Excellent article as many of his are. According to Simplicius the thinker It is getting so technical that it is difficult to follow even the comments. One of the comments:
I read this article a few days ago (and might even have dropped a link here?) but hoped it would be covered - and it has been and very well - thanks!
Seems to me that the BTGs were an attempt to create all arms units at a very low level - maybe 4 manouvre companies backed by artillery, grad, recce and AD. These could and maybe still work well (but seems even company sized groupings are vulnerable) but obviously came unstuck in close terrain. Back in Feb 22 I recall confidently saying to a pal that I thought the Russians would not invade as the weather forecast was bad and the Raputitsa would soon arrive. This would create conditions where heavy Russian units would be road bound and hence vulnerable - and could be held up by relatively light forces in villages/woods etc. As proved to be the case. Any way - I was thus surprised the war began when it did and I could make a point that it was started when it was via UAF provacation and shelling for just this reason.
What has surprised me was the failure of Russia to apply its massive army to overwhelm the UAF. This article goes a long way to helping to understand the reason why. Put simply, the fighting has become atomised attrition. Killing enemy soldiers is important, but destruction of their firepower and communications much more so. Russian attacks on infrastructure were it seems to me intended to degrade AD capabilities mire than anything else so as to allow Russian air superiority to come into play more decisively.
In this war of material attrition it seems that large battles have been replaced by hundreds of [fire strikes] daily and the slow erosion of enemy long term capabilities. The UAF would have been overwhelmed last year if it were not for NATO arms. But now it seems NATO itself is becoming degraded as it ships its weapons stocks to the war and they become consumed. It is a moot point whether NATO can in the medium term replace these faster than it is spending them.
Battles like Bakhmut become explicable because only in close terrain can large scale units operate. And it thus becomes clearer that the UAF made a grave error trying to hold here as they traded lives for Russian shells.
How does such a war end as it is hard to win a long war of attrition? The Twitter war may provide part of the answer. NATO has clearly dominated the English language and western European media spaces. This helps prime [voters] for the long haul, but is also intended to undermine Russian morale - maybe leading to collapse and regime change. Personally I think this is a fools hope, and there is a danger that one starts believing your own BS and propaganda - and I think that has occurred. But the corollary of this change the way wars are fought must lead to a change in the way they are won. If Russia is concentrating not on taking ground but attritting weapon systems, then at what point does Ukraine/NATO throw in the towel?
I suggest there must logically come a point where one side or the other cannot continue and it collpases, and then we will see lots of territory changing hands. It appears that many western analysts thought Russia was close to that point in early June and that one more attack would collapse Russian resistance. Not many who come here would have agreed. But is the UAF close to that point? That is the real question. And if not, what will bring it to that point?
