The War in the Ukraine

Temstar said:

To counter this sort of high mobility wheel based/road based warfare ideally you want your own wheel based and highly informationized medium combined arms brigade or SBCT or similar. They can keep up with the speed and have the combination of protection and firepower to go toe to toe. A few battalions of Bumerang IFV would come real handy by now but alas it's too late for that.

Failing that, even infantry armed with ATGM or failing that RPGs motorized by civilian vehicles could do the job. It's not like AFU are deploying actual medium combined arms brigade filled with 8x8 assault guns. What's more important than firepower or protection is informationization. We know that's something Russians are bad at, but incidentally this is one area that could in fact be fixed relatively quickly.

Where as PLA informationization focuses on top down systems, early in the war during the initial Russian offensive phase US put into service a smart phone based app that allowed a bottom up approach to informationization. It's conceptually very similar to a ride share app, only instead of drivers and cars and people looking to go somewhere it's friendly assets and enemy targets identified by NATO ISR. AFU troops could look on their phone and see what targets around them have been marked and take order. This system has been hilariously nicknamed "滴滴打人" and attracted enough attention that PLA has people looking into it to see what could be learnt from it for themselves

This rudimentary system allowed AFU to have some degree of informationization that far exceed what was expected of them and we saw the results in the early days of war. Now that the shoe is on the other foot it would be wise for Russians to clone this system and use it similarly. Particularly for LPR and DPR troops who might have better local knowledge and have easier access to civilian cars in the area.

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Thats super interesting O_O. Do you have more sources or information on this app?

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reservior dogs said:

When the Russians were retreating from Izyum and being defeated in Lyman, I accepted the narrative that the Russians are failing due to lack of manpower, lack of modern electronic equipment etc. The Ukrainians simply pour more manpower with Western backing into some weak point in the Russian defense line and broke through. I changed my mind when I see the Kherson retreat.

If you look at how the Russians fought this war, they have been very careful to advance in a broad front and not allow a single spearhead to push too far into enemy territory. This is to avoid the spearhead being cutoff and surrounded. In Kherson, we have a single Ukrainian spearhead traveling along the road deep into Russian territory. The Russians have troops in the area. There are many ways to deal with this grouping who are confined to the roads due to the increasingly muddy situation. The Russians can simply cut them off and destroy them, but instead, they retreated to "avoid being surrounded". I now believe in the whole retreat business, Putin is playing a game. This guy in Zhihu wrote an answer that voiced a similar view.

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Putin is using this "defeat" to mobilize inside Russia for a full declaration of war and to take out all of the Ukrainian territory East of the Dnipro River and all of the South including Odessa. He is using this "defeat" to silence all dissent inside Russia and mobilize public opinion so he can have the mandate to go to the next level.

The next phase of the war will be a lot more brutal. At the end, there won't be much of a Ukraine left when all is said and done.

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SampanViking said:

Perspective with newly deployed Russian regulars, newly recruited locals from accession territories, volunteers and other militia groups, plus the ability to deploy conscripts to the rear echelons of the accession territories, freeing up posts taken currently by contract soldiers or other combat capable militia, no less than 300, 000 and maybe as many as 500,000 new Russian troops are about to join the war.

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Sinnavuuty said:

Interestingly, the mobilization of 300,000 is a slightly lower number than the article above that was published in March of this year.

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SampanViking said:

The Russian forces have been retreating because the Ukraine has launched a series of do or die offensives which everything up, including the kitchen sink. This means that the Ukrainians have been attacking with a four to one numerical advantage in most instances, much higher in some local ones.

The Russians do as much damage as they can and fall back is as good an order as they can manage, taking with them everything they possibly can.

So far, they have done well, to date no major Russian Force has been defeated in battle, encircled or forced to surrender en masse.
I am sure nerves are jangling and I sure there is much frustration. These Russian forces however remain largely intact and at least new Russian army groups are forming up and getting ready to join the war.

Perspective with newly deployed Russian regulars, newly recruited locals from accession territories, volunteers and other militia groups, plus the ability to deploy conscripts to the rear echelons of the accession territories, freeing up posts taken currently by contract soldiers or other combat capable militia, no less than 300, 000 and maybe as many as 500,000 new Russian troops are about to join the war.

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Sinnavuuty said:

For effective execution of the objectives originally programmed in the invasion, four minimum tasks the Russian Armed Forces will need to accomplish with this mobilization:

Protect the perimeter of your occupied area from infiltration. From the Belarusian border north of Kiev to the Russian border east of Mariupol, the estimated perimeter of the occupied territory is approximately 2,950 kilometers in length. Using the basic calculation of a battalion of approximately 540 soldiers to protect each 80 kilometer section, perimeter security would require 19,980 (rounded up to +20,000) frontline soldiers. As these troops need personnel and logistical support, this equates to two reinforced Russian divisions with 2,400 personnel, logistics and aviation troops each (+4,800) and expanded coastal security (+1,500 troops) plus an army headquarters (1,000) for Task 1, requiring a minimum subtotal of 27,300;

Priority should be given to establishing secure support points in critical infrastructure, such as power plants and communication centers in urban areas. If the Russians are to keep or even annex the territory they have conquered, they will eventually need to provide food, water, energy, sanitation, healthcare and other essential services. The insurgents will attempt to target some of this infrastructure to undermine the occupation. There may be approximately 26 million people living in this occupied zone. Given the uncertainty of Ukrainian population estimates, population displacement from the war, and the relatively stable situation in Crimea (~2 million people), I use 19 million as a round population estimate. There are 22 major urban areas in the occupied zone. each urban area would have five major nodes requiring security, each node would require 145 soldiers, and each three nodes would require another 140 soldiers. Therefore, main node security would require roughly 25,900 soldiers.

Secure major roads and railways to keep internal lines of communication open. Keeping an occupation force stocked, fed and stocked with ammunition and spare parts for vehicles, radios and other equipment requires freedom of movement throughout the occupied area. Ukrainian insurgents will likely work to disrupt logistical traffic, ambush convoys, plant mines and other explosive devices, and otherwise disrupt Russian freedom of movement. Securing the lines of communication requires the creation of checkpoints and patrols along the routes most used by the occupation forces. Some risk must be taken on back roads, all of which can be used by insurgents to infiltrate and carry out attacks. the Russians would need to secure 7,255 kilometers of roads and railways. This breaks down into 181 sections, 63 troops per section (+11,403), with 140 battalions for every 400 troops (+4,060), plus two divisions and attachments (+4,800), requiring the deployment of an additional 20,300 troops, considering here are rounded numbers.

Protect the population and conduct civil-military and counterinsurgency operations. If the invasion of Russia is successful, the Russian Federation will de facto assume responsibility for the well-being of approximately 19 million people. This is equivalent to the population of the US states of New York or Florida. It is also approximately 14% of Russia's estimated current population. In terms of land mass and population, this will be by far the biggest occupation attempted since the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe in the years after World War II. Much of the infrastructure needed to support the Ukrainian population in the occupied zone is currently being destroyed, which will impact the construction of local support infrastructure. Occupation officers (possibly from the Rosguardia, the Russian National Guard directly reporting to the President of the Republic) will be responsible for supporting millions of people and rebuilding their cities while fighting an active NATO-backed insurgency in material resources and advanced weapons systems. It will take a highly engaged joint civil-military, dedicated counterinsurgency force to give the Russians any hope of successfully managing these tasks.

An eventual takeover of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city in demographic terms, would necessitate the need for a reinforced Russian motorized infantry battalion of 650 soldiers to protect each section. Using that same base estimate, Russia would need to allocate 110 battalions (+71,500 troops) into eight divisions (+22,400 personnel and division accessories) and one army group (+1,000) for a total of 94,900 troops. *Total occupation troop cost for all four tasks is 168,000 (27,300 + 25,900 + 20,300 + 94,900 = 168,400, rounded down). Another 168,000 troops would need to be kept in constant rotation for occupation duty, tying up approximately 336,000 Russian troops for what could be a multi-year occupation.

Using a new and likely advance limit west of the Dnieper River and north of Odessa, it is estimated that Russia would need to deploy at least 168,000 occupying troops and keep another 168,000 in constant rotation for a total of 336,000 troops. This constitutes over 95% of the entire Russian Ground Force of approximately 350,000 personnel, not including available Russian airborne, special operations, or National Guard troops.

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March 09, 2022

Interestingly, the mobilization of 300,000 is a slightly lower number than the article above that was published in March of this year.

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TK3600 said:

Not true though. Up on Kharkiv front it was a defeated retreat after a fight not preplanned retreat. You cant just dismiss any tactical defeat that is not an encirclement which almost happened.

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