I believe this conflict is going to really influence military thinking going forward. How many Javelins or NLAWs can you buy for the price of one MBT, how many MPAD’s for the price of one BUK, how many MALE drones for the price of one SU-25?
I saw a description of the Javelin as a ground launched substitute for precision air delivered munitions, interesting if you thing about it, up to 2.5 mile range, attacks from above yeah I can see that. The next evolution I can see is a small drone that can deliver targeting data to a Javelin for indirect fire.
I also see Drone Wars coming, countermeasures vs secure data links. Instead of continuous ground control I predict autonomous until a potential target is located and then burst transmission until target is identified and attack permission is granted.
I think all the wrong lessons are available right now. Like I’ve said in other threads, this is basically a 1980s Tom Clancy “Red Storm Rising” type conflict, or more akin the Yom Kippur War where missiles took a toll on tanks and aircraft. I fully expected a lot more done warfare- and drone swarms- and a lot my cyber taking down C3 for the Ukrainians.
That the Russians seemingly have buffed this so hard is…. Hard to explain- except for when you have a country run by oligarchs, you end up with skimming and false capabilities. 4:1 to run an attack, and the Russians were double that at 10:1. If Ukraine had any kind of comparable air capacity, that 40mile convoy would be fire line.
Was Putin lulled into over-confidence because of the past successes and the outcome in Syria? I guess he didn’t take the lesson when those Russian Mercs tried to screw with some US elements in Syria and we brought the holy-hell down on them.
As to what this means for China?
The biggest thing that you can draw from this and Iraq, is that you can’t win these nation wide invade&hold operations with out bodies, and those bodies mean draft/conscripts for large (multi-million) armies. I don’t know if western countries, or even China can pull it off.
That and for the last time I don’t want to hear that me with my AR-15 are not a viable threat to a ‘nuclear power’. A-Stan, Iraq and and now Ukraine- especially if they try to hold the whole country. That argument is buried with thousands of Russians.
Initial impressions do seem to be that Infantry, and even Light infantry, are more than capable of inflicting heavy losses on an advancing armored or combined armed force. Nothing new there, but it’s interesting to see it reiterated. The vulnerability of Russian supply convoys appears to be even worse than what the US experienced in '03. (to be fair, the Ukrainians are much better trained and equipped than the Iraqis were). Drones seem to be playing an important part, but, they aren’t having quite the impact people expected of them. They’re great for reconnaissance and some limited attacks, but nothing extreme thus far. All that fits with what we knew already. Comm plans and electronic warfare also seem to be playing a big role, but all in accordance with what we knew before. Geo-locating pictures, videos, and signals has been a great intelligence asset and have allowed even open-source analysts to keep track of the battle. I’m surprised jamming hasn’t played a huge role yet, but that might be more of a lack of evidence than the evidence of lack.
The Basics of understanding logistics. moving food and fuel forward in a timely manner. Rearm, refuel medical and food have to move forward in a secure fashion in order to keep the momentum going in your favor. Also having a safe place to perform maintenance in a timely manner is essential.
All of that was available to happen and none of it as far as I can tell actually happened. What you got was a fluster cluck that sat and sat and made a hell of a target for drones, artillery and air assets.
Service Station style resupply is a marvelous thing once you get it down.
That’s not fancy, but it’s been essential since Roman times.
Not at all, the problem is not tanks, it’s parking a tank, not refueling it and sitting there like Muppets until someone comes to “Save” you.
Conscripted Soldiers really aren’t self motivating.
Tanks in the lead, not stopping and covered by Mech Infantry has worked well for the last 80 years. Forget your purpose, slow down or stop, run low on food, ammo and fuel and your worthless.
I have yet to see a drone kill a tank in combat.
If the UAV is big enough to carry targeting equipment and a hellfire or two it can kill a tank.
Then at some point when do we develop drones with target acquisition capabilities that are just kamikaze style weapons once they lock on? Just a good sized shaped charge EFP warhead flying around with the operator looking for something to get a lock on and put the drone into self guided missile mode.
I was flummoxed when the Marine Corps eliminated it’s vaunted tank corps, but after seeing what small groups of AT and missile laden infantry can do to a tank force, I get it now.
During the recent Azerbaijan-Armenia unpleasantness, there’s footage of Armenian tanks being knocked out by drones. Although they seem to be in static positions and not in motion:
I thought it quite telling that when the German Chancellor gave his recent speech about spending an extra 50 billion euro this year to bring the Bundeswehr up to snuff he specifically mentioned acquiring Israeli armed Heron UAV’s.
There are quite a few Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 Drone videos on Twitter showing them hitting stationary targets, mostly anti air but I believe some tanks also. I believe they started the war with 20 and then received some more after the start of hostilities don’t know how many are active.
Doctrine or execution? Since they seem to have violated the “combined”, ignored the “-” and don’t exactly maneuver.
Predator or reaper can carry two hellfires?
I think that is more of an Asian/Island thing. Hell, were Sherman’s key to the island campaign in WWII? And those were set-piece, large island ordeals for airstrips.
Exactly, after reading about this, I was expecting an order of magnitude more, especially initially. Which is if I wonder they are holding some back for step 3, NATO countries.
I watched that video. Those are two-piece attacks. That ord isn’t coming off that platform that is designating, right?
Were there not as many MANPADs in that theater?
It seems to me that to take down a Helo, you could use a drone-ish type thing that goes 300mph, and is totally visual/AI driven based on camera tech.
I was waiting to see if the multi munition anti armor missile was going to be given to Ukraine to “test”. I forgot what it is called. It was in Tom Clancys The Bear and the Dragon and years later aired on Future Weapons. It effectively will destroy a whole armored battalion. That parked convoy was ripe for the picking.