maneuver force with lots of fires to achieve the breakthrough, and then they’d mass a totally fresh separate exploitation force, the famed Operational Maneuver Groups (OMG), to exploit that penetration. And they’d do that in numerous fronts, because they were massive.

But the Russian Federation isn’t the the Soviet Union, and what was done in Ukraine in 2022 was nothing like Deep Battle. Where were the OMGs during the invasion? Where were the reserves? Nowhere, minus the conscript formations that Putin refused to call, the cupboard was bare, pretty much every BTG they had was committed. But because they dispersed so much, they had little to no depth. Add in the abovementioned problems of being unprepared for fighting, it just wasn’t even possible for the Russians to overcome the defenders.

And yet they kept trying, for most of a month. And in the meantime, the Russian order of battle shattered itself trying to repeatedly smash its way forward using way too small a hammer, with far too little force to swing it.

It’s purely a counterfactual at this point, but I’d have been very curious what the prewar Russian military was capable of if they invaded Ukraine with a better plan and were ready. But we’ll never know, because they followed such an awful plan, the unprepared Russian military got so badly mauled in the first phase of the war that after they shifted to their next phase, the Spring 2022 Donbas Offensive, it really was almost an entirely new army, one “held together by duct tape and dreams.”

“That Said...”

Not everything went terribly when Russia invaded Ukraine. As I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, I can’t rate the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the worst offensive when it did achieve some successes.

Amazingly, despite the problems it caused to the RU efforts, the Russian deception plan to maintain OPSEC worked. Ultimately, helped by truly awful decisions by Ukraine’s leadership, Russia’s deception plan cost Ukraine approximately 20% of its territory almost overnight.

The President of Ukraine insisted on firm proof before he’d act, those were the very late stage invasion warnings tied to Russia’s OPSEC plan. But by the time that President Zelensky changed his mind, it was too late. With only a few hours’ notice, few Ukrainians units had the chance to get very far outside their garrison bases, allowing the Russians to advance something quite far across the border, a few times well over a hundred kilometers, before running into the not-so-heavy resistance necessary to stop their strung-out, round-bound armored columns. More so, there were no prepared defensive positions ready to occupy, no landmines laid, at least not outside the Joint Force Operations area in the Donbas. The Russians had achieved surprise.

The Kyiv front is a perfect example of the success of the Russian deception plan that hinged on OPSEC. With total surprise, the Russians blew through the borders, held only by lightly armed Border Guards. On the west side of the Dnieper, they made it to Ivankiv, about 70 kilometers inland, before the first Ukrainian unit, a reconnaissance company, was able to briefly put up a “hold at all costs” defense that only lasted a few hours before they retreated. The heavy fighting didn’t really start until the Russians reached the outskirts of Kyiv itself, primarily along the Irpin River, where the Ukrainians were able to hinge their defense. But that was about 130 kilometers from the border, at the shortest route to Belarus.

On the east side of the Dnieper in Chernihiv Oblast, the Russian advance suffered worse but only because, lucky for Ukraine, one of the few Ukrainian brigades that wasn’t deployed to the Donbas was still at its garrison base, which just so happened to be only 40 kilometer away from the northern side of Chernihiv City, where they were able to reach in time to hold off the Russians.

And it was like that all over Ukraine. But it wasn’t just surprise that helped the Russians get so far inland that they inadvertently stretched their supply lines nearly to a catastrophic level. Their FSB-run intelligence-driven subversion campaign to undermine Ukrainian resistance using Ukrainian spies did have some success, here and there.

Most notably, it allowed for the Southern Military District’s operational axes driving out of Crimea through Kherson Oblast, then heading west, north, and east, to score Russia’s greatest operational results. Before Southern Military District units finally ran into stiff resistance, forces heading out of the Isthmus of Perekop made it nearly 170 kilometers westwards to the gates of Mykolaiv and close to 400 kilometers eastwards to Mariupol. Not only did they advance the furthest inland, they also achieved a legit strategic objective for Russia, carving out the “Land Bridge” from the Russian-controlled Donbas to Crimea. And, at least partly, they accomplished that through espionage, with many Ukrainian government officials and politicians giving “stand down” orders to various Ukrainian security forces or military units, or refusing to give any orders at all.

Even the battle for Kyiv, which in hindsight was described by many to have been Ukraine’s greatest victory in withstanding the Russian invasion, was described by some credible military analysts as a near-run thing. If a river hadn’t been deliberately flooded, if a Russian commander had used initiative to keep bypassing southwards to they’d have reached the totally undefended M06 highway west of Kyiv, if a few small skirmishes had gone differently, then the campaign might have gone the other way, etc. If…

The Russian Aerospace Forces, the VKS, apparently did a decent job. Early on in the war, many in the West assumed the VKS was barely involved because so little of their work made it to the public eye. After performing research later on, it turns out the VKS had performed a large-scale strategic-level disruption campaign, performed a mix of Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD/DEAD), air superiority, and electronic warfare. And largely, those were successful for the first week. While the VKS couldn’t destroy most of Ukraine’s ground-based air defenses, they were suppressed for weeks. The VKS gutted the Ukrainian Air Force early on, it took years for the Ukrainians to recover. Air operations only really fell apart when the VKS was retasked to support the struggling ground campaign with air support, a mission they hadn’t prepped for and needed to improvise on the fly. At which point, their shift away from SEAD/DEAD to ground support allowed the surviving Ukrainian ground air defenses to reposition, and their integrated air defense network was reestablished, at which point the air war became much tougher for the VKS.

The Russians apparently also launched some crippling cyberattacks against Ukraine. That level of nerd shit really isn’t my thing, I can barely operate my cell phone, but I’m to understand they succeeded in taking out Ukraine’s domestic satellite communication system within the first day of the war, among other targets.

I previously ripped on the Russian stubbornness to pursue the highly faulty invasion plan for most of a month after it should have been clear it couldn’t work. But in comparison to other failed offensives of this war, the Russians pulled the plug on their failing invasion plan pretty quickly. They pursued a shitty offensive for less than a month. That’s nothing compared to the half a year it took the monstrosity that was the 2023 Counteroffensive to finally be aborted.

And sure, Russia’s new strategic plan to overrun the Donbas was nearly as bad as the first, but altering their plans, especially authorizing humiliating retreats from so much of Ukraine, did demonstrate some flexibility from the Russian leadership to cut their losses.

Three Cheers for Second Place

For years, I’d wanted to write out in detail about how stupid the Russian invasion of Ukraine was. I’d discussed it numerous times on Reddit in the past, but always with brevity. Then, finally, my great chance came to really have a go at the invasion and rip it to pieces. But now my heart is just not as into it, at least not what it once was. It’s sad to realize that, as bad as the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine was, the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive was just so much worse.

But I can’t let the invasion off easy, it needs to be shit on. What was more damaging? Sure, the Ukrainians never recovered from their disastrous 2023 Counteroffensive, and they are now struggling directly as a result. But we are witnessing the start of Year 5 of this war due to the failure of Russia’s initial invasion, a war that Russia is still not really any closer to winning now than in 2022. That has definitely got to count for something, right?

Not a surprise, the invasion involved a grossly negligent underestimation of the Ukrainian willpower to resist, coupled with a grossly negligent overestimation of the FSB’s ability to successfully undermine the Ukrainian war effort. The invasion tied down the entire Russian contract-based ground contingent but had them barely play a key role. They didn’t seem to expect to shoot anyone, and didn’t seem to expect to be shot at. That doesn’t sound like a military invasion at all, it sounds like the initial deployment for a peacekeeping operation.

Was that the real lesson of the invasion? It seems so. It’s scary that it even needs to be said, but if one nation plans to militarily invade another, they ought to do the courtesy of taking it seriously and treating it for what it is, a massive contested invasion.

Otherwise, it’ll go as badly as it did for Russia in February-March 2022.

The Painful Process of Learning

Think how hard it would be to learn how to do anything properly if there were no repercussions for mistakes. Failing often hurts and should, but it’s the pain that is moving the learning process along. Toddlers learn how to walk by falling over and getting boo-boos. Similarly, the lessons of warfare are most learned through defeat and loss. But does one need to personally lose a battle or become a casualty to learn? Of course not. Thankfully, humans have the brain power to learn from other people’s innovations and mistakes.

Some have questioned the value of studying history, wondering why they are forced to learn all that seemingly useless and boring trivia about past events. I think one of the greatest benefits is how it provides the opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and successes. And nowhere is that more necessary than in war, where it doesn’t take a military genius to realize the value of learning the bloody lessons of others.

And lucky for humanity, we have around 3,500 years of written history covering the “Art of War,” instruction manuals on how to properly kill and dominate our fellow man. Sure, a lot of that is a bit outdated, but there is still plenty of valuable lessons to be learned to assist with the planning and execution of military operations.

But what happens when some of the most valuable lessons of warfare in history, so universal to success that they are codified as “principles,” are ignored?

What you get is the very worst offensive of the Russo-Ukraine War, when planners didn’t just fail to heed the best lessons of warfare, they went and created their own lessons of what not to do that deserve to be studied in the future.

The “Winner” of the Worst Offensive Award

Considering how poorly most Russian and Ukrainian offensives had actually gone in this war, you’d think picking the worst would have been tougher than it was. But on the contrary, the top two of the worst category they stood out far beyond all the others, not only in their scale but in how greatly they failed. In chronological order, the contenders are the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive.

Interestingly, and considering this article’s theme, it should come as no surprise that both offensives were so similar to one another in terms of why they failed. But success needs to count for something, and one of these offensives achieved some success in pursuing its operational-level objectives, the other achieved none.

Therefore, the Worst Offensive Award goes to Ukraine’s 2023 Counteroffensive!

Conceived around October 2022 after Ukraine’s spectacular victories in the 2022 Counteroffensive, the grand offensive of 2023 was meant to kick off in May 2023 and lead to a rapid and decisive victory that would set the conditions for one or two follow-on offensives in 2023-2024 to mop things up and forcibly kick the Russians fully out of Ukraine, or Russian leadership would take the hint and sue for peace, accepting all of Ukraine’s terms, including one requiring the Russian government to surrender all leaders Ukraine alleged were guilty of war crimes.

That was what they wanted to happen. As it happened, the 2023 Counteroffensive missed the start date by a month, starting on June 4th, and it lasted a bit longer than the roughly eight weeks imagined, a whopping six months, finally petering out in November 2023. And it did not come close to any of its bold objectives.

In terms of territorial successes compared with the year prior, Ukraine was able to liberate around 15,500 km² of territory during the 2022 Counteroffensive, whereas the 2023 Counteroffensive only retook about 370 km². But that was only one disappointment; the real damage it did to the Ukrainian military is still felt to this day.

What went wrong?

Actions Have Consequences

While the Ukrainian 2022 Counteroffensive liberated massive swathes of territory in Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts, the decisive Russian military defeat came with an unexpected second-order effect.

Russian political and military leadership finally got the figurative and literal kick in the ass they needed to finally take the war seriously, resulting in a series of policy changes that had significant negative repercussions for future Ukrainian prospects for victory. In fact, I’d contend that Ukraine’s chances of winning the war effectively ended during this period.

Such was the ass-kicking the Russians suffered in Fall 2022 that they instituted all manner of critically necessary measures to unfuck their situation in Ukraine. Topping the list of reforms was passing what many dubbed the “Partial Mobilization,” Russia involuntarily mobilized around 300,000 new and veteran soldiers in a four-month period, which allowed the Russian Armed Forces to replenish existing units and build many new ones. Additionally, the Russians enacted “Stop Loss” type policies to prevent existing Russian soldiers from exiting the military on their own volition. And overall, they devoted far more money to defense, ramped up their war industry, cracked down on corruption, fired incompetent leaders, reinstated proper discipline, etc.

That was all bad news for the Ukrainians, as up until that point they’d greatly benefited from the laissez-faire attitude of the Russian war effort in Ukraine. While it was the Russians who ignored the true threat of the Ukrainians in early to mid-2022, the problem then flipped afterwards. Not only did Russia’s true capabilities improve with their late-2022 political and military reforms, but it was the Ukrainians turn to screw up and fundamentally ignore true strategic capabilities.

The failure of the 2023 Counteroffensive can be found in its foundation. Those who paid attention to part 1 of this series will remember that the initial concept of operations (CONOP) for the 2022 Counteroffensive called for its main effort in Zaporizhia Oblast, not Kherson or Kharkiv, imagining a 100 kilometer drive southwards to the city of Melitopol and the Sea of Azov coast to cut the Land Bridge. Risk aversion and probably some good sense led to the offensive against the Melitopol axis Counteroffensive scrubbed in 2022, but that cancellation was only temporary, as the main effort for the 2023 Counteroffensive CONOP was effectively a rehash of the previous.

But it wasn’t that simple. Similar to the 2022 Counteroffensive needing a supporting effort to fix and/or divert Russian reserves away from the main effort, the 2023 Counteroffensive CONOP took that quite a step further. The initial plans for the 2023 Counteroffensive called for:

1. The Melitopol axis offensive as the strategic main effort, to cut the Land Bridge and trigger a route of Russians out of Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts to Crimea.

2. A major partisan uprising managed by Ukrainian military intelligence and special operations forces that would start in southern Zaporizhia Oblast to disrupt the Russian rear areas and fix/divert Russian defensive forces already present in the area away from the front lines.

3. A follow-on supporting offensive in Kherson Oblast involving an audacious and frankly dubious “wet gap crossing” across the Dnieper River, strongly endorsed by the British, designed to put more pressure on the Russians to retreat to Crimea.

4. A counterattack against the Bakhmut area in the Donbas, where a major campaign had been ongoing since August 2022, to fix and/or divert Russian forces so they couldn’t be transferred to reinforce Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts.

5. A small-scale invasion of Russia itself into Belgorod Oblast across from Kharkiv, to fix or divert more Russian reserves and demonstrate how politically and strategically weak Russia really was.

On paper, there is nothing that stands out too much as being doctrinally unsound. In fact, it sounds impressive. Too impressive, the scope was huge, with five separate concurrent operations stretching a finite amount of manpower, brainpower, supplies, equipment, and support.

But, military operations aren’t won on paper, they are won in reality. And the reality was that an overly audacious CONOP written in October 2022 didn’t at all reflect the realistic battlefield situation in 2023.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

The 2023 Counteroffensive was a gigantic fuck-up, start to finish, but no mistake was more shocking and stupid than the deliberate choice to sacrifice any aspect of surprise, for reasons that seem to have based on a desire to maximize PR.

And that didn’t even start with the 2023 Counteroffensive. The top Ukrainian leadership gave up the time and location of the Melitopol axis offensive not once but twice, having done it the first time in July-August 2022, talking up their upcoming 2022 Counteroffensive with boasts of how they were going to liberate “The South.” As I mentioned in my previous article in this series, that wasn’t a deception plan, they only canceled the attack along that axis at the last minute before the 2022 Counteroffensive due to risk aversion. Nevertheless, they were to repeat the efforts to publicize the upcoming offensive, even enlarging the PR campaign to signal the 2023 Counteroffensive. All told, Russians had about 11 months of warning in total to prepare to resist the upcoming attack. And let me tell you, the Russians took full advantage of the warnings.

A Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) general by the name of Surovikin had commanded forces from the Southern Military District (SMD) since before the invasion. His forces invaded Ukraine from Crimea, with part turning westwards heading to Odesa and the other half to Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia City. In fact, Surovikin’s front really was the only one that kind of went as planned. And afterwards, when credible experts examined the invasion in detail, they judged that it was Surovikin’s forces that seemed the most ready and best performing.

A half a year later, when the Ukrainian leadership telegraphed a soon-to-start grand 2022 Counteroffensive against “The South,” Surovikin was positioned to stop, and it was through his efforts that the Melitopol axis was judged too risky to attack. And it was Surovikin that was responsible for the great difficulties the Ukrainians had trying to retake the Kherson Bridgehead in their first attempt at a Kherson Counteroffensive in May-June 2022, and then the more well-known August-November Second Kherson Counteroffensive.

In what would later be popularly referred to as the “Surovikin Line,” the competent Russian general used the forewarning to create a coherent operational scheme to defend Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts, determined to perform a legitimate defense-in-depth, with multiple operational-level defensive lines stretching back scores of kilometers. As the icing on the cake, Surovikin created a massive fortification project that included mines galore, tank ditches, and the use of reinforced concrete prefab bunkers and plenty of new positions poured, all for the first time in the war. And that was just to defend against the 2022 Counteroffensive with about a month and a half of warning.

The trouble that Surovikin was to cause Ukraine only started there. Among the political and strategic military reforms created in the wake of Russia’s disastrous defeat after the Kharkiv Counteroffensive in Fall 2022, Surovikin was appointed as the commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine, commanding the “Special Military Operation.” Henceforth, under new management and new orders, the Surovikin Line wouldn’t just be in “The South,” throughout the remainder of 2022 and into 2023 it was expanded throughout the rest of Ukraine.

The truly idiotic decision to telegraph the 2023 Counteroffensive led to a situation that rarely happens in warfare, when one side has such ample warning in advance of a major offensive that they have such a luxury of time as to headhunt their dream commander to oppose it.

In late 2022, the equivalent of the superintendent of Russia’s top professional military academy, a 3-star general named Romanchuk, published an article in the Russian military’s premier professional academic military journal describing how he would defend Zaporizhzhia Oblast against the upcoming Ukrainian offensive. Romanchuk’s plan was so inspiring that his article earned him a transfer to serve as the deputy commander of the Southern Military District and to personally command the Russian operational grouping of forces tasked with defending Melitopol.

The Ukrainian lapses in operational security (OPSEC) were truly epic. And it wasn’t the rank and file guilty, it was the top leadership responsible. It got so surreal that only a single day before the 2023 Counteroffensive finally kicked off on June 4, 2023, Ukraine’s President Zelensky went on television to reassure the public that the offensive was not delayed and was about to begin.

If anyone ever needed an example to prove the value of surprise, Ukraine was about to create one of the best lessons imaginable. For whatever epically stupid reasons they used to justify the deliberate violation of OPSEC, that reason alone damned the offensive.

But that was only the beginning.

Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Telegraphing the offensive and surrendering surprise was tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of bad decision associated with the 2023 Counteroffensive. The preparation process was a shitshow too.

Considering the scope of the offensive, the Ukrainians couldn’t support it alone an and needed the assistance of Western allies. Which meant first they had to “sell” the plan to NATO leadership on their supposed “completely realistic” chances to retake every bit of territory lost since the war started, assuming they were properly supported with material, money, and everything else they wanted. That process seems to have taken up the late Fall and Winter of 2022, but it worked, and NATO agreed to support the 2023 Counteroffensive. But the agreements didn’t happen until very early January for an offensive that was supposed to start only four months away.

While the Ukrainians would end up getting most of what they asked for, equipping and training of a half dozen new maneuver brigades, it started too late and took too long, especially since the Ukrainian CONOP created in October 2022 called for most of the offensive forces involved in the upcoming May 2023 offensive to be brand new units created over the winter. Why use brand new brigades for a major offensive? For the same reason OPSEC didn’t matter. The Ukrainian leaders didn’t think would matter, the Russians were too weak to stop it. But there was another reason they needed to rely too heavily on brand-new units, the veteran combat formations were a bit too busy to help out.

There is no better example of the lackadaisical attitude for the preparation of the upcoming 2023 Counteroffensive than the decision made by the Ukrainian leadership in early 2023 to double down in the defensive campaign to hold the infamous city of Bakhmut. Since August 2022, the Wagner Group, Russia’s controversial mercenary formation, had been grinding away in efforts to fulfill its contract to capture the city. Throughout the fall of 2022, despite the Russian strategic emergency created by the Ukrainian 2022 Counteroffensive, Wagner kept up the relentless attacks, inching towards Bakhmut in a notoriously bloody offensive, suffering horrible losses but still incrementally moving forward. Then, in January 2023, the added straws broke the camel’s back and Ukrainian flanks around Bakhmut collapsed. Not only was the city in serious jeopardy of being encircled, but efforts to further defend the city from a frontal assault were worsened as supply lines were severely interdicted.

At that point, the sound military decision was to retreat out of Bakhmut. Topographically, the city sits in the bottom of a fishbowl, in a river valley with heights not only to the north, east, and south, which the Russians held, but luckily enough for the Ukrainians, there was a perfectly positioned north-side ridgeline immediately to the west. Without a doubt, that was the most dominant terrain feature in that region of the Donbas. Retreating out of the deep Bakhmut salient to defend the ridgeline instead would have allowed the Ukrainians to dramatically shorten their line, freeing up more combat units to place in their reserve, while also defending much more defensible high ground. That was especially the right call considering the paramount need to conserve manpower, equipment, and supplies for an upcoming general offensive meant to start in only a few short months.

Had the Ukrainians done that, they’d have lost the city of Bakhmut while creating a perfect example of the principle of economy of force. Instead, Ukrainian leadership waited till the last minute to try to save the city, as the flanks collapsed due to the exhaustion of the defending units, the Ukrainian leadership threw most of their available strategic reserves, some counterattacking to retake the lost flanks (which largely failed) and others to reinforce the city garrison.

I’ve heard all sorts of theories trying to create creative reasons to justify that decision, but considering everything that happened before and since, and what many knowledgeable insiders have claimed, the choice seemed to have been based on Public Relations. The Ukrainian leadership were still high on the victories they’d previously achieved in 2022. The 2023 Counteroffensive was due to kick off shortly. “Bakhmut Holds” was trending well. So why lose it if they could avoid it? Why ruin their victory streak if they could defend the city long enough for the upcoming general offensive to start? Especially since the thinking behind the 2023 Counteroffensive was that it would have decisive strategic results and set Ukraine up for a strategic military success liberating all of Ukraine and forcing the Russians to concede defeat.

That’s all well and good, but for the 2023 Counteroffensive to succeed, it needed ample manpower, equipment, and supplies, all finite. Not only did they commit the very combat-experienced veteran brigades intended to use for the upcoming offensive, but the Bakhmut campaign seriously hurt Ukraine’s logistical situation.

For those who forgot, let me remind you that the US military was the perpetrator of one of the stupidest intelligence failures in modern history, when a low-ranking Air National Guardsman was able to get ahold of all sorts of high-level intelligence to post it for bragging rights on an online discussion forum for Minecraft gamers, all done to impress a bunch of tweens. The highly embarrassing 2023 US DOD Discord Leaks revealed much, but one story that got out that reflects how monumentally stupid it was for the Ukrainian leadership to have doubled down on Bakhmut.

By February 2023, the Ukrainian military’s entire strategic stockpile was down to about 9,000 155mm artillery shells. While that was only 155mm, since mid-2022 they’d come to rely on that caliber since their own supply of 122mm and 152mm COMBLOC ammo had become so depleted (see my Istanbul article for more info on that).

Let that sink in.

Not only were Ukrainian leaders planning a massive strategic offensive initially meant to start on May 1st that required vast stockpiles of ammunition, but they made the decision to drastically increase the scale of a fires-centric campaign to defend Bakhmut when they knew they didn’t have the ammunition to succeed. While emergency artillery resupply efforts by the US government kept the Ukrainians afloat throughout the rest of the winter and spring, the decision to reinforce Bakhmut further delayed the offensive, delaying to early June specifically for more artillery ammo.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Predictably, the October 2022 CONOP for the 2023 Offensive did have some changes. Some for good, most for bad.

One change made was probably for the better. The CONOP called for a contested river crossing of the Dnieper. Thankfully, that operation was aborted and switched to a southward ground offensive to be performed east of the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk Oblasts border, aiming at reaching the Sea of Azov coastal port city of Berdyansk, which would also work to cut the Land Bridge.

Some sources claim the cancellation of the Dnieper River crossing was only due to the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam and subsequent regional flooding that occurred days before the 2023 Counteroffensive kicked off. But the timeline of events does not match that claim. The Ukrainian forces meant to perform that operation primarily consisted of three Ukrainian Marine brigades that were meant to serve as the main effort force to cross the Dnieper, and yet they were among the same units that were already on the attack along the Velyka Novosilka-Berdyansk axis at the very start of the 2023 Counteroffensive, within days of the Kakhovka Dam rupturing.

It would have required psychic powers or a time machine for the Ukrainian General Staff to have recognized the repercussions of the flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, to issue orders for the Ukrainian Marine units to conduct a 500 km-long administrative movement from Kherson Oblast to Donetsk, arrive, unpack, perform the preparations necessary for an entirely new offensive, then go on the attack, all in a few days. Nope, that didn’t happen. The plan must have changed at least by mid-May, probably earlier.

That said, to support a thrust along the Melitopol axis and its operational goal to cut the Land Bridge while fixing/diverting more Russian forces, an offensive against the Berdyansk axis was much more realistic than a cross-river offensive. So, score one for clear-headed decision-making. If only it stopped there…

In all honesty, the original CONOP for the 2023 Counteroffensive needed a whole lot more revisions and updates, if nothing else than to better reflect the current battlefield conditions. Unfortunately, further changes made to the 2023 Counteroffensive plan only made it worse through infighting, factionalism, hubris, and classic stupidity.

Not long before the offensive kicked off, sometime between March and June, the top Ukrainian leadership decided to further dilute the strategic main effort in favor of scaling up the Bakhmut supporting effort. Originally, the counterattack aimed at Bakhmut was only meant to fix and divert Russian forces in the Donbas so they couldn’t be transferred to reinforce Russian forces defending Melitopol. However, personality conflicts fucked that right up.

A certain Colonel General Syrsky had a big problem with the 2023 Counteroffensive CONOP, namely, how small of a role he was to play in it. He was not only the commander of Ukrainian Ground Forces (their army), but also commanded all Ukrainian combat forces fighting in northeastern and eastern Ukraine, including personally taking command of the defense of Bakhmut. And Syrsky was a competitor to General Zaluzhny, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who was most responsible for pushing for the 2023 Counteroffensive’s original CONOP, especially favoring the operational plan to cut the Land Bridge. With the main effort aimed at southern Ukraine, and with Syrsky in eastern Ukraine, he resented how little of a role he and his forces were to play in it, so he took steps to change it.

While technically Zaluzhny’s subordinate, Syrsky got along much better with Ukraine’s President Zelensky and his all-powerful advisor, Yermak. Despite Zaluzhny’s misgivings, and the supposedly horrified response of US Army top generals advising the Ukrainians, Syrsky proposed to enlarge the Bakhmut supporting effort, not just attacking the city but liberating it along with most of the territory in Luhansk Oblast that the Ukrainians had lost during the Russian 2022 Donbas Offensive. For Zelensky and Yermak, who had gambled and lost in their efforts for a big propaganda victory defending Bakhmut, their favorite general just offered them a gift, to liberate Bakhmut and more. And so the plan to turn the Bakhmut axis from a supporting effort counterattack into its own offensive was enthusiastically approved.

What about the Melitopol axis? Supplying combat operations is a zero-sum game, whatever one effort gets, another doesn’t. Hence the principle of war of concentration, prioritizing resources to support the operation that supports the strategy to win the war, dubbed the main effort, while practicing economy of force elsewhere, to use the most minimal resources possible for the supporting effort.

The 2023 Counteroffensive’s bold plan was to cut the Land Bridge, which would come with strategic effects to further harm Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. To perform that, they chose an offensive against the Melitopol axis. They had wanted the majority of supplies for that operation, plus an order of battle consisting of a dozen offensive-capable maneuver brigades, using a handful of veteran brigades and the rest being newly raised. It’s called “weighing the main effort” for a reason.

Then in January 2023, Syrsky got orders to hold Bakhmut at all costs, with that unsound decision costing the main effort offensive against the Melitopol axis, losing its proposed veteran brigades. Then, the Bakhmut supporting effort was enlarged, not only stealing away more newly raised brigades originally set aside to take Melitopol, but half of all supplies meant for the entire 2023 Counteroffensive. At that point, the enlarged Bakhmut axis offensive was no longer a supporting effort, it had became an outright competing main effort.

Without a doubt, the Ukrainians were about to try something far too big with far too little.

No Plan Survives Contact with the Enemy

Considering the nightmare involving the lead-up to the 2023 Counteroffensive, nobody need be shocked that the Ukrainians fumbled the start.

Most especially at the main effort against the Melitopol axis, the attempt to perform a corps-sized breakthrough through the 30 km deep Surovikin Line was a bloody debacle. The whole world got a front seat watching the results as mechanized elements made up of scores of engineering vehicles, tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles ran smack into a wall of ATGMs, artillery, and lots and lots of mines.

Which speaks to another fundamental problem with the 2023 Counteroffensive. Its planning never took into account any of Russia’s military reforms and improvements to their overall strategic situation made since October 2022. Sure, a plan written in Fall 2022 would not accurately reflect reality in Spring 2023, but they made almost no effort to reassess the strategic situation and make necessary changes.

For example, everyone knew the Russians mobilized hundreds of thousands. In response, Ukrainian planners decided to discount that additional strength, declaring them all as poorly trained, led, and motivated, who would not fight well, if at all. The Ukrainian planners also acknowledged the Russians were fortifying the front lines, but they decided those were hollow, poorly made, inadequately manned, a façade, jokingly nicknamed the “Potemkin Line” by an army of rabid online supporters. And so on. Leading to this:

The Path of Least Resistance (based on OSINT mapping of known Russian fortifications, made by Brady Africk)

The Ukrainians planned to attack the most hotly defended sector in Ukraine. They knew going in that, due to political meddling, they would have too few forces involved. But they still considered the village of Robotyne, about 9 kilometers south from the start line, as a Day 1 objective. The city of Tokmak, 30 kilometers away, was a Day 3 objective. In reality, it would take nearly three months before Robotyne was taken, and the Ukrainians barely advanced south of it.

So bad was the intelligence assessment of Russian resistance that Ukrainian company commanders tasked with the assault were told by their own chain of command during their pre-battle briefings not to expect heavy resistance, that the Russians would rout in panic as soon as they saw the Ukrainian armored fighting vehicles coming at them. But it was the Ukrainians caught by surprise by the reality of their own offensive and the heavy resistance.

For the combat units performing the Melitopol axis breakthrough attempts, it’s unfortunate but true that their plan was doomed from the get-go. That said, they made some pretty elemental mistakes in execution.

For example, numerous assault units failed to properly coordinate with the defensive units they were passing through. One such incident resulted in a mechanized company literally driving right into a friendly anti-tank minefield they didn’t know existed, with the obvious results. Another armored unit moving out from their assembly area and conducting their march to the attack point ended up taking heavy ATGM and artillery fires from an adjacent Ukrainian unit, who panicked seeing a host of armored vehicles on their flanks without warning.

Another Ukrainian mechanized unit tasked with performing the ultra-complicated combined arms breaching mission, one of the hardest missions there is, requiring pinpoint timing, they famously missed their start time by four hours for some unexplained reason. And yet the artillery unit tasked with providing suppressive fires against enemy defensive strongpoints didn’t get the word, resulting in a four hour gap between prep fires ending and the Ukrainian armored column finally appearing in broad daylight. At which point they got clobbered by the alert and unsuppressed Russian defenders volley firing ATGMs as artillery and helicopter air support were brought to bear. But fuckups like that weren’t on the maneuver units, they were set up for failure.

It wasn’t all amateur hour and failure everywhere. Things went a little better eastward along the Berdyansk axis in Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian mechanized attacks there achieved a bit more success in the first weeks. Though their advances soon stalled out as well, their furthest advance made it about 10 kilometers southward, only 120 kilometers shy of the coast. But no doubt, they fixed plenty of Russian forces there. Unfortunately, it didn’t help the main effort. Both.

Colonel General Syrsky’s big brain plan to retake Bakhmut and beyond failed miserably. Copying the Russian attempt to avoid a frontal assault against Bakhmut , the Ukrainian plan was split between northern and southern axes meant to outflank the city. Forces on the south of the city did better than those on the north, though that isn’t saying much since Ukrainian forces on the northern axis didn’t budge at all. But even so, the successes won on the southern axes came at a hefty price in casualties and still never came close to retaking Bakhmut itself, let alone liberating the swathes of territory east of it. Did that end up fixing/diverting Russian forces away from the Melitopol main effort? Sure, but not enough, and considering how many Ukrainian forces and supplies were fixed/diverted to Bakhmut, it should only be described as a colossal error in judgment.

The plan to invade Russia itself, which went on to be nicknamed the “Belgorod Incursion,” managed some success making its way inside Russia, and it did manage to create a brief fervor of panic among the Russians. But it did little to fix or divert Russian forces beyond the tactical level, the small Ukrainian force used in the attack was driven back across the border with relative ease and swiftness by a Russian counterattack made up of local forces.

Remember the large-scale partisan uprising planned meant to wreak havoc in Russian rear areas in Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts? The talk of it was that it would be reminiscent of the partisan campaign done in conjunction with one of the most spectacularly impressive offensives in human history, the Red Army’s Operation Bagration. So overblown was this operation that on the eve of the counteroffensive starting, the story goes that the US military’s top general met with some Ukrainian SOF operators training in Germany with US Army Special Forces and gave them the standard patronizing pep talks that 4-star generals are favorite for, complete with guidance that every Russian soldier in the rear areas should be fearful of sleeping lest their throats be cut in the night.

But few throats were to be cut, if any. Maybe the Ukrainians had overestimated the size and capabilities of resistance fighters they could rely on for active support or to use as fighters. Maybe Russian counter-insurgency efforts were too effective in Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts and rolled up the Ukrainian partisan cells. Maybe Ukrainian SOF had no reliable way to even infiltrate into those rear areas to lead the uprising. Maybe someone recognized the futility and scrubbed the mission to use the SOF elsewhere. Maybe the whole thing was a deception plan. Whatever was the reason, the proposed partisan campaign never even started. Russia’s rear areas were secure.

Don’t Stop Believin’

Regardless of the unbridled optimism present in the planning and preparation stages of the 2023 Counteroffensive, the reality of the first week was that the “Potemkin Line” was as strong as pessimists feared, if not stronger.

And so, within a week or so of the disastrous start of the offensive, Ukraine’s General Zaluzhny called for a change in offensive tactics, ordering tactical-level commanders to stop attempts at costly mechanized breakthroughs and instead switch to squad- and platoon-sized dismounted infantry attacks to incrementally advance, judged lower risk.

Apparently, senior US Army officers in Germany advising the Ukrainians thought that was a terrible choice. Claiming it was evidence of risk aversion and timidity of the Ukrainian military commanders, the American senior officers believed that had the Ukrainians persisted with more mechanized attacks, the offensive would have succeeded. I get where they are coming from, sometimes reinforcing failure does succeed, numerous offensives in history started off badly but then succeeded with perseverance. However, in this case, the US Army senior officers were wrong. There was no weakness present in that region that would have allowed for a string of armored breakthroughs, not when their route was through +30 kilometers worth of hotly defended kill zones primarily designed to destroy armored attacks. Reinforcing failure in this situation would only have led to a much greater failure.

And yet, the Ukrainians were wrong too. The only purpose of attacking along the Melitopol axis was to reach the coast to cut the Land Bridge, requiring a hundred kilometer advance, with a minimum of 30 km of that being filled with known fortification lines. The Ukrainian military leadership knew within the first week they couldn’t accomplish that with mechanized attacks, which their plan hinged on, that was apparent as soon as they switched tactics relying on small unit dismounted infantry-centric tactics. And yet, how could squad- and platoon-level attacks on foot make rapid advance for a hundred kilometers?

To make the new tactics appear plausible, Ukrainian leaders tweaked their highly flawed operational plan. Instead of a rapid breakthrough to reach the coast in weeks, they’d still reach that same objective but manage it through attrition, not maneuver. That’s right folks, the Ukrainians would attack on foot and by doing so they’d kill so many Russians to cause their strategic collapse, and then Ukrainian maneuver would resume.

Even then, without the benefit of hindsight, that seemed moronic. The Russians were definitely strong, were better prepared than the Ukrainians had anticipated, their morale was good, and even Ukrainian military intelligence was reporting high numbers for Russia’s contract recruitment all spring and summer, which meant they could sustain losses. But could the Ukrainians?

No People, No Worries

When planning the 2023 Counteroffensive, Ukrainian leadership had only considered a “short and lively” maneuver-centric armored offensive, minimal if any resistance, with the entire campaign wrapped up in about a month and a half to two months, having achieved total victory against limited resistance. But the reality was they ran into the stiffest defensive resistance so far encountered in the war. But they still had options.

One option was to just scrap the offensive plan altogether, husband resources, and stop the offensive against the Melitopol axis. At that point, they could either wait for a better situation to presnet itself in the near future somewhere else, or reinforce another axis that was doing a bit better, like the Velyka Novosilka-Berdyansk axis or even Bakhmut. But that means accepting failure, taking the L, and that was out of the question for Ukrainian leadership.

Instead, they shifted away from risky mechanized attacks to try to exploit potential weaknesses of the anti-armor-centric Russian defenses by performing infantry-centric attacks. Lots and lots of them, for a very long time. In their minds, these would allow them to incrementally advance, to demonstrate success through quantifiable gains visible on a map, but they believed the Russian efforts to defend against those attacks would lead to catastrophic losses, the depletion of their strategic reserve, and then a big Ukrainian W.

But what about Ukrainian losses while attempting that? Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, very fortunately for the Russians, that problem wasn’t considered at all. Ukraine’s new plan not only violated nearly every tenet of sound operational art, but they made that decision with no plan to sustain their meatgrinder infantry-centric attritional campaign.

In terms of supply, courtesy of NATO and other Western supporters, Ukraine was rather flush with armored vehicles, artillery, and ammo during their general offensive. But what they really lacked was people. Namely infantry. 2022 had been a very costly year for the Ukrainians; though the numbers are classified, they got hurt pretty badly repelling the Russian invasion, then got hurt pretty badly resisting the Russian 2022 Donbas Offensive, then got hurt pretty badly in the 2022 Counteroffensive despite their successes. Then all fall and winter of 2022-2023, they kept getting hurt badly.

Some of that was unavoidable, some very avoidable. Such as how many Ukrainians troops were lost performing the routine propaganda-driven “hold at all costs” defenses they are famous for. Constantly, the Ukrainian military were given defensive orders akin to “Not a Step Back,” and while those orders did result in less Russian territorial gains and more Russian losses, they came at a great cost for the Ukrainians too. That was definitely the case in the defense of the totally strategically unimportant city of Bakhmut, where casualties were heavy, and worse of all, there had been no planning to replace them. Similarly, they did not plan for stiff resistance and heavy losses in the 2023 Counteroffensive, especially not when they shifted to infantry-centric offensive that lasted six months.

Manpower sustainment in war requires plenty of lead time, often a half year or more. Planners must account for how losses they plan to take down the road, plus account for how they wish to grow, then they must plan how to find, induct, train, and allocate those new servicemen and women where they need to go. Ukraine did not, in the slightest bit plan to take those heavy losses in 2022-2023. And worst of all, their personnel induction system couldn’t at all support it even if they had.

It’s not discussed enough, but the Ukrainian military’s induction system of new personnel is terrible. Some systems are terrible on paper but end up working, like Russia’s, so good for them. But Ukraine’s was terrible on paper and didn’t work.

They use a dual system. One part is conscription-based, legally called mobilization since the war started, where involuntarily-inducted men aged 27-60 years old (later shortened to 25 years old in May 2024) are given a short stint of basic training (anywhere from five days to six weeks) and then assigned to whatever unit and job the military command wants.

The other recruitment pipeline relies on volunteers who sign contracts for a specified time period, typically 2-5 years of active service (though indefinitely extended for the duration of the war), who have the luxury of their pick of branch of service, their unit, and their job too.

There is a huge flaw in that system that specifically affects the infantry. Motivated volunteers wanting to fight tend to sign contracts to join elite units with good reputations, who offer more training, possess better leadership, take fewer losses, etc. Motivated volunteers who don’t want to directly fight can choose support jobs that are easier and safer than combat arms, also tending to favor service with a shortlist of elite units with good reputations.

The result is that the poor bastards who end up mobilized will end up serving in the jobs the volunteers don’t want to perform in the units they don’t want to be assigned to. And in the Ukrainian Defense Forces, that means the infantry, who in all past wars and this one in particular, end up performing the most demanding jobs while taking the heaviest casualties. And nowhere was the demand more critical for infantrymen than in non-elite units that make up the vast majority of Ukraine’s military. That system just wasn’t designed for high attritional warfare, and it was failing by 2023.

Adding to the problem was Ukraine’s history of draft dodging, so bad it can almost be declared a national sport. Avoiding military service in Ukraine dates back to the 1970-80s, when it became commonplace for those with the means to avoid conscripted service in the Soviet Armed Forces, mostly due to hazing, poor treatment, the war in Afghanistan, etc. Draft dodging worsened after the collapse of the Soviet Union as conditions, pay, treatment, and discipline all deteriorated while corruption flourished. And draft dodging was already a major problem during the Donbas War, too many avoided that war too.

And then this war started, when amazingly Ukraine’s draft dodging problem completely disappeared early in the war. In fact, so many patriotic Ukrainians were motivated to volunteer in such great numbers that they were being turned away and told to wait to be mobilized. But like how all honeymoons eventually end, this hyper violent war dragged on, less than a year later and Ukraine’s old problem grew anew.

Here was the dilemma: Among the 27-60 year old Ukrainian men who were both motivated to serve their country and eligible to be conscripted during mobilization, by early 2023 most of them had already joined up. And thanks to the bloody battles of 2022 and 2023, many of those motivated Ukrainians were already casualties.

By early 2023, there were already reports that the Ukrainian mobilization effort was having trouble finding new recruits. This was no secret, even Western media largely very sympathetic to the Ukrainians were reporting on the growing problem, especially as it grew more problematic throughout 2023. By the start of the summer, the mobilization effort was under heavy public scrutiny for system inefficiency and corruption-related crimes, so much so that by August 2023, Ukraine’s President Zelensky mass-fired all the regional commanders responsible for running the mobilization efforts, hoping that alone would fix the problem. It didn’t.

It would take far more than band-aid solutions to support the personnel demands to perform an infantry-centric general offensive. But did the Ukrainian leadership take the drastic steps needed to fix their manpower problem? Did they make any efforts to incentivize service as a “Mobik,” the poor bastards conscripted and often ending up as barely trained infantrymen in an array of mediocre or poor-performing units? No and no. In fact, most of the policies instituted by the top Ukrainian leadership really deterred service for mobilized personnel. And yet, the volunteer contract system had no way to meet the demands of a high attrition conflict that the Ukrainian leadership had voluntarily chosen to pursue.

And as the mobilization crisis grew, so did the discrepancy between the number of infantry personnel inducted monthly and those lost in combat. The longer the 2023 Counteroffensive lasted, the more infantry casualties lost, the less likely they could be replaced. Ever.

The failure of the Ukrainian mobilization system deserves its own book series, so colossal and monumental has it been. But considering that was part of the strategic reality for Ukraine for months before they started the 2023 Counteroffensive, it is pure negligence that the Ukrainian leadership ignored the problem while choosing a course of action that couldn’t work as a result of the manpower crisis. They didn’t plan to sustain a meatgrinder offensive for one month, let alone six months, but did it anyway. And since 2023, that infantry manpower problem has only grown worse.

Do You Know What the Definition of Insanity Is?

While the scale and tempo of the 2023 Counteroffensive dropped into September 2023, the Ukrainian leadership kept the offensive going till around late November, when the last of the attacks along the Melitopol and Bakhmut axes finally ended.

Why stop then? Did Ukrainian leaders finally come to their senses and realize the errors of their ways? Unfortunately, no, instead they ran out of people. The limited number of offensive-capable Ukrainian combat units that had been set aside to perform the 2023 Counteroffensive had all run out of infantrymen. Many of those even went so far as to cannibalize personnel from their support units to press them into service as ad hoc assault troops just to follow orders and remain on the offensive.

The saying goes, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” By pressing the 2023 Counteroffensive so hard and for so long, the Ukrainians ended it only after having reached their strategic point of culmination. They did so voluntarily. Ukrainian leadership ordered their forces to keep attacking to pursue the goals of an offensive that had almost no chances of success, which couldn’t accomplish the objectives necessary to win the war. A plan that was based on a horrific appraisal of enemy combat potential, was done with poor preparation, no OPSEC, bumbling mistakes at the start, and a shift to an insane attritional approach to victory that they pressed for half a year without any semblance of a sustainment plan to allow for it.

Madness.

In the end, the Ukrainians handed Russia their greatest gift of the war, a deep, gaping wound to the Ukrainian war effort that has only worsened since then, one that very well might cost the Ukrainians the war. In effect, the Ukrainians 2023 Counteroffensive was an act of strategic suicide.

It didn’t need to happen that way, it shouldn’t have happened that way, but at least we can all learn some lessons from it.

I was halfway through the Best Offensive article when I realized I needed a second part for the Worst. I got about three thousand words into this article before realizing there was no way I could do this campaign the justice it deserved while also including the Worst Offensive Runner-up. So please be on the lookout for part 3, when I rip into the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I have wanted to write this series of articles for some time, but was hesitant as it seemed a major hassle. Truth be told, I was terrified of the effort. Why?

Sourcing.

As I followed the Russo-Ukraine War for the last four years, I have constantly said to myself in hindsight, “You really need to save your sources!” And to this day, I largely don’t. And like now, that screwup has bit me in the ass as I try to credibly defend my opinions. I’m okay with my posts not meeting PhD requirements for sourcing, but I prefer not to be considered full of shit either.

While following this war, I can’t even describe how many online sources I’ve read, watched, or listened to in the form of news articles, reports, social media posts, videos, documentaries, and podcasts. A lot, as the Russo-Ukraine War has become a near obsession. And while most of what I consumed has been crap, there were the occasional nuggets of wisdom that were incredibly insightful and educational. And in nearly every case, like a total idiot refusing to learn my lesson, I didn’t record those sources.

When it comes to my blog articles, I write about topics I have a good understanding of. Therefore, most of the work of publishing an article goes into the writing process. When it comes to research, since I already know most of what I’m writing about, my time is typically spent chasing down sources of information I had already read/watched/listened to, to find them again to properly quote or link them. And if you haven’t had the pleasure, that process is a total bitch.

Sometimes I succeed, but it’s usually an exhausting task. For example, in the section titled “The Ukrainian Meat-Flavored Substitute” in this blog article of mine, I spent about five hours re-listening to three different podcasts at double speed to find the one I had listened to previously that had an interview with a specific guest who gave a specific poignant quote I had remembered. I remembered the line, I couldn’t remember where I heard it, so I needed to find that first. Once I found it, I then transcribed it accurately, and then the massive quote was included in the exhaustive ~6,000-word first draft of that article. Then, for readability, I ended up cutting out the transcribed quote and instead included a short paragraph paraphrasing the quote with brevity. And that’s a success story.

However, other times, too frequently, I failed in my efforts to chase down a source. I’ll have an idea in my head about some very interesting point I remembered from prior research, but when I go to find the source again to include it in a Reddit post or a blog article, nope, I just can’t find it again. I want to blame Google’s search engine, it’s a pain in the ass to sort through sources from 3-4 years ago, especially when using vague Boolean search queries based on mental snapshots of the points made. Really, it’s my own damn fault.

In a perfect world, this article series would be sourced properly. In it, I’m going to grossly overindulge my id LARPing as a 5-star Armchair General as I cover in great detail four separate major military ground offensives, discussing controversial and educational points that should include sources.

But to do this article right, I probably would need to invest at least two weeks’ worth of research, if not more. Blogging (and shitposting on Reddit) is a hobby for me, I just don’t have the time or inclination to do this article right. After all, legit historians have grad students and assistants to do this type of shit for them for a reason, it’s excruciating.

So, I’m making a command decision. Fuck it. I’m not going to provide sources in this article.

I’m not happy about it, but I’m tired of sitting on this blog article idea and not writing it because I just can’t afford to spend the weeks necessary to dig through Google or Reddit.

The good news is that if you do want to find some sources, and you are willing to do the research yourself, you can search my Reddit post history, as most of what I’m covering here I’ve written about on Reddit over the years and have probably sourced it at one point or another.

But fair warning, from this point onwards, you can either take my word for it and keep reading, or you can bail out now. Your choice.

Enough foreplay, let’s get to it.

Operational Art: You Know it When you See It

Since its start in February 2022, the Russo-Ukraine War has been the most intense conventional war fought in Europe since WW2, the largest and most intense since Iran-Iraq War. As many of my previous blog articles have attested, this war’s operational tempo has been insanely high due to both sides’ political and military leadership’s desire to go on the offensive at every opportunity, damn the costs. We’re coming up on nearly four years of war and it’s only gotten more intense as time went on.

Wait, what’s an offensive? Isn’t that another fancy name for an attack? Yes actually, when used as an adjective, it’s a synonym for attacking, hence an “offensive operation” can mean a squad attack or an army group attacking along a 500 kilometer frontage. However, as a noun, offensive has a specific meaning. Ultimately, differentiating an attack from an offensive comes down to scale; an attack is performed by at the division-level equivalent level and below, while an offensive is performed above the division-level into the lower spectrum of the operational-level of warfare and going up from there.

And its offensives in the Russo-Ukraine War that I’m here to discuss. Large-scale, corps-level equivalent or larger, many brigades and/or divisions, not localized in one small area but spread out over a larger tactical area or beyond.

To properly judge offensives requires an understanding of operational art. What’s that? The internet is filled with an endless number of conflicting definitions, some short and concise, some wordy and pretentious. Basically, operational art is when solid doctrine is properly applied, resulting in successful operational-level campaigns that link the tactical-level of warfare with the larger strategic vision.

In terms of judging operational art as used in offensives in the Russo-Ukraine War, 2022-present, I could create a list of quantifiable criteria with a scoring rubric with points based on a standardized list of principles of war. But screw that, that’s way too much work. Instead, I’m going by my gut, flying by the seat of my pants, and will judge each offensive military operation on whatever criteria I think are worth mentioning to drive my points home. As they say about art, so goes operational art, “You know it when you see it.” And that is the best way to judge military operations.

With good offensives, it’s harder to find faults than positives, with the latter outweighing the former. On the flip side, bad offensives are just so easy to pick apart and find faults. Not to mention the obvious, success means everything. Good offensives typically succeed for the same reason that bad offensives typically fail.

And there have been scores of offensives performed in this war that I can consider. By my count, the Ukrainians alone have performed eleven distinct offensives. The Russians performed so many that I didn’t bother counting. Suffice to say, they’ve been on the “general offensive” nonstop since October 2023 and that time period alone has encompassed scores of distinct offensives, let alone what was done before.

Best and worst, which to choose, which to choose…

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Contestants!

In my expert opinion, most of the offensives performed in this war were shit. I’m paraphrasing, but I heard a quote by someone at some point characterizing the Russo-Ukraine War that went something like “this war is two Soviet armies, one big and one small, beating the shit out of each other.” If nobody else said it, I do. That quote is dead on.

Being that this war has not shown much finesse at the operational and strategic level of warfare, between the static and positional nature of the war and bungling decisions, the list of noteworthy offensives is actually pretty short. In fact, I can’t think of more than a handful of offensives to be worth considering at all. And yet, two offensives in particular have stood out far beyond any others.

My top two picks for best offensives both go to the Ukrainians. In chronological order, the September 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive and the August 2024 Kursk Offensive.

The Winner of the Best Offensive Award

This category nearly came down to a coin toss to choose the winner. Both had novel tactics involved, varying levels of surprise, competent planning with really good operational concepts hitting weaknesses with mass. They both managed rapid breakthroughs and operational-level exploitation deep into the enemy’s rear areas. In the end, I based my judgment on the long-term effects of the campaigns: one of these offensives succeeded in the long run, the other failed spectacularly.

And so, the winner of the Best Offensive Award goes to…

Ukraine’s September 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive!

Let me set the conditions for this glorious victory.

After the failure of the initial invasion, the Russians shifted forces to mass in the Donbas, not only legitimately coveting that territory and wanting to conquer it but also probably hoping that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) would be destroyed trying to defend against a massive fires-centric Russian offensive.

While the Spring-Summer 2022 Donbas Offensive was very painful for the Ukrainians, and ultimately the Russians were successful in taking most of what was left of Luhansk Oblast, the offensive didn’t destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces, far from it. Instead, it was the Russians who were ground up in the Donbas Offensive. Foolishly, despite being five months into a meatgrinder conflict, Russian leadership just wasn’t taking the war all that seriously. They’d invaded with too few units that were understrength even before taking massive casualties. After the Russians shifted from a general invasion plan to focusing on the Donbas, Putin refused to declare mobilization, and so they could not replace their very heavy casualties nor grow their force structure adequately.

The result was that by mid-2022, the Russians had essentially culminated their offensive capabilities through a mix of exhaustion and attrition, whereas the Ukrainians were at their strongest, having mobilized from day 1 of the war. By summer 2022, the Ukrainians had enlarged their military by about 400% and actually grossly outnumbered the Russians inside Ukraine. With such a large strategic reserve and a great desire to launch a counteroffensive to reclaim lost ground, the question was where to do it?

If you think the Ukrainians immediately chose Kharkiv, you’d be wrong. The UA political and military leadership actually wanted to attack southward in Zaporizhzhia Oblast to drive around 120 kilometers to Melitopol, cut the “Land Bridge,” force Russia to retreat out of Kherson, and to put Crimea within “fire control” range of Ukrainian long-range fires using US and German-issued GLMRS (If that seems similar to 2023 Counteroffensive, you’re not crazy).

However, that plan was too bold, too audacious, too risky, so sayeth the US Army senior officers who were assisting the Ukrainians with military planning. Those American field grade and general officers ran numerous wargames with the Ukrainian leadership to test out the proposed Melitopol offensive, with US officers playing the role of the Russians, they defeated the Ukrainians every time. According to their opinions, the objective was just too far away, the Ukrainians had too few offensive-capable reserves, and the Russians were not weak there, having beefed up defenses in that region between May and August, especially throughout July after the Ukrainian government brilliantly telegraphed the upcoming offensive against “The South.”

Unhappily, the Ukrainian leadership took the advice the US military generals and altered their plans. The Melitopol thrust was canceled (for now), and the main effort was shifted to Kherson. The area of operations was a piece of ground that I believe should be called the Kherson Bridgehead, the large lodgment area the Russians held on the west bank of the Dnieper that encompassed about 3,500 km² of Kherson Oblast, including Kherson City. There, the Russians had a very strained supply line due to the Dnieper River at their backs, meaning that if the crossing points were knocked out early on, Russian lines of communication would be severely strained, if not cut, leading to an “easy” victory, in theory.

However, if the Ukrainians only launched an offensive against Kherson, the Russians could commit reserves elsewhere. Properly, all attacks are supposed to be done in pairs at least to deal with that dilemma, a main effort against the true objective, and a supporting effort elsewhere to fix or divert enemy forces away from the main effort. Thus, the second offensive was needed. Where?

Big mid summer 2022, the Russians were VERY weak in Kharkiv Oblast. There, the Russian Western Military District (WMD) controlled everything from northwest of Kharkiv Oblast all the way to around the Lyman area in Donetsk Oblast, covering a massive frontage many hundreds of kilometers wide, far too much territory for them to properly defend. Making matters worse, around June-July all of the Russian airborne units (VDV) and most of the Central Military District (CMD) forces that had previously been involved in the Donbas Offensive were transferred to reinforce Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, leaving the region even more bare of combat ready forces, further forcing every remaining unit to expand their frontages.

Nowhere was the defensive situation worse for the Russians in Kharkiv Oblast than around the city of Balakliya, roughly 60 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv City. That section of the front was a “line” in name only, defended by highly isolated strongpoints manned by a handful of highly-attrited and exhausted conventional motor rifle units augmented by Rosgvardia paramilitary that didn’t even have heavy weapons. The Russian defense had no depth to it, gaps galore, making it an enticing target if the Ukrainians knew about it. And they did. The recommendation to attack was pushed up the chain and approved and the Kharkiv Counteroffensive became the supporting effort for the Kherson Counteroffensive.

Some media hacks and commentators have pushed a talking point that the Kharkiv Counteroffensive was the legit actual main effort of the 2022 Counteroffensive and that Kherson was a feint, a supporting operation done to deceive the Russians in a gambit to commit their reserves to defend “The South” in a brilliantly thought-out deception plan. That’s a load of shit, a lie designed to make the Ukrainians seem smarter than they were, especially their top leadership. The truth was that Kharkiv was intended to be a sideshow. However, that doesn’t at all negate the brilliance and success of the Kharkiv Counteroffensive. Some of the most impressive offensives in history started out as supporting efforts that ended up outshining the main effort, and Kharkiv is one of them.

The offensive was primarily conducted using five elite brigades, one of which was already operating in Kharkiv Oblast, with the other four transferred from the nearby Donbas front. All had been fighting hard for months, defending and also regularly performing counterattacks that lent them experience conducting mobile, mechanized offensive operations. Reportedly, they were all pulled from the line and given a few weeks to prep, take in personnel replacements, be augmented with batteries of US-provided artillery pieces to fire US-provided GPS-guided artillery shells, rehearsing, etc.

Amazingly, the Russians spotted the concentration of AFU forces, even Russian milbloggers were posting warnings of a Ukrainian concentration of forces in the exact area the Ukrainians were in fact massing a week before the offensive kicked off. Depending on the story, either the Russian military leadership ignored the warnings or there was nothing they could do about it, having no reserves to commit.

About a week after the Kherson Counteroffensive kicked off, the Kharkiv Counteroffensive started to amazing results. The AFU blew through the Russian front lines like they weren’t even there, which isn’t far from the truth. With light vehicles screening the advance of heavy armor, the Ukrainians had relatively smooth sailing supported by a fires plan that pounded every known position with arty, often using GPS-guided shells and GMLRS. Using true maneuver warfare tactics, soft points were overrun on the march while hard points were bypassed for follow-on-forces to take.

(Terrific graphics courtesy of Jomini of the West’s X account)

The Ukrainians advanced about 70 kilometers within days, they crossed the highly important Oskil River, then swung south in a race to the only real crossing point the Russians had left around Lyman.

In the mad dash to retreat without a massive encirclement, the Russians left behind thousands of working heavy equipment, including tanks, APCs, IFV, artillery pieces, and mountains of ammo and other supplies. Lots of POWs were captured by the Ukrainians, and numerous Russian units initially committed from the strategic reserve in an attempt to stop the attack were decimated, including multiple elements of the newly formed 3rd Army Corps. Apparently, the defeat was so bad that the Russians were even considering using tactical nuclear weapons to extricate themselves.

Strategically and operationally, Kharkiv was a huge success for the Ukrainians. Not only did the Ukrainians free up most of Kharkiv Oblast within a week, but they completely undid months of effort by the Russians in their 2022 Donbas Offensive, effectively destroying the Izyum Axis, which was trying to outflank the key Donbas fortress cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The Russian Western Military District, the pride and joy of the Russian Armed Forces before the war started, was badly hurt and embarrassed again (having performed poorly in the invasion too), leading to its second commander fired since the war started.

And best of all, in October-November 2022, the Russians were forced to retreat out of the Kherson Bridgehead in order to free up forces to commit to defending the fallback defensive line created far behind the Oskil River, which rescued the otherwise failing Kherson Counteroffensive, as the Ukrainians had made barely any progress since it started in early September. Two birds were in fact killed with one stone.

The Kharkiv Counteroffensive wasn’t cost-free for the Ukrainians, they apparently racked up quite a butcher’s bill themselves. Plus, in their efforts to further exploit success, the Ukrainian leadership decided to spend the remaining fall of 2022 by having the AFU grind away in largely fruitless attacks trying to breach the Russian fallback line between Svatove and Kreminna hoping to score another breakthrough that wasn’t to come. Nevertheless, subsequent failures should not take away from the many achievements of the 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive.

Kudos to the Ukrainians!

The Best Offensive Award: Runner-Up

The 2024 Kursk Offensive gets the prize as runner-up. Oh wait:

“In war, there is no second prize for the runner-up.” – GEN Omar Bradley

Tactically, I think the Kursk Offensive is actually superior to the 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive in terms of skill and finesse, especially at the tactical level to achieve the breakthrough.

What really impressed me was that many thought such offensives were impossible in the “age of the transparent battlefield.” Too many have said too much about how maneuver was dead in the face of modern intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) dominated by satellites, drones, signals intercept, and human intelligence. Kursk proved otherwise.

The opinion that the Kursk Offensive should have happened at all is very debatable. In Spring-Summer 2024, the Ukrainians were struggling in the war. Their problems were many in terms of the ground war. Ukraine was losing key battles and being forced to give up territory, especially certain cities, despite all efforts to hold them, regardless of the cost. Policies like that had led to a major manpower crisis, specifically within the infantry, which was plaguing the AFU and causing all sorts of problems as maneuver brigades didn’t have the strength to properly defend their overly extended strategic frontage in the manner the Ukrainian leadership required of them, which involved those pesky political-strategic-level orders refusing permission retreat, “Not a Step Back!” 21st century style.

In mid-May 2024, in a bid to overextend the Ukrainians akin to the 1918 Hundred Day Offensive, to totally overwhelm the AFU with a general offensive along the broadest front possible, the Russians re-opened the Northern Kharkiv Oblast front by launching a new offensive.

Lucky for the Ukrainians, despite some small-scale Russian tactical breakthroughs early on, the AFU had enough combat-ready battalion-sized reserves sprinkled around the front that were able to be quickly committed to stop the Russian advance cold and stabilize it.

In addition to Kharkiv being attacked anew, the Russians were also threatening Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast with what seemed to be another new offensive about to kick off. At a minimum, there was an active deception plan baiting a potential Russian offensive, as the Russians were concentrating forces in the adjacent Kursk Oblast, and were launching small-scale cross-border raids and probes into Sumy. However, while the initial threat was legit, due to the failing Kharkiv Offensive, nearly all of Russian reserves opposing Sumy Oblast in Kursk were transferred away to support Kharkiv. If a Sumy Offensive was initially considered and/or planned by the Russians, the plan was at least on hold by June 2024, if not dead.

That left Ukraine in a unique position. They had held Kharkiv largely with what was already present, but in the emergency of the initial offensive had transferred elite “firefighter” reinforcements from elsewhere in Ukraine who arrived just as the Kharkiv front was stabilized. Additionally, due to the very real threat of a Sumy Offensive, they transferred more units to reinforce that area as well. Around late June-early July 2024, the Ukrainians had a massive force concentration in the Kharkiv and Sumy region, many of them elite, with no mission.

In contrast, having transferred most of their forces out of Kursk Oblast to support the Kharkiv Offensive, the Russians had left a glaring weakness along the Sumy-Kursk border, then almost entirely held by border guards and a limited number of motor rifle units, many of which were made up of totally inexperienced Russian conscripts with a very limited understanding of the ever-changing tactical nuances of how to fight in the Russo-Ukraine War. Like Kharkiv in 2022, the Russian defenses in Kursk again made the mistake of having a weak forward defense with no depth. And again, the Ukrainians realized it. And thus was birthed the Kursk Offensive.

At the political-strategic level, its not hard to understand why the Ukrainian leadership were all for it. They wanted to show the world that Russia has no real red lines and that Putin wouldn’t risk a major escalation in revenge for Russia proper being invaded, hoping to inspire more Western support, especially to provide more long-range weapons to strike deep into Russia. Also, there was a desire to take the war to Russia to take their territory to “hold it for ransom,” with the idea that Russia would have to agree to give up Ukrainian territory in exchange for getting their lost territory back in Kursk. Lastly, they wanted to show everyone that Ukraine was still in the war, still capable of winning.

Operationally, the plan was borderline. On one hand, it was very risky to open up a completely new front, turning an otherwise quiet sector hot and driving deep to create a bulging salient into Russia that would be a much longer line to defend. However, the concept of operations is in line with certain aggressive military doctrines and viewpoints, especially those favored by Ukrainian top military leadership. Sometimes, the best way to defend is by attacking.

Case in point. In the summer of 2024, the Russian strategic main effort offensive was in the Donbas, specifically pressing towards the city of Pokrovsk, a key communication and logistics hub in Donetsk Oblast.

• Option 1: Commit reserves to the Donbas to defend it in strength.

• Option 2: Perform an economy of force defense in the Donbas with the absolute bare minimum, and commit reserves for an offensive elsewhere.

Option 2 has some appeal. It is essentially what happened numerous times in 2022. The September 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive was actually not the first Kharkiv Counteroffensive, an earlier offensive had been launched in late April 2022. Though a smaller offensive than in September, it pushed Russian units back to the border and across the Siversk Donets River, and forced a large concentration of Russian units to be transferred to reinforce that region, away from the Donbas. If an offensive into Kursk was successful enough, a similar situation could happen again. Russian commanders would either have to scale back their ongoing Donbas Offensive or outright end it, needing to transfer forces and supplies to stabilize Kursk. If it had worked as intended, the Kursk Offensive would also kill two birds with one stone, the Ukrainians would achieve their political-strategic goals for Kursk and also operationally defeat the Russian Donbas Offensive, at least for the time being. And it nearly worked.

With complete surprise, practicing expert operational security (OPSEC) for a change, on August 6, 2024, elements from about a dozen different elite brigades performed a series of highly competent mechanized combined arms breaching operations to get through minefields and forward defenses defending the Kursk border and the various defensive positions in the area, while using a comprehensive artillery and drone fires plan coupled with what was probably the most absolutely brilliant use of coordinated preplanned electronic warfare and cyber attacks done in the war on a large-scale, which utterly dismantled the Russian defender’s drone-directed communication and recon fires complex.

August 2024 Kursk Offensive Successes (Courtesy of MilitaryLand.net)

Within a week after launching the Kursk Offensive, the Ukrainians got about 50 kilometers deep into Russia and bagged about 1,000 km² of Russian territory, about a quarter or so of what Russia had taken from Ukraine in all of 2024. They captured a bunch of Russian POWs, enough to create an “exchange fund” for the prisoner swaps famous and unique in this war. It forced the shutdown of the Russian Kharkiv Offensive, needing to shift nearly all those forces to defend and then counterattack Kursk, as well as other Russian units transferred from all over Ukraine, certainly wrecking Russia’s 2024-2025 strategic timelines. As a result, the US loosened targeting restrictions with HIMARS to strike into Russia. And the Ukrainian people, Russia, and the rest of the world were shown that Ukraine definitely wasn’t defeated.

Unfortunately, despite the initial successes, the “Kursk Incursion” as it would be known, ended up blowing up in Ukraine’s collective face.

Sure, it initially accomplished some of its goals, but not enough of them. The US allowed some long-range strikes into Russia, but not everywhere, and Germany didn’t give up the Taurus cruise missiles as the Ukrainians hoped. And the Russians didn’t need to call off the Donbas Offensive either or even limit it. In fact, they barely shifted any units from that area of operations throughout the whole Kursk Incursion, instead transferring forces away from other areas around Ukraine that weren’t the Russian main effort.

It also didn’t achieve the overly audacious objectives some believe were legitimate. Some say one of the offensive’s goals was to take the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant to effectively hold it hostage, politically. Others say a goal of the Kursk Offensive was for the AFU to drive so deeply and then to swing right to outflank Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, totally relieving the Kharkiv region too. I’m not sure about the validity of either one of those goals, but neither succeeded.

Still, for the first two months at least, the Kursk Offensive was something the Ukrainians could legitimately brag about. And then, everything went to shit.

Some of you reading this might already be furious with me for even considering the Kursk Offensive as a good offensive, let alone the second best, when it ultimately ended as an abject failure. However, the Kursk Offensive and the Kursk Incursion are not synonyms, the former was part of the latter but not the whole. The overall Kursk campaign should be broken down into six distinct phases.

1. The August 2024 offensive to breach the border and get inside Russia, which I think was a noteworthy operation.

2. The failed attempt in September-October 2024 by the Ukrainians to expand their frontage with a new offensive into the Glushkovo district to reach the Seym River.

3. The Russian counterattack in October 2024, which forced the Ukrainians onto a defensive footing.

4. The mid-November 2024 start of the Russian counteroffensive to drive the Ukrainians out of Kursk.

5. Russia’s successful January-March 2025 attacks the shoulders of the Ukrainian Kursk Salient to cut its supply lines.

6. The chaotic Ukrainian rout out of the Kursk Salient when their whole defense collapsed in early March 2025.

Phase 1 of the Kursk didn’t go perfectly but it was still a big success. While all other phases were Ukrainian failures, that’s not the fault of the Kursk Offensive, that’s the fault of the Ukrainian senior political leadership for, again, not knowing when to pull the plug on an operation and retreat. No later than mid-October, AFU forces in Kursk should have voluntarily retreated back to a superbly heavily fortified Sumy border, having used the opportunity of the Kursk Incursion to lay in as much reinforced concrete as possible to make Sumy impenetrable for future offensives, while telling everyone the offensive was actually a large-scale raid and that Ukraine never meant to hold Russian territory indefinitely and were happy with the attrition and embarrassment they caused Russia. That was obvious then, definitely obvious in hindsight. But alas.

Notwithstanding, the Kursk Offensive punched through the Russian border like shit through a goose. Not only did it prove many wrong that the Ukrainians were not beaten or too exhausted to even properly defend anymore, but it proved that mobile mechanized warfare was still alive and well as long as the proper tenets of successful operational art were applied.

Kudos for the Ukrainians again, at least for the first phase.

This article ended up being much larger than I intended, so I split it into two parts. Be on the lookout for Part 2, the more entertaining and scathing of the two articles, as I cover the two worst offensives of the Russo-Ukraine War.

On a personal note, this topic is near and dear to my heart as I am a veteran of that conflict, having served two 12-month deployments as a US Army infantryman, in 2007-8 and 2009-10. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, the PTS, the TBI, and the cancer caused by the Burn Pits.

My firsthand experiences in that conflict taught me much, some good, some bad, but I think what it best provided me with was the context needed to better understand what I later learned. Being of a rather bookish personality, trying to make the most of my mostly useless history degree, and most of all, desperately trying to better understand “My War,” after I got home from Iraq I went on a deep dive to research what happened and why. Fifteen years later, I’m confident that I’ve learned a lot.

Unfortunately, many others haven’t. So I’m going to do my best to set the record straight and do some bust some myths about “My War,” the Iraq War.

Let me start by saying that I wholeheartedly believe that America made so very many mistakes involving the Iraq War.

We. Fucked. Up.

Readers, you have no idea how many years it took me to be able to admit that…

And yet, some of the mistakes that my country is blamed for, we’re not as guilty as many would have you believe.

For this article, I’m not going to discuss the lead up to the war, about whether or not Bush et al lied about WMDs, how the invasion went, how the occupation went for eight years, how well Rumsfeld performed as SECDEF, theater level command competence, whether the Surge worked or not, if Iran was the real winner of the conflict, or if our exit triggered the creation of the Islamic State.

I’m going to keep things simple and cover two myths that center on one man, L. Paul Bremer, the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004, effectively the US governor of the Iraqi occupation, who some claim was THE reason for the Iraqi Insurgency. Overall, I believe Bremer did a rather poor job running Iraq, and this article isn’t to defend his overall performance. However, I also believe that Bremer did receive some unfair blame, and I’m going to back up that opinion with some facts and sound argument.

Angel or Demon?

Those blaming Bremer are many, but interestingly enough, his loudest critics and the originators of the myth are the very US Army and Marine Corps colonels and generals who held senior command and staff positions at some point in the Iraq War.

Examples include the retired general and planned occupation administrator that Bremer replaced, LTG Jay Garner; the US Marine Corps I Marine Expeditionary Force commander during the invasion and first year, LtGen James Conway; the Iraqi Surge planner Colonel Peter Mansoor; not to mention most of the US senior officer corps and many others, whose adherents all bring up roughly the same talking point.

Here is their argument: In May 2003, only weeks after the Iraq Invasion was declared “Mission Accomplished,” which saw Saddam Hussein’s government overthrown, Paul Bremer, leading the Coalition Provisional Authority governing Iraq, passed several highly controversial orders that supposedly backfired, with the two most commonly referenced being these:

CPA Order No. 1: “De-Ba’athification of Iraqi Society”

CPA Order No. 2: “Dissolution of Entities”

What was so controversial about those decisions?

Here is Colonel Peter Mansoor’s answer, provided in a 2013 Ask Me Anything on Reddit:

There were three decisions made in the spring of 2003 that, in my view, created the insurgency in Iraq:

· Extensive de-Ba’athification that many Iraqis believed amounted to the de-Sunnification of Iraqi society

· Disbanding the Iraqi Army, the only indigenous forces that could have been revitalized and used to help secure Iraq in the aftermath of major combat operations

· Empowerment of an Iraqi Governing Council composed of highly sectarian politicians, many of them expatriates who did not understand the Iraqi people’s concerns

I like Mansoor, I’ve read a bunch of his books and papers on military history, and I generally agree with most of what he has to say about Iraq later in the war. And even in that Reddit post, I’ll fully agree with Mansoor’s third point, specifically because the US did indeed put way too much trust into some expatriates, most especially Ahmad Chalabi (may he burn in Hell).

But Mansoor’s other two points are completely wrong, and so is everyone else repeating those myths, and I’ll prove why.

While I am going to cover each of those controversial orders in detail, before I do, there is some background context that must be understood, because in this nuanced discussion, “context is everything.”

Saddam’s Iraq: Minority Rule Through Terror

Demographics are always important when considering nation-state level politics, and nowhere is that more crucial than in discussions about Iraq, The Land Between the Rivers of Sectarian Chaos.

To quote the CIA Workbook, Iraqi ethnical demographics are Arab 75-80%, Kurdish 15-20%, other 5% (which “includes Turkmen, Yezidi, Shabak, Kaka’i, Bedouin, Romani, Assyrian, Circassian, Sabaean-Mandaean, Persian”). Of the Arabs and Kurds, the latter controlled Northern Iraq, had rebelled in the 1980s, and had managed to gain a large degree of autonomy from the rest of Iraq since the mid-1990s. The Arabs controlled everything else.

But it wasn’t just ethnic groups that divided Iraq, it was also religion too. Muslims account for 95-98% of the population, with Shi’a Muslims accounting for 61-64% of the Iraqi population, while Sunni Muslims represent around 29-34%. To note, nearly all of the Shi’a Muslims are Arabs, while the Sunni are split between Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds.

Here is what the breakdown looked like: In Saddam’s Iraq in 2003, about 65% of the population was Shi’a Arab, another 15% were Kurds, Sunni Arabs represented 15% of the population, and 5% were Other.

In terms of power, it wasn’t evenly distributed. The Sunni Arabs had historically been in control of Iraq, but the mass conversion of Iraq’s present-day population to the Shi’a faith didn’t occur till the 19th Century. That kick started the problems. While the 20th Century was filled with sectarian divisions between the Sunni and Shi’a faith, the conflict truly exploded during Saddam’s rule. For Saddam and the Sunni Arabs to maintain power and control required an iron fist approach of oppression to achieve. A Gaul is to have said of the Romans, “They make a desert and call it peace,” Saddam took that advice a step further. To maintain power over them, Saddam is said to have killed over 200,000 Shi’a Iraqis.

The Kurds are an ethnic group whose historic homelands are spread across five present day nations, who have the fortune and misfortune to live on some of the most oil-rich lands in the world. They also want those lands to form their own separate Kurdistan type state, which has earned them the enmity of every country they reside in. In Iraq, the Kurds also largely adhered to Marxist-Leninist ideology and politics since the 1940s, further antagonizing their relationships with various Iraqi leaders, not to mention earning the ire of the United States. To maintain power over them, Saddam is said to have killed about 150,000 Kurds.

Saddam’s return on investment for that oppression was that he and the minority of Iraq ran the country through a system based on terror, fear, patronage, nepotism, and favoritism, while the majority population, the Shi’a and Kurds, were nearly totally excluded from power. But the Sunni Arab benefit of Saddam’s use of the iron fist approach to maintain power ended when the minority run violent dictatorship ended and Iraq’s destiny was to become a parliamentary democracy. At which point, it was a numbers game.

Saddam: Dictator at Large

The day Saddam was captured, December 13, 2003, seemed so momentous at the time.

I remember it clearly, even now, twenty-two years later, I can still mentally place myself in the exact setting when I saw the news announcement on a TV playing in an Army dining facility, where many Soldiers eating their breakfast got to watch yours truly literally jumping up and down while shouting with glee, “We got him!” Unfortunately, Saddam’s capture didn’t really change much in terms of pacifying Iraq.

But December 2003 is still a very important date to remember because Paul Bremer signed the controversial CPA Orders 1 and 2 in May 2003. Basic arithmetic means that for the first eight months of the US occupation of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was on the loose inside Iraq. As were most of the Ba’ath Party’s top leadership, the heads of his security forces, and the rest of his cabinet.

And when the were in hiding, they weren’t just catching up on their readings or binge-watching DVDs of television series they’d previously missed. They were carrying out their planned Ba’athist Insurgency (singular). Please remember that point, as many including the previously mentioned Jay Garner, Pete Mansoor, and so many others all outright blame Bremer for the creation of the Insurgency (singular), but it turns out that Saddam and his immediate inner circle planned it in advance (pages 65-66), even going so far as to disperse weapon caches all over Iraq to support it (pages 18-19).

Consequently, while Bremer was debating what to do with Iraq’s Ba’ath Party or Saddam’s defense security apparatus, Saddam and his entourage were all free and still a very real threat.

Iraqi Insurgencies (Plural)

Here is a pet peeve of mine when discussing the Iraq War: There was no Iraq Insurgency (singular), there were Insurgencies (plural.

Here is the US military’s definition of “Insurgency,” right from the Joint Publication 3-24 manual:

Insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.

That definition isn’t a noun, it’s not a conflict, it’s a verb and it applies to the actions of a single organization, as each competing organization would be organized separately in its attempts to use “subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.”

The Iraq War wasn’t like Vietnam War where only a single unified organization was in a state of revolt against the government while operating as an insurgent group (the National Liberation Front, aka the Viet Cong). In Iraq, there were literally scores of insurgent groups, of all varieties.

As it happens, there are few less knowledgeable about the true state of their enemy than those who are on the front lines of a conflict, and such was my experience as a run-of-the-mill US Army infantryman in Iraq. One wonders why we were so poorly informed. Maybe our own battalion-level intel specialists just sucked at their jobs, or perhaps they felt there was no reason to go into greater detail with us about who we were fighting as they thought we lacked the GT scores to understand. Based on what we were told, all Sunni Islamist groups were called Al Qaeda in Iraq, as in our eyes all the Sunni Islamist groups were all allied with each other (turns out they weren’t). We classified all the non-Jihadist Sunni Arab nationalistic and Ba’athist groups as “1920s Revolutionary Brigade.” On the Shi’a side, we really only knew of the existence of the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade.

How accurate was that? Not in the least. You check for yourself how extensive the list is: “Post-invasion Combatants of the Iraqi War.” Needless to say, the US was fighting more than one insurgent group.

Why is that pertinent? Because a significant and dangerous part of the insurgent groups and ideologies that caused so much of the bloodshed, chaos, and problems from 2003 onwards were not the ones that could have been and were penalized by Bremer’s CPA Orders 1 and 2.

In fact, many of those insurgent groups represented ethnicities that actually benefited from the overthrow of Saddam and Bremer’s CPA Orders 1 and 2. Truth be told, if those orders did fuel any insurgent groups, they were the minority.

Myth 1: “De-Ba’athification was Foolish”

With the context out of the way, we can finally get into Bremer’s decisions. Well, not quite yet. We still need a quick primer on Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.

Created in the early 1950s, the Ba’ath Party was a Pan-Arab political organization, kind of a mix of Marxism plus elements of National Socialism but for Arabs instead of Germans. It exploded in popularity in the 1950s, specifically embracing the hatred against European imperialism and the older Arab monarchies, most of whom were puppets of various European powers (mostly the British and French). The Ba’athists’ only real achievements were separately overthrowing and then taking over the governments of Iraq and Syria.

Saddam’s rise in the Ba’ath Party should surprise few who understand the nepotism that permeates Iraqi society. Saddam’s blood uncle and father-in-law (the inbreeding would help explain Saddam’s sons) was a major player in the Iraqi Ba’ath Party, who recruited his large, imposing, and sadistic nephew as a “heavy,” a thug to intimidate or liquidate rivals, opponents, and often their families. Saddam was even used as a triggerman in an attempted assassination of a previous military dictator of Iraq in 1959.

Over the years, Saddam kept rising in the Ba’ath Party thanks to the patronage of his relatives. After the Ba’ath Party took power in Iraq in 1968, Saddam went on to create and lead Iraq’s internal security apparatus, the infamous Mukhabarat, based on the model of the East German Stasi. Saddam would later use the power associated with his various positions controlling internal security and as the Vice President of Iraq to finally overthrow his cousin to become the new President of Iraq in 1979. At which point, Saddam famously and publicly purged the Iraqi Ba’ath Party of all opposition.

Fast forward 24 years to 2003, the Ba’ath Party was entirely and totally loyal to Saddam. And it was through the Ba’ath Party that Saddam ruled Iraq.

By the 1990s,…the Ba’th Party ideology and its emphasis on political and cultural education became centered on Saddam Hussein’s personality cult. (Sassoon)

The Iraqi Ba’ath Party was a huge organization. In 2002, it had almost 4 million members and supporters, which is very impressive considering that number represented a whopping 16% of the Iraqi population. Let’s consider the ranks of the Ba’ath Party:

There, done. That wasn’t too painful, right? Now that you’re all experts on the Iraqi Ba’ath Party, let’s examine Bremer’s CPA General Order No. 1, “De-Ba’athification of Iraqi Society.”

Were all 4 million Ba’ath Party members purged from Iraqi society? Nope.

The order specified that only the top four ranks were banned from employment in the public sector. Those four ranks were the highest-level party members, Saddam loyalists throughout his presidency, the undisputed power elite of the Ba’ath Party and Saddam’s Iraq. Of the 4 million members of the Ba’ath Party, they made up only 52,000 party hacks, 1.3% of the Ba’ath Party, and only .2% of the Iraqi population.

Paul Bremer’s predecessor, the aforementioned LTG Jay Garner (Retired), had this to say in hindsight about Bremer’s CPA Order No. 1:

“[What] I thought was going to happen was you wouldn’t be able to bring back the government in a functional capability, because all the talent was in those first three or four levels of the Ba’ath Party. Hell, you live in Boston. You take out the first three or four levels of government in Boston, see how well your electricity runs and how well the traffic lights work, and everything else goes.”

Seriously, Jay?

As you’ll learn more in this article, Garner wasn’t especially knowledgeable about how Iraqi society functions. Or Boston’s. Or any society for that matter. As anyone who has worked in government can tell you, political appointees holding the highest levels of government agencies don’t get their hands dirty, often have no clue about any technical aspect of their fiefdoms. That’s why ignorant political appointees can be placed in those top positions based on patronage, favoritism, and connections and rotated constantly without major ramifications to the organization, their roles and responsibilities are high-level management, policy, and politics, not keeping the literal lights on.

Besides the top-level party hacks, what other Ba’athists did CPA Order No. 1 negatively affect? Also on the chopping block were the “Udw and Udw Amil,” the “active members” of the Ba’ath Party, who would be fired from the top three layers of management in “every national govt ministry, affiliated corporations, and other governmental institutions.”.

Now, that seems harsh at first. After all, there is no question that many in Iraqi society knew that the key to advancing in life required joining the Ba’ath Party, to check the block. What about all those stories about how Iraqi school teachers and college professors needed to join the Ba’ath Party because they couldn’t get a job otherwise?

CPA Order No. 1 wasn’t about them. Don’t let the name fool you, “active members” weren’t the lowest rung of the Ba’ath Party, there were four membership ranks under them. To become an “active member” typically took 5-10 years of mandatory attendance and participation in all Ba’ath Party meetings, passing a stringent screening process, taking political education courses, and swearing loyalty to the Ba’ath Party in a formal oath ceremony.

Of the 4 million members of the Ba’ath Party, the “active members” and the “apprenticed members” both only made up about 477,000 of the total, or 11% of the Ba’ath Party, only 1.9% of the Iraqi population. And please note, those members weren’t barred from government institutions, only removed from the director, deputy director, and assistant director positions of public sector organizations.

A famous Prussian dude once said, “War is the continuation of policy with other means.” That means politics can’t be ignored because a war starts. Or, in this case, the war ends. Right or wrong, the objective of Operation Iraqi Freedom was not only to overthrow Saddam but also to completely replace the government of Iraq with one that was democratic, liberal, and let’s be real, friendly with the US and the West. That’s to be expected, right? After all, what nation state goes through the effort to invade another country to perform a regime change without cleaning house and removing the power elite loyal to the former leader, hoping to leave an amiable nation in their wake?

I really don’t understand why this is controversial. Immediately after the American Civil War ended, did the Union rush to hand the reins of power in the South over to former Confederate leaders? Did the Allies immediately hand power over in occupied Germany to Nazis and in Japan to Imperial loyalists? No.

Garner’s ignorance reminds me of General George Patton, who briefly governed Bavaria after the Germans surrendered in 1945 until he got fired for openly opposing “De-Nazification.” Like Patton, those condemning Bremer were too focused on keeping the “trains running on time,” or, in the case of Garner, believing the highest levels of Ba’athist leaders were responsible for maintaining the Iraqi electricity power grid.

Those who believe Bremer’s CPA Order No. 1 helped created the Iraqi Insurgency by alienating the top-level Ba’athists and Sunni Arab power elite did so from hindsight. Bremer excluded them, and various insurgent groups professing their ideology or demographics were actively fighting. But correlation is not causality, the top-level Ba’athists and Sunni Arab power elite were already planning to create a Ba’athist insurgency, which was not going to end just because some others were allowed to maintain some power. Look at the Shi’a who created a dozen plus insurgent groups, fought the US tooth and nail, and yet no ethnic group benefited more from CPA Order No. 1 than they did. They fought back because the reasons for doing so were a bit more complex and nuanced than opposition to CPA Order No. 1.

Want to talk alienated? Consider the majority populace of Iraq, the Shi’a and the Kurds, and what they’d have done if Garner got his way. Finally freed by Saddam by the US-led Coalition invasion, I can’t imagine they’d have been pleased if the Ba’athists elite and Sunni Arabs in power. In fact, I don’t need to imagine, I know they weren’t, Garner was replaced by Bremer because Garner’s views how to govern Iraq not only opposed White House policy but also the Shi’a and Kurdish dominated Iraqi Governing Council, who demanded Garner be fired, as they were NEVER going to allow their Ba’athists enemies to remain in charge.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Remember that saying, its going to come up a few more times in this discussion. Whatever decision Bremer made, he was damned. Regardless of what decision he made in May 2003, a series of Sunni Arab Ba’athist insurgent groups were actively forming to fight the US-led occupation. And had the Sunni-Arabs been allowed to hold dominant power in a post-Saddam Iraq, I can’t imagine any reality where it wouldn’t cause even more problems, providing legit casus belli for the majority population to fight against the US-led occupation in even greater numbers than they did.

The reality was that, as bad as the Ba’athist Sunni Arabs insurgency was, their size and ferocity were nothing in comparison to the Shi’a insurgent groups. And that despite all the benefits the invasion and occupation provided to the Shi’a. Can you imagine how much worse the war would have been if the Shi’a had been marginalized by the US-led occupation? And the Kurds too? I seriously doubt I’d have survived that war…

Myth 2: “Disbanding the Iraqi Army (and the other 29 military and political organizations that nobody talks about) was Foolish”

The other complaint about Bremer relates to CPA. Order No. 2. But what did it abolish?

Besides the many government organizations that you can find in the link to the order provided earlier in the article, the list included the following military and paramilitary units:

· The Army, Air Force, Navy, the Air Defence Force, and other regular military services

· The Republican Guard

· The Special Republican Guard

· The Directorate of Military Intelligence

· The Al Quds Force

· Emergency Forces (Quwat al Tawari)

· Saddam Fedayeen

· Ba`ath Party Militia

· Friends of Saddam

· Saddam’s Lion Cubs

Which means that Bremer abolished not only the Iraqi Army, not only the entire official Iraqi Armed Forces, but every other official and unofficial military/paramilitary organization too.

What were the consequences of that decision?

Well, as the talking point goes, after the US occupational government fired hundreds of thousands of military-aged Iraqi males, trained for war, they were left without jobs, paychecks, and hopes, and thus became insurgents.

But has anyone actually thought through what would have happened if Bremer didn’t abolish those military and paramilitary organizations and kept them all on the payroll and under arms? I don’t think so, because if they did and still thought it was a good idea, they’re either fools or Saddam loyalists.

The Republican Guard were all Saddam loyalists, officers and enlisted. The thought of the US occupational government keeping them intact and under arms, especially when Saddam and his inner circle are all on the loose, is outright suicidal. They amounted to about 70,000 in strength, and they needed to go.

Even more so, the Special Republican Guards were even more devout than the Republican Guard, much more highly trained, more capable. Some have described them as “Saddam’s Praetorian Guard.” They were about 15,000 strong, and they definitely needed to go too.

Then there was the Directorate of Military Intelligence, aka the Mukharbarat, Iraq’s Stasi, literally created by Saddam and led by one of Saddam’s sons. They were around 4-8,000 strong, and they most certainly needed to go.

That’s not even considering the half dozen paramilitary units, as those were part-time at best. Between the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, and Mukharbarat, that amounted to about 90,000 full-time professional soldiers and spooks, Saddam loyalists all, who were going to resent Saddam being overthrown, and who would have followed Saddam while he was hiding whether or not they still received a check and wore a uniform. They needed to be unemployed, because it would have been pure lunacy to keep them under arms within their existing “unit structure” and “command-and-control system.”

Which means if anyone is an adherent of the talking point of reducing the numbers of unemployed trained killers in Iraq, between those three organizations there were 90,000 potential insurgents right there, and there wasn’t a damn thing to do about it. They needed to go.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Next to cover is the Iraqi Armed Forces. Before we address the elephant in the room, the Iraqi Army, we have to consider that in 2003 the thinking was that with a post-Saddam Iraq, being that it was no longer supposed to be a menace to its neighbors anymore, wouldn’t need the Iraqi Air Force (approx. 40,000 personnel), Iraqi Navy (approx. 2,000 personnel), or Iraqi Air Defense Force (17,000). Which added another roughly 60,000 unemployed “trained killers” to the mix. Again, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

So now we’re left with the Iraqi Army, roughly 350,000 strong. What to do with them?

Those who think Paul Bremer screwed up massively by disbanding the Iraqi Army argue say it was stupid not because it created a large number of unemployed killers, but they also claim they had plans for Saddam’s Iraqi Army.

To again quote Jay Garner:

Well, our initial plan when we were in Washington, and initially in Kuwait, was that this war went in much like the first Gulf War, where you have thousands of POWs, maybe hundreds of thousands. ... The army was about 400,000, so from that, we would bring between 150,000 and 250,000 back. We wanted to keep them in their unit structures, because they had already had a command-and-control system. They had vehicles, what was left. They knew how to take orders, and they had the basic skill sets to do the things you need to do in early reconstruction of a country. So they were a labor force, and they provide a certain amount of security, like guard static locations -- guard buildings, guard ammo dumps or displaced ammunition, that type of thing...

Again, the ignorance of Jay Garner shows itself in so many ways. Let’s examine the stupidity of his comment, step by step.

First, let’s talk about the “unit structure” and “command-and-control system” of the Iraqi Army. They say all militaries are representative of the societies they come from, that definitely applied to Saddam’ Iraqi Army, where the majority were oppressed by the minority there too. The Iraqi Army utilized a conscription system for its enlisted manpower, which was nearly all Shi’a. Meanwhile, their officer corps was almost all Sunni Arabs, with about 20% of all Iraqi Army general officers being Tikritis from Saddam’s tribe (not a coincidence).

Not surprisingly, Saddam’s Iraqi Army was in a sad state before the 2003 invasion. They took a lot of damage in the Iran-Iraq War, and I shouldn’t need to rehash the beating they took in the 1991 Gulf War. But things got even worse for them afterwards as, unfortunately for them, many in the Iraqi Army followed President George H. W. Bush’s advice to rise up against Saddam. That 1991 rebellion was squashed relatively quickly but with much brutality. The Iraqi Army was never the same again, its revolts led to mass reprisals and effectively a full purge of its officer corps to remove anyone and everyone who was remotely disloyal to Saddam, at least outwardly.

Besides purging its officer corps, Saddam further coup-proofed the Iraqi Army by massively downsizing it, slashing its training budget, ensuring it had only inferior equipment compared to the loyal and elite Republican and Special Republican Guards, all in a bid to ensure they’d never again be a threat. And it showed, even before the lead-up to the US-led 2003 invasion, the Iraqi Army was a shadow of its former self, with major discipline problems leading to a roughly 40% desertion rate.

Then the war started, and things got so much worse for the Iraqi Army. Baghdad fell in twenty-one days for a reason, the Iraqi military didn’t so much fail to put up an effective fight to resist the US-led “Coalition of the Willing,” they disintegrated before any fights could start. Effectively, the Iraqi military ceased to exist through mass desertions.

Let’s consider one of the divisions tasked to defend Baghdad:

By the time U.S. forces closed in on Baghdad, the massive desertions and equipment losses caused by the prospect and reality of U.S. air attacks had reduced the Al-Nida Division to a mere skeleton. Out of an original division complement of some 13,000 troops and more than 500 armored vehicles, less than 1,000 soldiers and 50 or so vehicles remained. (RAND)

What is insane is that the Al-Nida Division was Republican Guard, and yet even they largely evaporated. And its desertion problems weren’t the exception, they were the rule. And the Iraqi Army was hit even harder.

One doesn’t need to be a retired lieutenant general to know that such a crippling desertion epidemic would have had some pretty big implications for any plans to use the Iraqi Army for a post-invasion nation-building effort. But a certain retired lieutenant general didn’t know that, Jay Garner wanted to “bring between 150,000 and 250,000 back.” How was that supposed to happen?

By and large, nearly the entire enlisted force structure of the Iraqi Army were Shi’a conscripts, forced to serve under a literal threat of death, forced to serve under an officer corps made up of the societal minority ethnic group who were their sectarian oppressors, officers loyal to a dictator and a political party they despised who slaughtered their people in the hundreds of thousands. Then at some point before or during the US-led invasion of Iraq, they managed to take off their uniform, go home, and survive. Free at last!

Change of plans, they were supposed to return to duty because Jay Garner had plans for them, to serve in their Saddam-era “unit structures“ under their Saddam-era “command-and-control system.” Why would they do that?

More so, how exactly was Jay Garner expecting the US-led Coalition to find and coerce hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Army deserters to return to duty? Were US forces supposed to launch city-wide clearing operations throughout Shi’a dominated urban enclaves, going door to door clearing out every building to track down and capture the highly disgruntled junior enlisted conscripts from a highly oppressed majority ethnic group to then hand them over to Saddam-loyalists officers? Were the deserters supposed to be “busified” like in Ukraine?

Funny enough, Garner et al think doing that was supposed to stop an Insurgency (singular) from forming. What a load of crap. I can’t even imagine a better way to start one than by trying to go through with such a stupid plan.

But let’s be real, it’s pretty clear those who profess this myth about CPA Order No. 2 never potentially rolled around a scenario to examine how their counterfactual was supposed to happen, because all they had was a simplified and dumbed down fairy tale plan where 150,000-250,000 enthusiastic Iraqi Army soldiers rising up from captivity decide to become laborers under their previous commanders. I believe the reality is that Jay Garner’s plan to use Saddam’s Iraqi Army was an impossible task, concocted just like he said, in Washington and Kuwait, before he or his staff knew anything about the real situation, the whole time and afterwards being grossly ignorant about Iraqi culture or history, and yet they put the concept of operations into a high-level Powerpoint presentation and that made it officially part of “The Plan.”

And all of that only deals with the missing Iraqi Army. Was it a smart choice to keep Saddam’ Iraqi Army under arms with Saddam and his ruling elite all in hiding?

Let’s not forget, the officer corps of Saddam’s Iraqi Army received their promotions and appointments despite a decade-plus of purges and coup-proofing efforts to remove all possible disloyal officers. That points to where their loyalties lay. With Saddam and his ruling elite in hiding already planning a Ba’athist insurgency, are we to believe Saddam’s Iraqi Army officers would fight against it?

There already exists a good example to see what that would have looked like. In 2004 in Fallujah, after bad press caused President Bush to call a halt to the clearing operation of Fallujah he initially ordered against the recommendations of the US military leadership, a former Iraqi Republic Guard general came forward offering a deal: he’d to lead a militia of Iraqi volunteers to restore order in the city, to take up the mantle of security so the US wouldn’t need to do it themselves. Top US political leadership, eager to avoid another PR nightmare of using the US Marine Corps to clear the city by force, agreed to his proposal. At which point, that Iraqi militia disappeared, its members having deserted en masse or switched sides rather than fight the local insurgents, requiring the Marines to clear the city by force, bad PR or not.

The clusterfuck that Garner had in mind would have dwarfed the Fallujah militia debacle, he intended to do that everywhere in Iraq, not just one city.

After looking into this in detail, it’s become clear to me that Bremer didn’t do anything dangerous or foolish with CPA Order No. 2. He disbanded a bunch of extremely dangerous paramilitary units, some branches of an armed forces that weren’t needed anymore, and an army that really only existed on paper at that point, which had loyalty problems to boot. But Bremer didn’t even stop there...

In the very same CPA Order No. 2, Bremer called for the creation of a “New Iraqi Corps,” aka the New Iraqi Army, which was officially created in August 2003. That army would be made up of volunteers only, and open to anyone and everyone including those who previously served in Saddam’s Iraqi Army, as long as they weren’t guilty of “human rights violations or war crimes,” weren’t previously affiliated with “the security and political control organs of the former regime” or weren’t part of “Extremist Organizations or other groups that use or advocate the use of violence for political purposes whether internal or international.”

That’s not exactly a high bar for service, unless one is literally the very type of person in Iraq who should not be armed and operating in a military organization endorsed by the US-led occupation government of Iraq.

In summation, the argument about whether or not to disband Saddam’s Iraqi Army wasn’t even a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” type decision. If was just dumb if you didn’t. Bremer did the right thing by dissolving the broken, absent, and disloyal military force and then creating a new one to replace it.

What happened after that, the delays and problems creating the New Iraqi Army, training issues, future loyalty issues including Shi’a members moonlighting as insurgents despite being the ones who primarily benefited from Saddam being overthrown and CPA Orders 1 and 2, etc., that’s a different story…

Motives for the Mythos

Since Bremer’s CPA Orders 1 and 2 weren’t nearly as destructive as many made them out to be, why were so many US senior military officers wrongly saying otherwise?

I’m a big fan of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Was that the case here? I think so. Well, maybe calling senior military officers stupid is a too harsh, it’s hard to suggest colonels and above legitimately lack intelligence. But suggesting colonels and above legitimately lack common sense or have a tendency to demonstrate gross ignorance on occasion, that shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest. What knowledge and intelligence they do possess, most possessed almost none relating to Iraqi culture or history before the war started and even afterwards. After all, they’re not historians, their high-level managers running military organizations, why would they know better about Iraqi customs and history? Why would they have taken the time out to take a deep dive to game out how a counterfactual would happen? So, there is a good chance the US military senior officer corps got it wrong because they were ignorant. They only knew that some senior officers said Bremer caused it, so they repeated the myth. (For more info on this, read Tom Ricks’ The Generals)

But here is an interesting line of thought: What happens when ignorance leads to malice?

It’s painfully obvious in hindsight that the US military was completely and utterly unprepared to fight a counter-insurgency in Iraq (and Afghanistan too for that matter). There was plenty of blame to go around in Iraq, it wasn’t just the politicians, the US military performance lacked. Especially its senior officer corps, and especially early during the occupation, when senior officers demonstrated a disgracefully bad understanding of Counter Insurgency (COIN) operations, almost no understanding of Iraqi culture or history, and were basically clueless.

By blaming Bremer, they were absolving themselves of responsibility. After all, if it wasn’t Bremer’s responsibility in 2003-2004 for the Iraqi Insurgencies (plural), who else could be held responsible? Them. The evidence is in the resumes, nearly all the senior officers who blame Bremer held senior command or staff positions in 2003-2004. Why dirty their own reputations when Bremer is such an easy target?

What Caused the Insurgencies (Plural)?

If it wasn’t Bremer’s CPA Orders 1 and 2 that caused the insurgencies to form, what did? After much research and soul searching, here is my short list of reasons:

· Gross ignorance from the Bush Administration (especially the Neocons) and US military as a whole about Iraqi culture and history. We knew next to nothing about that country before we invaded, and it took years before anybody really bothered trying to learn.

· Reliance on the conman Chalabi to lead Iraq, not realizing he was a criminal and hated by most of the Iraqis. We tried to put a loyal puppet in power, but he was a crooked piece of shit.

· Near criminally negligent underestimation of the role that Iran would play in Iraq after the removal of Saddam.

· The deliberate choice by the White House and especially DOD to use too few troops to govern Iraq.

· No contingency planning at all by SECDEF or CENTCOM for a possible insurgency.

· General Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, was completely checked out following the fall of Baghdad, having already put in his retirement papers before the invasion, resulting in the leader who most needed to be thinking about the problem of occupying Iraq, not giving a shit.

· Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the most junior three-star general in the US Army, promoted beyond division command only months before, was chosen to lead Coalition military forces in Iraq, and was both underqualified and incompetent to command such a massive force performing such an important mission.

· The US military had a dire lack of any COIN doctrine and knowledge to perform the roles they were given to occupy any country, let alone Iraq. Especially the US Army.

· The US political and military had almost zero political or military answers for any of the political quandaries that caused the top insurgent ideologies, such as Saddam loyalties, nationalism, Sunni Islamist extremism, Shi’a Islamist extremism, Iranian proxy influence.

· We didn’t actually win a war in April 2003. Defeated enemy don’t fight back, with such a rapid war, the Iraqi people did not feel defeated. Even the Saddam regime, despite being kicked out of their palaces, they didn’t accept the loss of Baghdad as defeat. The fact of the matter is that most of the militant population of Iraq, the type who did want to fight back, never really got a chance until after the occupation started. And yet, the disconnect was that the US thought we had completely and totally won, when the real war only just started.

Already, you can see quite a bit of difference between my list and Mansoor’s list. Not only will I not hide the US military’s dirty laundry, but my real reasons for the Iraq Insurgencies (plural) are quite a bit more complex than the decisions to rid Iraqi government institutions of Saddam’s most loyal followers, or dissolve an army whose officers were all loyal to Saddam and didn’t even exist anymore due to desertions.

Was Bremer without guilt? Hell no. But his crimes weren’t his CPA Orders 1 and 2. Even a broken clock gets it right twice a day…

For Additional Reading on the Topic:

Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime, by Joseph Sassoon

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks

The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, by Fred Kagan

The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, by Thomas E. Ricks

Iraqi Armed Forces on the Edge of War, by Anthony H. Cordesman, Online Link

Building an Iraqi Defense Force, by Joseph McMillan, Online Link

Why the Iraqi Resistance to the Coalition Invasion Was So Weak, by Stephen T. Hosmer, Online Link

And I’m hard pressed to find a better example of that than in Operation Shingle, the January 1944 Allied amphibious landing near the coastal city of Anzio in support of the Italian campaign in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO).

Frankly, the whole of the Italian campaign was really just one long series of clusterfucks. But Anzio particularly stands out so much, it bewildered me as I learned more about it, left me scratching my head, wondering what sort of dysfunction and stupidity led to such a “disordered and mismanaged” operation…

With All Due Respect…

This article isn’t about Winston Churchill, but it’s impossible to separate Churchill from Anzio, it was literally his idea (I’ll get into that later). So I’ve got to write a bit about him.

Churchill was a notorious drunk, a philanderer, who loved shocking others with his nudity, which means he basically acted like the typical American infantryman. So I can’t and won’t fault him for his personal behavior. In fact, he sounds like a blast to party with. Considering his sharp wit and sense of humor, I really think the two of us would have gotten along well on a personal level. And, wow, could the man write a great speech and deliver it perfectly, second to none. But…

Those who know the saying “With all due respect” know that it typically precedes an insult. As it will now. With all due respect, though a very successful politician and a fantastic orator, Winston Churchill was one of the most idiotic leaders in history when it came to military planning. After reviewing his career, I’m pretty sure Churchill did not even really know how to read a map.

That shouldn’t have been that big a problem, as Churchill was the Prime Minister of the UK after the start of it and thus had access to literal armies of highly capable subordinates who could have focused on the military-related topics while Churchill focused on his forte, politics and the big picture. The real problem was that Churchill went far beyond his duties as Prime Minister, specifically into military-related topics.

For example, he created an entirely new position in the British government called the “Minister of Defence” to provide more civilian leadership and oversight over military strategy, planning, coordination, etc. Okay, no problem so far. But he created that role to put himself into it, despite also being the PM, ensuring he’d be directly leading all military planning involving Great Britain. Because when it comes to Churchill’s management style, why delegate when you can do it yourself? And micromanage he did, or as it was called then and in historical works, Churchill had the habit of “meddling,” sticking his chubby tobacco and whisky-stinking fingers in every pie involving Allied military operations.

And in many an opinion, he wasn’t good at it either. Making him the worst kind of micromanager, an incompetent one.

A Not-So-Soft Underbelly

In August 1942, at the strategic Moscow Conference, as Stalin tried to push the Western Allies to open up another front in France, Churchill famously drew a picture of a crocodile, describing the Mediterranean as the “soft underbelly” of the Axis crocodile, while France, its snout, was to be avoided because of its toothy bite.

But the “soft underbelly” wasn’t the promised easy kill to disembowel the Axis. Instead, it turned into a lengthy and costly side-show that extended the duration of the war against Germany, probably by one year. It also infuriated Stalin, who, since 1941, had wanted a second large front in the West to take some pressure off the 150 or so Axis divisions the Red Army was fighting on the Eastern Front. And it also infuriated the US military leadership, who knew defeating Germany was not going to happen with an absurd indirect route through the Mediterranean.

Nevertheless, from 1941 to well into 1944, Churchill got his way. And that should be expected to some degree, as up until mid-1942, the Mediterranean side-show was a purely British affair. That changed soon afterward.

The Long and Bumpy Road To Anzio

With the US having entered WW2 thanks to Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s poorly thought-out declaration of war against the US, the joint US-British strategy of “Germany First” was made policy, the resources to drive back and defeat Japan would have to wait. And so by mid-1942 the US was looking for a way to contribute US Army and Navy forces into some large-scale operation that could defeat Nazi Germany ASAP.

But with what, where, and how?

With the US having waited till 1940 to start mobilizing for war, and not having taken the most decisive mobilization steps until the war started for the US in December 1941, by summer 1942, the US military was hardly ready for an immediate, massive invasion of Continental Europe. And they realized that, instead, the US mil chiefs favored building up forces in 1942 in England to support a landing in France in 1943. Operation Bolero was the buildup of US forces staged in the UK, and Operation Roundup was the proposed invasion of France in 1943 (later to be renamed as Overlord).

However, the British hated that idea. Specifically, Churchill abhorred any possible land war in Western Europe, believing it would look like WW1’s Western Front, a stagnated and indecisive meatgrinder. Instead, the British proposed a joint landing in the western Vichy France-controlled parts of North Africa. To them, it made perfect sense, with British forces there just having defeated the Germans in Egypt, they could arrange a large-scale pincer movement, with the British Eighth Army moving westwards, while the fresh US-British forces landing in Morocco and Algeria moving eastwards, meeting together to perform a massive an encirclement of Vichy, Italian, and German forces around Tunisia.

But the US mil chiefs hated Operation Gymnast, as the British proposed operation in North Africa was then called, recognizing it for what it was, a costly side-show that wouldn’t defeat the Germans, wouldn’t even tie up many Germans, but would tie up a whole lot of Allied forces in a theater with no strategic benefit. But President Roosevelt wanted to see US troops in action against Germans in 1942, so he overruled his US mil chiefs for one of the few times in the war and sided with Churchill and the British. And thus, the renamed North African landing, Operation Torch, was a go for November 1942.

However, thanks to Murphy’s Law, OP Torch didn’t go as planned, the quick and decisive pincer movement that the British envisioned wasn’t to be.

After the British victory at El Alamein, instead of retreating out of North Africa, Hitler doubled down and reinforced Tunisia with a whole new German panzer army. On top of that, the Vichy French in Morocco and Algeria put up a hell of a lot more resistance as planned. As the OP Torch assault forces made their landings and consolidated their beachheads, what followed was dubbed “The Race for Tunis,” a rush to execute the planned pincer movement, requiring the massively outnumbered and overstretched US-British landing forces performing a 560 miles/900 kilometer drive from Algiers to Tunis, damn the logistics, to try to seize the Tunisian ports before German reinforcements could land in force and before Rommel’s forces could arrive having retreated from Libya.

Unfortunately, the Allies didn’t win the Race for Tunis, and what followed next was a five-month-long slogfest, characterized by the famously embarrassing US Army defeat at Kasserine Pass and the very costly positional meatgrinder affair characterizing the Tunisian Campaign.

Meanwhile, the US and British leadership met to discuss what was to happen next. The US mil chiefs still stubbornly clung to a cross-Channel invasion of France in 1943. And once again, the British objected, citing the same reasons as before. Plus, they pointed out Sicily was right there, ripe for the plucking! Plus, look at all the Allies forces already so close to Sicily, army, navy, and air force units aplenty right there over the Strait of Sicily! And what’s right behind Sicily? Italy! And wouldn’t it be great to knock Italy out of the war too? Once again, the British got their way, and it was decided that the “Second Front” for 1943 would be Sicily first and then the invasion of Italy.

Tunisia fell in May 1943, Sicily was invaded in July. With more assault divisions involved in that landing than in D-Day in Normandy in 1944, it was no small affair. And yet the operation was semi-Pyrrhic. Yes, the Allies took the island in a bit over a month, clearing it of German and Italian forces. Yet they failed in their goal to trap the Germans in Sicily from escaping to Italy, and had taken some pretty heavy losses along the way in a campaign that turned out to be far more vicious and costlier than assumed during planning. (Noticing a pattern yet?)

Next up was the invasion of Italy itself. One of the best outcomes for the invasion of Sicily was that it led to an internal coup that overthrew Mussolini, which then led to secret talks between Allied leadership and the new Italian government, with the agreement being hatched that they’d quit the war if Italy itself were invaded. An additional selling point for invading Italy were the existing large airfield complexes at Foggia in southeastern Italy, taking them would allow US heavy bombers to reach the Romanian oilfields, which they couldn’t reach while stationed in North Africa, nor from their bases in England.

That said, the Allied invasion plan for Italy in September 1943 was…kind of stupid and bad. Definitely not Eisenhower’s finest hour in charge of a theater-level operation. Envisioned as another quick and easy campaign to knock Italy out of the war, it intended to take Rome on the fly, drive the Germans at least to northern Italy into the Po Valley and maybe out of Italy altogether.

But the optimistic appraisal was wrong again. Montgomery’s Eighth Army landed in southern Italy, its objective to draw off German forces that might have opposed the main effort landing on the western coast of Italy. But the Germans didn’t take the bait, instead of reinforcing southern Italy as hoped, they performed a series of delaying actions as they retreated up the boot, with Monty slowly nipping at their heels.

Shortly after Monty’s landing, the US Army’s Fifth Army conducted a joint US-British landing as the main effort, Operation Avalanche. With range limitations for air support from Sicily limiting where they could land, they chose the beaches south of Salerno, which was itself just south of the coastal port of Naples. And holy shit, did they Mark Clark’s Fifth Army botch that landing.

As it would turn out, the US Army commanders in the MTO still followed an outdated amphibious doctrine they had copied earlier in the war from the British, favoring night-time amphibious landings without preparatory fires, neither aerial bombings nor naval gunfire, hoping to achieve tactical surprise. That doctrine didn’t work in North Africa, nor Sicily, and it didn’t work in Salerno either. Not only was the OP Avalanche invasion fleet spotted on its way there, but the Germans had successfully guessed beforehand where the landing would take place using the same logic the Allies used to pick the landing site. The result was that the beaches around Salerno were well defended by elements of a German panzer grenadier division, with a large and capable panzer reserve nearby to reinforce them and counterattack on cue.

Worst of all, a rumor started up in the US Army troop ships the eve of the invasion that the landing would be a cakewalk because the Italians had surrendered, where everyone was telling everyone else not to expect resistance. You can see where this is going, right?

OP Avalanche didn’t go completely horribly. The US Fifth Army landing near Salerno included the British X Corps, and their landing fared pretty well. Apparently, they had revised their amphibious doctrine, deciding that a large-scale preparatory naval gunfire bombardment would work to good effect in suppressing, neutralizing, or destroying German beach defenses. They were right.

But the US Army VI Corps’ landing was a debacle, imagine pitch black version of Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene at Omaha Beach, a nighttime opposed landing on a heavily defended beach with zero fire support beyond infantry weapons. It was miraculous that the assault landing force wasn’t killed to a man, it was a bloody struggle to seize a foothold. Which was then counterattacked in force by the German reserve panzer corps, which nearly succeeded in a mass slaughter, really only saved by naval gunfire. For the US Army, Salerno was a “near-run thing,” as Wellington described Waterloo.

Nevertheless, OP Avalanche ultimately succeeded. The US Fifth Army defeated the counterattacks, secured its lodgment, moved inland, and linked up with the British Eighth Army. Foggia fell to the British, so the Allies had their bomber base to hit Romanian oilfields. Naples fell shortly thereafter, giving the Allies a major Italian port city for resupply. And the Italian government surrendered on cue.

But despite that good news, major resistance in Italy didn’t end as planned. The surrender of the Italian leadership led to Germany occupying Italy. For a short period, the top German leadership was seriously contemplating doing exactly as the Allies hoped, giving up Rome and Central Italy and retreating to the Po Valley or the Alpine Passes, but Hitler was moved by a proposal by the new German commander-in-chief responsible for Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. Instead of retreating outright as Rommel recommended, the Germans could instead perform an economy-of-force delaying action from a massive defense in depth, slowly retreating while making the Allies pay for every inch they pushed the Germans back through Italy. Hitler loved the idea, and just like that, the Allied plans for a quick and easy victory in Italy blew up in their faces.

Kesselring’s plan favored the geography of Italy. Its topography is dominated by the Apennine Mountains that run through the peninsula like a spine, which would split Allied forces as they advanced northward along a limited and obvious number of main supply routes tied to coastal lowlands and some port cities where they’d need to be resupplied from. Additionally, Italy is gifted with many rivers that generally run perpendicular to the direction of travel of any army moving northwards. Knowing that the German plan was to oppose the Allied advance with the ultimate defense in depth, it should come as no surprise that they turned many of those east-west running Rivers into a series of defensive lines.

One need not be a graduate of West Point, Sandhurst, or even elementary school to know what happened next: the Allies spent the remainder of 1943 performing a costly and slow positional meatgrinder campaign to move north, inch by inch, eventually stalling out south of the Liri Valley.

So much for a soft underbelly…

Fever Dreams

In December 1943, things weren’t going well in Italy for the Allies. Allied ground forces were halted along the Bernhardt and Gustav Lines, with the US Fifth Army on the left flank and western side of the Apennines and the British Eighth Army on the right flank and east side of the mountain range. It was especially daunting for the strategic leadership obsessed with Italy (ie. Churchill), as the clock was ticking, literally.

The joint Allied decision to invade Italy didn’t come carte blanche with manpower, equipment, supplies, and time; after all, Italy was not supposed to be a costly and lengthy positional meatgrinder campaign. Making matters worse for Churchill’s Soft Underbelly Strategy was the deal the British had made with the US chiefs to invade Italy in 1943. In exchange, Churchill and the British had to agree to invade France in 1944, and it would become the joint strategic main effort, requiring the transferring of combat forces already involved in the MTO to be sent England to be used in the upcoming Normandy invasion, while even more forces being used in Italy planned to eventually be transferred out to support the joint invasion of Southern France (Operation Dragoon, originally named OP Anvil).

Allied forces meant to be transferred in late 1943 and into 1944 didn’t only include combat divisions and air squadrons, it meant a significant amount of naval assets would go too, most especially landing craft, of which there were always too few. By end of December 1943, most of the Allied landing craft that had been assigned to the MTO, necessary to pull off the invasion of Italy, were meant to be transferred elsewhere, mostly to support the invasion of France, with some meant to head to the Pacific Theater of Operations.

Not only were the Allies planning to transfer a bunch of combat power out of the Mediterranean to England, they also transferred Eisenhower. Previously, he’d been the Commander in Chief of the MTO, but he had been tapped to serve as Supreme Allied Commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), to be in charge of the upcoming invasion of France. He reported to England in late December 1943, leaving the C-in-C of the MTO position open, which was filled by a British general, Henry Wilson. At that point, the entire top leadership of Allied operations in Italy, from the C-in-C, the Ground, Air, and Naval commanders, the 15th Army Group commander, all were British and all reported to Churchill.

Also in December 1943, Churchill was not at his best either. While visiting North Africa, the pensioner-aged politician caught pneumonia. That had to suck. Thankfully, I’ve never had pneumonia, but even a minor fever leaves me pretty useless and incoherent. Not so for Churchill. Churchill had a literal army of competent, distinguished, hoary politicians and senior military officers to help run the British Empire, but he wasn’t about to accept their help.

“Despite his illnesses, he continued to direct the affairs of State from his bed.”

Come on now, did you really think that while bedridden with pneumonia, Churchill was going to stop micromanaging? Get real.

Consider the situation. Winston Churchill, a 69-year-old suffering from a very serious sickness, of which he was not taking seriously at all, deciding in his fevered state that only he could still make good decisions, being a terminal control freak with delusions of grandeur about his military genius. His grand strategy for taking Italy fast and easily had utterly misfired, and so he was left with a theater of operations that was slowly being starved out of the necessary manpower, materials, and supplies needed to turn around the situation and break out of the positional warfare nightmare it’s turned into. Churchill needed to regain maneuver to take the Eternal City of Rome and advance beyond into the Soft Underbelly of Germany. And while the clock was ticking, he got some breathing space, the entire senior chain of command running the MTO then answered to him, must oblige him, must kiss his ass, or their asses would be on the first flight back to England, fired.

The Churchillian response was thus:

As the P.M. grows in strength [having contracted pneumonia], his old appetite for the war comes back. The C.I.G.S. [Field Marshal Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff] is in England, but the P.M. has a bright idea. He is organizing an operation all on his own…. If the Chiefs of Staff are not available, there are plenty of lesser fry to work out the details…. Alex [General Alexander, commanding Allied forces in Italy] too is sympathetic. He sees that the Italian campaign may receive a great fillip. Why, it may even shorten the whole war. The P.M. has become absorbed…[and] seems not only to direct the policy of war, he even plans the details.

- Dr. Sir Charles Wilson, Lord Moran, Churchill’s personal physician, writing in his journal about Churchill’s plans for Anzio

A Bad Plan Isn’t Birthed, It’s Shat Out

Surprisingly, the initial plan for Operation Shingle was not conceived by Churchill. In fact, it was originally Eisenhower’s idea.

As the election campaign slogan went, “I like Ike.” I think Eisenhower was a very good senior general. A very good leader, organizer, mediator, coordinator, etc. But, with all due respect, I’ve got to agree with some of his critics, because he wasn’t very good at the operational side of war, and it often showed in the North African and Mediterranean Theater of Operations. There, Ike was at least heavily responsible for the initial Allied setbacks during and immediately after the Race for Tunis, as well as the Kasserine Pass debacle (note, Fredendall’s II Corps wasn’t grossly overextended by his choice). Ike’s leadership over the Sicily operation was questionable too, as was Italy.

Also, Ike and his staff had the habit of concocting some crazy plans too.

For example, in the run-up to the invasion of Italy, Ike and his immediate staff pushed for an utterly insane airborne operation to jump the 82nd Airborne Division right outside of Rome as a coup de main to topple the Roman government and rally the region’s civilian populace to rise to overthrow the Germans. So opposed was the 82nd Airborne’s command team to that ludicrous and suicidal mission that they had the divisional artillery commander, Brigadier General Maxwell Taylor, go undercover and infiltrate into Rome to get a read on the civilian populace and the Axis military situation. Back, he told Ike and his staff that not only were there no indications that the Italians were motivated to rise up, but there were two German panzer grenadier divisions stationed nearby to the potential drop zones. And with that, Operation Giant II was thankfully canceled.

But Ike’s staff wasn’t done pushing their zany plans in the MTO. In mid-November 1943, in a rush to reach Rome, Ike ordered General Alexander to create a plan for a one-division amphibious landing in Anzio to be done once Fifth Army reached the city of Frosinone.

I need to make two points clear about Ike’s early OP Shingle concept of operations, which differed from the later version. While it was insane to land a single division alone roughly 60 miles/100 kilometers away from the nearest friendly unit, 1) the landing was only predicated on being a diversion, and 2) Fifth Army was already supposed to have successfully broken through the combined Bernhardt and Gustav Lines and resumed offensive maneuver moving towards Rome. Nevertheless, as Ike’s OP Shingle was supposed to occur no later than December 20, as that date neared, the Allies were nowhere near Frosinone, still about 50 miles/80 kilometers south, halted before the Bernhardt Line, the first itineration of OP Shingle was canceled.

Not a big deal for Ike, he was out of the Mediterranean to England to take command of SHAEF. Capturing Rome was no longer his problem. But Rome was still Churchill’s problem. He knew of Shingle, and in his feverish state in Carthage, sick as a dog from pneumonia and the associated ailments he was suffering with it, he dusted off those plans as a solution to his problem, to break the stalemate and reach Rome. To him, OP Shingle looked promising, but one division wouldn’t cut it, it needed to be bigger!

But enlarging Shingle isn’t as easy as just assigning more available divisions. The Allies in the MTO had the combat power to beef up the landing force with more than one division, but as mentioned earlier, December 1943 was the cutoff date for transferring most of the Allied landing craft out of Italy. The MTO could have all the Allied divisions in the world, but if they didn’t have the landing craft, an amphibious landing might be difficult to pull off.

So Churchill did what he normally did to get his way, he hemmed and hawed and begged and cried (literally), and the MTO got an extension on the use of the landing craft till mid-February, enough time to throw together an enlarged version of Ike’s OP Shingle.

Victory in Italy was surely at hand…

OP Shingle Concept of Operations

As previously mentioned, there were two defensive belts on the Western side of the Apennine Mountains that the US Fifth Army would need to breach before being able to link up with any force landing on the coast. First, the Allies would need to break through the Bernhardt Line, then the Gustav Line.

The objective of Churchill’s OP Shingle was no longer just a diversion anymore, it was to create such an emergency in the German rear areas that they would abandon the Gustav Line in haste to retreat to Rome or beyond after their lines of communication were threatened and/or outright cut, all while Fifth Army was aggressively pursuing routed German forces through the Liri Valley.

But that meant first the Allies needed to successfully break through the Bernhardt Line as a shaping operation to put everyone in position to then face the Gustav Line. That was no easy task, the Allies grinded away through December and January. But they succeeded, breaching the Bernhardt Line, and so the stage was set for the larger series of operation that doesn’t really have a name but could best be described as the 1st Battle for Rome.

Before the landing of OP Shingle, Fifth Army’s two corps present near the Gustav Line, British X Corps and US II Corps, were to launch a large-scale attack to fix the Germans in place on the Gustav Line, draw even more German reserves, and simultaneously cross the Rapido and Garigliano Rivers to gain a foothold into the Liri Valley, breaking through the initial crust of the Gustav Line.

Two days after the start of Fifth Army’s attack on the Gustav Line, Phase 1 of Operation Shingle was to commence. The US Army’s VI Corps, tasked with the landing, was to “seize and secure a beachhead in the vicinity of Anzio.”

However, despite the extension to keep the landing craft that made the Anzio landing possible, there were still not enough of them for the whole of VI Corps. The plan called for the British 1st Division to land on the left flank, just to the west of the coastal city of Anzio, the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division would land on the right flank, just east of Nettuno. A mixed bag of US Army Ranger and airborne battalions and some British commando battalions would land in the center between those cities. Besides one US Army infantry regiment of the 45th Infantry Division as the floating reserve, no further reinforcements were expected to land for about a week until the landing assault flotilla could make its way back south to Naples, load up the follow on force of the 1st Armored Division, and sail back.

Once the landing beachheads were secure and a lodgment formed, the second phase of the plan was to begin, VI Corps was to “advance and secure the Colli Laziali,” also known as the famed Alban Hills, the high ground dominating the Sacco Valley, overwatching Highway 6, the main supply route for German forces holding the western side of the Gustav Line, also the planned route that the US Fifth Army would use to reach Rome.

Some of you may wonder why a British division was included in an American corps. It should come as no surprise that Churchill was responsible for that as well. Remember, the Anzio landing was intended to be a hugely successful operation, routing the Germans from the Gustav Line. Thus, being closest to Rome and following the heels of the German chaotic retreat, OP Shingle’s Phase 3 would have VI Corps “be prepared to advance on Rome.” So it’s no wonder Churchill wanted a British division involved to share the glory of that achievement.

The Math Doesn’t Add Up

I’ll be honest with you all, the plus side of majoring in history and political science in college was being able to avoid high-level math courses. Not to say I’m bad at it, I just don’t like math all that much, it doesn’t come easy to me like some other topics do. But despite that, math is important.

For example, math explains why Operation Shingle couldn’t succeed, coming down to defensive frontages and force ratios.

Let’s get started with the frontages.

OP Shingle’s Phase 1 required the beachhead to be defended against prospective German counterattacks. The width between the outer edges of the two landing beaches was about 14 miles/23 kilometers apart, so at a minimum, that’s the frontage to defend the beachhead (it actually curve around, being longer).

OP Shingle’s Phase 2 required VI Corps to secure the Alban Hills, which geologically is a very large caldera, a volcanic crater. From there, Allied ground forces were supposed to cut Highway 6 with fires, probably interdicting road traffic by calling artillery on whatever they saw moving. Holding that piece of real estate against a concerted counterattack, which would no doubt happen considering how valuable that terrain feature is, would require a near 360 degree perimeter around the ridges ringing the crater. Which by my math comes out to about 24 miles/40 kilometers.

So far, that’s a defensive frontage of about 38 miles/63 kilometers.

But wait, how far of a distance is it from the beachhead to the Alban Hills? We can’t forget those pesky lines of communication that would need to be held at all costs, because the forces holding the Alban Hills would need resupply from the beachhead. That supply line would be 22 miles/35 kilometers, one way, from the beach to the hills. But, being that there would be a threat from German counterattacks from both the right and left flanks of that supply line, both sides would need to be defended. Adding 44 miles/70 kilometers of frontage to defend.

All told, the plan hoisted on VI Corps to perform OP Shingle as Churchill intended would have required the meager initial assault elements of VI Corps to defend a minimum frontage of 82 miles/130 kilometers.

Could they?

Only the infantry can really hold territory, so we must focus on them. The US Army’s 1944 FM 7-20 Infantry Battalion field manuals stated an infantry battalion could defend less than .5 miles/.9 km in broken terrain, .8 miles/1.3 km – 1.1 miles/1.8 km in open terrain, and up to 1.9 miles/3.2 km in swampy ground (page 190 of that source).

When I broke down the order of battle of Allied forces used in Operation Shingle available during the first week of the landing, there appeared to be 9x infantry battalions of the US 3rd Infantry Division, 9x infantry battalions of the British 1st Infantry Division, 3x of the reserve regiment of the US 45th Infantry Division in support, 4x US parachute infantry battalions, 3x of the US Army Rangers, 2x British Commando battalions, and 3x armored infantry battalions that would arrive when the 1st Armored Division came ashore around D-Day+5 or D+6. That comes to a total of 33x infantry battalions that have the potential of defending the overall perimeter of Operation Shingle.

For argument’s sake only, let’s say that not a single infantry battalion was being held back in reserve, they’d all be defending the line. And being conservative to the max, and I’ll allocate each battalion a frontage of 1.9 miles/3.2 km, suggesting they’re all defending open swamp ground, the easiest hence the widest. That comes out to the ridiculous best-case scenario to defend a total perimeter of 62 miles/105 km. Quite a bit less than 82 miles/130 kilometers.

When it comes to force ratios, by D-Day+3, US Fifth Army planners considered VI Corps would be facing upwards of 33,000 Germans compared to the roughly 40,000 that would land as part of VI Corps initial assault convoy. Not quite a 1:1 ratio of attackers to defenders, but close enough.

More so, as the battle actually did pan out, the approximately 33x US and British infantry battalions that landed at Anzio in January ended up opposing 36x German infantry battalions by the end of the month, meaning the Allied forces at Anzio were outnumbered by the Germans, and per the plan, doing so trying to defend a frontage that was impossible to hold.

Math says that Churchill’s plans for OP Shingle could not have succeeded.

Sage Advice

Spoilers Warning: What should be called the 1st Battle for Rome was a total disaster.

Fifth Army’s attacks against the Gustav Line failed, pretty miserably. British X Corps did okay, while the US Army’s 36th Infantry Division attempt to cross the Rapido River ended into a bloodbath.

Around Anzio, VI Corps landed successfully, encountered almost no opposition initially, but didn’t secure the Colli Laziali. In fact, they didn’t come close in reaching the Alban Hills, VI Corps didn’t even try to go for them.

Mark Clark, commanding the US Fifth Army, John Lucas, commanding VI Corps, and even the eminently capable Lucian Truscott, commanding the 3rd Infantry Division, were all quite negative about the prospects of OP Shingle during the planning stage, they believed it was a suicide mission. Surely, they were competent enough to also understand the math didn’t work in their favor. But unfortunately, none had the authority, clout, or sway to get Churchill to change his mind, though they tried. OP Shingle was going to happen whether they liked it or not.

But they did work to pare down the scope of the operation before it kicked off. For example, the final operations orders from Fifth Army to VI Corps altered the original three phases to two. VI Corps would still “seize and secure a beachhead in the vicinity of Anzio,” but Phase 2 was changed to “advance on Colli Laziali,” and that was it. The vague language of Phase 2 was intentional.

As was the warning Clark gave Lucas the morning of the landing, when he and General Alexander landed at Anzio to visit Lucas to check in on him. This is what Clark said to Lucas before he left:

“Don’t stick your neck out, Johnny. I did at Salerno and got into trouble.”

Wiser words were seldom said.

And Lucas followed that warning to the T. Maybe a bit too well. Anglophiles incapable of finding fault with any decision or action made or done by the British in WW2 complain about Lucas’ failure to reach the Alban Hills, but the only valid criticism labeled against him that has any validity is that maybe VI Corps could have moved a bit further away from the beachhead to take some key road junctions on the way to the Alban Hills. Lucas thought otherwise, and he wasn’t alone:

“Either it was a job for a full army, or it was no job at all; to attempt it with only two divisions was to send a boy on a man’s errand.”

– Admiral Samuel E. Morison, in the US Navy official history of WW2

That quote was dead on accurate.

Nevertheless, Lucas failed to execute OP Shingle as Churchill wanted, and so on February 22, a month after the landing began, he was relieved of command of VI Corps, cited for being too timid. Lucas’s reward for saving VI Corps from annihilation was being fired, ever the scapegoat.

C’est la guerre.

What Were they Thinking Of?

On a serious note, did any of you notice anything unusual about my aforementioned map that showed the shape of the full perimeter needed to defend Operation Shingle? The beachhead, the position holding the Alban Hills, the two sides of the defended supply line, did that remind any of you of anything?

In late December 1943, Churchill concocted OP Shingle while his brain was cooking from a fever, as he was hacking away from pneumonia, as his heart beat irregularly, maybe still guzzling large quantities of whiskey and champagne, no doubt still pinching the asses of every nearby nurse that crossed his path. What was really on Churchill’s mind as he was reading the OP Shingle maps in his delirious state?

For Additional Reading on the Topic:

Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome, by Carlo D’Este

History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Book IX: Sicily – Salerno – Anzio: January 1943 – June 1944, by Samuel Eliot Morison

Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory, by Adrian Lewis

US Army "Green Book," Official History of WW2, Anzio

Summer is here. The kids are out of school, work is slowing down, and family vacation time is about to start. So it’ll probably be around mid-August at the earliest until I can publish any new articles. Fair warning.

That said, once I have time to write them, I have a bunch of promising blog article ideas that I’m hoping my readers will like. But before I get to writing those, I’d like to ask my readers to post in the comments with their opinions on a topic that has been vexing me.

Are my blog articles too long?

When I was reading up on creating a blog, most recommendations about article size favored a limit of around 2,500 words. But I’ve gone over that for nearly every blog article I published, some have gone over 4,000 words.

Is that inconvenient? If so, would you like shorter articles as the norm? Or on the occasion?

Note, shorter articles will be faster to read, but not nearly as informative. And sometimes they’ll be harder for me to write, it’s often hard to do a topic justice in under 2,500 words, let alone shorter.

Also, if anyone has any topics they’d like me to write about, I'm always open to new ideas. If you’re already replying to give your opinion on article length, throw in any suggestions you might have, I might like it!

Have a fun and safe summer!

Regards,

Duncan

Note to readers, this article is more of an anthology of random thoughts I’ve had on the topic that either didn’t make it past the cutting room floor for previous articles, or popped into my mind recently. For those of you who like the topic of Meat, Bon Appétit!

Getting Old Sucks

Those familiar with discussions about the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) mobilization laws will have picked up on their peculiar policy that favors mobilizing older men to serve predominantly as infantrymen. I’d discussed this strange phenomenon in Meat Part 3 in the section titled “Older Man’s War.” For those who haven’t read it (shame on you!), at the start of the war Ukraine’s mobilization laws specified that men aged 27-60 years old were subject to mobilization, which was then lowered to 25 years old in Spring 2024 as a result of Ukraine’s infantry manpower crisis.

Many people defend the Ukrainian legislative decision to avoid the younger men and mobilize the older men as a rational decision. After all, don’t the demographic charts of the ages of Ukrainian citizens demonstrate that there are far more older men than younger? Then, of course, they should have a law that protects the fewer and more valuable younger men versus the icky older men, with their ear hairs and weird smells!

But why should we assume the decision was rational? For that matter, when did the Ukrainian government have the foresight to pass a law to favor the more plentiful, expendable older men over the fewer, more valuable younger men?

On a lark, I looked into why old men are Ukraine’s prime target for mobilizing cannon fodder, and I found the answer hidden in plain sight, right there in the April 2024 law that revised the age statute, which references the original law that stipulated the 27-60 mobilization age limit.

In the text of the Law of Ukraine "On Military Duty and Military Service" (Vidomosti Verkhovnoi Rada of Ukraine, 2006, No. 38, p. 324 with subsequent amendments), the numbers and words "27 years of age" shall be replaced by the numbers and words "25 years of age" (Google Translate)

There you have it, that law isn’t recent, it’s from 2006. Not right before this war started, not even when the Donbas War started in 2014.

I noticed something interesting when reviewing that. At the time, those Ukrainian men who were 18-26 years old would have been born between 1980 and 1988. As the Ukrainian age demographic chart shows, that group represents the largest number of Ukrainian men born since at least 1924. Which means that at the time of the passing of that bill in 2006, the politicians running Ukraine, for whatever reason, logical or illogical, decided to exempt their largest number of military-aged males from mobilized combat service.

And yet, those protected in 2006 by being 18-24 years old, they would be 34-45 years old when this war started in 2022, which meant they were the expendable Meat that Ukrainian society was comfortable with to feed the Russo-Ukraine War. Protected once, thrown away the next.

Is that irony? A paradox? Whatever it is, it’s messed up.

North Korean Meat Gogi

In Meat Part 3, I had wanted to discuss the intervention of the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) in the Russo-Ukraine War. But I’ll be honest, I’ve felt very frustrated and uncomfortable with the off-the-wall messaging surrounding the topic, filled with outrageous claims such as pornography addiction, drunkenness, and face melting, not to mention confusing and contradictory statements like how the North Koreans were withdrawn from Kursk one week, and then not even a full week later they had returned. But the spewing of outrageous propaganda has died down recently, some insightful information has come out, and even Putin confirmed the North Korean involvement in Kursk, so I think it’s a bit safer for me to put my thoughts on the record without feeling like a fool.

Here is what I’d like to discuss: Were the North Koreans used to support the Russian counteroffensive to retake Kursk being used as Meat, aka expendable infantry?

Interestingly, the KPA infantrymen seem to have been studs. Described as young, physically fit, "shockingly disciplined", great marksmen, solid tacticians, et cetera, they were not barely trained old men, convicts, and “superfluous people.” Probably to be expected as the KPA sent their best light infantrymen from their XI Corps, aka the “Shock Corps,” the pick of the litter in terms of elite North Korean soldiers, apparently a larger, KPA version of the US Army’s Ranger Regiment.

Overall, reports suggest they fought pretty well, earning the respect of the AFU personnel, who seem to consistently review them as a dangerous and competent adversary. However, some questionable incidents marred their performance. For example, back in early to mid-December 2024, KPA troops were reportedly involved in multiple platoon-sized or larger dismounted infantry attacks. One attack was even described in detail by AFU defenders as being made up of three separate company-strength waves of dismounted infantry.

I laid out my own definition of a “Human Wave Attack” in Meat Part 2, writing that the reports of Wagner conducting Human Wave Assaults during the Bakhmut campaign were false, primarily because they didn’t fit the customary definition; staggered out squad or fireteam-sized attacks lack the numbers necessary to be described as waves of people. But battalion-sized dismounted infantry attacks, with companies in echelon, advancing regardless of failures of the first and second echelon attempts, that fits my definition of a Human Wave Attack pretty well, hitting the high points of most historic descriptions. Therefore, if the above report is true, then the North Koreans did indeed perform Human Wave Attacks against Ukraine. Remember, it doesn’t matter if they meant to do that, it matters what the defender’s experienced.

That said, even if those AFU reports of echeloned battalion attacks were bullshit, the video evidence above still shows larger than platoon-sized dismounted infantry advances caught in the open by drones and heavy targeted. Which is why large-scale dismounted infantry advances aren’t done in this war, they’re too risky; getting caught in the open with large groups will result in a Turkey Shoot. But that raises a question: if those elite infantry were used callously, cheaply, and/or stupidly by their commanders, does that make them Meat? And if so, were they conducting “Meat Gogi Waves” in Kursk?

Part of me wants to say yes. After all, we’re talking about North Korean soldiers, loyal followers of a regime who most agree doesn’t give a shit about its people. And those platoon plus dismounted attacks, come on! What were they thinking? But that doesn’t matter, because if elite, highly skilled KPA infantry can be labeled as Meat because they were used improperly by a flawed chain of command, probably still in the costly early learning phase of realizing doctrine and reality conflict, then it means anytime any high quality infantry (or special operation forces) screws up their attack and takes heavy losses in past or future conflicts then they’re Meat too. And that just isn’t true. Planning and executing an attack badly doesn’t mean those doing it are Meat, sacrificial, disposable, and without value. It just means that somebody screwed up.

Therefore, the elite XI Corps KPA soldiers used in Kursk weren’t Meat.

Which means, despite probably having performed “Human Wave Attacks,” they didn’t perform “Meat Waves.”

How is that for being pedantic?

Who Wore it Better?

I had discussed extensively in previous Meat articles the history of the convict volunteers in this war. To sum up, it started with the Ukrainians only days into the start of the war but then seemed to have been canceled, then Wagner embraced it in the summer of 2022, then the Russian Ministry of Defense stole it from Wagner afterwards, and in mid-2024, the Ukrainians officially adopted it on a large scale too.

It’s since taken on a strange twist. Starting as far back as maybe early 2023, the Russians recruited female convicts to serve as assault troops in the SMO in Ukraine.

Let that sink in: Female. Convict. Assault troops.

I’m at a loss for how to process this. Is this a ruthless but smart way to find motivated manpower for cannon fodder jobs, like the use of male convicts? After all, somebody has to do the probing attacks or suicidal assaults, right? Should I be celebrating the fight for inclusion, with women finally having proper representation as Meat? Or is this disgusting decision made out of desperation?

What does the fair and balanced Euromaiden Press have to say?

Such use of women prisoners is yet another indication that Moscow is confronted with massive losses and is prepared to use almost all measures to find additional troops without announcing a general mobilization that could easily trigger anti-government actions across the country.

A bit harsh, but that about sums it up for me on a personal level. I find this decision to be repugnant.

But how did this insane project work out for Russia? I’m not really sure, the reporting I’ve read on it is very conflicting. For example, a Ukrainian Military Intelligence spokesman claimed that by spring 2024 most female convicts initially recruited were already killed or seriously wounded; but the GUR is notoriously full of shit, so take their claims with a hefty grain of salt. Later reporting in summer 2024 stated that no female convict had reached the front lines as assault troops by that point, due to problems with the program, declaring it a total failure. Could things have since improved? The Ukrainian state-owned media reported in late 2024 that female convicts were being used for assaults, and another source claimed in April 2025 that many female inmates were still volunteering. I guess it’s working well enough for the Russians to keep doing it.

But, as I mentioned already in the past, I’m biased. Because of that, I don’t think I should be the arbiter to judge whether a program to use female convicts as Meat assault troops has been a success or failure based just on how Russia did it. What we need to properly judge it is another example. Preferably, a much more competent nation and military, one that is Basically NATO™. Luckily, we have that opportunity!

Not to be outdone by their adversaries, in July 2024, right after their own convict recruitment program kicked off, Ukrainian female convicts joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Where would the female convicts serve? You guessed it, inside assault units, the only unit type they are legally allowed to serve in.

As I was doing research about how both Russia and Ukraine were recruiting female convicts as Meat, it reminded me an awful lot of certain tabloid fashion magazines that have similar columns showcasing two celebrities wearing the identical outfit with some sort of spin on the phrase “Who Wore it Better?”

As a thought experiment, I want everyone reading this to view the reporting of the media outlet Radio Free Europe as they covered the same story, the recruitment of female convicts as assault troops, from different points of view:

Female Convicts To The Front: How The Kremlin Tried, And Failed, To Bolster The Ukraine Invasion

Ukrainian Female Prisoners Swap Cells For Combat Unit Roles

You tell me, readers, who wore it better?

Anyone following this war, who doesn’t have their head up their own ass, will have seen for themselves the occasional episode where the propaganda has gotten totally out of hand. This is one of them. And I don’t think I’m the only one who got a good laugh out of how the same story is written so differently for Russia versus Ukraine. The writers of Radio Free Europe clearly think the outfit looks best on Ukraine.

Though I’m of the mind that the outfit is too hideous for anyone to look good in.

Beating the Meat: How to Counter Expendable Infantry

The best way to deal with cannon fodder is more cannons. The End.

Just kidding. You’re not getting off that easy.

Back in early 2023 as I was watching the Bakhmut campaign play out, observing how some of Ukraine’s best combat units were chewed up defending against mostly Wagner convict Meat, besides wondering why the hell the Ukrainian leadership were ordering such a tenacious defense for an unimportant city (especially after their flanks collapsed), I was also wondering how does one properly defend against such a tactic. That wonder has only grown since then.

I think this is a pretty important conversation to have, as there are quite a few nations that might face the prospect of fighting cannon fodder on future battlefields: What are some good countermeasures to mitigate the threat of large numbers of expendable infantry?

For example, a traditional defense against an enemy infantry attack relies on the defenders mostly relying on organic small arms fire to wipe out attackers as they enter prearranged kill zones, calling in supporting arms as necessary to finish them off (mortar and artillery, maybe some air strikes).

But doesn’t that benefit a Meat recon-in-force probing attack? After all, they are used hoping the defender gives away their location by lighting them up with small arms, at which point an overwatching recon drone spots the defensive location, at which point it is pounded with fires, at which point a deliberate attack is launched to take it. Or bypass it. Or the position will be destroyed by fires. Obviously, the attacking Meat infantry needs to be destroyed if possible, but with the threat being that traditional defensive tactics lead to detection, the solution must be to defeat the Meat probing attack without giving away the location of the defenders.

At a minimum, that requires the prioritization of long-range stand-off weapons, making it a good opportunity to rely heavily on designated marksmen, snipers, grenade launchers, medium and heavy machine guns (firing in very short bursts, without tracers), recoilless rockets firing airbursting HE-frag rounds, and any supporting mortars and artillery, plus strike drones. And it makes for a great argument to mass issue suppressors for rifles and machine guns, as those will help conceal firing signatures when they do need to be used, making it more difficult for the enemy to detect the direction and distance of incoming fire.

Prior to 2024, before the realization hit home for me of the full realities of the drone threat, I’d have recommended a mobile/maneuver defense to mitigate the threat of a fires-centric opponent, and especially the threat of constant probing attacks. Stick and move, maximize tactical mobility, don’t remain in one location long enough to ever be decisively engaged after detection. However, in a battlefield dominated by drone-directed reconnaissance fires complex, tactical mobility for the defender is just as dangerous as for the attacker, moving means being out in the open, and that paints a big target on the defenders when enemy recon drones are overhead. So, as repellent as the idea is, it’s probably safer to stay put and fight a positional defense.

But that doesn’t mean this. I believe that a proper positional defense requires defensive positions built properly. And in a war like this, defenses should be competing with the Japanese at Iwo Jima in terms of winning the blue ribbon for the best cover and concealment in the history of modern warfare. At a minimum, open-top trenches need to be concealed from the bird’s-eye view of an overhead drone using thermal imaging-resistant materials.

And I can’t stress this enough, defensive positions cannot be too dispersed. Some degree of dispersion is necessary, the transparency of the battlefield requires it. And it’s all well and good for anti-armor centric defenses to be dispersed, as they rely on ATGM teams in forward positions engaging blatantly obvious mechanized attacks from kilometers out. But a front line of isolated small-unit defensive positions many hundreds of meters apart, sometimes kilometers apart, not mutually supportive, means they are just asking for infiltration attacks from an infantry threat. Mind those gaps, or the enemy will.

Also, invest in anti-personnel mines. Lots and lots of them. Screw the memory of Princess Di, the more Bouncing Betties, Toe-Poppers, and Butterfly Mines, the better. In static positional warfare, enemy infantrymen should be so worried about AP mines that they pre-tie tourniquets around their legs before the mission starts. If they aren’t that worried, there aren’t enough mines.

But that’s just how to stop offensive Meat. We’ve seen plenty from both sides in the Russo-Ukraine War when expendable infantry are also used to hold ground. Sometimes they’re there just to eat the destructive prep fires that will ravage forward positions after being identified, but some Meat defenders specifically seem to be serving another purpose.

From my perspective, their chief role seems to have been to serve as bait.

That sounds bombastic, but here me out: An attritional strategy that is recon fires-centric requires enemy targets to be detected before they can be engaged. In the case of an active defense strategy, to include a tactical adoption of a “Line of Drones” strategy, defenders need attackers to be out in the open to detect and target them. How to do that?

Take people that society doesn’t give a crap about, mobilize them by force if necessary or otherwise convince them to enlist, give them bare minimum training because it won’t matter anyway, and then put them out front in weakened and isolated positions, legitimately appearing ripe for an attack. Then watch and wait.

Meat defenders have become a tethered goat, drawing out the man-eating tiger from the cover of the jungle, while alert hunters watch from hidden tree stands behind, waiting until the tiger appears in the open to put a bullet in it.

And it’s not just the Ukrainians doing that, the Russians manned their most forward defensive positions to stop the 2023 Counteroffensive around the Orikhiv-Tokmak-Melitipol axis with Storm-Z convict units, so they’re guilty too. And whether or not it’s a deliberate decision for their Meat defenders to serve as bait doesn’t really matter, the effect is the same, they’re baiting attacks.

If that is the case, the center of gravity of the defending enemy isn’t the Meat defenders, it’s their ISR, fires, and command and control, all the pieces needed to run a recon fires-centric defense. Therefore, offensive success requires a solid plan to reliably dismantle the defender’s recon fires complex. Blind the hunter or kill him in the tree, and the goat is easy for the tiger to take.

How to do that? I have no clue. It seems like it’ll require a whole lot of technical innovation. But as my wife will attest, I can’t figure out how to fix a broken light switch, so don’t ask me…

Infantry: Queen Pawns of Battle?

Since WW1, including most of this war, artillery has been the reigning King of Battle. But things have changed, at least since late 2024, it appears that strike drones have taken the top position.

If artillery has been demoted, does that make it the new Queen of Battle? And if so, where does that leave the former Queen of Battle, the infantry? How low have they been demoted?

More so, are they now fit only to serve as Pawns? Has it reached the point that in a conventional modern war, infantry are only really fit for little else than to serve as Meat?

I’ve read the comments online from many individuals already jumping to those conclusions, suggesting that, like the tank, well-trained infantry are obsolete for the same reason as they think the tank is obsolete, the Russo-Ukraine War showed them how easy they are to be killed. Simply put, “they” say it’s a waste to invest in quality manpower, or to even properly train them.

But I think that’s a load of crap. Tanks and infantry were always pretty easy to kill in conventional wars, this war didn’t start that trend, it only solidified it. Though I will admit, it’s been getting ridiculous in the Russo-Ukraine War to kill them, especially the infantry.

I mentioned their problems already in this article, but defensive operations are no cakewalk against an attacking enemy possessing a well-supplied reconnaissance fires complex. Times are tough, even with defending being considered by many now as the dominant form of warfare. For example, earlier in the conflict, the inability of a front-line infantry unit to rotate out defending soldiers from the most forward outpost and strongpoint positions every few weeks, if not days, was indicative of some major problem in either that unit’s command and control, or a lack of reserves. That’s since changed. Now, due to the growing capabilities of Russia’s drone-directed fires, the norm for the Ukrainians is to wait and rotate out the defenders of the furthest forward defenses after many weeks or even months, as the rotations themselves are too risky.

The constant threat of fires and assaults makes occupying those positions incredibly dangerous, I can’t imagine how physically and mentally exhausting that must be. And yet, it has become too dangerous to routinely relieve defenders in place by vehicle or foot, as the troop movement and rotation leave them all too exposed in the open to an enemy embracing battlefield transparency, actively searching for and targeting those rotations because they make for easy kills. That’s pretty insane. But is it game-changing? With the threat of fires to defenders, does it pay to man the “Zero Line” defenses with quality infantrymen? Or should it be Meat?

Offensively, Meat has been used extensively in this war to perform recon-in-force probing attacks (especially by the Russians); it’s debatable if those can be done in a way that doesn’t necessitate high casualties, but what about deliberate attacks? Despite the planning and coordination that goes into those, if the greatest danger for any type of advancing infantry, regardless of their mode of travel, is the threat of drone-directed fires during the approach march, does elite infantry have any better odds of survival than cannon fodder?

The previously mentioned North Korean elite infantry is a perfect example of that issue. Reportedly, they took pretty heavy losses, and I can’t imagine a situation where they wouldn’t have. Obviously, the Russians needed large numbers of infantrymen to support their counteroffensive to retake Kursk Oblast. But did those assault troops need to be elite?

Is it a waste of time and effort to find quality personnel to turn them into quality infantry when they die more easily than ever before?

I’m putting my foot down. The juice is worth the squeeze, the efforts necessary to build and maintain quality infantry as the standard ARE worth the investment and sacrifices.

First off, I know from having done the job as an infantryman, there is nothing simple about it. There is nothing an incompetent infantryman is good for other than screwing up. Even if the mission allows for most of them to become casualties as Meat, like sending them on a probing attack to find the enemy by walking into kill zones and being shot at, improperly trained infantrymen will screw that up too. To succeed, they need individual tactical and technical competence, and need to properly work in a team to conduct complex missions. They need morale, discipline, and confidence in their own abilities. They need physical fitness, a rarely discussed topic but a cornerstone to being a good infantryman.

Just look at the efforts of the Russians and Ukrainians, who both field tiered infantry units, some garbage, while some range from pretty good to really good. The Russians have certain PMCs, militia units, units of the airborne and naval infantry, and select assault detachments within conventional motor rifle or tank units, and they’re all pretty good infantry, getting shit done. The Ukrainians are no different, they too possess numerous elite infantry units, some Far Right-affiliated groups like Azov, others are conventional mechanized or assault units, also getting shit done. Why? They all invested in quality, making the effort to staff positions with good people, making them elite in the literal sense, able to pick and choose who enters their unit. And they are training them. And the results speak for themselves, those units regularly outperform non-elite units. Meanwhile, the veterans of both sides, officers and enlisted, are constantly calling for more training, more quality, and calling for an end to the use of Meat, because they know the value!

This situation reminds me of WW2 and the heavy bomber crews of the US Army Air Force. It required twenty-two months to create a B-17 heavy bomber pilot, and eight months to create the lowliest gunner, and that was just individual training after basic training. And then those crewmembers went on to take horrific attrition; the Eighth Army Air Force, responsible for the strategic bombing of Germany from England, lost more airmen killed than the US Marine Corps. And that wasn’t relying on substandard, expendable personnel to man the crews of Bomber Command, quite the opposite, the USAAF had at their disposal the best and brightest of inducted US Army personnel (page 183). Why did they bother? Because that job was hard enough without trying to do it with low-quality personnel, trained poorly.

And so with the infantry. Those who say “Quantity has a quality of its own” have no clue what the life of a grunt entails. The job is hard enough, they deserve every benefit they can get to achieve success.

This about wraps up most of what I had to say about Meat. Maybe if things change in the Russo-Ukraine War, I’ll write some more on the topic, but for now, I’m putting the Meat in the freezer and moving on. I hope you enjoyed the taste!

NGSW is meant to be a “Leap Ahead” system, using cutting edge technological designs to gain a generational advantage over US opponents. Sounds impressive, let’s see…

What’s the Point?

I asked myself a hundred times while writing this, why am I bothering?

Technically, there is still time to do the right thing and kill the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program. Certain US Army infantry battalions have already been issued them to test out, and more are expected to get them soon, but NGSW has not been mass fielded yet. The ammunition factory to produce 6.8x51mm ammo, though already commissioned, hasn’t been built yet. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is looking for useless things to cut from DOD’s budget and I can’t think of anything better turd to flush down the toilet than NGSW.

But my cynicism says it won’t matter. The top leadership of the US Army clearly wants NGSW. Congress, thinks it’s a great idea. We might as well admit that it’s going to happen, no turning back now.

Therefore, my goal with this article is just to vent. For posterity, I want to publish my opinions for no other reason than to say “I told you so” down the road and point back to this article.

I’ll be covering a lot here. This is going to be my longest article yet.

But I won’t be covering the troubled and insane development of the NGSW and how it came to be; that would take a book, enough alcohol in the world doesn’t exist to numb me for that struggle. And I won’t be covering the past or the troubled politics of its chief patron, nor will I dwell on the dumbass retired general who acted as the ultimate “Good Idea Fairy” for this program, whose had some other truly whacko ideas in the past that frustratingly were also taken seriously by the top US mil brass, who are supposed to know better.

A Swing and a Miss

Only three manufacturers submitted bids for NGSW. This is what won:

6.8x51mm Cartridge: Designed by SIG Sauer, Inc. known for their recent explosion into the US defense industry, where they’ve begun dominating small arms procurement. To meet the cartridge requirements of the NSGW program, it uses a hybrid case with a brass body and steel case head, a novel design needed to meet the high-pressure requirements of mimicking the performance of a .270 Weatherby Magnum out of a 13” barrel in a full-automatic capable assault rifle. The bullet’s slicker profile and higher velocity gives it such an extended range that the standard combat cartridge can’t even be used on the standard US Army rifle ranges, it exceeds most range’s Surface Danger Zone (SDZ), requiring a reduced range for general training use. Additionally, a “special purpose” tungsten-tipped, armor piercing round is also meant to be issued in wartime settings.

Total cost per round of ammo: $2.15 for the combat round (Page 100 of PDF) and $12.30 for special purpose (Page 112 of PDF).

XM7: Originally submitted as the XM5, the XM7 is a repurposed and slightly modified MCX-MR, a failed submission attempt for the US Army’s 2015 era M110A1 Designated Marksman Rifle program trial, rechambered from 7.62x51 NATO to their proprietary 6.8x51 cartridge, with a shorter barrel and SIG brand suppressor. Effectively, take an AR-10, combine the short-stroke piston from a HK-417 with the dual recoil assembly of the AR-18, and you get the XM7 Rifle.

Total cost per rifle: $4,400 (page 201 of PDF).

XM250: SIG’s “automatic rifle” submission seems to be a slightly redesigned 338 Norma Mag Machine Gun, shortened and lightened, weighing approximately 13 lbs unloaded, without the suppressor. It uses a proprietary “short recoil impulse averaging weapon system” that includes a reciprocating barrel, meant to reduce felt recoil, which sounds pretty cool. However, please note in pics, the absence of any mechanism to quickly detach the barrel; problematic for a belt fed light machine gun firing a notoriously “hot” cartridge.

Total cost per “automatic rifle: $11,300 (page 194 of PDF).

XM157 Fire Control Optic: The boldest element of the NGSW program was submitted by Vortex Optics, an otherwise very reputable scope manufacturer. Designated the Fire Control Optic (FCO), their submission was intended to solve most of the aspects of external ballistics, factors affecting the projectile’s trajectory after it leaves the barrel and before it hits the target. The FCO is an all-in-one system that can detect range with a laser range finder, detect barometric pressure with a barometer, solve angle firing by calculating inclination/declination, calculate trajectory with a built-in ballistic calculator, with the ability to superimpose an electronic aiming point “hold” on the 1-8x power etched reticle that corrects for range, angle and a full value 10 mile per hour wind (assuming the shooter knows the wind speed and direction, which is another ballgame altogether). Additionally, the FCO comes with an Infrared (IR) aiming laser, though not an illuminator (which means the need to also mount a PEQ-2 or other device to the weapon).

Total cost per optic: $12,600 (page 208 of PDF).

That is what the Army got. How does NGSW work?

Not well. The testing of NGSW has revealed a litany of problems:

· Early issued NGSW weapons had issues with “accuracy and fumes” Source

· XM7/ XM157 "exhibited a low probability of completing a 72-hour wartime mission without a critical failure." Source

· The XM7 frequently malfunctions Source

· The suppressor breaks if twisted by hand if already locked Source

· 6.8x51 hybrid ammunition routinely regularly breaks apart, causing stuck cases/failure to extract with the XM250 Source

· "Soldiers also rated the usability of the XM157 Fire Control below average or failing" Source

· “The Vortex XM157 is shit" Source

· The XM157 FCO’s laser range finder doesn't work in rain or fog Source

· The XM157 FCO IR Laser can be detected by existing issued near-peer enemy equipment Source

Apparently, the NGSW sucks.

But meh, those could just be teething issues, right? So let’s explore the concept of NGSW and see how that holds out.

People Aren’t Tanks #1: The Fallacy of Buying Hits

Per Army issued talking points, the NGSW is often compared to a tank’s fire control system and cannon, the narrative that the NGSW’s Fire Control Optic and high-pressure/high-velocity ammunition allows for routine center-mass kill shots against enemy troops out to 600 meters or further, body armor or not. Buying hits with technology.

But they couldn't be further from the truth.

I’m going to take their comparison with tank cannons a step further. Picture an old tank, before the age of gun stabilizers, rangefinders, or digital fire control systems. Assuming the cannon is properly boresighted, its greatest difficulty hitting a stationary target beyond the maximum point-blank range will come down range estimation. But let’s say that the gunner knows the range to target.

If the gunner breathes while aiming, will that disturb the tank cannon’s optical reticle positioning in relation to the target? What if the gunner is excited and hyperventilating, will the reticle be bouncing? Does the gunner need to demonstrate good bone support or any other aspect of a good shooting position to steady the tank sights and barrel to achieve a hit?

Of course not. All of those aren't factors needing to be considered by the tank gunner, because that tank cannon is not being supported by human bones and muscles or the intelligent use of artificial support, it’s got gears to stabilize it. If an old school tank isn’t moving, the barrel isn’t moving. If it’s newer and has a stabilizer, even if the tank is moving, the barrel isn’t.

Not so with small arms, where there are many more factors involved with accuracy besides knowing range or other aspects of external ballistics. Those factors are called the “Fundamentals of Marksmanship,” they assume the shooter can calculate trajectory properly and instead focus on the aspects of firing a weapon that will always be valid to achieve hits: Steady position, Aiming, Breath control, and Trigger squeeze.

How much do they influence accuracy? As an example, let’s examine the US Army’s fairly recent rifle qualification test. With human torso-sized pop-up targets positioned 25 to 300 meters away from the shooter, inside the maximum point-blank range of 5.56, range estimation wasn’t a factor. And yet, how well did the Army’s Soldiers score? Generally, not well.

Let’s examine the US Marine Corps’ fairly recent rifle qualification. Firing at known distances of 200, 300, and 500 yards, the shooters benefited from range flags hanging everywhere, allowing the use of formulas like these to solve wind speed and direction. Despite external ballistics barely being a factor, qualifying as a Marksman was difficult, let alone Expert. I can’t find official figures for the USMC rifle qualification scores, but I served as a marksmanship coach in the Marines, I supervised the qualification process, and as others like me can attest, qualifying as an Expert was the exception, not the rule.

Those were flat ranges, shooters weren’t exhausted or stressed, targets were easy to find, fully exposed, weren’t moving, and weren’t shooting back either. And yet reliable hits were difficult to achieve inside 300 meters, let alone 600 meters. Meaning, that despite the laser-like trajectory of the heavy-recoiling 6.8x51 cartridge and the features of the Fire Control Optic, despite its hefty price tag, NGSW is not going to buy more hits, because the NGSW program has no real answers to aid the fundamentals of marksmanship.

Let’s ignore all the fundamentals but “Steady Position,” aka stability. Obviously, that can be done by resting the weapon on something to support it, like a pack, sandbag, ledge, berm, etc. There are other solutions available that can even be attached to the weapon to help with stability too. In the past, it was often achieved with a sling. In the present, many weapons carry bipods, typically found on designated marksman and sniper rifles, as well as all light machine guns. Camera-type tripods are commonly used by snipers, while specialized tripods are famously used with machine guns. Not to mention the use of sandsocks or more elaborate shooter bags used by snipers, precision shooters, and long-range hunters alike. All in an effort to help gain added stability to increase hit probability.

The XM250 "Automatic Rifle" comes with a bipod, but the XM7 rifle does not. Why not? Despite the designer’s intention to penetrate small ballistic plates covering the center-chest of enemy soldiers standing 600 meters away (a target size of less than 2 Minutes of Angle), the XM7 didn’t come with a bipod because the fundamentals of marksmanship are alien to those running the NGSW program, who were and are totally and utterly clueless about how hits are achieved with small arms.

Unfortunately, that is not all they are clueless about.

People Aren’t Tanks #2: The Fallacy of Armor Penetration

As previously mentioned, a central theme for NGSW is to penetrate enemy body armor out to 600 meters. How critical is that need? I’m liking that tank analogy, I’m going to use it one more time to demonstrate how stupid the NGSW concept is.

Modern tanks are fully protected against small arms fire and light high explosive fragmentation (HE-Frag), with parts of it much more protected, specifically frontally, to stop anti-tank armor piercing (AP) projectiles. Most modern 3rd Generation Main Battle Tanks have the equivalent of a whole meter of rolled homogenous steel on their turret mantlet and hull glacis, presenting a daunting challenge to penetrate them to achieve kills.

In comparison to tank armor, the standard issue body armor worn by the best-equipped infantrymen today typically consists of a Kevlar-based plate carrier that has a little bit more coverage than the rifle-rated ballistic plates they carry, worn on the front, back, and maybe the sides of the torso. Add a ballistic helmet covering the upper head that is also rated to stop light fragmentation and maybe some small arms fire. The result is that approximately 20% of the total surface area of the human body is protected from small arms fire and HE-Frag.

What if tank armor were more like an infantryman’s?

Meet the Mark 69 Man-Tank, which also has the habit of marrying strippers

Does that look like an imposing target?

With just a ballistic plate on its chest and a helmet on its head, if you were a defense planner, would you feel the need to produce a more powerful tank cannon and ammunition type to penetrate that very limited amount of armor protecting the hull glacis of the Mk-69 Man-Tank? Is acquiring a 130mm gun to fire larger and faster depleted uranium sabots still paramount?

Hell no. If Mk-69 Man-Tank was the threat, there would be no need to penetrate its armor, the easiest solution would be to avoid it. Any smaller caliber rounds could be used. Or better yet, HE-Frag would become the primary anti-tank munition, peppering the fleshy exterior of the Mk-69 Man-Tank with fragmentation from a nearby detonation.

That same common-sense lesson should apply to squad-level infantry weapons intending to kill or wound human beings wearing limited amounts of body armor: Avoid the plates, hit what isn’t protected.

Modern body armor is nice and all, it reduces casualties, especially deaths. And it does act as a morale booster, motivating wearers to take greater risks because of the perceived feeling that they are safer. But it’s still not all that effective at protecting people from enemy fire.

Just look at our own recent history, the US military spent nearly 20 years engaged in wars wearing ballistic plates the whole time, fighting various enemies who were largely without the means to penetrate our ballistic plates. Did those wearing SAPI or ESAPI plates feel safer while being shot at? Were we (me included) harder to suppress than without? No.

Look at Syria and the DAESH War in Iraq, or the current Russo-Ukraine War, where the wearing of ballistic plates was commonplace. Was there a demand in those conflicts by combatants for better armor penetration capabilities for small arms? No.

Within the US military, the most highly skilled and experienced gunfighters reside within Special Operations Command (SOCOM). They are the tip of the spear when it comes to the development of small arms, marksmanship, and small unit tactics. They also have a budget that every conventional force salivates over, and the freedom to largely buy what they want. Are they demanding better armor penetration capabilities for small arms? No.

That’s all called a clue.

Let’s take this discussion about battlefield lethality a step further. What is known to be much more effective at causing casualties than small arms fire? HE-Frag, by a staggering margin, and that’s been the case repeatedly since WW1 when artillery was the primary casualty-producing weapon by far, the definitive “King of Battle.” And HE-Frag type weaponry has remained the “King of Battle” in every legit war fought since.

Not surprisingly, bullets need to hit a target to cause damage, whereas HE-Frag projectiles can miss and still cause damage, as long as they miss close enough to detonate their bursting charge to trigger hundreds or thousands of individual projectiles to fly outwards to hit nearby targets.

What targets are most vulnerable against HE-Frag? None more so than the fluid-filled meat sacks called human beings, including those that are only partly covered by body armor, aka modern infantrymen. Not only are they susceptible to holes poked in them, but they can also suffer from blast effects to the brain and lungs, flash burns, etc.

In terms of HE-Frag, the US Army’s infantry rifle squad and platoon already possess M67 fragmentation hand grenades and 40mm HEDP grenades that can miss an enemy by 5 meters and still kill them, miss by 15 meters and still wound them. The standard issue HE-Frag round used by the M3 MAAWS “Carl Gustaf”, issued to every US Army infantry platoon, can miss enemy soldiers by 50-70 meters and still kill/wound them. Most impressive.

And yet we could do better. Want to really increase infantry small unit lethality? Then the US Army should invest in what is well-known to work: HE-Frag.

Hits and Misses

Don’t get me wrong, small arms are important. Gunshot wounds kill between 10-30% of enemy combatants in warfare. Small arms are especially crucial in the close fight, conducting or repelling assaults. But not every bullet fired is going to hit a person. And as every trained infantryman knows, they aren’t meant to, don’t need to, and shouldn’t, as most small arms fire is suppressive in nature.

Simply put, suppression is a psychological effect where, for the duration of the shooter’s incoming fire, the shootee is unable to perform whatever their job is, instead focusing on preserving their own life.

Suppressive fire shouldn’t be intended to miss, as hits on enemy targets have the greatest suppression effect; nothing puckers an asshole better than watching your buddy get hit. But close misses work especially well too, with the consensus being that the small arms fire must pass by or impact within 1 to 3.5 meters away from a person to achieve a reliable suppression effect.

I've criticized NGSW enough, but here is a positive: 6.8x51 has better terminal ballistics than 5.56 NATO, the 6.8 projectile is over twice the weight of 5.56 and going faster too. Not only will it do more damage to flesh, muscles, bone, and organs, but it’ll have better barrier performance too, not even considering the dedicated "Special Purpose" tungsten-tipped AP round.

So in theory, 6.8x51 should perform better at suppression than 5.56 NATO and probably 7.62 NATO too. As countless studies have proven, the audible indicator of a nearby passing round, the fabled "snap" or "crack," plays a big part in suppression. Simply put, the wider the bullet, the faster it's going, the greater the snap. That has a direct correlation with terrifying an opponent who is being fired at. And when it comes to barrier penetration, the 6.8mm wide bullet will penetrate more than 5.56 NATO, at further ranges too. Therefore, those on the receiving end should theoretically feel the need to take extra cover to protect themselves against it, more than 5.56 NATO.

But what suppresses better than small arms? High explosives and fragmentation. If the US Army wants better suppression capabilities, they should invest in more HE-Frag, not small arms cartridges.

Plus, while individual 6.8x51 NGSW cartridges might be better one-on-one than 5.56 NATO, suppression only lasts as long as the target is being fired at, which has a direct correlation with the ammo loadout and fire rates.

The Soldier's Load

When comparing the basic combat loads of 6.8x51 NGSW to 5.56 NATO, there is a dangerous discrepancy.

A 5.56 NATO cartridge weighs 12 grams, 6.8x51 weighs 22 grams, only slightly lighter than 7.62 NATO’s 24 grams. Not only is 6.8x51 almost twice the weight as 5.56 NATO, almost the same weight as 7.62 NATO, it has the same bulk, width, thickness, and length of 7.62 NATO too. That can only mean the basic combat load for NGSW will need to be reduced in size compared to 5.56 NATO, or comparable in size at the cost of adding much more weight and bulk.

For example, the current basic load for 5.56 NATO chambered rifles is 7x 30-round magazines, for a total of 210 rounds. The standard combat load for the XM7 is said to be 7x 20-round magazines, for a total of 140 rounds. That’s a 33% decrease in the combat load that comes with more weight too, with bulkier magazine pouches.

Comparison of belt-fed squad automatic weapon ammunition reveals the same problem. For roughly the same weight, the 6.8x51 belt-fed ammunition stored in fabric ammunition pouches, AKA “nutsacks,” will hold 50-round and 100-round belts, whereas 5.56 NATO nutsacks will hold 100-round and 200-round belts. The result is that the XM250 gunner’s combat loadout will be either far less than 5.56 NATO, or heavier and bulkier. That’s especially a problem, since the concept of an automatic rifle/SAW is specifically for suppression.

Overall, the choice to pursue NGSW runs counter to existing problems relating to the increasing weight of the soldier’s loads. Which has already been a long-standing issue throughout the Global War on Terror, and it’s still a problem such today that the US Army recently set a maximum 55 lb combat load, which would include everything carried in battle.

*Fun fact: the same brilliant general officer pushing the weight reduction for infantry is also defending NGSW problems

Interestingly, one of the other bid submissions for NGSW came from General Dynamics; its rifle and automatic rifle submissions were lackluster, but their ammunition type was very intriguing, using a composite/polymer case. I think the greatest potential for their design had nothing to do with the NGSW program, it’s that the ammunition manufacturer has already started mass-producing composite cased 5.56 NATO ammunition, which is 30% lighter than brass-cased 5.56 NATO ammo, with zero compatibility issues with existing weapons.

Meaning, if the US Army had been smart enough, they could have kept their 5.56 NATO weaponry, while making the ammunition lighter, allowing the infantrymen to carry the same combat load for less weight, helping solve the Army’s goal for a 55 lb combat Load. But alas…

[Insert Witty Quote About Logistics]

Ammunition-wise, the efforts of the West to support Ukraine in its current war has shown that stockpile depth among NATO and Asian allies largely sucks.

Even the US hasn’t properly stockpiled enough ammunition for war. And minus South Korea, nobody else we plan to ally with for a future war has even close to our stockpile depth, let alone what will be needed. The scary truth is that in the next war we land ourselves in, especially for a Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) type, our allies are going to be reliant on US military logistical support, they are going to need us to provide them with ammunition.

If we go to 6.8x51 NGSW, what about our allies?

Over the last few generations, we dragged them into accepting 7.62 NATO, they standardized with that caliber for all their weapons. Then we dragged them into 5.56 NATO, they standardized their infantry squad weapons with that caliber too. Now we’re investing the bulk of the US Army’s wartime small arms ammunition needs (infantry and engineers) to 6.8x51, an ammunition type that isn’t compatible even with the rest of the US Army, let alone the US Marines, SOCOM, JSOC, or other branches of service. Let alone America’s strategic allies.

That doesn’t sound like a rational decision. Especially because, as I mentioned earlier, we’re not actually gaining any sort of benefits in lethality with this transition to 6.8x51. The only way NGSW will act as a “Game Changer” will by crippling the small arms logistics of the US and its allies.

The Real Game Changer: Reconnaissance Fires Complex

I love small arms, but its missing the forest for the trees. As some are laser focused on small arms, they are ignoring that the US Army infantry platoon and squad already has the capabilities of establishing its own organic Reconnaissance Fires Complex.

I’ve ranted about this topic in the past in regards to Russia and Ukraine, it’s worth reading for those who haven’t. For those of you too lazy, recon fires complex is just a fancy way of saying an integrated sensor shooter loop: Detect target, report target, fire at target, hit target, as fast and accurately as possible.

The US Army infantry platoon and squad already possess the key systems to create the system. They have the battlefield tracker situational awareness systems. They have secure radios to communicate. They already have fires, M3 MAAWS, grenade launchers, Javelins, AT-4s, medium machine guns, and small arms. In terms of sensors, the guys on the ground act as the sensors to find and plot targets, aided by magnified optics, night vision equipment, thermal imagery, etc.

Without any new equipment, they could already create new tactics emphasizing reconnaissance fires complex. If they wanted to better invest to improve small unit lethality, then they could and should improve the sensor shooter loop. Augment the infantry platoon and squad with better comms, more sensors, and more effective weapon systems. Thermal imaging devices, small reconnaissance drones, small strike drones, more HE-Frag weaponry.

Attention US Army Leaders,

Do the right thing. Take NGSW out behind the tool shed and blow its brains out.

Regards,

Someone Who Cares…

Even at the time, it was known that talks were occurring only days into the start of the war. But they seemed to go nowhere, reportedly fizzling out around May, at which point Ukraine’s President Zelensky laid out his ultimatum that there could be no peace until Russia returned all Ukrainian territory, and then some.

However, some kernels of truth started to appear here and there. For example, also in May, the Ukrainians were suggesting the timing coincided with the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s surprise visit to Kyiv on April 9. Nothing too controversial yet.

Then, by Fall 2022, more info was revealed, with an in-depth report stating that “negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim.” In other words, the war nearly ended only months after it started. In hindsight, that sounds quite nice.

And then in March 2023, the bombshell dropped when the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Istanbul Peace Deal talks, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) member Davyd Arakhamiia, said this:

“Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let's just fight.”

Wait, what? Did Johnson scuttle the peace talks? That’s pretty crazy.

It only got crazier since then. More and more information trickled out through 2024, leading to lots of discussion about what has become known commonly as the Istanbul Peace Deal, which is how I’m going to refer to it. Much was said to describe what happened and why it fell apart, including by those who had been personally involved in the negotiations. Generalizing, I noticed two talking points in particular that seem to dominate the discussion.

One version is that the West had nothing to do with the decision to end talks, that the realization of the Bucha Massacre eroded trust, that the Russian terms dictated to Ukraine were too punitive, and Ukraine didn’t trust Russia anyway.

The other version says the UK and US forced Ukraine to reject any deal and to keep fighting on, such as Arakhamiia’s account that said if Ukraine did agree to such a deal, the UK government wouldn’t honor it.

I don’t like either of those talking points. Instead, I’m going to offer you a third version of events, my version. One that came to me primarily because of my intense infatuation with the minutia of the Russo-Ukraine War. I wasn’t seeking this information out looking for an alternative theory as to what really killed the Istanbul Peace Deal, but the dots were connected as I noticed them.

Try to follow along…

“Amateurs Talk about Tactics, but Professionals Study Logistics”

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a prestigious British defense think-tank, has had their defense analysts regularly interacting with the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian Armed Forces on fact finding trips that have resulted in a dozen or so highly detailed reports on the war, which I consider essential reading to militarily understand this conflict. I don’t agree with everything they say, but I still appreciate it.

One report in particular was written in November 2022, titled Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022, and it discussed the initial invasion of Ukraine up until the culmination of the Russian Spring-Summer 2022 Donbas Offensive.

Check out this hidden gem:

[Before the war started] The UAF had 1,176 barrel artillery systems, of which 742 were 152-mm calibre systems, 421 were 122-mm howitzers, and 13 units were 203-mm systems…

The UAF had ammunition to support these systems in high-intensity warfighting for just over six weeks.

At the time when I read it, I mentally noted it, packaged it and stored it away, and didn’t think much about it. Other than wondering why an artillery-centric army that had been at war with another artillery-centric army, Russia, for the better part of a decade, and who had made it their national strategy in March 2021 to “deoccupy” their lost territory (requiring more warfare against Russia), only managed to have about six weeks worth of artillery ammo stockpiled. You’d think they’d have more, right?

But in hindsight, that was a huge revelation. Most of the Russo-Ukraine War can be accurately described as a war of artillery, especially in the early part. Contrary to memes and sensational reporting, the Russian invasion wasn’t defeated by St. Javelin, courtesy of the US, but by Ukrainian artillery firing COMBLOC-caliber ammunition.

What is six weeks from the invasion date of February 24th? April 6th.

Remember that date, it will make more sense in a bit.

The Cost of Violating a Principle of War

You’d be hard pressed to find any short list of the principles of warfare without the element of surprise being listed, it’s that crucial for success. I know what you’re thinking, surprise is not always possible to achieve, be it tactical, operational, or strategic surprise, but it tends to act as a significant force multiplier when it’s possible.

In comparison, can you think of any credible person who would recommend deliberately revealing future military operations to the enemy with public announcements? No, because that’s just dumb.

And yet, that’s what happened on March 25, 2022, when a senior Russian general representing the General Staff, obviously speaking with permission by Putin, Shoigu, and Gerasimov, told the Russian media and the world that the invasion of Ukraine had succeeded (lol), that “all main goals of the first stage of the operation are in general complete“ (lol), and more so, also reported that the Russian Armed Forces were going to shift the focus of military strategy to the “liberation of the Donbas.”

Thereby telegraphing Russia’s upcoming strategic offensive targeting the Donbas.

I was following the war then, and that announcement shocked me. Why in God’s name would the Russians tell the world and the Ukrainians that they were about to attack the Donbas in strength? Even if Ukrainian or Western intel could pick up indications of the offensive coming, it baffled me that they’d give it away anyway, thereby giving weeks to the AFU to rush forces to defend the Donbas, dig in, and prep.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Russians went on to launch the Donbas Offensive a bit over three weeks later. And no surprise, the AFU had time to rush forces there to defend the Donbas in strength, greatly limiting the success of the RUAF offensive, and managing to attrit the Russians badly enough that it set the conditions for the successful Ukrainian Fall 2022 Counteroffensives.

Why announce it in advance? It made no sense at the time. Key words: at the time.

In March and April 2022, it didn’t make any sense. In March-April 2025, it makes sense. Let’s look into an extended timeline to figure out why.

Duncan’s Definitive Timeline of What Really Happened®

February 24: The invasion started.

February 27: The Istanbul peace talks started.

March 25: The Russian government publicly announced that their “Special Military Operation” has succeeded so far, and that they are planning an upcoming offensive to conquer the Donbas.

March 27: The Russians retreated from Sumy Oblast, which was supporting the left flank of the Kyiv operational axis.

March 28: The Russians retreated from Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, allowing the Ukrainians to liberate the city.

March 29: Russian diplomats announced they would “decrease military activities around Kyiv and Chernihiv” as a diplomatic “gesture of goodwill.”

April 4: While visiting the recently liberated city of Bucha, another Kyiv suburb, to witness the aftermath of Russian war crimes perpetrated there, Zelensky said diplomatic talks are still on because “Ukraine must have peace.”

April 6: Ukraine was about to run out of artillery ammunition.

April 8: The British passed a £100 aid bill for Ukraine, while the EU imposed more economic sanctions against Russia, while Biden announced that the US 1) would be trading Patriot air defenses missiles to Slovakia for its S-300 air defense systems and ammo to send to Ukraine and 2) had imposed more economic sanctions against Russia.

April 9: Boris Johnson visited Kyiv to talk to Zelensky, promising major financial and military pledges from the UK at least.

April 12: Putin announced that the peace deal was collapsing.

April 13: Biden announced a major aid package for Ukraine, “an additional $800 million in weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance to Ukraine,” which would include heavy equipment, lots of US military artillery pieces, and ammunition from the US artillery stockpile.

Putting the Pieces Together

When Ukraine was invaded, it had just enough artillery ammo to make it into early April, then they were going to be in trouble. By then, Ukraine was still on its own in terms of military heavy equipment, with the West only providing ATGMs, MANPADS, helmets, small arms, hand grenades, stuff like that, but hadn’t committed anything more substantial.

In comparison, while the Russian Armed Forces had botched the invasion, they had barely tapped into their vast ammunition stockpiles. Which is legendary, one of the largest in the world. How deep? By August 2022 they supposedly fired about 7 million artillery rounds, so that deep. That would mean future offensives would be the total opposite in comparison to the invasion: Centrally planned, fires-centric, methodical advances. Old Cold War-era stories used to say that Soviet artillery fire missions erased grid squares off the map, that was what the Russians could bring to the table.

But to pull off a future offensive requires more than just their ammo stockpiles transferred to Ukraine, the Russians would need to mass forces at one location. But that’s a problem, where are they supposed to come from? Remember, their invasion plan was ridiculous, they had operational units stretched all over Ukraine. And almost no strategic reserves left to commit, the cupboard was bare, which meant that massing in one location meant transferring units from one location to another. They’d need to rob Peter to pay Paul. Who was going to play Peter and Paul?

By mid-March, the Russians had two and a half military districts worth of units committed to the Kyiv axis (Central and Eastern Military Districts and half of Western MD), half of two military districts committed to the Donbas (Western and Southern MDs), and half of one military district committed to the South (Southern MD). To support a larger offensive anywhere, at least one of those strategic fronts would need to be terminated.

It had to be Kyiv. To support a greater offensive there required reinforcements, retreating either out of the Donbas region, a long-term Russian objective to take control of, or to pull out of the South and evacuate the Land Bridge, which was the only truly successful front of the invasion. Plus, what’s the point in reinforcing the Kyiv front to take the city? What does that net the Russians? It only really made sense as a strategic target initially, as it was the main effort of their initial coup de main invasion plan to decapitate the Ukrainian government. But by mid-March, that didn’t seem realistic, the Ukrainian government wasn’t keen on quitting, at least not without cause. Therefore, the options left for a future offensive were either the South or the Donbas. There are good political and military reasons for both, for whatever reason the Russian leadership chose the Donbas.

With that, the retreat from the Kyiv front was ordered. Already reported by March 27, done orderly, the decision would have been made at least a week earlier. That “peace gesture” freed up three military districts worth of units to transfer eastwards to support the upcoming Donbas Offensive, killing two birds with one stone. Militarily, it freed up forces and supplies. Diplomatically, the retreat may have helped sell the negotiations to Ukraine, especially with the diplomatic gesture that came with it.

“I'm Gonna Make Him an Offer He Can't Refuse”

In mid-March, imagine what the Ukrainian political and top military leaders were thinking.

Surely, they were ecstatic for having survived so far, and performed so well too, stopping the Russian invasion and giving them a serious bloody nose/black eye too. But once the excitement over their initial successes wore off, they must have been terrified of the future. After all, it’s not like they didn’t know about their own ammunition shortage and its implications.

Remember, the top Ukrainian generals knew exactly how the Russian generals fight, because they and the Russian top leadership were all from the same school, literally. Not a few serving AFU generals started their careers as Soviet officers, while the rest of the 1990s era AFU officers holding the top positions in 2022 were close facsimiles of the Soviet officer corps because nothing really changed. Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, both armies still largely followed Soviet doctrine for their Soviet styled, organized, and equipped forces that were still best described as “artillery armies with tanks,” just like the Soviet Ground Forces.

In mid-March 2022, those Ukrainian generals would have known two things: Their ammunition stocks were soon going to run out, while the Russians hadn’t even really tapped into their vast ammunition stocks yet. Without artillery ammo of their own to counter Russian fires, it’s game over. If the AFU attempted to defend against a well-supplied, fires-centric Russian offensive, I’m sure they would have fought valiantly, but they would also be destroyed in the process. And with the AFU destroyed, who is going to protect the nation? Then all of Ukraine would be back on the table for Russia to conquer.

And that is where the March 25 telegraphing of the Donbas Offensive suddenly makes sense, it had everything to do with the Ukrainian ammunition situation. Whether or not the Russians knew about the Ukrainian ammunition shortage doesn’t even really matter, Ukraine knew. Russia only needed to believe Ukraine was weak, that a properly supplied and performed future offensive couldn’t fail.

Why couldn’t it fail? Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian doctrine views warfare scientifically, an assortment of math problems with algebraic formulas that dictate success or failure, which especially applies to artillery nomograms formulas that they love using. Per their doctrine, having quantified everything, having crunched the numbers, they solved for N, which told them they were going to destroy the AFU during the upcoming offensive. How do they know? The universal language of math told them so!

(Photo: A Russian General Staff officer planning the Donbas Offensive)

Telegraphing that offensive was a diplomatic gesture akin to Russia pointing a loaded pistol at Ukraine’s head, the ultimate “Or else” threat. Using a Godfather analogy, this is effectively what telegraphing the Donbas Offensive was meant to achieve:

“Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.”

If the Ukrainians were smart, they’d submit, and Russia wins. If they were stupid and brave, Russia still wins. Win-Win.

That was why the terms of the Istanbul Peace Deal were so punitive. The Russians mandated a requirement for the Ukrainians to significantly de-militarize (cut the size of the AFU), adopt a “No NATO” pledge (requiring a constitutional amendment), and came with a ridiculous “security guarantee” that give Russia the power to veto it (meaning Russia could veto efforts to stop a future Russian invasion of Ukraine).

Let’s be frank, those are terms for the loser of the war. Up until that point, Ukraine wasn’t losing. Or more so, they didn’t appear to be losing. But due to their logistical issues, if they kept fighting, they would have lost, big time.

The Ukrainians knew this. Hence, while visiting Bucha on April 4, Zelensky was still saying Ukraine would need to seek peace, ergo accept the Istanbul Peace Deal. What other choice did he have? At that point, even with rationing, Ukraine was probably running very low on artillery ammo. Continued resistance was suicide. Imagine how pissed Zelensky was, standing in that suburb of Kyiv to verify the war crimes perpetrated against his people, while having to tell the media that he still intends to accept a negotiated peace deal, one that we now know definitively favored Russia. Ukraine had stopped the Russian initial invasion on their own, mobilized the better part of a million Ukrainians under arms, a massive army of pissed-off patriots wanting to keep fighting, but they can’t.

Or can they?

The Proxy War Begins

As all of that was playing out, what was the West thinking?

We know now that before the war started and in the first week, they didn’t think the Ukrainians could stop the Russians, and were planning on supporting an insurgency inside Ukraine against the expected Russian occupation, and offering Zelensky offers to escape to a safe haven to form a government in exile.

Then a miracle happened. The Russians botched the invasion and Ukraine performed much better than expected. Without any real help from the West, Ukraine had already defeated Russia’s invasion plan. Supporting a government in exile and supplying an insurgency against Russia wouldn’t be necessary as long as Ukraine was properly supplied, and if they were then they even be able to militarily defeat Russia.

That must have seemed to Joe Biden and Boris Johnson as the ultimate opportunity to use Ukraine to defeat Russia, potentially resulting in Putin being overthrown. So they took it. Sometime around the end of March and the first week of April, the machinations began and an agreement was reached between the US and UK: major military support for Ukraine was now on the table. With that, their administrations started to maneuver, rolling out various military and financial aid packages to Ukraine while imposing more economic sanctions against Russia.

But somebody had to communicate their plan to Zelensky, and that explains Boris Johnson’s trip to Kyiv. Acting as the emissary of the West, it was his job to give Zelensky the good news. What did he say? I seriously doubt Johnson needed to force Zelensky to fight on. After all, the Istanbul Peace Deal terms were loser terms. What Johnson offered Zelensky was an “Option B,” if Ukraine agreed (and they seemed to want it), the US-UK and others would support them with what they needed to fight on and defeat Russia.

With that, Zelensky agreed. And within days of Johnson’s visits, the promised aid was unlocked, with Biden announcing the $800 million aid bill. And within days of that, the Istanbul Peace Deal was dead. And the military hardware rolled into Ukraine, including artillery shells and artillery pieces galore.

Why the Deception?

With utmost modesty, my brilliant theory makes so much sense. And yet there is no peep of it from anyone involved in the negotiations.

Could I be wrong? Could all those factoids that I’ve mentioned, the dwindling ammunition stockpiles, Russia’s retreats, telegraphing the Donbas Offensive, Boris Johnson’s visits, etc, all be legitimate and yet unrelated to the decision to kill the Istanbul Peace Deal? Possibly. I’ve been wrong before.

Or could this theory be legit? Maybe I am the first to put this together from the outside, requiring an obsessive-compulsive war nerd to have found the evidence. After all, how many public personalities obsess over military logistics like I do? Who reads RUSI reports for fun?

But why hide it in the first place? If I’m right, why isn’t anybody in the US-UK governments or from Bankova Street in Kyiv eager to talk about the real reasons the talks broke down?

Qui Bono, who benefits? If I am right, why would they want to say so?

How do the US and UK governments benefit from deviating from their established narratives, that they had nothing to do with the decision for Ukraine to reject the peace and fight on? Sticking to their story makes them look less imperialistic, less manipulative, less patronizing. It makes the conflict appear less like the Proxy War that it has absolutely morphed into. It publicly empowers the Zelensky administration and the Ukrainians. More so, it places responsibility for whatever happened after April 2022 on the Ukrainians, as clean a hand-washing gesture as ever done, Pontius Pilate would be proud.

How does Zelensky’s administration benefit from deviating from their established narrative, that the Bucha Massacre was the reason talks ended, that Russia can’t be trusted to honor any peace deal, that Ukraine never took the deal seriously to begin with? Sticking to their story hides Ukrainian unpreparedness for war, it makes them seem less needy to the West to bail them out and save Ukraine, they appear less the Proxy, and most of all, their established narratives describes Zelensky as strong and brave, Churchillian, never having truly contemplated capitulation during the darkest hours.

My Two Cents Dollars [inflation sucks]

In hindsight, three years later, with the untold dead, disabled, displaced, with all the ruin to their nations and economies, with the instability and tensions caused by the Russo-Ukraine War, the Istanbul Peace Deal seems like a wasted opportunity. But was it?

In truth, the terms of the Istanbul Peace Deal stunk, they a loser’s deal for Ukraine. But I think that was the point, because Ukraine was the loser at the time, despite few knowing it then and few knowing it now. After all, running out of the most critical type of supply needed to hold back the Russians, let alone win, is as good a reason as any to throw in the towel and accept losing terms. But with a clear lifeline thrown to them, why not keep fighting? Especially if economic sanctions are supposed to do most of the heavy lifting to force Putin to capitulate, they were the decisive weapon to destroy Russia. Continued Ukrainian military success really would just have been the icing on the cake to lick Russia.

Was Russia wrong for pressuring Ukraine too much? Offering too harsh of terms, blatantly telegraphing an offensive they were then forced to execute afterwards? In hindsight, definitely. But their opponent appeared weak. Isn’t that when harsh terms are possible? Also, maybe those harsh terms seemed merciful to the Russian leadership at the time. After all, if they just went ahead and launched their Donbas Offensive, which can’t possibly lose (science says so!), they’d destroy the AFU and the terms at that point would be even worse for Ukraine. By offering any terms beforehand they might have felt they were in fact being merciful.

Was the West wrong to bail Ukraine out with a promise to support Ukraine that they didn’t keep? It seems irresponsible now in hindsight, especially as 2022 and 2023 proved the US-UK leadership had significant limits on what they’d actually offer to Ukraine as military aid. But who knew in April 2022 that it would be necessary for NATO militaries to effectively strip naked to give to Ukraine, and then go to a wartime economy all to support the Russo-Ukraine War? Who knew that the Russians would be willing to weather years of harsh economic sanctions and suffer huge military losses in manpower and equipment, just for Ukraine?

I think that all perfectly encapsulates the biggest issues from the early days of the war to the present: assumptions. And as I was taught as a recruit in the Marine Corps:

When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the Russo-Ukraine War has made an ass out of all the political leadership involved. But, unfortunately, like throughout history, they’re not the ones who pay the price…

At the time, there was lot of talk from within the global defense community, professionals and online shitlords alike, about the need for the US and NATO to take Cold War 2.0 seriously to prepare for a “Near Peer” conflict against Russia. I’d participated in quite a few online discussions on that topic here and there, which is why the very first blog article I had planned to write was about what to expect from the Russians in what is now called a Large-Scale Combat Operation (LSCO).

But alas, this article was never fully written out, and my blog took an additional seven Goddamn years to create. Life seems to find ways to interfere with the best-laid plans...

Nevertheless, I decided now to leave this as it was written originally, just a collection of rants in bullet point paragraphs, and am posting it here to show that even I, the Great and Mighty Duncan the Wise, am fallible, capable of expressing crappy viewpoints on occasion, and am sometimes utterly full of shit. Also, I want to emphasize that learning is a lifelong process that should never end, as demonstrated by this article, as I’ve surely learned a lot since 2018.

For shits and giggles, I’m including my 2025 opinions under each paragraph of my 2018 opinions that are in italics. For added amusement, I’m doing it as if we’re different people, that the 2025 Duncan is replying to the 2018 Duncan on a discussion forum.

• Any forces likely poised or planned for any important operation, especially against NATO forces, would almost surely come from the brigades of Spetsnaz, VDV airborne, MP Marines, augmented by motorized infantry or tank brigades or divisions given Guards status (better than average). They will have state of art Russian weapons and equipment, top to bottom body armor and PPE, NVG/NODs, comms, a very real NCO corps, well trained junior officers given some leeway and initiative, and well-trained contract troops, with minimum to no conscripts serving in combat arms jobs within those units.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that the first half is true, the Russo-Ukraine War and previous wars have shown the elite units of the Russian Armed Forces do most of the heavy lifting. And they are pretty well equipped too.

But your estimation of Russian improvements in small unit leadership, command styles, and professionalism is just really, really bad. It reads like propaganda, or someone who read too many pre-2022 Grau/Bartles articles, as those two famously took Russian claims of excellence at face value.

*Note: In all honesty, Lester Grau and Charles Bartles are awesome sources, though I do think they overestimated Russian capabilities and professionalism quite a bit.

• Historically, the greatest weakness of Russian/Soviet troops was a combination of very high-level centralized planning (to front/army group or even Stavka/general staff level) forced down on subordinate commanders who were allowed little to no leeway or initiative to change a non-working plan through their own FRAGOs. However, that has largely changed since the beginning of the 2008 reforms, especially in the elite units who, due to their mission in the past, were given more leeway than a conventional lower tier motorized rifle or tank divisions.

This is a total shit take.

Since 2022, the Russian army’s command system is still rooted in a centralized Directive Command style. We know this because the Russian troops themselves endlessly complain of it. That means they plan, coordinate, and issue tactical orders by higher-level tactical commands, typically brigade, regimental, or division-level, with officers of the battalion-level and under only given minimalist orders, with their role being to execute pre-established simplistic battle drills based on their orders.

Essentially, everyone below division or brigade level is just a cog in the machine, minimal brain power needed, their duty is to execute orders, that’s it. Initiative isn’t needed and desired, as it conflicts with the command system. Directive Command works best when intelligence is on point, planning is excellent, and the enemy decides not to vote and throw wrenches into the plan. When it doesn’t, the plan fails, a mass casualty event typically ensues, hence why the Russians typically take heavy losses.

Interestingly enough, the Wagner Group in Bakhmut was known for using Mission Command system, with subordinates given great leeway to use initiative to plan their own operations. Some were greatly impressed by Wagner and for a brief period bit in 2023 there was a call from numerous respected and popular milbloggers for the rest of the Russian Armed Forces to copy them. But alas, reform didn’t happen and Wagner would go on to be destroyed as an organization by the Russian MOD.

• Contrary to WW2 and the Cold War, Russian Ground Forces elite units are going to be stuffed with state-of-the-art force multipliers, down to the squad level. This means encrypted, freq hopping enabled comms down at the very least to the platoon level, if not the squad; GPS systems along with Russian knockoff of FBCB2/BFT; advanced ISR equipment to include various types of drones, NVGs, thermals/FLIR, laser range finders, etc. They will not be that far behind the US, and unless we secretly have some way to jam their comms or kill their electronic equipment (or, God forbid, they can do it to us), they’ll be very close to us. For those who remember the good old days of the 80-90s when the US military was at least one giant generational leap ahead of the Soviet Army must accept that, that isn’t the case anymore, the modern Russian Federation ground forces, especially the elite units that will be operating on point against NATO, are near/very close to the conventional US military’s capabilities, enough that we do not have any major unclassified force multipliers.

Regarding radio comms in the Russo-Ukraine War, the Russians seem to mostly use Motorola-type radios, often worse (Amazon-level Baofeng types), some with encryption features and some not. Most infantry units, in particular, don’t possess many, if any, frequency-hopping digital radios. And that has larger implications, as radio communication with other units operating as part of the combined arms team and with higher HQ must also use single-channel frequencies. Amazingly, despite the major vulnerabilities to jamming using single-channel comms, the Russians don’t seem to suffer greatly, probably because the Ukrainians are in the same boat.

Despite that, I think you might be underselling Russian battlefield situational awareness and fire control systems, they are excellent. Their EW is world-class. You briefly mention drones, but they are key.

Secure comms + fire control systems + fires = Reconnaissance Fires Complex. And that drives Russian tactics. I seriously recommend you read more about Recon Fires Complex, especially if you want to understand the Russo-Ukraine War.

• Every Russian infantry unit, down to the squad, to include not only motorized infantry but also Spetsnaz, VDV, MP, will have an organic/assigned BMP, BMD, BTR, or BRDM. These vary in armor protection and firepower, ranging from a rough equivalent to a Dragoon Stryker to a Bradley. This also includes platoons and companies of organic BMPT Terminator AFV organic to their brigades. This doesn’t even count tank battalions assigned to every motorized infantry unit, nor the actual tank brigades and divisions. What this means is that fighting Russian infantry means fighting a shit ton of Russian AFVs, plus attached tanks.

You’re dead right on this one. The Russian doctrine to be so strong in armor, so weak in infantry, has had a major impact on the history of the Russo-Ukraine War. Anyone wanting to kick Russia’s asses needs to have STRONG anti-armor capabilities. Though, the armor-dismounted infantry balance is much better since mid-2023, the Russians have largely corrected their dismounted infantry deficiencies in terms of quantity (the jury is still out on quality).

Note to anyone considering fighting Russia: Any anti-armor centric defensive scheme against the Russians will be vulnerable to Russian infantry; a good defense against the Russians needs to consider both mounted and dismounted threats.

• The Russians emphasized combined arms warfare as the cornerstone of ground operations all the way back to the earliest periods of WW2, actually before the US or the British did it themselves. They have task-organized mission-specific varying battle groups of different organizations and equipment based on what missions they want to achieve. They have always fully integrated, to the best of their ability (take that as it is), infantry, armor, artillery, close air support/air interdiction. Motorized infantry divisions have organic tank battalions, tank divisions have infantry assigned.

I like where you’re going with this, but I’m surprised you don’t mention the pre-2022 Russian obsession with Battalion Tactical Group (BTG), which they were obsessed with before the invasion. However, by the time of the 2022 Donbas Offensive, the BTG-centric doctrine proved to have systematic problems. One, the BTG was too small to serve as the dominant tactical formation in a large-scale combat operation. Two, the battalion-level leadership and under were too ignorant of the tactical and technical aspects involving the specialized support assets allocated to them (EW, drones, air defenses, etc). I think that if the Russo-Ukraine War has taught us anything, the typical infantry or armor officers, captain to colonel, need to learn a whole lot more than just infantry, armor, and artillery.

I am not even exaggerating when I say that it may be necessary at this point that combat arms officers be required to have hard STEM degrees to command companies and above, the technology driving tactics is getting that complicated.

• Human wave infantry assaults are not going to happen, just stop bringing them up. They weren’t even something that the Russians were commonly doing even in WW2. They occurred, especially in the early years before they got their shit together, but they were rare. Soviet infantry since WW2 were trained to advance under the cover of heavy supporting fires until artillery was shifted or lifted off the objective, infiltrating to a nearby assault position either on foot or moved by vehicle, attacking the last 50-100 meters advancing quickly on foot on the enemy, firing their small arms in something similar to marching/assault fire, generally staying on line but not bunched up, while staying abreast of their squad organic vehicle providing cannon and coax fire support. Russian ground troops are still taught this method, along with the basic bounding fire and maneuver TTPS at the company, platoon, and squad level. They will not be charging shoulder to shoulder, should the old “Urra" battle cry asking to be mowed down by machine guns and rifle fire. If they are on their feet, assaulting it will mean the target is currently or had recently been obliterated by artillery fire.

Human Wave Attacks, while talked about endlessly by the Pro-Ukrainian side, don’t seem to really be happening in this war, though that is just a technicality regarding lack of numbers involved in the attacks, they’re typically platoon strength and under.

The Russians in particular do conduct ultra-aggressive dismounted infantry attacks in extremely reckless ways, often deliberately, including using purposeful expendable cannon fodder, aka Meat for Cannons, aka Meat. It might just be a peculiarity of this war, but the Russians tend to task organize their infantry. Some get more training, better leadership, and are used well. Others are barely trained and sent to specific assault groups, their role is to conduct probing attacks for the most part, their life expectancy is limited, that’s intentional.

Anyone fighting the Russians needs to recognize that there is a very good likelihood they will end up fighting shit-tier troops who will use very rudimentary and reckless/cruel tactics, techniques, and procedures on the regular, and still be a major threat.

• The Red Army was renowned for its use of massed tube and rocket field artillery, this hasn’t changed with modern Russian Ground Forces, they still greatly emphasize field artillery. What has changed is that their artillery is going to be much better than it has ever performed in the past. It will be more accurate (GPS and better technology, better trained personnel), more responsive (especially through better and more reliable comms), the rounds and rockets are made with greater care, so the smaller dud rate, logistics have improved, so they will have a greater supply of them. They will still rely on massed fires, so expect their artillery to be just as plentiful as in the past, but capable of relative precision.

  As demonstrated in various military operations since the 1990s, the Russians have routinely mixed large concentrations of towed or self-propelled tube and various-sized rockets of HE, cluster munitions, and Fuel Air Explosives (FAE), often in conjunction for single missions.

  Russia’s newest self-propelled gun is capable of Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact (MRSI), which even the US does not have the capability of. This means a single tube will be able to shoot multiple rounds at different angles and powder loads to ensure they all impact at the same time on the same target. What this means is a one-gun fire for effect mission equivalent to a US Army battery level Time On Target (TOT). Which means a single battery of these Russian SPGs is capable of replicating the effects of a coordinated Fires Brigade or DIVARTY mission from the US Army. They can fire this mission inside a minute and shoot and scoot to avoid any counterbattery.

As far as I know, MRSI hasn’t been talked about much in the Russo-Ukraine War by either side, though I would agree that it’s pretty useful for a concentrated “fire for effect” mission.

That said, your emphasis on the importance of artillery was spot on. But you didn’t mention the Russian use of drone-directed recon fires complex to improve targeting with responsive and accurate fires with minimal kill chains. Another factor happening with Russian artillery in Ukraine is that they have been greatly dispersed, with individual pieces, cannon and rocket, typically operating independently. Additionally, “shoot and scoot” artillery tactics have taken a backseat to digging in, as the latter has an easier time avoiding detection as they are moving less on well-surveilled roads and trails, able to be spotted by recon drones.

• “Moral is to the physical as three is to one.” The Russians are not soft. They don’t coddle their troops, they are not prevented from imposing basic discipline on their personnel because Mommy might get upset. They aren’t wasting their soldiers’ time with mandatory training on inconsequential subjects designed for political optics and feel-goodery. Their officers, NCO corps are not risk-averse, and their culture as a whole is renowned for their very enthusiastic acceptance of great risk associated with machismo. They will not be restricted from using anti-personnel land mines or cluster munitions. They don’t care about depleted uranium effects on the environment, they don’t care about lead poisoning. And they don’t care about using white phosphorus on population centers. They will not place a heavily scrutinized ROE on their combat forces for the sake of public relations to placate the UN or the fifth column govt and media. They are as hard as nails.

You “nailed” this, lol.

In fact, I think you downplayed how tough the Russians actually are. For example, credible sources describe the decentralized authorization of summary executions down to the squad leader level, and that’s pretty F-ing hardcore.

Say what you will about the Russians, but they “bring it” when they go to war. They don’t screw around when it comes to war, their military aren’t trying to make friends, look nice, or win hearts and minds.

Amazingly, despite the conditions they face, their morale and discipline have held up, they seem to have accepted it for the most part. How many other cultures or countries have soldiers who would accept such draconian discipline and callous treatment? I can’t imagine the US accepting it.

And that doesn’t just apply to the soldiers either, the Russian families, the media, political leadership, they’re largely silent on the matter. How many other nations can say that? Not the US…

In hindsight, my 2018 opinions weren’t too bad. If I posted them today on Reddit, I can see some of them being worthy of an upvote. Though some were pretty bad.

I significantly overestimated Russian professionalism. As most professional military analysts and intelligence officers know, it’s safer to overestimate an opponent than under. But that’s not what happened with me, I wrote what I did because I thought it was true at the time, I read some sources that said so, and I believed the New Look Reforms made their army better. Life and learn.

And I underestimated the importance of dismounted infantry in modern warfare, which is unsettling considering my infantry background. Having gone back to other older Reddit posts I’d made before this war started, underestimating the infantry for LSCO was a common theme of mine. I thought conventional wars against well-equipped Near Peers would be fast, highly mobile, and armored-centric. Pre-2022, if someone told me that a future war involving a hundred-plus “mechanized” combat brigade equivalents on each side would end up dominated by small-unit dismounted infantry attacks to make offensive progress, I’d have laughed in their face. I’m not laughing now, but I’m still shocked a bit by the increased role infantrymen play in the Russo-Ukraine War, and truly flabbergasted trying to predict what role infantrymen might play in future warfare dominated by ultra-lethal drones.

Overall, my understanding of Russian doctrine, operational art, history, etc, has improved over the years. I’ve learned in detail about their doctrinal obsession with recon fires, and understanding that made the Russo-Ukraine War understandable, and learning that was very beneficial.

From time to time, I might post other “Blast From the Past” blog articles reexamining some older thoughts and takes of mine and how they’ve stood the test of time. Some subscribers might like these types of posts, others might not.

Read them at your own risk…

"Birds of a Feather Flock Together"

Honesty time.

I bought into the prewar hype that the Russian Armed Forces had actually improved greatly since the 2010s era New Look Reforms. I won’t say I spent a lot of time researching the topic, but I read a little bit on it, and there was nothing credible that I found that was suggesting anything less than flowery praise and some pretty heavy fear involving the growing military capabilities of the Russian military.

Then this war started and showed me the error of my ways. The Russians hadn’t really changed all that much, still prone to the same old habits. Still corrupt. Still ruthless, callous, and cruel to their own troops. Still loving their centralized command processes with regards to planning and mission executions. Still stubborn, and most of all, still requiring embarrassing failures to learn and adopt, needing to get punched in the nose HARD to then get further permission to duck the next time.

Likewise, early in this war, I was initially taken in by the talk about how much the Ukrainian Armed Forces were Basically NATO™. I knew very little about them when this war started, but they did seem to perform so well early on, I thought the stories were true. But after watching how they performed since, and diving into their history too, I have come to realize the AFU has far more in common with the Russian Armed Forces than any NATO military that isn’t a recent Eastern European addition.

Here is an apt quote I find accurate, from the Austrian defense analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, to describe this war, based on his Summer 2023 observations:

This is essentially two Soviet militaries fighting one another.

So true.

Take two societies with the shared cultural baggage of military history and traditions, and it shouldn’t be surprising that they both end up finding similar solutions to similar problems. And I’m not just talking about the use of Meat either, I mean they both view warfare similarly too, both the strategic and political aspects.

On Strategy

It’s important to be clear with words, phrases, and their meanings. I’m no military philosopher that gets giddy arguing about what a bunch of old men in the 18th-20th Century said about warfare, philosophy makes me sleepy, but I think it’s a good idea to bring up a couple in particular just to be on the safe side, as their ideas have become popular enough to have been commonly accepted. Namely Clausewitz and Delbrück.

I won’t go into great detail about their works, only summarizing their views on the two types of strategies used to prosecute wars: Annihilation and Attrition/Exhaustion.

A strategy of annihilation is most easily described as an attempt to remove the enemy's ability to resist by military means. It’s most typically viewed as a campaign designed to destroy the opponent’s field armies with a decisive victory using maneuver. Even concepts involving strategic bombing can be included as facets of strategies of annihilation, such as targeting the enemy’s means of war production to make further military resistance impossible without sufficient equipment and supplies.

Interestingly, a strategy of annihilation can use tactics and operational-level campaigns focused on attrition as a mechanism to destroy the enemy’s means to resist.

Attrition/Exhaustion is a strategy that aims to cause maximum pain and suffering to the enemy's military and/or society to force them to quit by eroding their morale, resolve, and willpower to continue resisting. In some cases, only the leadership's morale, resolve, and willpower matter, though in other cases, the people can pressure the ending of a war with revolutions, rebellions, and coups, or even just with protests and votes against the war.

Interestingly, a strategy of attrition/exhaustion can use tactics and operational-level campaigns focused on maneuver to cause a diminishment in the enemy’s morale, resolve, and willpower by way of repeated military thrashings, as nothing says “What’s the point in continuing?” like repeatedly getting your ass endlessly kicked on the battlefield.

Niederwerfungsstrategie ist Kaput

The Russian invasion plan was so badly conceived that it’s not worth even debating which strategy it attempted to follow. But by mid-April 2022, when the Russians launched the Donbas Offensive, the signs were there that a victory against Ukraine by way of annihilation was likely not possible. By July, it was out of the question, meaning the only conceivable way to win the war was a strategy of attrition and exhaustion. Not just eroding the morale, resolve, and willpower of the Ukrainian people and its government, but also that of the key Western patrons making this war possible (seemingly the weaker link in the chain).

With Ukraine being the underdog in this war, lacking the capabilities to neutralize Russia’s military capabilities, a strategy of annihilation was never really a possibility. But Russia did seem potentially vulnerable to a strategy of attrition and exhaustion, which is what Ukraine adopted from the get-go of this war, through a mix of causing unacceptable military losses of manpower and equipment, in conjunction with the hopes of Russian economic ruin caused by Western sanctions, later adding long-range deep strikes into Russian territory against Russian commercial energy as a way of increasing the pain factor.

Note, I’m not trying to suggest Ukraine didn't seek out decisive strategic military campaigns at every opportunity, as their many maneuver-centric ground offensives attested, but they did those for the practical reason to reclaim lost territory, increasing pressure against Russia, while using the successes to undermine Russians morale, resolve, and willpowers.

Hate is Bad

There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent. – Lao Tzu

Truer words have seldom been said. And yet, all military strategy requires an assumption that the enemy can be defeated, so all strategies require some degree of underestimating the opponent. After all, if one believes the enemy possesses no weaknesses, then how can they be beaten?

But some strategies are worse than others when it comes to assumptions about enemy strengths and weaknesses, and a strategy of attrition/exhaustion is one of the worst. Besides the enemy’s military needing to seem weak, a strategy of attrition/exhaustion requires underestimating all facets of the enemy's way of life: they must be a weak people, with a weak economy, with a weak government, and especially weak leadership. If any of these are assumed to be strong, a strategy of exhaustion makes no sense, it can’t work. Therefore, those who recommend a strategy of exhaustion think very little of their opponent.

And that's especially the case with Russia and Ukraine. For those not paying attention, this war is fundamentally an ethno-nationalistic conflict. Those who support the Russian ethnicity and nationality despise the Ukrainian ethnicity and nationality, and vice versa. Naturally, they think less of each other as a result, which feeds a confirmation bias. And as a result of their contempt for one another, that affects their decision-making when it comes to military strategy. Disdain for their opponent lends itself to underestimating them.

Balls to the F’ing Wall

In 2002, the mixed martial artists Don Frye and Yoshihiro Takayama beat the ever loving shit out of each other in a Pride match in a shocking display of brutality that was as insightful as it was entertaining. It’s not a long fight, I highly recommend taking the time to watch it, as it’s the perfect analogy for how Russia and Ukraine have chosen to fight this war. If nothing else, watch the clip.

As previously mentioned, Russia and Ukraine are both using similar strategies of attrition and exhaustion, targeting each other’s morale, resolve, and willpower, which both sides underestimate due to a shared hatred of each other.

But also previously mentioned, they are two Soviet successor states with the same cultural baggage with one another, and that especially includes their thoughts on warfare, and that plays a big part in why they think pummeling their opponent so aggressively, despite getting pummeled in return, is an effective strategy.

The theorists who created Soviet operational art all agree that maintaining an extremely high operational tempo (OPTEMPO) to exert maximum pressure against the enemy is a great idea. And that theory never eroded into the heyday of the Soviet Union, and it is being adhered to this day, as this war shows.

However, that same Soviet doctrine also required total war measures for it to work correctly. To sustain the pain and suffering that must be endured to succeed in a large-scale combat operation between major industrial nation states, society and the economy must be mobilized to ensure the military is at its strongest.

Makes sense, right? Exerting relentless pressure with an extremely high OPTEMPO is a two-way street, pressure to wear out an opponent also wears oneself out, so endurance is key, which means maximum level of manpower, equipment, and supplies must be ready and available in great numbers.

But did Russia and Ukraine prepare themselves to go balls to the wall? Did they mobilize properly?

The Great Patriotic Limited War

Despite going balls to the wall for three years, despite the fiery public rhetoric that makes one suspect that this is a war of extermination, amazingly enough, the political leadership responsible for the prosecution of this war, for both parties involved, treat it as a very limited war.

Putin is scared to escalate. So far, all the nuclear saber-rattling and “red line” rhetoric has proven only to be bluffs. He waited eight months into the war before finally taking it seriously, a mistake that gifted Ukraine its September-November 2022 offensive strategic victories at Kharkiv, Lyman, and Kherson. Since then, Putin authorized a single partial mobilization for 300k troops in 2022, but otherwise has refused to perform another. He also refuses to alter the legal state of war, it’s still a “Special Military Operation,” further limiting his options. He still won’t use Russia’s +300k conscripts either; not even when Kursk was the victim of a surprise Ukrainian offensive in August 2024 with the Rodina itself invaded, did Putin dare authorize the use of conscripts to fight Ukraine. Surely he’s got reasons to justify his decisions, and no doubt some are legit and some stupid, but the point is that Russia is holding back.

Likewise, Ukraine is holding back, because Zelensky is scared too. He was scared before the war started to authorize a mobilization to properly prepare for or deter an invasion, going as far as to criticize the West for instigating panic over a supposed Russian invasion. He’s not improved either since the war started; he still won’t fix the great mobilization problems Ukraine has faced at least since February and March 2023, which have only gotten terribly worse since. As Ukraine loses the war due to a manpower crisis, Zelensky hasn’t even done the bare minimum to reform the mobilization process, which is now in a very sorry state of affairs. It’s hard to take seriously the morale, resolve, and willpower of Zelensky and the Ukrainians when they take object half measures.

Both sides know their opponent’s leaders are afraid to escalate, which has dramatic effects on justifying their decision for their increased OPTEMPO. But the decision not to take the mobilization and the war effort seriously comes with major repercussions.

Actions Have Consequences

Almost two thousand words later, I can hear your thoughts:

“Duncan, what the fuck does all of this have to do with Meat?”

Russia and Ukraine are fighting each other using total war strategies when they haven’t taken total war measures, instead investing in half-assed mobilization policies. That means they are going to have manpower problems. Quantity will almost surely be a problem, but quantity with quality will be impossible. And we’ve seen that play out.

This was a voluntary decision both sides made, one that was unique too. The need to mobilize properly to sustain oneself in an industrial war of attrition isn’t just some lofty ideal outlined in archaic treatises on warfare, it’s a requirement. Most major power militaries in modern history who’ve fought the nasty meat grinder wars of the 20th Century still managed to maintain quantity and quality because they made the sacrifices. The British during WW1 and WW2, the Germans in WW1 and WW2, the US during WW2, the Japanese in WW2, etc. Even the Red Army, after 1942, tried to legitimately pursue better quality than the Russians or Ukrainians had so far attempted in this war.

Therefore, contemporary Russian and Ukrainian leadership are the foolish outliers for favoring policies to limit the war for whatever reasons, while having an unwillingness to throttle back the OPTEMPTO, making quantity with quality impossible to maintain. Neither side entered this war prepared to sustain heavy losses to their infantry in particular, not Russia as I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, nor Ukraine either. And yet they half-assed the effort to reconstitute and expand, forcing them to take shortcuts. Denied sufficient numbers of talented individuals, instead, they most often were stuck with too few, never possessing the time and resources to properly train their force. Quantity suffered, quality suffered.

What is most amazing about this situation, where Russia and Ukraine both made the same disastrous decisions, is that one side’s weakness was balanced out because their opponent didn’t possess the strength either to exploit the weakness, as they made the identical mistakes too. Neither can capitalize on their enemy’s mistakes when they made the same mistakes too.

“When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade”

Despite being set up for failure by their political and strategic level leadership, tactical level military leadership, Russian and Ukrainian, must still do their duty to execute strategic policy and carry out the orders imposed on them. More so, as professional officers, they must get results, because losers don’t get promoted. But how can they achieve offensive or defensive success when they are denied the tools?

They can hope their leadership will end the war and quit. But in this war, quitting isn’t an option when the political leadership and their people, shielded from the worst effects of war, are adamant they want total victory. So that’s out.

Another option is to militarily practice “economy of force” on a strategic level. They can call off major offensives, perform maneuver/mobile defense prioritizing the preservation of their forces, shorten the overall strategic frontage as much as possible to free up forces, pull as many units from the line into the reserve as possible, all to create the breathing space needed to rebuild the force structure with quality. However, as stated, neither Russia nor Ukraine is willing to throttle back their OPTEMPO. After all, “The enemy is so close to breaking!”, as both sides’ leadership have believed for three years.

They can’t quit the war, and they can’t slow it down either. The only decision left is to game their system to try to achieve whatever success is possible despite the self-imposed limitations. And that is where expendable infantry becomes an option that makes some sense.

Limited war led to limited mobilization systems that provided larger numbers of low-quality troops than high-quality, requiring each side to elect to use the larger number of lower-quality troops to perform the necessary dirty jobs required for tactical success. Making the decision easier is that both have an identical shared military history of making this decision in the past, as dedicated Meat worked in WW2.

Allowed to suffer the higher burden of losses, the lower-quality inducted infantry serves to preserve the lives of the higher-quality infantry. Protected from the most dangerous missions with the lowest chances of survival, the lower-quantity, higher-quality infantry are then used to perform missions that lower-quality infantry can’t perform.

Or in the case of the Ukrainians, they seem not to even bother anymore trying to find high-quality infantrymen, they push their higher-quality inducted personnel into non-infantry combat support roles, specifically drone operators, to use as technological force multipliers. At this point in the war, I’m not even being facetious saying that AFU infantry units, filled with mobilized cannon fodder, seem to exist almost entirely to serve as “tethered goats” in isolated forward defensive positions to attract predatorial Russian attacks, which can then be attrited by a well-supplied and efficient reconnaissance fires complex.

“If It’s Stupid But Works, It’s Not Stupid”

A lesson that was beaten into my head during my military service and throughout my amateur military history education is that any military solution that works isn’t stupid. Costly, cruel, wasteful? Sure. But if it works, then it works. And in the Russo-Ukraine War, Meat works, especially considering the aforementioned political and strategic realities that have been self-imposed by Russia’s and Ukraine’s leadership.

For the Russians, they can maintain the offensive for extended periods in a war dominated by costly infantry attacks without bothering to invest into better infantry, using a mix of manpower nobody in Russia seems to give a shit about: Pro-Russian Ukrainians, convicts, deserters and other military criminals, and Superfluous Russians of dubious socio-economic classes willing to accept the big bonuses to sign contracts for the ultra-dangerous job of Shturmoviki assault troops.

And the Ukrainians can better replicate the Japanese at Peleliu, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa with ultra-tenacious “Hold at all costs” defensive mandates, directed by political leadership, performed largely by barely-trained 45-year-old infantrymen deemed expendable by Ukrainian society, allowing them to take high losses without worrying about troubling their youth with the threat of military service.

It’s a Win-Win situation for them both. Well, except for the Meat. But if they truly mattered, they wouldn’t be Meat.

But, and I can’t state this enough, it didn’t need to be this way. While using expendable troops seems to have worked in this war for the leadership, I think there were better options, namely making the proper decisions not to half-ass the mobilization processes, and throttling back the insanely high OPTEMPO to take a breather to properly regroup.

In closing, I want to say that, regardless of which military they belong to, the troops used as Meat deserve better (even the convicts). My interest in the plight of infantrymen is not only having spent quite some time being one myself, not just as a matter of basic human decency, but also in terms of good leadership. Caring for subordinates is the right choice. Any person fighting for their nation deserves loyalty from their political and military leadership just as much as is expected of them to provide up the chain in return. Duty is a bitch, but it goes both ways.

Rest assured, I plan to post some more articles on the topic of Meat in the future, as I’ve got more to say on the matter. But for now, I’m wrapping this bastard of a series up.

I want to give a special shout-out to the Reddit user Larelli, who helped me with the research going into this project, especially finding sources describing the trials and tribulations of Ukrainian fighting men. Grazie!

Crazy enough, despite their well-known casualty rates and the overt brutal level of military discipline imposed on them, with summary executions as the penalty for nearly every infraction, the Wagner prison recruitment effort was extremely successful, with up to 50,000 convicts having signed up.

Where this story takes a crazier turn is that Wagner’s convict scheme worked so well, the Russian Ministry of Defense copied it and then stole it from Wagner!

Storm-Z, Not as Cool as it Sounds

About the same time Wagner was battling it out in Bakhmut primarily relying on convict Meat, the Russian MOD was adopting a similar policy of recruiting convicts for short-term contracts in the “SMO” to serve as assault troops. Thus, Storm-Z was born. And shortly thereafter, Wagner was banned from recruiting convicts.

Those were dedicated assault units built into every combined arms army/army corps, staffed with convict volunteers and military malcontents (deserters, drunks, thieves, etc), but with professional leadership. With about a hundred men per Storm-Z detachment (roughly company-sized), they were further broken down into four assault groups (roughly platoon-sized), each with an assault squad and a fire support squad. Assault groups were meant to be attached to other Russian tactical units; regardless of the branch of service, if a Russian combat maneuver unit was conducting assault operations, they’d be assigned Storm-Z detachments to perform the dirty work.

Storm-Z Meat went on to perform similar missions as the convicts in Wagner, plus some more. Reminiscent of WW2-era Penal units, during the Ukrainian 2023 Counteroffensive, Storm-Z assault groups were even used sacrificially to defend forward positions in the Russian defense-in-depth. Just like Red Army penal units defending the first lines at Kursk in 1943 were meant to absorb German fires and the first wave of an offensive, so too were Russian Storm-Z stationed on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts meant to eat the initial assaults of the upcoming AFU offensive that started in June 2023.

Sometime in 2023 or as late as early 2024, Storm-Z was supposedly replaced by Storm-V. Besides detachments being a tiny bit bigger, I’ve not found any other changes to the organization or mission, other than that the incentive of short-term contracts was removed. It’s very possible that it was just a rebranding effort by the MOD to distance itself from the negativity surrounding the Storm-Z name.

Where Have all the Bad Men Gone?

Wagner and Russian MOD Storm-Z/V differed in quite a few ways, one was the length of service of their convict contracts.

For background, when Putin enacted the September 2022 “Partial Mobilization,” the Russian Armed Forces adopted a “Stop Loss” type policy for nearly everyone, which meant everyone serving in Ukraine would do so indefinitely. But Wagner Group convict contracts were for six months, then pardoned, to either accept a discharge to reenter civilian society as a free man, or they could join a better Wagner unit with more pay, better treatment, etc.

When the Russian Armed Forces fully usurped the convict recruitment program, they reportedly extended the term of service for convict volunteers from six months to one year, and then at some point, potentially during the Storm-V rebranding, they extended convict service indefinitely. Promising a pardon upon honorable discharge for “the end of the war, loss of health or reaching the age limit.”

Why no more discharges? As a guess, too many convicts were being lost, they couldn’t afford to lose more through discharges. Though I can imagine the discharge policy was also viewed as unfair to non-convict Russian troops, who were already serving indefinitely regardless of the risks. Why should convicts be given discharges when they weren’t?

Overall, how did the convicts fare in terms of survivability? Open-source casualty tracking of public death notices in Russian social media suggests that convicts made up the bulk of reported Russian military casualties in late 2022 and throughout 2023, but those numbers dropped significantly in 2024. That’s interesting. I wonder what triggered that?

Did the Russian government institute a crackdown on the issuing of death notices on social media?

Did field commanders within the Russian Armed Forces reevaluate the value they placed on the lives of their convict soldiers and decide they weren’t Meat?

Did the Russians figure out a more successful assault tactic that took far fewer casualties despite a dramatic increase in the operational tempo of their strategic offensive throughout 2024?

I’m not buying any of those explanations. Most likely, Russia’s source for convict volunteers dried up, the Russian Federation has a limited population of prison manpower who were capable enough to serve and motivated too. Like the use of L/DNR before, it was time to find a new source for Meat.

“Superfluous People”

Do the Russians still rely on Meat? Reports from the front from Ukrainian and Russian sources both suggest they are. But if they’re not relying on mobilized L/DNR or convicts anymore, at least in large numbers, then which poor bastards have the honor now to serve as Russia’s primary source of expendable manpower?

Amazingly, the Russians seemed to have chosen random Contraknik volunteers as their newest source of cannon fodder.

Recently, Alexander Borodai, a serving member of the Russian Duma (their parliament) who was also very active in the politics and military operations during the Donbas War, had a leaked conversation divulged where he was caught discussing the new source of expendable troops:

They’re seen as second-rate infantry. In reality, they’re positioned on the front lines as defensive units, set to hold the line. Their real task is to draw attention and exhaust enemy forces as much as possible while others in the rear prepare for the main offensive. Just wear them down, you understand? No one expects these forces to achieve some fucking incredible—or even small—victory. They’re simply cannon fodder.

Okay, nothing controversial so far, Borodai isn’t saying anything I’ve not said myself. But he goes on:

Essentially, they’re Landsknechts mercenaries, yes. Volunteers for pay…This infantry, you understand, is made up of people who aren’t seen as particularly valuable. Or valuable at all…there’s a term for this, you know, introduced by Maxim Gorky and widely used in various philosophies and stuff—“spare people.” [Borodai is misquoting Gorky, who called them “Superfluous People”].

Yikes. In essence, powerless and disadvantaged Russians enlisting for the financial incentives are viewed by the Russian public as mercenaries, who know the risks when they signed the contract, so society doesn’t care about them.

Back in the day when I was in the Marine Corps, there was a punchline delivered whenever someone complained about doing anything unappealing, “USMC stands for U Signed the Motherfucking Contract.” Ergo, don’t bitch for doing a job you volunteered to do. That seems to doubly apply to those who volunteer to join the Russian Armed Forces to fight in Ukraine, especially those who take the extra bonus to become a Shturmoviki, aka Stormtrooper, aka assault infantryman-sapper, aka Meat.

In Fall 2024, a Pro-Putin Russian journalist corroborated Borodai’s comments when she described the extremely short careers of three typical Russian volunteers who went missing in action within a few short weeks of signing their contracts with the Russian Armed Forces. She was clearly not happy discovering the Russians had found their new source of cannon fodder.

And yet miraculously, despite their heavy losses, like the convicts, the “Superfluous” Contrakniks keep volunteering. Are they serving in Storm-Z/V detachments along with the dregs? Are they serving in dedicated Reconnaissance and Assault Units? I’m not sure, it’s hard knowing the details of the Russian order of battle from the outside, but wherever they are serving, for the time being Russian Meat is still on the menu.

The Ukrainian Meat-Flavored Substitute

As of yet, I’ve ranted and raved at length about the Russian use of expendable troops. Those who are Pro-Ukrainian probably greatly enjoyed that, but now I’m going to piss in their Cheerios. Because fair is fair, and the Russians weren’t the only ones to use expendable troops in this war.

There is a branch of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), who can best be described as the “red-headed step-children” of the AFU. Conceived as an organized national militia of motivated amateurs, by law and doctrine, they were intended to defend Ukraine against a full-scale invasion by either forming an insurgency if an invading army won, or otherwise performing rear area security functions. They were never intended to be used on the front lines of a conventional meatgrinder war, not being organized, trained, or equipped for that role.

And yet out of a self-imposed necessity, the TDF was used extensively as just another conventional ground combat maneuver force, often finding themselves at the very tip of the spear holding key areas in the hottest and most critical strategic sectors of the front, despite a lack of training, equipment, and leadership competent in that style of warfare.

Scratch that. The TDF wasn’t treated as just another conventional ground combat maneuver force. They were treated as Meat. And that’s not me making that distinction. For some extremely strange and grotesque reason, the Ukrainian leadership and their talking heads seem to take joy in declaring that TDF units are cannon fodder, where they are deliberately placed on the front lines of the hottest sectors specifically to preserve the better-quality AFU forces during high-intensity defensive battles.

Does that sound familiar? It should, that’s exactly how the Russians used their Storm-Z to defend the forward positions against the Ukrainians’ 2023 Counteroffensive. How the Red Army used their penal battalions in Kursk 1943.

The first time I encountered this was during the Russian Spring-Summer 2022 Donbas Offensive, where on multiple occasions I heard or read of a common talking point emerging, that the TDF was being used to defend the Donbas to preserve the better AFU units for a later counteroffensive. Such as at the 48:00 mark in this podcast episode.

That near identical talking point was later repeated in the early winter of 2023 after the Ukrainian government doubled down on “Bakhmut Holds” despite the worsening tactical situation and the competing need to prepare for the upcoming large-scale counteroffensive, when they began telling Western media that they were conserving their better troops and instead deliberately using their TDF, foreign volunteer troops from the International Legion of the TDF, and their National Guard to defend Bakhmut, meaning those were expendable.

That’s pretty screwed up. But the craziest part of these claims is that they weren’t even true. The reality was that the Ukrainians were using their better forces to defend the Donbas in 2022 and Bakhmut in 2023, who suffered very heavy losses. But in their hopes to deflect against that embarrassing fact, the Ukrainians were bragging about relying on cannon fodder when they weren’t.

Even the professional military analyst Mike Kofman, whom I’m a big fan of, got duped into repeating that talking point too about Ukraine preserving its best units by using cannon fodder to defend Bakhmut. But then he visited Bakhmut himself and talked to the AFU units defending it, he came back with a different story: the Ukrainians had “accepted an attritional fight where they are trading better manpower, better people, for manpower that Russia can easily replace.”

Bragging about using Meat when you’re not is like bragging that you have genital herpes when you don’t.

Mutinies of the Damned

I truly wish the claims of using expendable troops by the Ukrainians were all just unfounded episodes of braggadocio to cover up excess losses in conventional units. But unfortunately, the AFU did embrace the use of Meat, though never to the degree and scale as the Russians.

Starting at the height of the 2022 Russian Donbas Offensive to the present, there have been endless reports of AFU units struggling in hot sectors of the front, predominantly TDF units, though not always. And not surprisingly, those episodes have led to resentment from the soldiers with increased discipline issues, including regular mutinies.

We’re not talking about service-wide WW1 French Army Mutiny type problems, these were platoon or company-sized mutinies, with the ring leaders even going so far as to video-record collective speeches to post onto social media, to justify their decisions to refuse to follow orders, citing their desires for their conditions to improve, wanting their incompetent commander relieved of duty, asking to be rotated off the lines for a break, complaining that they are not properly equipped or supplied, and altogether suggesting they were being set up for failure by their chains of command. One such example involved a TDF unit in May 2022 that claimed, among other things, that they were “being sent to certain death.”

That sort of claim was hardly rare. The rate of Ukrainian disciplinary problems resulting from refusals to fight and outright mutinies had skyrocketed in mid-2022 to such a degree that in late-2022 the Ukrainian government was forced to pass a law increasing punishments for violations of military discipline. Despite that, the number of troops openly complaining or even refusing to perform their military duties has increased, with incidents like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one. Ex Cetera. Those weren’t isolated incidents, many Ukrainian soldiers believed they were being treated unnecessarily callously by their leadership and acted out as a result. Made easier by belonging to a society more open to criticism than the Russians, and rather lax military discipline, where even mutiny didn’t come with stiff official penalties.

But stiffer unofficial penalties for mutinying were on the table. Like the Russians, the Ukrainians seemed to adopt a policy of assigning their malcontents to assault units. For example, reports have described brave, veteran AFU soldier who after mutinying over spats with incompetent leadership, were sent to the assault companies of other brigades as a punitive measure.

Penal units in all but name…

Pixelated Meat

It wasn’t just social media accounts from disgruntled soldiers mutinying that proved the Ukrainians were using Meat, they had some unfortunate episodes where it became big news.

For example, in April 2024, the nationalistic Right Sector-aligned leadership of the 67th Mechanized Brigade was broken up by the AFU Commander-in-Chief, not the least bit for protecting its politically aligned “elite” volunteer troops at the expense of their allotment of mobilized “Mobik” troops.

Nicknamed “Pixels” due to the pixelated camouflage patterns of their AFU-issued uniforms, as opposed to the MultiCam camo patterns worn by the Right Sector volunteers, the Mobiks assigned to the 67th were placed into their own rifle infantry battalions and deliberately assigned the most dangerous tasks, specifically defending forward positions as cannon fodder while the Right Sector volunteer units of the 67th were kept safely in the rear.

Though the 67th’s leadership were punished, the crackdown against them was primarily triggered when Pixel Meat, manning a critical section of the frontline, were broken through by a Russian attack, resulting in a tactical disaster at the fortress city sector of Chasiv Yar in the Donbas. If not for that, I seriously doubt the AFU senior leadership would have intervened, as they haven’t otherwise.

Speaking of Penal Units…

I briefly hinted in Part 2 of my Meat series that the Wagner Group’s leader ‎Prigozhin might have had inspiration besides from WW2 for his convict recruitment scheme. I say that because Wagner wasn’t the first organization to enlist convicts as combatants, that award goes to the Ukrainians

"Ukrainians with real combat experience will be released from custody and will be able to compensate for their guilt in the hottest spots." - Zelensky, Feb 28, 2022

When I read that the first time, I noticed something about that quote that seemed familiar. Then I remembered why:

“Form within each Front from one up to three penal battalions…and put them on more difficult sectors of the front to give them an opportunity to redeem by blood their crimes against the Motherland.” - Stalin Order 227, July 28, 1942

Here we have Zelensky’s speech writer paraphrasing Stalin’s famous “Not a Step Back” Order, which created the use of penal units. Was it an accident or on purpose? Does it matter?

Alas, that early-war convict volunteer program did not seem to go anywhere. But in May 2024, along with other legislative reforms of its mobilization system, Ukraine passed a law allowing prisoners to volunteer. Where would they serve once they enlisted? What job would they perform?

“Under the new law, prisoners qualified to join the amnesty program can be assigned only to assault brigades.”

While it seems some of those thousands of volunteer convicts were destined to serve in mixed assault units, convict volunteers and others alike, while other convicts ended up in all-convict assault units, like that within the 24th Mechanized Brigade. Just like Wagner and Storm-Z.

Regardless of the type of assault unit, mixed or all-convict, the reading of the law itself demonstrates they’re meant to serve in the most dangerous of assignments, as assault infantry. Ergo, Meat for Cannons.

Old-er Man’s War

There is something that’s bugging me greatly about one of the choices Ukraine made to mobilize manpower. And it’s personal too.

Once upon a time, I was a young 18-year-old infantryman, who did that job till I was 30 years old. And now I’m a rather broken-down 45-year-old. I know full well just from personal experience what it takes to do that job, and what being older means.

So how the Fucking Shit is 45 years old the average of the Ukrainian Armed Forces?

And to average 45 means many more are over. The Pro-Ukraine military analyst Rob Lee had this to say on the matter:

"Of about 30 infantry troops in a unit, said the deputy commander of the 72nd brigade, on average half were in their mid-40s, only five were under 30 and the rest were 50 or older.”

Shockingly, that is a deliberate decision. Despite millennia of history demonstrating who makes the best soldiers, the AFU predominantly relies on old men with little to no military experience, totally physically unsuitable for military service, given the barest of basic training, who often end up as infantrymen. Why is that?

To quote Valerii “The Iron General” Zaluzhny:

“We need Ukraine to exist in 20 or 30 years. That future lies with them - those who are 18 now. They are a completely different generation who will save this country.”

Truthfully, Ukrainian demographics do trend higher for men 30 years or older. And so the Ukrainian leadership, with the stamp of approval by their society, decided to shield the youth of Ukraine from war despite the disgusting ramifications, that their old men are expendable.

There are more of them and they possess less value to Ukrainian society than younger men, so it’s their duty to serve and die so the young can be protected. That is the literal definition of cannon fodder.

“Are We the Baddies?”

Already I pissed in the Cheerios of the Pro-Ukrainians, now I’m about to take a shit in it. Because I need to get something off my chest.

I will openly admit I’m biased about the Russo-Ukraine War. I fully acknowledge the illegality of the invasion, the overt Russian naked imperialism and aggression, the brutality brought to the Ukrainian people. More so, I’m a Gen X American military veteran raised on 80s-era movies where the Russkies were always the Bad Guys and they will always remain so in my brain regardless of what happens in the future.

Consequently, I will always inherently expect the Russians to act badly, to not value human life, and to make cruel decisions. Like using expendable troops in warfare. The Russians are using Meat? After initially getting over the realization that this is happening again, in the 21st Century, it’s not that shocking that Putin’s Russia is taking such measures. After all, water is wet.

But weren’t the Ukrainians supposed to be the Good Guys?

Aren’t they the Pro-West liberal democracy that values human life? Aren’t they Basically NATO™?

I expected better from Ukraine. While I certainly view their use of Meat as far less wasteful and cruel than the Russians, nevertheless, it’s repellent. They shouldn’t be doing it, and they definitely shouldn’t be gleefully bragging about it.

More so, it was unnecessary. And that is where it hits the hardest. Neither side needed to use Meat, they did so because it was cheaper than the alternative.

Stay tuned to the last article in my Meat series, where I provide my closing thoughts and analysis, including the deeper political reasoning behind why both sides chose to use expendable troops.

(Note, in this article, I didn’t tackle the North Koreans or the use of female convicts, which both sides are doing, as this article was already too long)

I will now discuss how the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner Group took that concept and doubled down on it.

“Wagnerology”

I mentioned the Wagner Group in the previous article about their role in taking the key Donbas city of Popasna by way of professionally executed traditional dismounted infantry assault tactics, something the Russian Armed Forces had largely forgotten how to perform, and was largely unable to perform due to shortages in manpower. Why could Wagner do what the Russian Armed Forces couldn’t?

From what I have gathered, the Wagner Group was a PMC created circa 2014 from among Russian ex-military mercenaries who had already been serving as military contractors in Syria and then took up the fight in the Donbas War. Likely created with support by the top Russian leadership and the GRU (Russian Defense Intelligence), the Wagner Group was financed and led by a low-level Russian oligarch named Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin’s Chef” for the empire he built on the foundation of a single hot dog stand in St Petersburg, turned fancy restaurant owner, turned defense logistics supplier courtesy of his favorite St Petersburg customer, one Vladimir Putin.

If Prigozhin was the CEO, CFO, and chief spokesman of Wagner, then the COO was undoubtably a man by the name of Dmitry Utkin, a former GRU Spetsnaz lieutenant colonel, a Russian Neo-Nazi with SS lightning bolt neck tattoos, whose radio call sign was Wagner, for whom the organization was named from.

Unlike US PMCs in Iraq and Afghanistan like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, DynCorps, Aegis, etc., the Wagner Group augmented security work with direct action offensive combat operations. For example, in Syria, they were being paid by the Assad regime to help retake key cities in exchange for cuts on oil export revenue. And in the Donbas in 2014-15, they were helping the Russian Separatists L/DNR forces, under contract with the Russian GRU. Due to the heavy ground combat they’d experienced in Syria and the Donbas War, Wagner had a large cadre of ex-Spetsnaz and VDV cadre who were highly motivated, well-paid, well-equipped, well-trained, whose specialty ended up being set-piece ground assaults, mounted or dismounted.

Wagner joined the Russo-Ukraine War shortly after it started, contributing a roughly brigade-sized force (2,000-3,000), with other Wagner units serving in various global conflict zones due to honor their contractual obligations. Wagner’s expeditionary combat force was organized, trained, and equipped to fight as a mechanized-dismounted combined arms force, styled on the table of organization and equipment of a Russian VDV brigade, including force multipliers like night vision, digital radios, battlefield tracker situational awareness computers and software, etc, the stuff typically only be found in VDV or Spetsnaz. (if you’re interested and want to know more, read this).

While Wagner was competent, capable, well-led, and elite in the very meaning of the word, they weren’t very big. But that was about to change.

Landing the Contract of a Lifetime

Before rolling into the story about Wagner Meat, it’s time for a quick history lesson so everyone understands the situation when these decisions were made. I’m going to do this quick and dirty with a few maps, courtesy of Militaryland.net

1. The operational situation in the Donbas in mid April 2022 saw the Russians attacking along a broad front all along Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts (aka the Donbas) with supporting attacks in southern Ukraine, but predominately focused on breaching the the Siversky Donets River defensive line.

2. Then Popasna fell in early May and that collapsed the southern part of Ukraine’s defensive line.

3. The collapse of Popasna created a weak point in the AFU lines that the Russian exploited with follow on attacks, which broke through, outflanking the southern half of the AFU’s Siversky Donets River defensive line in June.

4. By early July, the Russians had managed to overrun nearly all of Luhansk Oblast when the Ukrainians were forced to retreat back to a new defensive line hinged on the high ground east of the Bakhmutka River Valley, home to the cities of Siversk and Bakhmut.

At that point the Russians had to take an operational pause moving their forces from the Siversky Donets defensive line to the Siversk-Bakhmut line. Taking the rest of Donetsk Oblast, Russia’s stated chief territorial strategic objective for their SMO, wouldn’t be easy. The next phase would necessitate frontally assaulting either the city of Siversk and/or Bakhmut, as they both lie in the direct route westward. After that, the Russians would need to cross the Bakhmutka River Valley, attack up and over a tall ridgeline to their west (which the city of Chasiv Yar sits atop), and only then being able to directly face the twin fortress cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the key administrative/military hubs of Donetsk Oblast. If those cities fall, the rest of the Donbas is really just a matter of mopping up. Thus, the upcoming assault on the Siversk-Bakhmut Line was a big deal.

So why did Wagner Group end up as the main effort assault force to take the main effort strategic objective of the Russian SMO?

My guess is that the overall weakness of the Russian Armed Forces led Putin and his Minister of Defense Shoigu to take drastic steps in the summer of 2022 to make their strategic goals possible without having to mobilize, and that meant empowering a paramilitary force that proved they could get things done. Which meant Prigozhin’s Wagner Group was awarded a contract and given their orders to take Bakhmut at the very least.

Based on the timeline I’ve been able to put together, Wagner must have gotten the go-ahead to prosecute the main effort assault to take Bakhmut around June 2022, potentially earlier. I say that because in July 2022 Yevgeny Prigozhin was already featured in international media conducting recruitment drives in Russian prisons looking for assault troops. And he wasn’t doing that to protect mines in Africa.

The Dirty Dozen Fifty Thousand

If I never saw the videos of Prigozhin’s bombastic speeches to the Russian prisoners myself I’d have laughed off the story as absurd propaganda. But even after watching them I was shocked. It was as if Prigozhin was channeling Lee Marvin’s character in the film The Dirty Dozen when recruiting the Army inmates for what amounted to a suicide mission. But with Prigozhin doubling down and going well beyond.

That crazy bastard gave a recruitment pitch telling those prisoners that he preferred murderers and violent offenders, that they’d be used as expendable troops, that if they disobeyed any orders they’d be summarily executed on the spot, etc. And it still worked!

In fact, so many Russian convicts ended up joining Wagner, they grew to corps size within months, supposedly swelling up to 50,000 in strength. To sweeten the deal, the convicts were offered lucrative incentives: For a six-month stint in the “Special Military Operation” (SMO) they would get a pardon, cash bonus, and the chance of a better future afterwards. Not a bad outcome for those stuck in that notoriously brutal Russian penal system for life.

Where did Prigozhin get the idea? While I’ll go into a bit more detail in the next Meat article about one more recent possibility, I think the most likely inspiration came from the Soviet Red Army’s use of Penal Battalions, the Shtrafbats, created by the infamous “Not a Step Back” Stalin Order No. 227 issued in the dark days of 1942. Those were made up of Red Army troops, enlistedmen and officers, who’d disobeyed orders, retreated without permission, or altogether pissed off their chain of command enough to not warrant a firing squad but still necessitating severe punishment. Penal Battalions were assigned to every field army and front to be attached to other units to do the dirtiest of dirty missions that an infantryman or combat engineer could be asked to perform. Their standard mission set were near-suicidal assaults, demining or laying mines in active “No Man’s Land”, and manning forward defensive positions against known German offensives to eat the preparatory artillery barrages and the leading assaults.

The Russian Bakhmut Campaign started around August 2022 and culminated in May 2023 when the city finally fell and Wagner was relieved by other units of the RUAF who took up a defensive footing. Wagner succeeded. But during their offensive, reports flowed in greater and greater numbers through the media, from Ukrainian troops, and even from within Wagner, about the brutal fashion in which Wagner was using their convict assault troops, using tactics, techniques, procedures, and regulations that copied much of the tactics, techniques, and procedures from the previous use of L/DNR Mobiks, with some added sadism.

Meat Waves?

Before I get into tactics, we need to address the elephant in the room: Was Wagner conducting Meat Waves, aka Human Wave Attacks at Bakhmut?

Well, what exactly is a Human Wave Attack? Or in the parlance of social media in recent years, what is a Meat Wave?

In all honesty, I’ve never found a suitable definition elsewhere so I created one myself based on the historical resources that seriously described them: A Human Wave Attack is a derogatory term for a post WW1 dismounted infantry attack using rudimentary infantry tactics, relying on mass as a combat multiplier, emphasizing close combat, conducted at the walk or run with little to no fire and movement, with little to no supporting fires, performed in a skirmish line formation with follow on forces in echelon (waves), with subsequent waves attacking regardless of lack of success or casualties of the previous waves, and with little or no changes in tactics between waves.

Point of order. No military force thinks it conducts Human Wave Attacks, they definitely don’t include the term in their doctrine. I think they’re typically caused either by errors from faulty doctrine, the result of poor intelligence on the enemy situation, faulty planning, a breakdown in coordination, and nearly always coupled with pressure from superiors to subordinates to aggressively attack and get results, whatever the cost. And for added flavor, toss in a pinch of stubbornness and callousness by commanders to sustain those heavy losses to appease their bosses.

I do think Human Wave Attacks have happened regularly in the past, most notably the Red Army in WW2 (in 1941 especially), the Imperial Japanese Army throughout WW2, the Republic of Chinese KMT, the PRC Chinese PLA, the Vietnamese especially against the French in the Indo-China War, and the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, specifically the Basij Militia.

With that out of the way, was Wagner also conducting Human Wave Attacks, aka Meat Waves, during the Bakhmut campaign?

Almost, but No.

How Wagner convict assault units conducted their missions nearly fits my definition of Human Wave Attacks (and others too), but I don’t think the Wagner attacks had the mass necessary to fit the definition properly. Attacks done in what amounts to reinforced fireteams or squads in staggered column formations, not in line formation, with waves often separated by hours or days, are hardly the massed waves of humans described in the past when entire companies or larger were attacking together, with repeated waves of similar size formations coming over and over in short periods, where in the matter of hours, the dead would literally be stacked multiple feet high atop each other.

So if Wagner wasn’t doing Human Wave Attacks in Bakhmut, what were they doing that could be so easily and often confused with them?

Wagner Infantry Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

Reports suggest that Wagner was utilizing mixed assault groups, with the actual assault element meant to conduct the attacks, covered by fire support elements (machine gun, automatic grenade launchers, mortars, snipers, anti-tank guided missiles), security elements to hold their flanks, consolidation elements to dig in and hold ground after it was taken, also with command, recon, electronic warfare, and drone elements to round them out.

Wagner convict Meat seemed to be organized in three man teams (troika), in squad-sized formation of two to three teams. Despite their expendable nature, they were still heavily armed with rifles, GPMGs, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers, mostly RPGs and RPO-A thermobaric types. Each team member was also given a cell phone without SIM card to use for land navigation purposes only, utilizing the GPS function, with preset maps uploaded of their area of operation, with known enemy positions, routes, checkpoints, and other control features preloaded. Each team member also supposedly carried a cheap, unsecure ICOM-type FM radio, the type you can typically find on Amazon for $30, to communicate with one another and with their leadership.

Leadership on the ground was either a professional Wagner mercenary or a picked convict given more responsibility, serving as the equivalent of a squad leader. Actual command and control for these missions seems to have been done by Wagner leaders in the rear, watching the live drone feed from an accompanying ISR recon drone, giving commands as necessary to those on the ground through their ICOM radios.

What were the ultra-dangerous infantry missions that Wagner convicts were typically performing?

Reconnaissance-in-Force: Because AFU defensive outposts and strongpoints were heavily dispersed, often well camouflaged, using dummy positions, and doing their best to remain undetected, despite the Russians possessing rather good reconnaissance drone coverage of the forward line of enemy troops, it was still difficult for the Russians to know where defenses were located. And that’s a big problem when it comes to planning attacks. Without knowing exactly where the defenses are located, how they are situated, their readiness, weaponry, fields of fire, obstacles, etc, a deliberate attack has little chance of succeeding, at least without heavy losses.

Like the L/DNR Mobiks before them, Wagner used their convict Meat assault groups to to find those AFU defensive positions by reconnaissance-in-force attacks, whereby Wagner convicts were given the location of likely or suspected enemy positions during mission planning, told to advance against them, and then finding them by effectively stumbling into the defensive and being fired on by defenders.

Placed in a similar situation, a trained recon unit could probably break contact at that point without heavy losses, if any. In fact, a good recon team can find the enemy without the enemy knowing they’re being observed. But poorly trained convicts cannot do that, making that a very dangerous mission for them, with a high likelihood of becoming casualties to small arms fire, not to mention the added threat of being caught in the open by enemy drones or forward observers and having fires called on them. To make matters worse, Wagner convicts weren’t allowed to break contact after being discovered, their commanders wanted them to remain in contact with Ukrainians defenders to develop the situation, find flanks, attempt assaults.

This was all bad news for the Wagner Meat assault groups on the ground, but great news for the Wagner assault detachment command elements in the rear, watching the ISR drone feeds, discovering the newly identified AFU defensive positions firing on their men. Those types of missions would provide some top-quality intelligence. Obviously they’d learn the defensive position locations, but also the general size and shape, the number of troops defending it and their protective posture, their potential sectors of fires, potential blind spots, nearby defilade/dead space, obstacles, and all sorts of other valuable info that would be used for planning future attacks, with those having a much higher likelihood of success than the probing attacks, courtesy of Meat.

With better intelligence on the enemy situation, follow-on assault elements would usually be performed by the better trained, led, organized, and equipped elite Wagner assault groups, primarily operating at night using thermals and night vision optics, which were quite useful since most AFU infantrymen didn’t possess them.

Deliberate Attacks: If specific AFU defensive positions were located, and if it was believed they were weakly held, Meat assault groups would probably succeed in taking them. Might as well try anyway. If they succeed, great! If they don’t, the failed attempt by Meat would still provide useful intelligence to the command element of the assault detachments, increasing odds that their next effort would succeed. Either way, win win.

Attrition: Once an AFU defensive position was identified, it would not only be hit by fires but by likely be hit by repeated Meat assaults. The Ukrainian defenders would take casualties, they’d be forced to consume excess ammo, they’d become mentally/physically exhausted, and that would trigger a need for them to be rotated out and relieved in place by another unit of defenders. During which they would be ripe for being hit by fires or for a deliberate assault.

The added benefits of repeated Wagner Meat assaults was that it didn’t just force AFU front line infantrymen to fire, but also revealed the positions of AFU supporting fires too, which could be tracked and engaged by Russian counterbattery fires.

Infiltration: By order, the convict assault groups were required to advance forward. If they were unlucky, they ran right into a Ukrainian position and got shot at. If they were lucky, without stumbling on a land mine or running into small arms fire from a defending position or being caught by the recon drone screen, they might discover a gap between AFU defenses, allowing the Meat assault groups to bypass strongpoints and outposts and move deeper into the Ukrainian tactical rear, outflank and assault the AFU defensive positions from a vulnerable flank or rear, or to cut the AFU defender’s lines of retreat/resupply.

“The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves”

With their day-to-day missions having such a high risk of death or serious bodily harm, how did Wagner keep chronically delinquent, violent convicts under firm discipline?

They did it with brutal punishments, the type that would have made a WW2 NKVD executioner a bit queasy.

If Wagner convict troops retreated without permission, they were supposed to be immediately summarily executed. If they refused to advance, summarily executed. Self-evacuate due to wounds without permission, summarily executed. Deviate from the pre-planned route without permission, summarily executed. If they violated an order of any kind in the rear, their Wagner superiors would literally beat them to death with sledgehammers.

And yet despite the unbelievably brutal discipline imposed by Wagner professionals on their Meat personnel, it didn’t hurt convict recruitment effort at all. More so, it got the job done. And that can’t be said enough. Despite the extremely stubborn AFU defense, with the added media rallying cry of “Bakhmut Holds!” But it didn’t hold, Wagner and its convict assault groups won in the end.

Many try to justify or describe the Bakhmut Campaign this way or that, but I think the best description is of a meat grinder battle where the cream of the AFU was wasted away trying to maintain a beneficial kill ratio against Wagner convict Meat. But a 3:1 ratio of Russian dead to Ukrainian wasn’t going to cut it. Even at a 5:1 ratio, even at a 50:1 ratio, it didn’t matter. The Russians could afford to lose expendable convicts far more than the Ukrainians could afford to lose the core of their mobilized, motivated army. Attritional warfare is cheaper using cannon fodder.

Once again, Meat worked.

Stay tuned for the Meat Part 3, “Plagiarism is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.”

Long story short, the claims are absolutely true, Meat exists in the Russo-Ukraine War, and both sides are guilty too. But the long version is worth knowing, so strap yourself in for this first article in a five-part series on this shocking, sickening, and yet quite interesting phenomenon.

"A Rose by Any Other Name…"

The first time I heard the term Meat used was a few months into the war coming from Ukrainians describing the Russians. I initially thought it was a clever insult created right then, but on a hunch, I did some research online, and thanks to Google Translate, I discovered that the term is not new at all, it turns out that the Russians have their own cultural version of the term “Cannon Fodder,” they call the same concept “Pushechnoe Myaso,” literally “Meat for Cannons.”

Meaning that Meat is just the translated abbreviated Russian way of saying Cannon Fodder, which I’m going to define as expendable troops whose lives are viewed as of little significance by their society, government, and military chain of command, without much if any real value.

Who constitutes Cannon Fodder? Because of the inherent value of expensive and limited number of military aircraft, ships, and even armored fighting vehicles, I think it’s safe to suggest that Meat should refer to ground troops (though the American 8th Army Air Force heavy bomber crews in WW2 would give modern Russia a run for their money in how cheaply they were used). While Meat can also include sapper combat engineers, to keep things simple I’m only going to focus on infantrymen. I figure there are two ways that they can be used as cannon fodder:

Incidentally: Infantry and even SOF can occasionally be used callously, recklessly, and/or incompetently by their leadership resulting in extremely heavy losses, even if they weren’t intended as such. Everyone is guilty of this from time to time. For example, the histories of the US Army and Marines are filled with accounts of notoriously bloody campaigns in WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam too where commanders used their units poorly, treating their troops with little regard.

Purposefully: On occasion, certain military units have been created, task-organized, and given missions intended from the get-go to be used callously and recklessly because their value to their chain of command doesn’t necessitate survivability. Cannon fodder of this type exists as a design, not as an accident. It’s this manner that I’ll be focusing on in this series, when it’s deliberate.

Rotten to the Core

To understand why expendable infantry came to be used in the Russo-Ukraine War, we must first discuss the situation that led to the decision. Hardly anybody wakes up one day and decides that certain troops have the value of used toilet paper, it’s a very specific chain of events that leads to it. In the case of the Russo-Ukraine War, that started on the eve of the invasion, when Russian ground combat maneuver units averaged 75% strength, with most of those missing personnel being infantrymen.

Part of the reason for that dates back to the early 2010s and the Russian MOD’s New Look Reforms, which saw a large number of newly built maneuver brigades and divisions created but that growth was not accompanied by a successful recruitment campaign of Contraktniks, the Russian nickname for the volunteers that signed 3-5 year long enlistment contracts who provided the bulk of the Russian ground combat power.

To rectify that deficiency in manpower, the Russians could have relied on their annual allotment of approximately 300,000 conscripts, each serving twelve-month terms, with roughly half or more serving in the ground combat branches. But conscripts are forbidden from serving in combat outside a declared war, which Putin elected not to do, legally declaring it a “Special Military Operation.” So Russian conscripts couldn’t serve in Ukraine during the invasion (and still can’t).

Why was the deficiency among the infantry? Why not other jobs? That can be traced to doctrinal and culturally related choices. I’ll get into that a bit later in this article, but the Russians have very specific views on combat effectiveness that are driven by armored-centric doctrine, so shortfalls in manpower fell on the infantrymen serving in the dismount roles of Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV), viewed less critical to overall unit effectiveness than vehicle crews.

The effect was that on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the typical motorized/mechanized infantry squad might have as few as two or three dismounted infantrymen per squad, as opposed to the seven dismounts per squad they were supposed to have on paper. To put that in perspective, a full Russian infantry platoon could only dismount a single squad’s worth of infantrymen.

And that’s before losses.

A Stoppable Force Meets an Unmovable Object

It shouldn’t be shocking to read that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was one of the worst in modern history. That’s not hyperbole, it was horribly planned and executed even worse.

More than any other problem, beyond their many glaring issues with faulty doctrine, insufficient manpower, poor training, lack of competence, corruption, poor logistics, etc., the Russian invasion failed because the plan’s success hinged on an intelligence assessment that the Ukrainians wouldn’t resist the invasion. But the Ukrainians did indeed fight back, fiercely and stubbornly, and that took a heavy toll on the Russians.

The first phase of the war can be said to have ended in late March 2022, when the Russian strategic coup de main to conquer Ukraine as a nation-state had failed, forcing the Russians to conduct mass strategic retreats out of Kyiv, Chernikiv, Sumy, and Mylokaiv Oblasts, as well as tactical retreats in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts too. The Russians had gotten their teeth kicked in, with very visible losses distributed across their force structure, with few units not having gotten mauled.

The war then transitioned into what most consider the beginning of the second phase, “the complete liberation of the Donbas," when the Russians committed a significant part of their force structure and supply lines to conquer what remained of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts in Eastern Ukraine. Without any surprise, having telegraphed the offensive weeks in advance, without an operational pause to recover from the beating they took in the first phase, the Russian strategic leadership once again set up their forces for failure.

The Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine was insufficiently organized for the type of fight they were about to endure, specifically lacking the infantry manpower necessary to conduct aggressive assaults, part and parcel of any offensive against prepared defenses. They started the war unprepared for that reality, and everything that happened since the war started only made the infantry manpower situation worse.

As mentioned previously, before invading Ukraine the Russian Armed Forces relied on a partial mobilization force structure, primarily relying on Contraktniks, while in the event of a major conventional war they planned to use their conscripts and mobilize calling in further reserves. But without having done so to support the 2022 Donbas Offensive, the only option left to replace manpower was a continuation of a wartime volunteer enlistment recruitment program offering massive signing bonuses and debt relief as enticements for signing short contracts (three to six months) to fight in the “Special Military Operation,” with marketing aimed at Russian military veterans to limit the need to train them from scratch.

Miraculously, by the end of 2023 to the present, the Contraktniks recruitment program met Russian manpower needs to support their SMO, bringing in around 25-30k new troops per month, enough to replace monthly losses and grow to some extent. But whatever number they recruited during the Spring-Summer 2022 period wasn’t enough, their manpower demands were too high, needing to recruit enough individuals to not only bring existing units up to full strength, needing more to consistently replace future losses, while also needing even more new troops to build newer units. The Russians didn’t need a few tens of thousands of new recruits per month, they needed hundreds of thousands ASAP. And so with too few new Contraktniks signing up, their infantry manpower crisis fared no better.

Regardless, they went on the attack.

Death Before Dismount

Generally speaking, the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) defensive template in mid-2022 relied on a positional defense, dominated by heavy fires supporting motivated troops manning a series of hasty and prepared defenses along the front lines. Their forward defenses were quite dispersed, the result of a need to limit forces in direct range of Russian attacks and fires, to better hide them, and because the overall strategic frontage was massive in comparison to the number of troops available; credible reports suggest an AFU infantry company held roughly 3 kilometers of frontage, translating to an AFU infantry platoon defending up to a full kilometer of frontage, if not more. Forward defensive positions tended to be squad or platoon-sized strongpoints dominating key terrain and avenues of approach, often screened by fireteam or squad-sized outpost positions.

Why do it that way? Well, like the Russians, the Ukrainians shared a common ancestor who wrote all their doctrine, so they knew exactly how the Russians would plan to fight. The Soviet “Army” was popularly described during the Late Cold War as an “Artillery army with tanks,” and that definitely applies to Russia (Ukraine too).

For example, while most Western militaries have a large number of infantry units that can be characterized as “light infantry,” within the Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian militaries all of their infantry units were effectively mechanized or motorized types, with all infantry squads possessing their own organic tracked or wheeled infantry IFVs, namely variants of the BMP, BTR, or BMD. Whatever the branch within the Russian Armed Forces, be it Ground Forces (their Army), VDV (Airborne, a separate branch from Ground Forces), or MP (Naval Infantry, under the Navy), there wasn’t any real conventional light infantry to be found at the start of the war.

That strange table of organization and equipment was deliberate, as Soviet-era and Russian offensive doctrine envisioned dominating the “fragmented battlefield” that would be found at the start of any major war, a non-linear, highly fluid environment with too few enemy military forces defending too large a frontage, with gaps everywhere, unguarded flanks everywhere, undefended roads everywhere, few if any prepared defenses. Pure maneuver warfare, dominated by overwhelming a highly mobile army with lots of fires.

Interestingly, had the Russians prepared properly for the invasion of Ukraine, the first weeks would have been the perfect environment for their doctrine and Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) to shine. Characterized by the meeting engagement with platoon, company, or battalion-sized tank-infantry maneuver forces, highly supported by fires, they planned to drive right into an unprepared enemy force and either destroy them in a vicious fires-centric meeting engagement skirmish, or the defenders would be bypassed to later be encircled.

Note, in this maneuver-centric warfare, dismounting infantry squads from their IFV was to be avoided when possible, as it was viewed as slow and wasteful. Hence why it was okay to staff a motor rifle infantry platoon of three IFVs while each squad not even have a fireteam’s worth of dismounts. No big deal, dismounting shouldn’t be happening anyway, right?

The Ukrainians knew all this. With their primary threat being Russian armored attacks, their tactical defensive scheme reflected that. With potential avenues of approach overwatched by recon drones and outpost positions, attacking Russian armor would drive right into long-range ATGMs or shorter-range anti-tank rockets, aiming at the lead vehicles, as artillery fire was directed on the other vehicles halted after coming under fire. And that’s exactly what happened in the invasion, and it’s exactly what happened throughout the Donbas Offensive.

However, every plan has a weakness, and the AFU plan was no different. While those dispersed, hidden, dug-in defensive tactics worked rather well against armored attacks, especially limiting the Russian’s capacity to conduct armored breakthroughs (read my earlier articles on Reconnaissance Fires Complex for more details on that topic), their antiarmor focus didn’t work so well against dismounted infantry attacks; there were both figurative and literal literal gaps in the AFU defenses.

But how could the Russians exploit the gaps to successfully storm defensive positions without an adequate number of dismounted infantrymen?

That’s it, I Quit!

Besides not having enough dismounted infantry during this period, the Russian Armed Forces couldn’t even have used their infantry aggressively even if they wanted. Get ready to learn one of the most insane military policies in history, this is going to blow your fucking minds:

Due to a totally asinine peacetime-era regulation within the Russian Armed Forces, initially meant to serve as an enticement to help recruitment, Contraktniks were allowed to resign from the RUAF whenever they wanted.

I’m 100% serious too, that’s legit. Let the ramifications of that sink in.

Is leadership a pain in the ass? Homesick? Life sucks in the Russo-Ukraine War? Scared of becoming a casualty? Well, good news for every Russian Contraktnik, be they junior enlisted, NCO, or officer. They could quit nearly as easily as walking out of a job at McDonald’s. The only stipulation involving combat was they had to wait until their unit was rotated off the immediate front line before they could be out-processed.

Think how batshit insane that is! As a combat infantry veteran myself, I can’t even imagine servicemen being allowed to quit whenever they want, especially in a combat zone. What maniac would give them that choice? More so, what maniac wouldn’t quit if they had the option?

And with Putin unwilling to legally escalate the conflict beyond its initial “Special Military Operation” status, the RUAF was stuck with that policy. At the time, their only recourse the Russian military had was a grossly ineffective shaming campaign meant to pressure soldiers not to quit or else their name and picture would be posted on social media and badmouthed. Or they’d catch unofficial threats from their chain of command. Hardly a successful deterrent.

Forced by circumstances and politics to conduct a meat grinder offensive, the Russian Armed Forces was stuck with that suicidal policy until Putin finally passed the Partial Mobilization in September 2022 after the Russians got their teeth kicked in again by Ukrainians during the Kharkiv and Kherson Counteroffensives, leading to legislative reforms that finally enacted a “Stop Loss” type policy where Russian Armed Forces discharges were frozen and they were no allowed to resign at will.

That insane policy had huge ramifications in mid-2022. Remember that the RUAF invaded Ukraine already understrength in dismounted infantry, then suffered heavy casualties in the initial invasion, and with even more losses in the months-long grinding Donbas Offensive. Then on top of that, their manpower crisis worsened due to Refuseniks quitting in record numbers.

And yet, the show must go on…

The Savior of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine: Ukrainians

Spring 2022 was characterized by lots of fighting throughout the Donbas, but two big urban battles stood out, at Mariupol and Severondonetsk. Neither was that important tactically or strategically despite becoming such a media spectacle, but they’re worth noting because the bulk of the Russian dismounted infantry assault troops involved weren’t Russian military.

While there were quite a few Chechen units involved, most of the infantry fighting were actually Pro-Russian Ukrainians who resided in the breakaway Ukrainian Donbas oblasts, self-identified as the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republic (L/DNR). Since the start of the Russo-Ukraine War in February 2022, the L/DNR committed their prewar “professional” veteran units and hastily raised mobilized troops (Mobiks) in the tens of thousands to serve under the Russian Armed Forces.

Initially serving along the old “JFO” demarcation Line of Contact from the 2014-2021 Donbas War to reinforce the Russian 8th Combined Arms Army, operating as part of the Southern Military District, as time went on L/DNR Mobiks were being attached throughout Russian ground units in Ukraine in company-sized light infantry companies to augment their offensive capabilities.

That makes total sense, in theory. The L/DNR could make up the deficit in dismounted infantry, allowing the Russian Motor Rifle, VDV, and Naval Infantry units to conduct aggressive sustained assault operations without dismounted infantry, which they didn’t possess in enough of their own.

In theory, it sounds like a nice solution, but what really happened?

Be Thankful For What You Have

Imagine you’re a Russian field commander. You have orders to conduct aggressive offensive operations and you must obey them. But the Ukrainian defenses are tenacious and effective. Your doctrinal bread and butter armor-centric attacks are both costly and often unsuccessful. However, there appears to be a gap in enemy defenses, but those require many dismounted infantrymen to exploit. Of which you are running low. Compounding your severe infantry manpower shortage is knowing that your Contraktniks can quit at will, requiring you be mindful of morale and losses.

Then your senior commanders give what appears to be a lifeline: large numbers of L/DNR infantrymen.

Hold off on the celebratory vodka, because upon receiving those L/DNR troops, you realize you got handed a bunch of barely trained Mobiks, who know as much about foot soldiering as I do about physics. What are your options to make this amalgamation of crap work? It’s time to get creative!

Check out this quote from the RUSI defense analyst Jack Watling, describing Russian operations during the 2022 Donbas Offensive:

So you, on the one hand, had LNR, DNR troops. They were often used to fix and force Ukrainian positions to light up. You had reconnaissance troops and Spetsnaz companies who would go and designate targets to get precision artillery against them, like Krasnopol. You would have Wagner companies and VDV companies who would be used to assault positions, and very often this would be done sequentially with the artillery. So you would force everyone to light up, fix them, smash them with the artillery all day, do them with a deliberate assault with those VDV companies. Once you took the ground, you'd put the LNR and DNR into the taken positions and then withdraw the VDV so that they didn't get hit in any counter-attacks.

Really, really attritional. Lost lots of people, although very disproportionate in terms of where they took the casualties…

And that wasn’t the only source I’ve found that described that exact same use of the L/DNR. In May 2022, a roughly brigade-sized Private Military Company named the Wagner Group took the key Donbas fortress city of Popasna using classic dismounted infantry assault tactics, supposedly also using L/DNR troops identically as Watling described above.

Bingo! That’s it, right there! That is the how, when, why, and where the use of Meat in the Russo-Ukraine War started.

The numerous and valueless Ukrainian Mobiks of the L/DNR were used to perform the only function that their callous and reckless Russian field commanders could find to get value out of them. Viewed as not competent enough to perform complex deliberate attacks, they were used to conduct reconnaissance-in-force probing attacks to find and fix Ukrainian outposts and strongpoint positions. Once those positions were identified, the Russians would hit them with heavy fires to attrit them, and then use a smaller number of more competent, more valued, more Russian assault forces to eliminate the positions, which at that time meant VDV or Wagner mercenaries.

Amazingly, that system worked rather well. Right up until the Russians ran out of Ukrainian Meat. Alas, all good things must come to an end, and by the autumn of 2022, the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics were pretty much tapped out of manpower left to mobilize.

But the seed was planted. The Russians had found a solution to the tactical and organizational problems they faced. If they had dismounted infantry to serve as Meat, their deliberate attacks against AFU prepared defenses could succeed, and they could keep attacking and taking territory, per their strategic orders.

But was there another source of Meat to tap into other than L/DNR Mobiks? More so, what if there was an even larger, more expendable source?

It wouldn’t take long to find out…

Stay tuned for more on the topic in Meat Part 2, Wagner in Bakhmut.

If the Ukrainians are so weak, why can’t the Russians breach, penetrate, and exploit the Ukrainian lines and achieve a tactical and operational victory? Why are only incremental gains possible?

Because the Ukrainians aren’t weak where it counts, and where it counts is their Reconnaissance Fires Complex.

Ramifications of a Defense-in-Depth of Fires

Much ink has been spilled about how the Ukrainians are using a defense-in-depth to hold back the Russians. And it’s true. Well, sort of. Due to AFU deficiencies in their infantry, it’s not possible to be arranged in depth anymore, they are essentially performing a forward defense because the infantry units of the maneuver brigades of the AFU are overextended. And despite being in a forward defense, they are still dispersed greatly too, with large gaps between defensive positions making them unable to mutually support each other. Maybe not everywhere, but it seems to be a prevailing theme.

This should present opportunities for the attacker to score a breakthrough. A century plus of offensive doctrine involving bread and butter maneuver warfare says to find one of these gaps, mass, breach the obstacles, destroy the front line defensive positions or bypass the holdouts, penetrate to the tactical rear, and exploit by driving deep into the enemy’s operational rear.

If only it were that easy…

Let’s examine a traditional mechanized attack and how it would fare against a weakly held forward defense defended by a well-supplied and effective Reconnaissance Fires Complex. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll limit the fictional attack to a reinforced mechanized company, with a platoon of tanks accompanying three platoons of infantry fighting vehicles and their dismounts, with an attached section of engineering support vehicles meant to reduce obstacles and clear lanes of mines. Their orders are to breach the main line of resistance to take a platoon-sized defensive strongpoint, with follow-on forces to press through for a breakthrough operation.

Upon receiving orders to conduct the attack and individually preparing, those mechanized units must meet up with one another at an assembly area. While there is no hard rule on how far back those need to be from the forward line of troops, they’re supposed to be concealed from enemy observation, preferably outside of enemy medium artillery range, because assembling in a small area makes for a ripe target. So how far back is the assembly area supposed to be in a transparent battlefield? Credible reporting suggests recon drones are often overflying deep into the tactical rear areas, sometimes well into the operational rear areas. That means our fictional mechanized company has a roughly 10-15 kilometer approach march from their assembly area just to reach the enemy. And even then, there is the possibility that they still might be detected in the assembly area by drones and engaged by long-range fires.

Now we need to crunch some numbers to figure out how long it's going to take that mechanized company to reach its objective. I couldn’t find current Russian doctrine but older Soviet-era manuals describe the approach march speed as around 20 kilometers per hour. But for argument's sake let’s imagine this mechanized task force is driving the max off-road speed of accompanying infantry fighting vehicles of 45 km/hr, they’d still need about 15-20 minutes to cross friendly tactical rear area and traverse No-Man’s Land, all the while potentially being detected by enemy drones and engaged.

And that doesn’t factor in the threat of anti-tank mines emplaced along every known route in the attacker’s tactical rear areas courtesy of enemy utility drones and/or rocket-launched Family of Scatterable Mines systems. That requires all any motorized/mechanized attacking force to move in column formation with either a dedicated engineering support vehicle or tank equipped with a mine-plow/roller. Deployed and plowing, that reduces the column’s march speed to about 12 km/hr, meaning the approach march might realistically take a full hour, all the while potentially being detected by enemy drones and engaged.

That all sounds very risky already, but the hard part hasn’t started.

Sporadic mines might have been possible on the approach march but enemy defensive positions are very likely going to be protected by wide and dense minefields, tank ditches, and other obstacles, meant to be covered by direct observation by defending ground forces, not to mention more recon drones. Our theoretical mechanized company must conduct a combined arms breach, a mission the US Army considers one of the most complex and difficult to successfully execute in combat, not a surprise as there are just so many things that can go wrong.

This is what the US Army thinks a combined arms breach should look. If like you have twenty minutes of free time, I recommend you watch it. Afterwards, ask yourself this: how the fuck is any of that possible in the Russo-Ukraine War?

How are the enemy’s defenses suppressed in their depth, including their fires, when they’re incredibly dispersed, hidden, and dug in? For that matter, how are enemy drones suppressed when EW or air defense can’t do it reliably? How does a mechanized force on the move obscure itself not only from the ground view of the enemy but also from the bird’s eye view of a drone, which might come from any angle? Would traditional smoke obscuration even work against the POV of a recon drone, often possessing thermal/FLIR capabilities?

If the attacker can’t adequately suppress the defenders and they can’t obscure themselves, how are they supposed to secure, reduce, and assault through the obstacles? Let alone perform the rest?

“If They can be Seen on the Battlefield, Then They will be Hit."

Think about the ramifications so far of the complexities involved in a mechanized breakthrough.

At this point in our fictional attack, the mechanized company will have conducted a lengthy, long approach march to then have performed a breach most likely without the benefits of SOSRA, very likely under observation from drones who will direct accurate and responsive fires on them. But for the sake of understanding the implications, let’s say the attacking task force succeeded in the breach, and now are moving forward to destroy or bypass the enemy’s forward defensive positions and beyond.

Based on Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian doctrine, and exacerbated by excessive strategic frontages, defenders need to remain dispersed. The Ukrainians tend to use squad and platoon-sized strongpoints covering an approximately kilometer-wide frontage, potentially screened by fireteam or squad-sized outposts. These positions tend to be hidden and dug-in well enough to survive against the Russian drone-directed recon fires complex, and are typically situated to hold key terrain features that the Russians will mostly likely be attacking, relying on attached ATGM teams or organic AT rockets to engage Russian armor as they advance into pre-designated “fire sacks” kill zones in front of their positions, and using machine guns and small arms to repel ground attacks.

No easy objective to take, with ATGMs they’ll typically have range overmatch on any tank or IFV cannon present with our fictional attacking mech company. But let’s say the forward defensive positions are adequately suppressed by supporting fires and aren’t a problem. Will the attack succeed? Let’s say they do. The strongpoint has been destroyed, and everyone occupying it are casualties or surrendering. Victory at last! Now what?

Why would defensive fires let up? Why would recon drones suddenly fly home? Why would various tactical operation centers turn off the live drone feeds and ignore the situation? If anything, should the attack succeed, resistance in the form of drone-directed fires will only intensify. The greater the success of the attack, the greater the response in the forms of fires galore directed against a dozen plus armored fighting vehicles easily spotted in the open. And thus starts the Turkey Shoot, if it hadn’t already started.

What happens to the attacking mechanized company if they just decide to hold tight and set up a hasty defense to consolidate whatever limited objective they took? They take the strongpoint, now they just need to hold it. Well, the problem is they’re still visible, they can be detected and engaged. And thanks to drones, gone too are the days in the past when an armored vehicle could pause and take up hasty defensive positions like going into defilade or vehicle hide positions like this. That works great against observers at ground level from the direction of enemy-held territory, but it does nothing to hide from the bird’s eye view of a drone, where only elaborate overhead cover/concealment can hide them. Not something easy for an attacking mech unit to find on their march.

Essentially what happens with mechanized attacks is that as soon as an attacking force is detected by the defenders, a clock starts. The longer the clock runs, the more attrition they’ll take. It’s nearly impossible to hide individual vehicles without prepared vehicle hide sites located in their own tactical rear. If they remain in the open within drone range of the enemy, they most likely will eventually be detected and engaged. Moving or stationary, they are very vulnerable.

If survival requires our mechanized company being invisible, how can they advance deep enough to penetrate the defense-in-depth-of-fires?

They can’t.

“Mass Kicks Ass Is Ass”

Let’s change things up and launch a fictional battalion-sized mechanized attack instead of company-sized. Fuck it, let’s attack with a whole division!

Will increasing the size of the attacking force increase the chance of success? If so, what mechanism causes that, when the defeat mechanism for earlier failure was drone-directed fires? Is success based on an assumption that the enemy can’t kill everyone attacking? But what if they do have enough ammo to kill everyone? Is that a chance any commander should make? How many times can field commanders afford to take that risk, fail, and not be relieved for cause? How can their personnel induction system, necessary to replace losses, survive that?

Without a tactical or technical solution to the enemy’s drone directed recon fires complex, adding mass to an attacking force without countermeasures to dismantle the recon fires complex doesn’t mitigate the threat, it only increases the chances of triggering a mass casualty event with severe and embarrassing losses when the attacking forces end up the victim of a bloody Turkey Shoot.

“Bite and Hold” in the 21st Century

If traditional mechanized breakthroughs can’t work against a defense built on a highly functioning Recon Fires Complex, what’s left? This system has got to have a weakness, right?

The historical counter to a defense-in-depth is with incremental limited attacks, not trying to penetrate it but constantly nibbling away at the edges, called "bite and hold" tactics. And that’s exactly what’s worked in the Russo-Ukraine War since at least late-2022. And what’s most unusual is that these incremental Bite and Hold attacks are most successful when performed by small unit dismounted infantry units, almost never above platoon-sized, potentially even down to fireteam-sized.

Wait a second! Full Stop. Back the fuck up! How is that possible?

After all, didn’t the entire history of the 20th Century of warfare demonstrate that dismounted infantry attacks don’t work against modern military technology? Wasn’t that why tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were built in the first place? And I’m to believe that small groups of infantrymen are more successful than armor, and doing it in small units too? How can that work?

I mentioned already how far back from the forward line of troops the assembly areas for mechanized attacks must be located due to the recon drone threat. In comparison, infantry assault groups can start their approach march right from the most forward frontline positions. Why? Because they can do so hidden. They can even infiltrate into No-Man’s Land earlier to stage at rally points closer to their objective. The shorter the distances to travel, the less exposure they have to being spotted by recon drones.

And which is easier to spot by the drone? A formation of moving armored vehicles will have a much more substantial visual signature than a dispersed small unit of infantrymen moving on foot, including their thermal signature.

When contemplating defensive coverage of potential enemy avenues of approach, there can only be a certain number of recon drones airborne at any given time conducting surveillance; while there isn’t a reliable means to disable/destroy enemy recon drones in conjunction with an attack, they’re still vulnerable to electronic warfare and air defenses. For planning purposes and logistics, it’s easier for them to overwatch known or suspected avenues of approach associated with mechanized attacks than trying to cover the entirety of the defender’s frontage trying to detect small groups of dismounted infantrymen moving through an almost infinite number of potential routes, including through restrictive terrain like between and through buildings, woods, swamps, wet areas, steep terrain, through anti-tank obstacles, etc.

It’s widely known that armor can’t hold ground, only infantry can, and that’s never been truer than in the Russo-Ukraine War. As mentioned, the moment an armored formation leaves the assembly area to the point they return they have no real chance of hiding without a well-built vehicle hide site. But dismounted infantry can easily hide along the route to their objective or on it, especially from the birds-eye view of a drone, using any manmade structure with a roof, vegetated woods, not to mention building cover with entrenching tools, or occupying defensive fortifications they take from an enemy. Even tossing up a poncho overhead on the branches of a bush can make them invisible to drones.

And let’s say the small unit of dismounted infantry catches some bad luck, they are not only detected by enemy drones but they are also successfully engaged too. What’s riskier for sustained offensives: Losing a full platoon or more of armored vehicles, their crews, and their infantry dismounts? Or just losing a squad of infantry dismounts?

An Idea So Crazy It Just Might Work!

Raise your hand: Who was shocked upon learning for the first time that the Russians were using dirt bikes and Utility Tactical Vehicles (the so-called “Chinese Golf Carts”) to conduct assaults? Who thought that was utterly ridiculous?

At first, my hand went up too. This tactic just screamed stupid, dangerous, and desperate. And yet it can be all of those things and still be evidence of effective innovation.

The way I came to terms was it was recognizing what made dismounted infantry attacks less risky than massed armored attacks. Then I asked myself, what if the enemy drone-directed reconnaissance fires complex makes armored breakthroughs too risky, but they also make dismounted infantry attacks too risky too? What if the walking distances are too lengthy, or the routes too surveilled?

That’s where the light vehicles come in handy. With their fast acceleration and high speeds, they can cover the distances of No Man’s Land much faster than dismounted infantry can on foot.

I just know a bunch of you reading this are screaming “Shenanigans!” After all, weren’t armored personnel carriers/infantry fighting vehicles literally invented to move infantry faster with added protection?

Absolutely. But as mentioned previously, there are issues with using APC/IFV, specifically relating to the ease with which they are detected and engaged. But light vehicles can be more easily infiltrated forward close to the front lines in small numbers into hide sites, and the closer they are to the enemy, the less time they have to spend under potential drone observation during their advance. And with the ability to traverse constricted terrain better than most APC/IFV, they aren’t nearly as constrained in available avenues of approach. They have more routes available than armored vehicles, and shorter ones too.

I’d never argue that light commercial vehicles with no armor have as good survivability against hits from pretty much every modern weapon system in comparison to legit IFV or APCs. But the Survivability Onion has more than the two layers of “Don’t be Penetrated” and “Don’t be Killed,” the additional five other steps above them deal with avoiding detection, something light vehicles will excel at over AFV.

Picture this: a dispersed handful of dirt bikes tear-assing at breakneck speeds from jump-off positions within a kilometer of their objective. If the drivers don’t wreck, they will have a greater chance not being where the drones are most commonly looking, so not detected. If they are detected, they will be harder to acquire at their fast rates of advance by responding fires, harder to hit.

A Little Goes a Long Ways

Forget for a second how they’re reaching their objective, but how is a small unit of dismounted infantry supposed to be able to succeed in assaulting a well-defended fortified strongpoint position?

That was the hardest part for me to wrap my head around. Especially from having personally served in the infantry and with so many years of research on the topic. A platoon-sized infantry assault force, let alone squad or fireteam-sized, should only be able to take out an equally sized defending unit, or more often smaller than they are.

Are the Russian dismounted infantry assault groups so well-trained and competent that they are basically Tier 1 assaulter level competent? Hell no.

Are the Ukrainian front-line defensive positions so weakly held that a halfway competent Russian squad or even fireteam-sized assault group can successfully capture it? For the most part, minus Kursk especially, it appears so.

As mentioned, the Ukrainian soldiers themselves are reporting significant infantry shortages, inadequate defensive fortifications to fight from, and very extended defensive frontages with around a platoon or less holding a full kilometer of frontage.

But here is the thing, even if the Ukrainians themselves weren’t reporting the above issues, the results speak for themselves. “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It can only be happening this way.

Due to having too few infantrymen, being too dispersed, having their defensive system overly focused on repelling enemy armor and not enemy infantry (which means defenses can’t be dispersed), adding in poor training, morale issues, etc, it means the Russians can commonly take Ukrainian defensive positions objective with just a squad. Or less.

All it takes is them getting through that pesky recon drone screen intact…

Battle Taxis

What if a small unit of dismounted infantry can’t get through the drone screen on foot or in light vehicle, the routes are just too heavily surveilled? What if the AFU defensive strongpoints are too well defended for only a squad or even a platoon of dismounted infantry to successfully assault, requiring greater mass?

Then it means the mechanized attacks are back on the table. But this time they differ from the previous traditional breakthrough style attack I described above. They still need to do the approach march and the breach, but they will not attempt to penetrate deeper. Instead, they’re acting as an armored battle taxi service to move larger groups of dismounted infantry assault groups to the objective in the fastest and most protective manner possible.

But remember, as soon as they break from cover and concealment, the clock starts and it’s ticking till they’re back out of the range of enemy drones. So armored vehicles can’t stick around near the objective supporting the infantry, or else the drones will detect and engage them. Mission success requires them to advance as close to the objective as possible, drop off the dismounts with their equipment as close to the enemy objective as possible, maybe provide a little bit of close range supporting fires help the assault succeed, but their survivability demands that they retreat ASAP out of drone-fires range. At that point, the dismounts are on their own to successfully assault their objective and then hold it, indefinitely.

Will they be relieved in a timely manner? Unknown.

Will they be resupplied? Unknown.

Will they end up abandoned because there is no guarantee that relief or resupply is possible? Unknown.

C’est La Guerre en Ukraine.

In the future I would like to follow up this article series with my opinions on the long-term ramifications of net-centric warfare and the recon fires complex, as well as going into potential countermeasures to reliably defeat an opponent’s recon fires complex. But for now, I’m leaving it here. Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes and ears open for them drones!

*In this context, the word Complex is interchangeable with System, meaning a collection of multiple parts.

Courtesy of Pentagon hacks in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many are familiar with the term “Revolution of Military Affairs,” but I bet most don’t know this phrase was borrowed from the Russian vernacular of 1970s-era Soviet Armed Forces operational art.

It seems the Soviet military officer corps, no slouches when it comes to musing on operational art, had become very enamored with the US Army-Air Force’s Assault Breaker Program, designed to interdict Warsaw Pact Follow-On-Forces using sensors and long-range weapons to attrit field army-sized formations moving in the Soviet operational rear that were the second and third echelons necessary for their Deep Battle Operations doctrine. The Soviet thinkers saw promise in Assault Breaker and created an entire doctrine of their own based on it.

Reconnaissance Strike Complex is the fancy Soviet-Russian-Ukrainian name for an integrated fires system using sensors to find targets deep into the enemy’s operational level depth (as far back as 100 kilometers or more), with secure communication nets they can direct long-range fires such as ballistic and cruise missiles to strike high-value targets using a smoothly functioning sensor-shooter kill chain with maximum responsiveness and accuracy. The tactical-level version of it is called Reconnaissance Fires Complex and envisioned the same tactics, techniques, and procedures to find targets within the enemy’s tactical area and engage them using an assortment of tactical-level weapon systems.

Funny enough, in Western defense communities, despite having created the concept ourselves and using it numerous times in past conflicts, we don’t have an exact name similar to Recon Strike or Recon Fires Complex, so I’m sticking with the Russian term.

A New Look for an Old Concept

Despite conceptualizing Recon Strike and Recon Fires so long ago, the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation in the 1990s and 2000s didn’t have the funding, technology, or capabilities to pull it off.

But the US military did, it had invested massively in Air Power and drones too, as well as satellites and other forms of intelligence sensors to detect targets. The key to making a Recon Strike and Recon Fires system work requires rapid and secure communication, which the US possessed using digital communications, including satellite transmissions that worked well over long distances. Additionally, the US had a vast stockpile of assorted PGMs and effective area weapons such as cluster munitions, which were designed for deep strikes on massed formations.

Despite not possessing a name for it, the US had created its own high-functioning Reconnaissance Strike and Fires Complexes, which validated the concept during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, OP Allied Force against Serbia, OP Enduring Freedom against the Taliban, OP Iraqi Freedom again against Iraq, and every subsequent military operation in the last decades. Whatever it was called, it seemed to work, and the world was watching and taking notes.

After the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 despite their successes, the Russian Armed Forces embarrassed itself enough with a plodding poorly formed offensive with an antiquated army, which provided enough backlash within their system for reformers to take over top MOD positions to launch what became known as the New Look Reforms. Funded by energy sector revenue flooding Russian coffers in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Russian Armed Forces worked to fix its many problems, and that included finally gaining the capabilities to perform Recon Strike and Fires.

Among the New Look Reforms, the Russians invested heavily into Intelligence, Surveillance, Target acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) type drones, which would provide day-night flight capabilities with thermal imaging, secure live feeds hardened against electronic warfare (EW) jamming, which reported directly to brigade level commands and above, providing them direct live feed to direct fires and perform command and control functions. They also invested heavily in PGMs, increased EW systems, and created dedicated fire control systems with automated software including Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities. These sorts of newly acquired assets were directly attached to much smaller-sized combined arms battlegroups called a Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG), based around a three-company tank-mechanized infantry force supported by two full battalions of cannon artillery and an MLRS rocket artillery battalion. Quite the formidable opponent, at least on paper.

There was much talk in the 2010s in the West debating the real capabilities of Russia’s Recon Fires Complex. In general, it’s good practice not to underestimate an opponent, and so it wasn’t hard to overestimate Russian fires dominance when they had so much organic artillery firepower with dedicated drones, digital comms, specialized fires software, and doctrine to pull it all together. Scary indeed.

In the Donbas War in 2014, a Russian artillery strike on the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) assembled at the village of Zelenopillya terrified many within Western defense establishments. Drone-directed artillery had massed and annihilated those AFU units. Then in 2017, one of the top generals of the Russian Army even boasted to the world that their Recon Fires Complex kill chain was down to only 10 seconds between detection and engagement. Very scary indeed.

But talk is cheap. The big question was whether they could really pull that off when it counted. And in the Russo-Ukraine War proved to be the ultimate test ground.

A Fitful Start

Like everything else involving the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russians fucked up their Recon Fires Complex as they did everything else.

It’s pretty safe to say the collective senior officer corps of NATO militaries blew a sigh of relief upon watching the Russians in 2022, with performances so bad that many in the West gleefully claimed that prewar Russian boasts about pretty much every aspect of their military were maskirovka, classic Russian military deception, or lies that they themselves believed. But like the saying goes, “The Russians weren’t twelve feet tall, but they aren’t four feet tall either.”

Reality was less controversial, it took a bit of time to work out the kinks, but when it did the Russian Armed Forces got their Recon Fires Complex to function as designed. Well, mostly. As far back as mid-2022, the British defense think-tank RUSI was reporting that the drone-directed counterbattery kill chains were 2-5 minutes long from detection to weapons splash. And it’s safe to say that their Recon Fires Complex was smoothly functioning at the very least by at least Spring-Summer 2023, when it played a big part in defeating the Ukrainian’s 2023 Counteroffensive.

The Other Soviet Successor

If Russia alone possessed a functioning Recon Fires Complex they’d have won the Russo-Ukraine War already. But they are not the only army fighting in this war whose history, traditions, and doctrine descended directly from the Soviet Armed Forces, including its doctrine. In fact, the chief reason Russia has been taking massive losses from the earliest days of the war, where hundreds of meter advances are qualified as successes worth bragging about, is due entirely to the extremely well-performing Ukrainian Armed Forces Recon Fires Complex.

Created in the late 2010s and early 2020s, the Ukrainians entered the war with Recon Strike and Recon Fires systems already in place. Relying on their own domestically introduced digital mapping/situational awareness/fire control software apps they had everything needed waiting and ready just in case the Russians attacked.

Since the start of the war in 2022 and throughout 2023, the Ukrainian Recon Fires Complex was a cornerstone of their offensive and defensive doctrine. But as their drone and fires capabilities grew while their organic infantry weakened due to losses, the Ukrainian drone-directed Recon Fires Complex is doing the heavy lifting to defend Ukraine. In some armies, everything exists to support the infantry, but I personally believe that within the Ukrainian Armed Forces everything exists to supports their Recon Fires Complex.

How’s it Work in Ukraine?

Picture a house, apartment, or factory building somewhere quite a ways behind the front lines. Deep inside is a dank, sturdy cellar, chosen specifically because of its stout reinforced concrete construction, making it a premade fires proof command bunker.

It houses a tactical operations center (TOC) used by the company-level and higher for maneuver units as well as their combat support units such as artillery or drone battalions. These TOCs remain hidden from enemy observation, with efforts taken to limit visual evidence and signals emission to give away the position.

Reeking of body odor and cigarette smoke, a command team and their staff monitor a dozen or more laptops and tablets set up everywhere. Some of those will display show digital maps run on custom situational awareness networking software apps, like Russia’s Andromeda-D system or the Ukrainian’s like Kropyva, they combine satellite map footage of the area of operations with GPS-like navigation systems to show live friendly locations, with designated enemy positions, phase lines, obstacles, and any other graphic control measure worth marking. Other computer monitors will display live drone feeds, courtesy of forward deployed drone teams.

Drone teams typically operate in two or three man groups positioned in preplanned hide sites located nearby but not on the forward line of friendly troops (aka the “Zero Line”). Once occupying their deployment site, they set up relays to extend signals for their drones and activate their satellite internet system, be they dedicated defense types or commercial versions like Starlink. And then they launch their drones.

Recon drones, depending on type and role, will be assigned certain routes and sectors to overfly and view, some covering No-Man’s Land or into the enemy rear areas looking for enemy ground forces, and some overwatching friendly forces for situational awareness/command and control. To communicate with other units and their higher headquarters, drone teams will primarily be using personal electronic devices and commercial text messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Google Chat, Telegram, etc. If the drones teams spot a target they report it up the chain and can then relay an internet link of their live drone feeds to their higher headquarter TOCs.

With a fully functioning Reconnaissance Fires Complex set up, the TOCs double as joint command-fire direction centers, where the plethora of officers following the live drone feeds are using them for command and control and instantly directing a whole plethora of fires onto enemy targets spotted in the drone feeds or plotted in the situational awareness maps by others.

How are they doing that? Those same custom situational awareness networking software apps act as the ultimate modern fire control software.

For the Russians, they use a system called Strelets, whereas the Ukrainians use GIS Arta apps, nicknamed “Uber for Artillery.” Units tasked to perform fires are networked into those systems and the tactical battlefield situational awareness mapping apps, along with essentially every single maneuver element leader issued some sort of electronic device and an internet connection. Everyone with access can plot targets or receive fire missions to provide the fires, with the systems even able to provide firing data to hit the enemy.

Nobody ever was able to achieve the braggatory 10 second kill chains, but Recon Fires Complex kill chains are supposedly down to roughly two minutes from detection to engagement, where a pilot flying a recon drone spots a target, someone in a TOC verifies it and instantly plots the enemy target on the situational awareness fire control app and then clicks a drop-down menu to direct fires on them, at which point a waiting crew operating a mortar, cannon artillery piece, MLRS, GLMRS, FPV strike drone, bomber drone, or even a ballistic missile, are instantly given fire missions and all info needed to effectively use their weapon system. And after firing, the recon drone can provide everyone involved instant battle damage assessment or adjust fires as necessary.

Effective, fast, and lethal. The God of War approves.

Dismantling a Recons Fire Complex

Offensively and defensively, possessing a well supplied and high function Recon Fires Complex is the ultimate force multiplier. But what happens when it doesn’t work?

Like any highly reliant system, whether it be radio comms, GPS, night vision, if any military force becomes over reliant on it and its removed without warning, there are some…adjustment periods afterwards, often painful, before they can adopt and overcome. And that would especially be true when a unit used to experiencing a transparent battlefield becomes deaf, mute, and blind all at once.

But can an effective Recon Fires Complex be targeted by the enemy?

In theory, sure. Since it requires command and control using drones plus fast and secure communications, targeting any of those effectively should dismantle the system. And it is happening too.

For example, we already know from many reports within Ukraine from both sides that weather greatly disrupts drone operations. To the point that winter months typically showcase large-scale brazen mechanized attacks taking advantage of snow storms or heavy rains knowing, as the Germans did when planning the Battle of the Bulge, that poor weather grounds aircraft. Additionally, mist and rain have negative affects for laser targeting systems used by dedicated ISTARS targeting drones.

Blinding drones can be done deliberately too. For example, I’ve read reports from AFU field commanders that have said that they prefer not to use smoke obscurants in conjunction with attacks because they blind their own recon drones used for command and control/fires targeting, so it can be assumed they’re having an equal effect on enemy recon drones.

Outright taking down drones is also a reality. We know electronic warfare is especially effective at it, even dedicated (and expensive) ISTARS fire direction drones using “hardened” frequency hopping signals aren’t immune to powerful and effective EW. Additionally, both gun and missile-based short range air defenses are also noted for taking their toll on drones, especially those operating behind enemy lines. And most recently, the Ukrainians have pioneered FPV drones to perform counter-drone operations, either self-detonating or crashing into enemy recon drones.

And it’s been known since the early days of the way that TOCs can be located and targeted, with not a few command posts all the way up to corps/field army level have been successfully detected and destroyed. It’s a long lesson of warfare, targeting command and control tends to disrupt it.

However, while its possible to disrupt any individual aspect of the Recon Fires Complex, it doesn’t appear that either Russia or Ukraine possess an effective way to reliably counter the recon drones, interrupt their communications, target the dual TOC-Fire Direction cells, or suppress enemy fire assets with counterbattery. At least not well enough to do so regularly and in conjunction with deliberately planned operations, especially large-scale attacks.

Which is a scary situation for any force contemplating offensive operations against an opponent possessing an effective Recon Fires Complex. They cannot stop from being seen, and if they are seen they will be targeted. And that comes with deadly repercussions.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my Reconnaissance Fires Complex series, where I’ll discuss in detail and length the ultimate question that I’m sure baffles so many and it did me: What is keeping the seriously weakened Ukrainian Armed Forces from collapsing? Is the Ukrainian Recon Fires Complex responsible for preventing it?