I have a few thoughts on the subject of maneuver warfare in Ukraine. I will begin by saying that I am by no means an expert on military matters or military history, and I could easily be mistaken or misguided in my thinking. I post here because I think this forum is one of the best to get constructive criticism on thoughts on this subject. Many of the points have been already raised here, I include them for completeness of the reasoning.
Some, on this forum and in many other, say that Russia could be more successful in the war in Ukraine by using more maneuver, and the reason they don’t is organizational deficiency stemming from mismanagement. In essence, the claim is, that if von Moltke the elder had been in charge of the Russian army for the last 10 years, then the Russians would have captured Lviv already. It is not obvious to me that this is true. I can think of several other reasons why it might be very hard for Russian forces to outmaneuver Ukrainian forces, and also hard to meaningfully exploit any successful maneuvers, when I consider the following:
(1) Ukraine is assisted by the spy planes and satellites of NATO countries, as well as their apparatus for processing the collected data
(2) Russian aviation can’t beat late Soviet air defenses
(3) Ukraine uses stores and factories that are outside Ukraine
(4) The ubiquity and sophistication of anti-tank weapons
(5) The ubiquity and sophistication of drones and thermal sensors
The Russians can’t surprise the Ukrainians due to (1). Russian forces can’t pin Ukrainian forces with aircraft while they themselves maneuver due to (2). Russia can’t interdict the supply of fuel to Ukrainian forces due to (2). Russia can’t destroy Ukraine’s stores of fuel due to (3).
The concave geometry of the front means that Ukrainian forces have less distance to travel to relocate than Russian forces. The concavity of the front is likely not an arbitrary choice by Russia. It may partly be due to random success early in the war. However, likely Russia focused a lot on protecting the mouth of the Russian internal canal system and to have a land bridge to Crimea to back up the Kerch strait bridge.
Even if Russia manages to maneuver to achieve temporary local numerical superiority at some point, that still might not help much, because of technology that benefits the defender.
The constraint for artillery is not so much the number of artillery pieces in the area, rather the constraint is the targeting. A few artillery pieces can still do a lot of damage to targets in the open if they are fed a lot of good targeting data. If local artillery is not enough, there is some types of artillery which can give support from up to 120km away. Artillery is of course not new to war. However, (5) means new enhanced ability to see targets. Advancing forces are much more vulnerable both to being seen and to taking damage from artillery than a static defender hiding in some urban area or treeline trench. Russian vehicles are old, or at least the base design is old, and I don’t think they were designed with thermal stealth in mind.
Anti-tank weapons let a small defending force negate the strength of the ”breakthrough weapons” of an attacking force. Anti-tank missiles and rockets have been used in wars before, and tactics have been devised to deal with them. However, NLAW, Javelin, Stugna-P, Corsar, Brimstone, etc, are not like the older weapons that have been mainly used before. They are more likely to hit and more likely to cause critical damage, and it is not possible to break the guidance by suppressing the operator. There is also the sheer quantity. On April 7, Mark Milley said that Ukraine had received 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons from various countries, while Lloyd Austin said that US aid to Ukraine included over 5,000 Javelin missiles and over 7,000 other anti-tank weapons.
It is not possible to simply bypass defenders, and I think this was demonstrated in March/April. Ukrainian defenders won’t quickly collapse just because they might get cut off from the main Ukrainian body. Russia doesn’t have enough forces to properly cordon off every defended point while continuing with the main advance, so Russian rear lines will be harassed.
Then there is the issue of rivers, of which there are many in Ukraine. If (1) or (5) spots the pontoon bridge, then the crossing fails. Crossing forces and the bridge will be destroyed by artillery, and the already crossed forces will be stranded.
Some argue that all the popular theory and conventional wisdom prescribes maneuver. However, Russia has shifted through several radically different tactics in this war and apparently concluced that static warfare works best under the circumstances. If the empirical experience does not align with theory, one should at least consider the possibility that maybe it is the theory rather than the practice which is wrong.
It is hardly unprecedented that prevailing military paradigms don’t work. Before WW1, everyone worshipped maneuver warfare. So they invested mainly in light field guns and shrapnel shells. For the most part, that didn’t work out so well in WW1. Yet in WW2, maneuver worked great against France. One of the main deities in the pantheon of maneuver, von Moltke the elder, famously wrote: ”No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end.”, or more concisely paraphrased, ”no plan survives contact with the enemy”. It seems to me that sometimes doctrine also does not survive contact with the enemy.
Some argue that the problem is that Russia cannot execute proper maneuver as prescribed by theory because of a logistical organization that has been neglected and badly trained. In June, Oleksandr Danylyuk said that Russian artillery fires 50,000 rounds per day. On August 16, Valery Zaluzhny said that Russian artillery fires 40,000-60,000 rounds per day. So the Russian logistical organization supports the firing of about 50,000 shells and rockets per day, while operating under a hail of SRBMs that are targeted by (1). To me, even when considering that these numbers are for static warfare, this doesn’t sound like the numbers of a logistical organization that has been neglected and badly trained. If this level of performance is not enough, I wonder what level the theory requires, and if the theory also requires the soldiers to perform 720 degree backflips riding unicycles on thin wires while simultaneously playing chess and backgammon.
Some point to the numerous historical examples where maneuver was used with great success. However, there are usually key differences that can be distinguished. For example, in the Gulf Wars, none of the five points above were applicable. When evaluating the results of practical experiments, if more than one variable was being varied, it is very hard to disentangle which variable caused what.
If the reason for Russian maneuver problems is Russian organizational deficiency, it seems germane to flip this and ask: why didn’t Ukraine exploit Russian weakness in the supreme technique of war that is maneuver to decisively defeat the Russians already? Ukraine has (had) plenty of tanks and other armored vehicles. Is it because Ukraine’s military organization is equally deficient? Why wasn’t this deficiency fixed during 8 years of NATO training? Or is it because the feasability of maneuver warfare depends on the equipment of the enemy?
Some might argue that Russia could have anticipated and alleviated problem (2) ahead of time. Yet how much money would that require? The US solution to that problem is F-35, APG-81, ASQ-239, ALQ-99, Next Generation Jammer, ALE-50, etc. Does Russia have money to develop, manufacture, maintain and operate their own equivalents in sufficient quality and quantity, considering other critical priorities such as a large nuclear weapons stockpile, ICBMs, SSBNs, Avangard, Status-6, Buresvestnik, Tu-160, Zircon, SSNs, satellites, S-400, S-500, etc?
The Su-57 is less advanced than the F-35 and Russia can’t afford it. Russia has lagged and struggled with AESA radars on fighter jets and air defense systems. Can the Russian electronics industry develop and manufacture sufficiently good avionics at reasonable cost? Russia doesn’t have much civilian electronics industry and expertise to leverage, so the state will have to pay for almost the entire value chain. ”Just build superweapons” doesn’t seem to me like a constructive proposal on how to solve the problem. Also, in many parts of Ukraine there is the problem of Ukraine not even having to turn on their search radars because Russian planes are visible to NATO AEW.
Maneuvering reduces the throughput of the logistical organization compared to not maneuvering, and this is most detrimental to the side that has more artillery and more heavy and complex vehicles. So the Russian conclusion might be that more maneuver would just mean a reduction in their advantages for no benefit.
