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bear in mind, current Russain doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons is public. you can literally go look it up, its available publically as part of their strategy (declartory strategy, basically "drawing the red lines" so that other nations are deterred form any actions that might trigger a nuclear response). the document was last updated in 2014, "The Russian Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence"


In this document, we have the following:

"the Russian Federation considers nuclear weapons exclusively as a means of deterrence, their use being an extreme and compelled measure"


emphasis is mine, but you get the point.

They also outline the 4 use cases that they say they will use nuclear weaponry:

1) arrival of reliable data of a ballistic missile launch, aimed at Russia and/or its allies.

2) use of nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, by an adversary against Russia and/or its allies.

3) an attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of Russia, that would undermine the command and control of the nuclear forces. (i.e. a conventional weapons strike aimed to "decapitate" the Russian nuclear forces to prevent them launching)

4) aggression with conventional weapons that threatens the very existence of the Russian state (ie hostile tanks on the outskirts of moscow).


now, I aggree that doctine and reality are not the same, and just because they SAY these are their use cases, it doesn't mean thier would never use them outside of them, but it does give you an idea of the threshold needed for nukes to become viable options in russian eyes, and it would be what the training given to the troops actually pushing the buttons would be based on. A use outside of these sorts of situtaions would likely run the risks of troops refusing to risk the total death of most of the worlds population (the "turn the key" problem, as wargames put it.)


In short, the situation in ukraine is not bad enough to justify a nuclear response. For At worst, to paraphrase Hirohito, "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Russia's advantage"

xerxeskingofking wrote:
"the Russian Federation considers nuclear weapons exclusively as a means of deterrence, their use being an extreme and compelled measure"

That's a political policy and it must not be discussed here. Please limit your discussion to the battlefield actions of the Russian and Ukranian armies fighting this specific war.

A use outside of these sorts of situtaions would likely run the risks of troops refusing to risk the total death of most of the worlds population (the "turn the key" problem, as wargames put it.)

There is no such risk. Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons and no other country is part of the conflict as defined by OP.

Ah, i must admit, i skipped the part of the threat where you declared your intent to derail it. nevermind.

have you tried just reporting it as a inherently political topic to the mods?

xerxeskingofking wrote:
Ah, i must admit, i skipped the part of the threat where you declared your intent to derail it. nevermind.

have you tried just reporting it as a inherently political topic to the mods?

It is apparently allowed, given that OP is a mod. But OP has declared this a politics-free topic so I will comply with their wishes and only discuss the battlefield actions of the Russian and Ukrainian armies and attempt to steer the conversation back onto the permitted topic.

If you find it to be "derailing" to limit this topic to what OP has explicitly limited it to then perhaps you should complain to them instead?

CadianSgtBob wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Militarily what good wrecking your own country does? Russian generals(who have to propope use of nukes first) know using nukes result counter nuke. Russia dead.

What military gain that is? Russia loses out.

Nukes used makes zero military sense. It is only feasible without counter nukes.

Ukraine does not have nukes so any "counter nuke" would have to be from an uninvolved third party.

No, as there are numerous very involved third parties with nuclear capability.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yeah, I feel like some of y'all really aren't understanding that CadianSgtBob is having a go at the ridiculousness of a topic of war without politics.

And you are missing the counterpoint that Bob is creating straw men not based on political discussion so he can argue the point, and very much seems to be attempting to derail the topic himself so that he can declare we was right.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
No, as there are numerous very involved third parties with nuclear capability.

Not without invoking politics there aren't.

And you are missing the counterpoint that Bob is creating straw men not based on political discussion so he can argue the point, and very much seems to be attempting to derail the topic himself so that he can declare we was right.

Foreign policy decisions of non-Russian nuclear states is politics.

Russian concern for relations with non-Russian nuclear states is politics.

Russian domestic support and willingness to sacrifice to win the Ukraine war is politics.

If you want to discuss political issues like these then feel free to lobby to get the rule changed. But please stop trying to invoke forbidden topics.

Conditions 3 and 4 are so open-ended and flexible that Putin can (and would, if he felt compelled to do so) spin them over any trivial thing. Do keep in mind the bs excuses he used to justify his invasion - it was an act of self-defense against NATO expansion, nevermind the fact that Ukraine was no closer to joining NATO in February than it was in 2012 or in 2002, and to defend ethnic Russians from genocide at the hands of the western backed Ukrainian government, nevermind the fact that they were actually defending themselves from Russian backed separatist rebels, and oh yeah Ukraine was never a real country in the first place, its just a renegade Russian province that needs to be brought back in line.

Now that Putin has recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent sovereign nations with an eye towards apparent annexation and integration into the Russian empire, let alone the fact that he has already annexed Crimea he can easily spin any Ukrainian push to reclaim their lost territory as triggering article 3 or 4 and justify nuclear strike that way. Its not the high threshold you make it out to be.

Oops - that became political. Shame.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Stop posting

actually, in that case you should and edit your post

2 possibilities, the information is up to date and valid, than you should not write it because (at least in EU and I think US should have the same) there is ban to post information about Ukrainian troop placement/movement online (and the post on dakka are public available)
or the information is public available therefore outdated or not valid

if the US does not restrict sharing such information, people should still not do it

 kodos wrote:

and for the AT weapons Ukraine got, it does not matter either, just that the AT weapon likely cost more than the tank they destroy
with the problem that Ukraine will run short in AT missiles before Russia runs short in cheap tanks

Ah... all the information I can find says Russia has 2800 tanks and 13,000 other armored vehicles.

According to this https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2022-03-07/ty-article/nato-allies-send-ukraine-17-000-anti-tank-missiles-in-six-days-heres-the-result/0000017f-dc79-d3a5-af7f-feff9cf90000... well, the title says it all. Even if the Russians have twice as many armored vehicles, and NATO has only sent half as many missiles, there are still 5600 tanks vs. 8500 missiles. The lighter armored vehicles can be taken down with lighter weapons than a full ATGM.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 BertBert wrote:
Wouldn't the nuclear fallout generated by a nuke dropped on Ukraine be enough to constitute a declaration of war against neighbouring NATO states?

Unlikely. Fallout goes eastward and east of Ukraine is just Russia. A few tactical nukes or air bursts against city targets would cause very limited fallout. And in strictly military terms, without considering politics, a declaration of war would be pointless. Once the fallout is in the air no military action can stop it so NATO involvement would have no military objective to accomplish.

Just going to leave this here:

Given Russia can be classed as a kleptocracy I guess we can't mention corruption impacting on capabilities as it is therefore political?

This channel popped up in my feed.
I guess this dude is actively tracking the goings on in Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqqf2BwNM4Oih-a_ikbWww

xerxeskingofking wrote:


now, I aggree that doctine and reality are not the same, and just because they SAY these are their use cases, it doesn't mean thier would never use them outside of them, but it does give you an idea of the threshold needed for nukes to become viable options in russian eyes, and it would be what the training given to the troops actually pushing the buttons would be based on. A use outside of these sorts of situtaions would likely run the risks of troops refusing to risk the total death of most of the worlds population (the "turn the key" problem, as wargames put it.)


In short, the situation in ukraine is not bad enough to justify a nuclear response. For At worst, to paraphrase Hirohito, "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Russia's advantage"

And as per russian nuke procedure military proposes, president authorizes. No red button for president to launch nukes. If he orders nukes military needs to break their own rules to follow. Putin literally isn't allowed to order launch of nukes on his own. The army has to say "we think situation calls for nukes. Can we fire them?".

And we know at least two cases where soviet soldiers refused to follow orders and procedures to fire nuke even when situation actually called use of nukes as per orders...

If soldiers refuse to use nukes even when standing orders and procedures say "launch them" who thinks they will use them if illegally ordered to?

And what soldier will launch nukes when military wise it will result in own country getting annihilated...That's suicide strategy. That makes 0% sense military wise. Generals wants to win wars. Not lose them and nukes is mutual lose. By definition russia loses if they use nukes. Russia gets nuked in return. That is losing proposal. And military doesn't want to lose in general...

 Vulcan wrote:
Ah... all the information I can find says Russia has 2800 tanks and 13,000 other armored vehicles.

there are about 3k tanks in active service, and 17k tanks in reserves from different types (T-62, T-64, T-72, T-80, T-90) and other armoured vehicles

and yes, not all of them need modern missiles to be taken out, yet troops are not having always all AT weapons available (so need to take the better one for the old tanks as well if this is the one they have ready)
logistic is a problem (actually the biggest problem Ukraine has at the moment as they don't have the troops and equipment to defend/support the whole front line but need to concentrate forces were they think Russia will attack) as you need to get the weapons there in time and soldiers who can use it
it does not help to have twice the amount of missiles if those are at the wrong end of the front or the soldiers trained to use it are somewhere else (so the total amount of weapons delivered can be misleading as this does not mean those are all available to everyone all the time)

 kodos wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Stop posting

actually, in that case you should and edit your post

2 possibilities, the information is up to date and valid, than you should not write it because (at least in EU and I think US should have the same) there is ban to post information about Ukrainian troop placement/movement online (and the post on dakka are public available)
or the information is public available therefore outdated or not valid

if the US does not restrict sharing such information, people should still not do it

Its public knowledge released by Ukrainian ministry of defense sources. For example: https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1524438980191731717

Stop trying to lecture people about gak you clearly don't know anything about.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
No, as there are numerous very involved third parties with nuclear capability.

Not without invoking politics there aren't.

And you are missing the counterpoint that Bob is creating straw men not based on political discussion so he can argue the point, and very much seems to be attempting to derail the topic himself so that he can declare we was right.

Foreign policy decisions of non-Russian nuclear states is politics.

Russian concern for relations with non-Russian nuclear states is politics.

Russian domestic support and willingness to sacrifice to win the Ukraine war is politics.

If you want to discuss political issues like these then feel free to lobby to get the rule changed. But please stop trying to invoke forbidden topics.

The direction is to ignore political posts and report them. Quite obviously, even YOU know they aren't.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Given Russia can be classed as a kleptocracy I guess we can't mention corruption impacting on capabilities as it is therefore political?

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the best model for predicting Russian behavior is to consider them a petrochemical company with a standing military. Even in the Soviet era, oil prices often determined what they could afford to do. When oil prices were high, they could afford to be more adventurous; when oil prices were low they had to roll back their ambitions.

(Not politics; economics!)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Ah... all the information I can find says Russia has 2800 tanks and 13,000 other armored vehicles.

there are about 3k tanks in active service, and 17k tanks in reserves from different types (T-62, T-64, T-72, T-80, T-90) and other armoured vehicles

and yes, not all of them need modern missiles to be taken out, yet troops are not having always all AT weapons available (so need to take the better one for the old tanks as well if this is the one they have ready)
logistic is a problem (actually the biggest problem Ukraine has at the moment as they don't have the troops and equipment to defend/support the whole front line but need to concentrate forces were they think Russia will attack) as you need to get the weapons there in time and soldiers who can use it
it does not help to have twice the amount of missiles if those are at the wrong end of the front or the soldiers trained to use it are somewhere else (so the total amount of weapons delivered can be misleading as this does not mean those are all available to everyone all the time)

While all that is true, it's true in both directions. And the point remains that ATGMs are not the only way to take out a tank.

A bit off target, but I saw this on another forum recently and found it very interesting;




Makes me think about about some of our own media. I absolutely see parallels here. The Anime/Light Novel series Gate immediately came to mind, as do basically the entire LitRPG genre (though there the focus is on much more mundane power fantasy).

Saves me making a new topic.

I’ve heard a lot said about combined arms Warfare involving sending the infantry out ahead of the tanks. Why is that the case? It sounds slightly backwards and counter to why tanks were first introduced.

Aren’t tanks meant to protect your very squishy infantry and do the job of punching through defences that could suppress infantry? What stops a few guys with heavy machine guns chewing up your infantry as they try to screen your tanks from AT missiles? How does the infantry avoid the sort of limitations people had in WW1 attacking without tanks? It sounds a lot like playing canary without context and I am not sure how that at face value wouldn’t result in high infantry casualties.

It's specifically about where the fighting is taking place. In open fields, you absolutely lead with the tanks, but in built up areas like cities, which is where most of the fighting in modern warfare actually happens, tanks without infantry for support and screening are horrribly vulnerable to ambush. Close terrain means they lose their speed and maneuvre advantage, the enemy could be hiding anywhere and can easily get in close to target blindspots and vulnerable points.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Saves me making a new topic.

I’ve heard a lot said about combined arms Warfare involving sending the infantry out ahead of the tanks. Why is that the case? It sounds slightly backwards and counter to why tanks were first introduced.

Aren’t tanks meant to protect your very squishy infantry and do the job of punching through defences that could suppress infantry? What stops a few guys with heavy machine guns chewing up your infantry as they try to screen your tanks from AT missiles? How does the infantry avoid the sort of limitations people had in WW1 attacking without tanks? It sounds a lot like playing canary without context and I am not sure how that at face value wouldn’t result in high infantry casualties.

what pgmason said. the tanks are very vunerable to ambush and flank shots, same as always. the tanks are not THAT far behind the infantry, and can provide direct fire support to the PBI as they advance. The infantry have better situational awareness, and can easily talk a tank onto target, so heavy anti infantry weapons are less likely to engauge becuase they will get 30 seconds before HE rounds start slamming into their location. the infantry can spot AT weapons, and fire on a launcher once it shoots and reveals itself which can throw off the missile teams aim and save the tank. the footsoldiers, by virtue of their numbers, also cover multiple axis of approach or attack, for example having guys facing down every street intersection when going though a town, so that any AT team trying to infiltrate and get a sdie attack is faced with infantry who can shoot at them and alert the tank to the threat.

its not so much

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Saves me making a new topic.

what pgmason said. the tanks are very vunerable to ambush and flank shots, same as always. the tanks are not THAT far behind the infantry, and can provide direct fire support to the PBI as they advance. The infantry have better situational awareness, and can easily talk a tank onto target, so heavy anti infantry weapons are less likely to engauge becuase they will get 30 seconds before HE rounds start slamming into their location. the infantry can spot AT weapons, and fire on a launcher once it shoots and reveals itself which can throw off the missile teams aim and save the tank. the footsoldiers, by virtue of their numbers, also cover multiple axis of approach or attack, for example having guys facing down every street intersection when going though a town, so that any AT team trying to infiltrate and get a sdie attack is faced with infantry who can shoot at them and alert the tank to the threat.

its not so much

- A lot of Ukraine is open country though and a lot of the fighting is in what should be tank country.

- If the tank is close enough to provide fire support and the launchers range is greater than a rifles then how could the tanks be able to cover the infantry and the infantry cover the tanks? Can’t most of these launchers shoot beyond the human eye and well out of any real danger?

- How does this chess like formation not make everything slow down to walking pace? How does an advancing force know that there’s a guy with an AT launcher over that hill?

- What if the Weapon only needs one shot and your opponent isn’t massively concerned about the fate of the conscript once that’s done?

- Is a heavy machine gun really a significant loss? 30 seconds seems plenty time to cause damage. What if your opponent is happy to trade your two guys for the ten to twenty he might get in that time? Multiplied across an entire line why wouldn’t you be happy locking horns with the enemy and shredding his infantry?

I think back to Iraq 2003 where the US just charged straight up the road to Baghdad. How did they avoid the issues the Russian army had? I remember there being some losses but you never saw whole columns of US armour being destroyed by artillery or stopped at the gates of the city.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Saves me making a new topic.

what pgmason said. the tanks are very vunerable to ambush and flank shots, same as always. the tanks are not THAT far behind the infantry, and can provide direct fire support to the PBI as they advance. The infantry have better situational awareness, and can easily talk a tank onto target, so heavy anti infantry weapons are less likely to engauge becuase they will get 30 seconds before HE rounds start slamming into their location. the infantry can spot AT weapons, and fire on a launcher once it shoots and reveals itself which can throw off the missile teams aim and save the tank. the footsoldiers, by virtue of their numbers, also cover multiple axis of approach or attack, for example having guys facing down every street intersection when going though a town, so that any AT team trying to infiltrate and get a sdie attack is faced with infantry who can shoot at them and alert the tank to the threat.

its not so much

- A lot of Ukraine is open country though and a lot of the fighting is in what should be tank country.

True, but for reasons best known to themselves, the Russians appear to have mostly been sticking to the roads.

- If the tank is close enough to provide fire support and the launchers range is greater than a rifles then how could the tanks be able to cover the infantry and the infantry cover the tanks? Can’t most of these launchers shoot beyond the human eye and well out of any real danger?

Not when your line of sight is 50m to the next building.

- How does this chess like formation not make everything slow down to walking pace? How does an advancing force know that there’s a guy with an AT launcher over that hill?

It pretty much does. Everything I’ve ever heard or read about urban clearance is that it’s a slow, brutal grind.

- What if the Weapon only needs one shot and your opponent isn’t massively concerned about the fate of the conscript once that’s done?

Fine as a strategic theory, but that conscript may have some significantly different ideas about his fate. This is where the Ukrainians have a real advantage, because they’re highly motivated to make the Russians pay for every metre of land, somewhat regardless of cost, where as the Russian conscripts don’t really want to be there and aren’t super keen on throwing their lives away for Uncle Vlad.

- Is a heavy machine gun really a significant loss? 30 seconds seems plenty time to cause damage. What if your opponent is happy to trade your two guys for the ten to twenty he might get in that time? Multiplied across an entire line why wouldn’t you be happy locking horns with the enemy and shredding his infantry?

Again, everything I’ve ever read is that, outside of WW1 trenches, most fire is used for suppression whilst you manoeuvre / call in artillery / relay the enemy coordinates to your air or armour support. The casualty to rounds fired ratio for squad based weapons is astonishingly low.

I think back to Iraq 2003 where the US just charged straight up the road to Baghdad. How did they avoid the issues the Russian army had? I remember there being some losses but you never saw whole columns of US armour being destroyed by artillery or stopped at the gates of the city.

A) by 2003 Iraq had been under sanctions for over a decade and they’re military capabilities were significantly degrade.
B) outside of specific units (e.g. Republican Guard), most of their conscripts weren’t super keen on laying down their lives for Saddam.
C) the US (and allies) had complete air supremacy and things like MLRS counter-battery systems, etc. Anything that started lobbing rounds at the advance had a life span measured in minutes. I think it’s a WW2 aphorism that the most dangerous weapon in the US arsenal is a Lieutenant with a radio.

Something I’ve been mulling over for a couple of weeks now is how this conflict seems to be reinforcing the lessons from the end of WW2; so much of this is about depth and resilience of logistics.

Having the latest and greatest technology is fine, but only if you have enough of it to deploy where it’s needed, the transport to get it deployed and the spares, consumables and replacements necessary to keep it in the field.

I’m very concerned that so much of western defence procurement is now based on one-off procurements of “just enough” stuff; how many Javelins/NLAWs, etc. have we sent to Ukraine and how many years will it take to replace the stockpiles? I know it will never be the sexy part of military procurement, but we really need to look at the resilience of stockpiles and supply chains.

 Jadenim wrote:
Something I’ve been mulling over for a couple of weeks now is how this conflict seems to be reinforcing the lessons from the end of WW2; so much of this is about depth and resilience of logistics.

Having the latest and greatest technology is fine, but only if you have enough of it to deploy where it’s needed, the transport to get it deployed and the spares, consumables and replacements necessary to keep it in the field.

I’m very concerned that so much of western defence procurement is now based on one-off procurements of “just enough” stuff; how many Javelins/NLAWs, etc. have we sent to Ukraine and how many years will it take to replace the stockpiles? I know it will never be the sexy part of military procurement, but we really need to look at the resilience of stockpiles and supply chains.

An oft debated topic, but the long and short of it is that, in ATGMs at least, NATO's own stocks are still significant in most regards, plus NATO has significant production capability to regenerate those stocks, and, most crucially, NATO is not reliant on shoulder fired ATGM systems as its sole anti-armour weapon. We have our own tanks, attack helicopters, CAS planes, etc, all of which can cover for deficiency's in any one area.

That said, the rates of expendature (or at least, apparent rates of expenditure) are still very high, and would imply we need to significantly up our own war stocks. We should also consider upping the size of many of our vehicle fleets, given that even in the most favourable estimates (based on visually confirmed losses, ie ones we have photo evidence for) the russains have lost enough tanks to, for example, completely wipe out the UK tank fleet and its reserves in storage.

given recent history and the war on..."fear", NATO has quite robust supply systems in place for a lot of things. in a theoretical intervention, we would be able to sustain troops in the field with much greater ease than the russains appear to have had in the early days of the invasion (they seem to have sorted out thier supply issues, but that appears to be mainly by going static in most areas and focusing down onto ever smaller offensives).

- A lot of Ukraine is open country though and a lot of the fighting is in what should be tank country.

True, but for reasons best known to themselves, the Russians appear to have mostly been sticking to the roads.

this is for a few reasons:

1) in the initial stages of the invasion, the russains are forced to advance along the roads because of the Rasputitsa, the "mud season" when the ground thaws and the winter snows turn to water and the earth into mud. this forced the russains to stick to the roads, becuase the mud was so bad it bogged down everything up to and including tanks, and even if the tanks could get though, the supporting trucks bringing fuel, ammo, etc could not. ergo, they were channeled down the road network into towns and villages where the superior ranges of the tank guns was useless.

2)Additionally, everything, tanks included, is faster on road, and the apparent Russian plan was a lightning push into Kiev, supported by a airborne drop to size a airport as a forward resupply base, to overun the ukrianians before any external opposition could crystallise and present them with a fait accompli.

3) even now the ground is dry, they are still reliant on a mix of rail and road bound supply routes, so need to take the towns in order to clear their supply routes to support any advance.

4) the Ukrainians, knowing this, and knowing they would stuggle in open ground, are concentrating thier forces in the cities, forests and other close terrian that limits the ability of the tanks to sit back and pepper them. if your maxiumum line of sight is 500m, then a 2,000m+ gun range is not a advantage.

- How does this chess like formation not make everything slow down to walking pace? How does an advancing force know that there’s a guy with an AT launcher over that hill?

What if the Weapon only needs one shot and your opponent isn’t massively concerned about the fate of the conscript once that’s done?

your right its very slow, but thats the reality of fighting. you can drive at 50-100kmh up to the front, but once your their you are tied to the speed of your foot soldiers. you DONT know if thier a AT weapon over the hill until you look, but you can be fairly certian that if their is a defended position ahead, they will have AT weapons, and arrange the attack accordingly.

and like Jadenim said, what really matters is the willingness of the man with his finger on the trigger to die for his country, not the general that put him their. But your right, in the hand of someone willing to sell his life, you will struggle. NATO struggled with this for the last 20+ years, after all.

- Is a heavy machine gun really a significant loss? 30 seconds seems plenty time to cause damage. What if your opponent is happy to trade your two guys for the ten to twenty he might get in that time? Multiplied across an entire line why wouldn’t you be happy locking horns with the enemy and shredding his infantry?

Well, 1) you only have so many HMGs, and 2) your not going to kill 30 blokes in 30 seconds. its not like they are just going walk into your fire ignoreing their comrades dropping around them, Napoleonic style. They will hit the deck at the first sign of fire, and start shooting back, which kind of ruins your aim. You might get a few in the initial burst but not many more.

and 3) this sort of attritional, hit and run fighting is pretty much exactly what both sides are stuck in at the moment. The russains are relying heavily on suppressive, saturational artillery fire (whether because its the most effective option, or because of a lack of sufficient precision weapons is a question of pure speculation, and beyond the scope of this thread), but are still taking losses to these sorts of ATGM and mg ambushes.

 Jadenim wrote:
Something I’ve been mulling over for a couple of weeks now is how this conflict seems to be reinforcing the lessons from the end of WW2; so much of this is about depth and resilience of logistics.

Having the latest and greatest technology is fine, but only if you have enough of it to deploy where it’s needed, the transport to get it deployed and the spares, consumables and replacements necessary to keep it in the field.

I’m very concerned that so much of western defence procurement is now based on one-off procurements of “just enough” stuff; how many Javelins/NLAWs, etc. have we sent to Ukraine and how many years will it take to replace the stockpiles? I know it will never be the sexy part of military procurement, but we really need to look at the resilience of stockpiles and supply chains.

Yea there is obviosly limit on supplies. Russia too. And i would dare to say nato countries are working on producing new ammunition etc faster rate. Russia meanwhile struggles to replace smart missiles as they are dependant on black markets for parts due to parts they have bought from west being blocked out. In same way russia ain"t producing new tanks(again can't buy from west certain components) so best they can do is pull old stuff even they classified as not fit for front lines.

But yes logistics is still a king and that's the biggest fear for Ukraine. Does west run out of weapons.

 Jadenim wrote:
[
I think back to Iraq 2003 where the US just charged straight up the road to Baghdad. How did they avoid the issues the Russian army had? I remember there being some losses but you never saw whole columns of US armour being destroyed by artillery or stopped at the gates of the city.

A) by 2003 Iraq had been under sanctions for over a decade and they’re military capabilities were significantly degrade.
B) outside of specific units (e.g. Republican Guard), most of their conscripts weren’t super keen on laying down their lives for Saddam.
C) the US (and allies) had complete air supremacy and things like MLRS counter-battery systems, etc. Anything that started lobbing rounds at the advance had a life span measured in minutes. I think it’s a WW2 aphorism that the most dangerous weapon in the US arsenal is a Lieutenant with a radio.

Something we were good at glossing over was the long trail of broken down vehicles. From memory in the 5? weeks it took to reach Baghdad 80% of the tanks starting in the forward units didn't make it (but they were picked up and replaced by the units following).

A while we liked to give the impression it was a platoon of lone tanks racing through the enemy, they were just the most visible part of a military system that was able to extend and do that.

On Logs - from the land warfare conference a couple of weeks back, at the rate Ukraine consumes ammunition the British army could fight for 2-3 weeks with no resupply from other nations, at the Russian rate 2-3 days.

Also logs. Dangerously political (reform of militaries always is), but the Russians are even worse than we thought. It transpires they are moving munitions entirely by hand, and use very inefficient packing material. As they are a train based logs system they have simply been moving the supply lines and the rear echelon bases closer to each other. The slow arrival of long ranged Western Artillery and Rocket systems is wrecking that. They are back to their surviving trucks and hand loading and offloading with caches established now well back from the front lines. They have steadily reduced and stopped activity on most fronts, and had a slow down in the remaining activities. Now they are countering - Ukrainians have learnt if they spot a drone they have to take it out and relocated within 3 minutes of the counter battery fire starts arriving. Expensive MANPADs are being used on $1000 dollar spotting drones, hard to sustain. Russian ECM has got good fast (with the occasionally mishap) and Ukrainians are finding it very hard to get their drones into positions to support them.

The current estimate bandied about is if Ukraine can keep attrition low, slowly trade ground for time, continue NATO retraining and the US continues to supply equipment at the current pace (no change to leaders of parts of government who want to stop arming Ukraine), they will if they can generate the armour necessary be able to launch major counterattacks in Spring.

And I am still blown away that the Ukrainians are still managing to generate fixed wing sorties, simply unbelievable.


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tneva82 wrote:

But yes logistics is still a king and that's the biggest fear for Ukraine. Does west run out of weapons.

Or lose the will to stop supplying them. And when we say West we mean America. Europe is giving some stuff, but even if they go for the East European scheme to badge aircraft and armour transfers via their bases, the vast vast majority is American.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
And I am still blown away that the Ukrainians are still managing to generate fixed wing sorties, simply unbelievable.

Yep, that’s the one area where you would think the Russians would have had a clear victory. They should have at least parity, if not superiority in both technology and training and a significant numerical superiority, by any logic the Ukrainian Air Force should have ceased to exist as cohesive force weeks ago. That’s one area in particular that will produce some very interesting analysis in a few years time when we find out what actually happened (or at least a much clearer picture).

Russia has pretty much zero experience on large scale air operations. Those you don't do without practice. Americans train for it. And then train. And train some more. And specifically for the kind of things russians are supposed to do. And been doing for decades.

And west learned this ages ago. And have been teaching ukraineans what gave them headache. So ukraineans know how to at least irritate competent trained air force. Vs ones trained more for solo strikes and parade flights going to do more than irritate.

On combined arms, and the escalating concepts from joint forces to multi domain integration...

Essentially if you just rush tanks forward you will be fast, you will hit hard, you will be immune to a lot of things - but if something you are vulnerable to counters you, you are stuffed. But in general if you are vulnerable to something, other elements of your force mix will be less vulnerable and can counter it. So you mutually support. You mechanise your supporting elements to support an armoured advance. You set up caches for defensive infantry and artillery teams. And so on.

Because you might say tanks are dead, but what happens when they bypass your infantry javelin carrying force by 50 miles, and slam into your rear echelon columns? They remain excellent spearhead units, when supported.


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tneva82 wrote:
Russia has pretty much zero experience on large scale air operations.

Fair enough, and I know their operating concept assumes contested airspace not air superiority (and their BTGs bristle with AA weapons). But still, they had the long range fires, even using their airforce in a dumb bomber role to supplement it, to flatten the Ukraine combat air infrastructure. Instead they were wasting missiles on apartment blocks.