Month: March 2022

Geography and terrain
The situation maps totally misrepresent the real conditions in the combat area. This is a low-density conflict with both sides only present and in control of a very limited part of the conflict areas. The Russian forward company positions or platoon posts have open space between them not covered by weapons or even surveillance.

As the Russian Civil War was rail-bound, this is road-bound as the Finnish Winter War north of the isthmus. The Russian invasion took place in the mud season and has therefore been fully tied to the roads by their Cold War generation logistics trucks (mostly the ZIL-131 workhorse).

This factor gives the Ukrainians the possibility to move in the unoccupied spaces against the flanks and rear of the Russians … as the Finns did in the Winter War.

Videos make clear that the terrain is far less open than I expected. Hedgerows, small and larger woods, and trees and bushes in village or suburban gardens makes infiltration and ambush possible for the Ukrainian combat patrols, and they use simple commercial hobby drones to gain superior situation awareness.

Command and Control
Instead of using the well-stablished Russian system of appointing and supplementing the appropriate Military District HQs as the coordinating joint “front” HQs for the operation, the Russian leadership has kept operational-tactical control in Moscow and left it to the four involved Military Districts to command various operational groups.

Whether if it is to make certain that all got a share in the honour or to promote competition, it is certain to slow reactions to friction and local failure.

The situation has been worsened with the deliberate Ukrainian campaign to attack the various operational and tactical commanders to decapitate local command and delay reactions.

On the other side the Ukrainians seem to have delegated tactical leadership to the local commander that leads a tailored mix of regular army elements, National Guard and ad hoc volunteer militia groups.

Logistics
The long road-bound columns hamper logistics and medevac support for the forward battalion task group (BTG), and this has apparently been worsened by a lack of attention to this issue. Reports of BTGs running out of food and fuel and of wounded only reaching hospitals (in Belarus) after gangrene his started indicates how critical the situation is.

On the other hand, the Ukrainians can use a combination of prepared military and civilian “total defence” logistics. The main challenge was an effective distribution of the vital arms from the West. Apparently, the only place where delivery failed was in Kherson.

Pre-war expectations and reality
I had followed the reform initiatives under General Gerasimov to create a more competent army, and after the observations of take-over of Crimea and the two effective interventions in the Donbass fighting in 2014-15 as well as the demonstration of new capabilities in Syria,. However I missed that the in deoth improvement has been limited to the staff prepared coordination of more complex operations and to the airborne landing troops (VDV) and naval infantry.

I did not realise that fact the regular army had not disciplined itself to break with the practice of “Dedovshchina”-discipline by mobbing, Therefore it was impossible to create motivated and well-trained citizen conscripts and later good contract soldiers. The Russian leadership and generals apparently has no real feeling of respect and sympathy for their soldiers.

I noted that the Russian Army had recreated several divisions and armies, and I thought that these would be organised as earlier for echeloned break-through operations in attack formations with the ability to take attrition and thereafter succeed. However, the reality was that the divisions and armies were just pools of weak brigades of BTGs advancing in columns on roads. With the total force including the airborne landing (VDV) and naval infantry limited to the 168 BTGs mentioned last year by the Russian Defence Minister, “general” Sergei Shoigu. Therefore, the maximum sum of ground force infantry was 26.000. The airborne added around 6.000 and naval infantry around 2.000 to that number.

The combat power in Ukraine in countering ambushes and in urban combat was totally dependent on the quality and motivation of these soldiers.

Pre-invasion observations
I therefore noted with wonder that the units concentrated to camps in the vicinity of Ukraine since the autumn were kept basically unemployed an untrained in their tents with their vehicles left to deteriorate in the open in the damp and cold winter weather. The only training that I saw was some basic firing range training.
I also noted that the clear majority of the tanks were of 1970s and 1980s vintage, however modernised with reactive armour and better fire-control. Later it became clear that a number of the T-90 tanks were also deployed. No T-14 Armatas.

The same average age was reported for the deployed Russian aviation.

Actual tactical performance of the combat units
The ground force Battalion Tactical Group’s field performance was worse than anything I have seen in my professional life. The motor-riflemen stayed mounted in their combat vehicles or carriers and became casualties there, when fleeing from the striken vehicles or probably of their wounds later on the long evacuation route.

There was apparently no training in counter-ambush drills. There were no developed routines for the close team cooperation between the BTG tanks, dismounted infantry and combat engineers essential for combat in built-up areas. No sign of close cooperation with direct support mortars or any BTG howitzer batteries.

The airborne assault infantry and naval infantry acted far better. The air-assault infantry was seen seated on top of the BMDs and the naval infantry moved on foot, dismounted from their BTRs. The better performance of the elite infantry is a likely explanation for the better results in the south, but it also led to heavy losses in these units.

Videos of Ukrainian patrols also showed a low level of field-use skills in the improvised volunteer units. No fire-and-movement drill. However, with use of the open space between Russian units that normally acted in a very predictable way meant that this behaviour apparent rarely brought disaster.

Equipment and its performance
The Russian Army average equipment situation was even worse than I noted before the invasion. Some tank units also had only slightly modernised or unmodernised T-72s, and most carriers were MT-LBs, older BTRs and BMP-1s with no added protection. Only the airborne and naval infantry had new vehicles.

Even on T-90s, the Russian reactive armour boxes have proven incapable of defeating the new Western two-step hollow-charge missiles, and even traditional weapons (such as RPGs or old LAW) could penetrate earlier versions.

Russian tanks are still likely to be destroyed be by explosion of the charges of their main ammunition (leaving the turret blow-off next to the burned-out hull).

Air force performance
It was a surprise that the Russian Airforce failed to achieve air supremacy at the start of the invasion. Not being an air force specialist myself, I have read that the operations in Syria had given a too positive picture of Russian air performance. It was now realised that the missions there were conducted with single aircraft or pair, not as large scale and complex missions. It was now noted that the Russian pilots had relatively few flying hours and these were not used for training in hard missions. Therefor the tactical air operation staffs got no or little practice in planning and controlling large scale and complex operations as one required to destroy or disable the Ukrainian Airforce at the start of the invasion.

Final remarks with warning
I know from correspondence with close contacts how hard it is to acknowledge and accept the Russian military weaknesses shown in the conflict so far. It is apparently too hard to accept that the mighty army that you needed and still need as the defining threat had been so thoroughly defeated by a force inferior in materiel.

However, I miss another explanation how and why the invasion stalled if the reason wasn’t massive losses of personnel and main equipment.

The great Russian Army may be mighty in total size because of having to maintain a full base for operations at most areas of the enormous territory. However, the combat echelon was limited in number of units and therefore tactically defeated, even if the General Staff concentrated around 75 % of all these units for the invasion.

On the other side we find too many eager to conclude that hereby the military threat from Russia has proven to be empty. A historian of Russian reaction to former defeats I must characterise this as irresponsible bullshit. Even if the priviledged had to be brutally purged and disciplined, difficult reforms followed awkward humiliations.

What Russia can achieve in an unlimited mobilisation of society was shown twice in the 20th century. Firstly from 1929 to 1942, and secondly after the humiliation of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That the latter effort broke the economy and the political system just shows the determination the humiliation triggered in an already demoralised society. Russian arms designers produce some excellent solutions that are ready for mass production when the will and money is made available.

What we see now after the initial failed coup and the stalled offensive of the Russian peacetime army is the call-up of regular reserves to man the normally unmanned units of divisions and brigades and equip them with the remaining vehicles and other equipment of the depots. Whether it is possible to improve tactical performance is to be seen, but the next offensives are likely to be far more deliberate and thus have strong artillery preparation.

It seems to be ignored by those without roots in the 1980-ties’ discourse that the main issue related to nuclear weapons from the 1950-ties onwards was how to make the weapons usable for something more than the deterrence of a general nuclear attack.

The U.S, sought to enhance the credibility of NATO’s defensive by arming the existing forces with with a very large number of Tactical Nuclear Weapons. Thereby we hoped to deter a Soviet attack without spending a large amount of money on larger conventional forces.

Likewise the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, needed to free funds for the development of the economy and forced the Red Army to replace mass with nuclear weapons, mainly on missiles.

Where NATO realised the problems of assuming an automatic escalation to nuclear weapons as an early response to a Soviet Invasion, the lack of a academic-political-military exchange in Moscow meant that the Soviet General Staff war planners and staff colleges continued regarding nuclear weapons as just a more powerful type of ammunition, and only the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the massive follow-on cleaning operation made some realise that this view could not be sustained.

By mid-late 1970-ties the U.S. Carter Administration sought ways to extend its nuclear deterrence to Western Europe by developing a capability for “Limited Nuclear Options” different from the general and self-destructive possiblity of fighting a defensive tactical nuclear war in Europe.

When the Soviet Union modernised its intermediate range nuclear forces by deploying the SS-20 missiles, NATO decided to meet the threat of Western Europe being “de-coupled” from the U.S. strategic deterrent by deploying its own intermediate ballistic and cruise missiles, if the SS-20s were not removed.

The only place in Denmark where officials were educated in understanding nuclear issues was at the Joint Staff Course at the Royal Danish Defence College. I graduated in 1979 and soon became drawn into the hot and divisive public debate on the threat of nuclear war and human extinction that followed. My years 1981 to 1983 were spent serving as a board member of the government created Commission for Security and Disarmament Affairs dealing with nuclear weapons issues in writing, international conferences and in public discourse. After 1989 with its end of the Cold War, I hoped and assumed that I would never have to remember and use the understanding developed from ten years earlier.

However, now I am chocked by the frivolous certainty from people like the former NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh-Rasmussen, that even in an open war between Russia and the West there is no risk of escalation to use of nuclear weapons. He may have heard the the 2013 Russian Military Doctrine include nuclear weapons’ threat and use to protect gains at a lower level of conflict.

But he ignores the risk and thereby the problem of what to do if mistaken.

With my background in the period where the dominating public consern was nuclear war rather than climate change, I find that the optimistic certainty borders on madness.

As a historian I am certain that nuclear weapons will be used again – early or later – and that it is our duty to confront that risk and do our maximum to minimise that risk by accepting the possibility rather than by arrogant denial.

When an American friend noted that the rot of the Russian Army exposed in Ukraine would mean that Russia would not become a conventionel threat for twenty years, I replied:

The Russian potential is enormous. My Baltic friends have experience with that enormous power and have already been told once since 1991 by arrogant Westerners such as Americans, Brits and Germans to ignore it.

My experience with Russian officers is that they are well trained and their General Staff officer corps is very good and focused.

However, right now they are led by a corrupt, self-serving mediocrat. But I know as historian what they could do when their leader was that extremely brutal hater of inefficiency and corruption, Josif Stalin.

If such a person replaced Putin tomorrow, the Russian nation would hail him.

Hundred years ago Trotsky had taken a broken army to victory in 1 1/2 years by using zarist officers. Only the Poles were just able to beat it because of jealousy between Soviet commanders.

So if nothing happens to counter corruption and kleptocratic behaviour, you are right. And if Russia finally goes West, we shall all be right.

But if a hater of Putin’s thieving regime that is still an ardent nationalist takes over, it will take a very short time to rebuild the army using the Chinese axis to the maximum. Navalny could be that person.

This my Balts, the Poles, the Finns and the Ukrainians know. They are not like Westerners without history to inform them.

I identify the following causes:
1) Bad (echo-chamber) intelligence
2) Unsuitable unit and formation organisation for general mobile warfare, as the basic, conventional elements had been focused exclusively on limited military support of other means of waging open conflict
3) Low quality tactical leadership (no initiative, no hard-exercised combined arms tactical skills, road-bound advance, no integration of drones for reconnaissance and supplementary deep fire support)
4) Inferior training and motivation of soldiers also mirroring the character/lack of dynamic leaderby example
5) Inferior quality materiel (especially personnel carriers, drones, and trucks for the logistics tail, but also protection of tanks)

The problems are apparently much smaller in the Russian Naval Infantry and airborne troops than in the regular army units, so the analysis concentrate on the latter.

Reference 1) The echo-chamber intelligence

As we know from other cases, this problem is hardly unique to Putin’s Russia now. We just have to go back to the situation in Afghanistan last summer or Donald Rumsfeld’s record before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As long as Russia have a dictatorial leadership real improvement is unlikely.

Reference 2) The Battalion Task Group building block

The BTG proved far too weak to take the attrition and still operate as the traditional Russian/Soviet break-through and follow-up manoeuvre require. Its effect is also dependents on a quality of delegated command that seems to be beyond the Russian Army to achieve (except at the end of a major war as in 1946-45).

The Russian Army could probably improve its performance by returning til Motor Rifle and Tank Regiment based divisions. However, this would be a move away from the 2013 Military Doctrine focus on grey zone situations, and Russia will find it hard to create the mass required to succeed.

Reference 3) Leadership quality improvement

In order to achieve this the army needs to allow and breed initiative amongst its officers. Their education, training and character of the field exercises should change in a fundamental way away from detailed planned, “scientific” battle management military paradigm. It would require a very significant change of service culture that would probably be easier to develop and accept in the major to colonel ranks than among the junior officers. Apparently such improvement has been easier to develop in the elite naval and airborne infantry as well as spesnaz units than in the regular army.

Reference 4) Soldiers’ training and motivation

It would apparently take a major change of service culture and leadership commitment to change the “dedovshchina” treatment of conscript soldiers and make regular contract service attractive to both the soldier and his family. The war has made clear that this has not yet been anywhere near achieved in the army.

Reference 5) The weapons, etc.

I see this as the most difficult Russian challenge, as it would require not only a massive use of resources, it would have to discipline and clean-up the corruption in a lucrative part of the state sector . As a minimum they have to achieve a standardised modernisation of all main battle tanks with new defensive sensors and automatic active armour to defeat modern anti-tank weapons … in real competition between tha design bureaus. They also had to develop and integrate far better drone systems, to supply thousands of new armoured transport and combat vehicles for their infantry (motor riflemen) and to replace tens of thousands of trucks with vehicles with a far better cross-country capability. Parallel with this the air forces need to produce a large number of new sophisticated replacement aircraft and large stocks of precision munitions.

In 1918 the Finns fought and achieved independence. The German assistance proved effective.

At the end of 1918 the Baltic peoples started their fight for independence led by the Estonians. The German invasion in February 1918 had made this possible. Russian Bolsheviks invaded in December to crush the attempt as they had in Finland. However, a surge of will to fight similar to what we now see in Ukraine was nourished by the arrival of the Royal Navy off Reval (Tallinn) with moral support and weapons. Finland helped their brothers. In 1919 first a more energetic British and thereafter a determined French support chased both the Russian army and then the German mercenaries out of the emerging new Baltic Republics.

Thereafter the fight for freedom against Russian rule moved south, and with the help of French assistance the Poles broke the Soviet Russian counter-offensive at Warsaw in late summer 1920. The defeat of the Russians also meant that Western Ukraine remained part of Europe until late summer 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in autumn 1939. By June 1940 it also led to the end of the first Baltic years of independence.

When Stalin invaded Finland after a “false flag”-incident later in 1939, Western public opinion reacted as now to events in Ukraine. France and Britain – already in the “Phoney War” with Germany – sent arms assistance and prepared to exploit the situation by sending an expeditionary corps to North Scandinavia and reach the Finns. The threat of that intervention stopped the massive resumed Soviet offensive against Finland and thus saved Finland for the future.

After the Second World War Russian powed had brought control of Eastern Europe, and in 1956 the Hungarians rebelled to regain their freedom.

They were followed in 1968 by the Czechoslovakians and thereafter soon by the Poles in several waves.

We now know that in 1956 the American nuclear weapons dominance had been so total that a determined threat of war would have been likely to have forced a compromise that would probably have ended in a neutral status of Hungary similar to that of Austria.

However, in 1968 that clear dominance had ended. It was also the case in 1982, and the U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, choose a strategy of long term support for the Polish aspirations by denying the legitimacy of Soviet rule.

In 1994 and 1999 in Chechnya, in 2008 in Georgia and 2014 in Ukraine the response was indifference, denial and appeasement. Ukrainians now pay for that.

Here in 2022, Westerns states’ naïvity and unilateral disarmament, (including American in the nuclear weapons field), have removed key check pieces from the board and turned the 1956 advantage on its head.

The West has therefore been left self-emasculated and the Ukranians have joined the far too long list of heroes in the struggle against Russian imperialism.

This was developed as notes for an interview with Ole Nyeng for an article in Weekendavisen. However, the editor choose not to use any of the arguments below. Instead the article ended-up being focused on Putin-loyal citizens of Narva that hoped that they would be liberated next after the end of the “operation” against the Ukrainian “Nazis“.

1) The Bad News
• Very long borders to Russia and Belarus
• The limited “depth” of the territory from the border to the sea
• The geostrategic significance and vulnerability of Lithuania: Vilnius’ location close to the border to Belarus; Kaliningrad treatening both the coast north and the Suwalki Gap
• The very small total size of the Latvian forces in relation to the area to be defended and threat from the east and up the coast
• The full dependence on external air support
• The experience of Ukraine regarding the totalitarian warfare of the Russians

2) The Good News
• Geography’s somewhat better support for defensive operations than in Ukraine (but clearly worse than in Finland)
• That the population will act as the Ukrainian, including the clear majority of the Russian-speaking population
• Skilled and highly motivated officers in the armed forces
• The experience of Ukraine regarding the weaknesses of the Russian forces (small size and low fighting value of most infantry; low level of air force tactical and coordination skills)

3) Can they be defended now? Unfortunately only a very short time due to problems:
• The vulnerable sea lines in the southern part of the sea (Kaliningrad and potential Russian capture and use of Bornholm and/or Gotland)
• The uncertain air situation: Lack of well-located NATO bases. This gives Russian artillery the same free and dominant role as we see in Ukraine
• The lack of enough effective weapons for the forces of all three countries (especially air defence; anti-tank; numerous very long range artillery systems including long range sensors; armed drones)
• Lack of powerful Allied presence, especially American

4) What might be done quickly to improve the situation?
• Massive weapons aid to the Baltics (as to Ukraine) in exchange for them quickly developing the size of their forces (in line with the Military Assistance model from the early 1950s)
• Building American and German presence to a substantial level, meaning brigade frameworks, mainly at the Suwalki Gap
• Securing Bornholm against a coup capture (as the Swedes have secured Gotland)
• Preparation of air bases for support of Baltic Defence (best and easiest if Swedish bases were available)
• A rapid American build-up of nuclear deterrence in Europe to deter Russian coercion and limited use
• The creation of a Joint NATO Regional Baltic Sea Command under SHAPE

In 1939-40 and again i summer 1944 Finnish bravery in defence on the Karelian Istmus held in spite of massive Soviet Russian artillery bombardment. Today they would have failed.

In this winter of 2022 the cowardly president of the formerly great Russian Nation realised that the bravery of the Ukranian Nation was beyond what his ineffective soldiers could manage.

However, now the right weapon to counter raw courage was available.

A weapon that destroy the courage by killing everything alive immediately within at least a square kilometer. Like the effects of a small nuclear warhead. All killed with a combination of destroyed lungs and third degree burns.

The West experimented with the “thermobaric”/”fuel-air explosive”/”vacuum” ammunition, and I remember that it was considered a possible solution to clearing mine fields.

But the Russians developed field artillery systems for the weopon.

For the Russian corrupt cowards it was good to have this tool to counter first Chechnyan and now Ukrainian courage and raw will to resist.

The Russians used to be the carrier of a great culture. Now be they have let themselves be reduced to a mix of criminals and accomplises with only the brave few that stand up.

Let that nation freeze in isolation until it learns, regrets and compensates for the crimes against humanity they have now been responsible for in more than a century.

Nu skal forligsforhandlingerne i gang på det klart nye grundlag, som Ruslands invasion af Ukraine og åbne militære trussel mod Europa har skabt.

Mange af artiklerne her på bloggen er direkte rettet mod dette behov, og det eneste, jeg her vil tilføje som nyt forslag er at inddrage eksterne, erfarne sagkyndige i en rådgivende støttegruppe:

Både nordisk-talende fagfolk (man kunne tænke sig et par finlandssvensktalende finske generaler/admiraler)

Og respekterede danske pensionerede officerer, der er så gamle, at de har personlig erfaring med beredskabs-, mobiliserings- samt operativ og logistisk krigsplanlægning og har studeret symmetrisk forsvarskrig og afskrækkelse og har personlig erfaring fra helhedsforsvarsledelse (man kunne tænke på admiral Tim Slott Jørgensen, general Knud Bartels og kontreadmiral Jørn Olesen).

Dette opslag er for at andre kan bidrage med analyser, kommentarer og forslag.

Det er af forløbet allerede nu klart, at der straks skal findes og anvendes betydelige ekstra midler.

For at gøre deres anvendelse rimeligt rationel, skal helhedsmyndighed- og ansvar straks tilbageføres til Forsvarschefsembedet.

Der skal straks ske en forsøgsordning med uddannelse af værnepligtsenheder til Hærens reserve i konkurrence mellem tjenesteder.

Der skal ske en intensiv rekruttering af gode tidligere stampersonel, både til at fylde op i eksisterende enheder og til tjeneste som kadrer i værnepligtsuddannelsen. det

Hjemmeværnet skal udvides gennem offensiv rekruttering og lære af det ukrainske eksempel vedrørende bevæbning og uddannelse i bykamp.

De ekstra penge til materiel skal anvendes til:

1) at bygge brigadens bataljoner op til meningsfuld styrke med tre infanterikompagnier

2) at anskaffe det manglende materiel, våben og ammunition til alle tre værn, for Hæren specielt bevæbnede droner, artilleriets målopklaringsevne, og både områdeluftforsvar (en Patriot-afdeling) og nærluftforsvar til enhederne (Stinger-afløser)