Apparently in the span of the last 24 hours, the Ukrainians have killed three regimental commanders (I think they have all been confirmed, I’ll let Adam weigh in), and while people understand the importance of that happening (on top of the 4-5 generals being killed), I don’t think people REALLY appreciate how big of a deal that can just crush morale. An RCO in America is a full bird Colonel, and they are pretty much gods in their fiefdoms. They are mythologized and adored, and in my unit, commanded about 3k+ men. I looked into it briefly and it is similar in the Russian Army (again, I am hoping Adam will weigh in).
And in Russia, officers are kind of mini celebrities OUTSIDE the army, in civilian world. We have that every now and then (think Powell and Stormin Norma, recently), etc. So again, killing these guys is a BFD on several levels.
Another thing that hasn’t been talked about much is that we all know Putin is desperately trying to get mercs from anywhere he can- the Wagner group, Syria, and most recently Libya, and I think one of the reasons this is happening is because of Russia’s very real demographic problems. If the Russians have lost the number of people we have hear they have, and estimates range from 7-12k in fatalities, they are facing a real problem. The general rule of thumb (at least as I remember it, again we are lucky to have Adam clean up my bullshit if I am wrong) is that for every fatality, triple that number for injured. so you are looking at estimates of any were 21-48k men out of the fight. And that doesn’t count for all the people who are required to take care of the injured, if Russia is doing that. That is a lot of people. That is a lot of combat power just fucking vaporized. Obviously people will return to battle, etc., but many will not. Again, an obvious crushing blow to Russian morale and there is simply no end in sight. And these numbers don’t count the number who have been captured or deserted or just melted away.
For the last couple decades, Rand and other thinktanks and demographers have talked about Russia’s demographic crisis, and basically for quite some time they simply have not had a birth rate to sustain their death rate, and were already looking at very serious labor shortages in the not so distant future. The same with China, whose one baby policy is biting them in the ass. You can look it all up yourself or someone smarter can chime in in the comments, but what this boils down to is that when you are talking a thousand here and a thousand there in terms of fatalities and casualties, and pretty soon Russia is going to have a hard time filing its ranks with young, able-bodied men. Hence the need for mercs, but mercs need to be paid, and Russia may shortly run out of the means to do that.
We’re really not that far off before Russia is mobilizing 17 year olds, eating their seed corn.
Again, if I am way off base with this, hopefully Adam will chime in. I will DM him so he can fix my mess if there is one before too much misinfo gets out.
War for Ukraine Update 26: Waiting In the Small Hours To See If Threats Will Become Reality
Adam L Silverman
Sounds good to me. The general officer/flag officer the killed today was the deputy commander for political affairs in the Russian Navy. He was forward with troops in south Ukraine because, as I talked about last night, Russia’s comms don’t work and their command and control is very centralized and hierarchical. Like the colonel the Ukrainians killed the other day, this guy was in command in the Donbas in 2014. And he was born in Kyiv. I expect the Ukrainians we’re looking for him. I expect they have a high value target list of senior officers they’ve been looking to take out since Putin first invades Ukraine in 2014.
Sebastian
You couldn’t be more on spot, John. This is exactly what is going on.
Sebastian
@Adam L Silverman:
The Ukrainians are working a plan here. It’s pretty obvious by now.
First fuel and supplies, then SAM, now it’s C&C. Planeloads of night vision gear and now switchblades.
This war is only four weeks even though it feels like it’s going on forever.
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman:
@Sebastian:
Props to the Blogfather and both of you.
After the 3rd general or so, I was wondering if some of them were actually going to the front lines on purpose and [ETA: choosing to] risk the snipers rather than wait to see what happens if they go home defeated.
But this does not sound like what is happening based on what you say.
jonas
The Russian Way of War since forever has been to just feed young men into the meat grinder for as long as it takes and make the enemy understand that they will keep doing that until they prevail and that resistance is futile. That may have worked for the tsars and for Stalin, particularly when Russians understood that it was either Stalin’s way or Hitler’s and they had no choice, but now this is a war of choice, not an existential threat — despite Putin’s lame propaganda. As Cole said, I don’t see how they keep losing 1-2k men — not just casualties — a week, and keep this up. And if anyone’s going to attract mercenaries looking for some action and a good payday, it’s the Ukrainians, not the Russians.
Putin has delusions of grandeur that he’s Stalin redidivus or something. But this will end much, much differently, I suspect.
West of the Rockies
@Sebastian:
C&C? SAM?
David Anderson
@Adam L Silverman: Does the Russian practice of having fairly small staffs make the Russian field formation commanders more of a leverage point than the same position in a NATO formation? Or does that not matter?
Belafon
@Sebastian: imagine how long WW2 would have felt if we had real-time video of it all.
Lyrebird
@West of the Rockies: Command and Control
Surface to Air Missiles
I think
Timill
IMO: you can’t hire mercenaries unless they expect to survive and get paid. If Russia needs them to replace the fallen, that doesn’t sound so good…
BottyGuy
I have a question related to the general massacre. I assume that these officers aren’t being taken out by snipers, but rather rockets or other explosives. If so there must be a lot of collateral deaths of staff officers and other military management personnel. Is that true? And wouldn’t that make it difficult to prosecute a battle plan?
CaseyL
Not that I think they’d care, but it seems to me any mercs fighting for Russia would be subject to war crimes prosecution as well…
dmsilev
I was morbidly curious, so to speak, earlier today so I looked up some historical numbers. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviets lost about 3,000 men KIA per day. Russia now is losing something like 350-700 KIA per day, depending on whose estimate you use, So, anywhere up to a quarter of a Stalingrad. When ‘one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War’ isn’t too far off as a comparison, that’s not good.
Adam L Silverman
@David Anderson: This is not my specialty, but from what I understand is that they have a crap NCO corps, decision making is centralized and hierarchical, and subordinate commanders have very limited autonomy to exercise discretion. All on top of an Army that, outside of so called elite units like the spetznaz and VDV/paratroopers, are made up of poorly trained conscripts.
Adam L Silverman
This is the most recent senior leader they’ve killed:
West of the Rockies
@Lyrebird:
Thank you.
Martin
They’re consistently losing over 1000 soldiers a day (killed and wounded). I mean, the Soviets lost a million in 6 months in Stalingrad and they still won, so I guess it’s still possible.
Of course, Russia is making almost no headway for their 1000 casualties, so not great.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I was think something similar, Russia had a demographic problem with men during the Soviet Union and got worse after the collapse. That’s why all the Russian mail order brides. They don’t have a general of 18 year olds to lose.
Brent
@West of the Rockies:
Command and Control. Surface to Air Missiles.
Jager
@jonas:
I read the other day, a German General during WWII said, “The Russians put out a fire by throwing bodies on it.”
cu
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, if it’s Sergej Suharev, he was in charge in Ilovajsk in 2014, where per General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine 220 servicemen were killed, 44 were wounded, 40 were missing and 13 were in captivity.
Morzer
I don’t know what is the “official” percentage of effectives a combat unit can lose and still be viable, but my impression is that we are reaching or past that point for quite a number of Russian units. There are already stories about Russia desperately scraping up fighting men from anywhere and everywhere, Russian conscripts self-mutilating to avoid serving in Ukraine, some units refusing to attack. Similarly, they seem to be reaching their limit in certain types of munitions – and they’ve run out of food so badly that they are looting, which is always bad for discipline. Now, some of this is probably exaggerated, but overall it’s hard to imagine that the Russians are going to be able to get much further, or even hold their gains. I just wonder how long their army is going to be any sort of effective force.
jonas
@Adam L Silverman: I forget where I saw this, but didn’t some (US? Israeli?) postmortem of the Yom Kippur War come to the same conclusions? — that the Egyptian officer corps was too rigidly hierarchical, that unit commanders were afraid to make on-the-ground decisions without some higher-up authorizing it, etc., thus allowing the far more flexible IDF to get the jump on them? That was like, fifty years ago. And the Russians haven’t studied up on that at all?
jonas
@Jager:
Sounds about right.
Another Scott
Kamil Galeev (https://twitter.com/kamilkazani) has had some great long threads about the demographics and history of Russia and what that means for the war.
I don’t know how universal his conclusions are, but he has lots of receipts.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
I do think Lavrov was not lying when he said that they see this as a battle over the future of the world order. Russia’s problem was that their oil and gas customers were eventually going to cut them off over climate change. That’s the problem with being a petrostate – if people stop buying, you got nothing. And Russia has completely failed in being independent in almost any other industry. Even if they wanted to make their own tractors, they need the west to sell them the equipment to make the tractors. Economically, they’re just getting crushed, and now even China is passing them. The status quo wasn’t cutting it. They needed to change. But Putin is too committed to looting the country, so they couldn’t change in a more productive way. Their strongest asset has been their military. This is them playing their best hand with the provision that Putin stay in power.
Sarah Taber often talks about farmers pursuing policies that keep them the biggest fish in the pond, even if that requires shrinking the pond, which is why so many rural policy solutions are so fucking backward. Because they aren’t there to protect the community, just their role as the most influential player in the community. Putin is probably just fine being the bigger North Korea, so long as he’s the one in charge. I wish I had any faith that the people of Russia weren’t going to sit back and let it happen.
cu
@Martin: Million Soviets = “Million citizens of Soviet Union” Soviet Army was losing. Now it’s Putin’s army loosing 1000/day Russians, sent to Ukraine to kill both Ukrainians and Russians living there.
different-church-lady
I know nothing about warfare, but my gut tells me to be wary of claims regarding casualties on the other side. Obviously I’d like these things to be true, but I also have no doubt there’s at least some supportive propaganda aimed our way, just as the Russians are hurling negative propaganda at us.
Martin
@jonas: Putin doesn’t want independent thinking generals. Sometimes independent thinking generals shoot fascist leaders in the head. It doesn’t matter what the lesson of that conflict was. Russia, like the US, believes itself to be exceptional. Hard to take the lesson to heart in that situation.
See also: the US determining you need 1 soldier per 50 civilians to maintain an occupation and then not getting anywhere near that number in its two most recent occupations. Because that number is for other countries. The US can get by with less because we’re special, which is why Iraq and Afghanistan both turned out so awesome.
different-church-lady
@Martin:
The Soviets were the home team in that one.
Sebastian
@West of the Rockies:
SAM. Surface-to-Air-Missiles. Look like those armored personnel carriers with radar and missiles on top. Rare, expensive, valuable to the Russians. Can shoot down Ukrainian Bayraktar drones (~half the size of a Cessna but can drop 4 tank killer missiles per mission)
Ukrainians appeared to have a changing preference of targets during different phases of this conflict. Especially for their Bayraktar drones and Special Forces. Observing where those precision-guided or directed or commanded weapons or people went and acted, gave you a foreboding or hint as to what was important, where the focus of Zelinskyy and his generals are.
First, Ukrainians shot at everything then it seemed they turned their focus on fuel, supplies, ammos; and then, for the past two weeks or so, it appeared they were paying more attention to SAM, taking out as many as they could, while at the same time Turkey shipped more Bayraktars. Something is brewing here.
C&C is Command-and-Control. I believe Ukraine is taking out all the brass and whatever is left of the shitpile organization the Russians started with.
We know the Russian Army is calcified in its structure. It relies on a rigid top-down dictatorial system of people yelling at their underlings. How wouldn’t it? These people never experienced anything but Soviet-style management of absurd orders. It’s Dilbert cubed with a lot of punishment. That’s the only way they know how to operate.
Right now, it appears that everyone in Russian C&C is about to die. Struck by Archangels from the sky as it were. Or ghosts. At least that’s how it must appear to the Russians.
Martin
@cu: I think it was a million military. Mind you, in that kind of situation you’re very rapidly converting civilians to military, so it may be a distinction without a difference.
Sebastian
@Adam L Silverman:
Insert Jerry Seinfeld’s It’s A Shame.
Sebastian
@Belafon:
I don’t know which Juicer showed me this yesterday but you have to check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnYsx-3-8VM
Martin
@different-church-lady: There’s a fair bit of independent confirmation on these numbers. That’s why the range. Figure low-end is independently confirmed, and high end is reported by someone who would have better information, but also is motivated to lie/exaggerate.
FlyingToaster
From my doomscrolling through Twitter, I’m seeing both the tire guy opining that their shoddy equipment maintenance means the invasion will be truckless in about a month, oryx listing off confirmed Russan equipment losses (250 tanks? WTF?), and kamilkazani’s thread of threads explaining how Russia is committing suicide on the world stage.
What Putin has are missles. What he hasn’t got are grunts. The demographics are even worse than they look at first glance; young educated Russians have been leaving since the invasion, because no one with a choice wants to be drafted into this clusterfuck.
So you’ve got poorly led, poorly equipped and poorly trained minority teenagers from Outer Buttfuck, with overloaded ammo trucks and no food coming in. I can’t even imagine what their mission is supposed to be, other than dying.
Sebastian
@Morzer:
I think we are about to see a route soon.
dmsilev
So apparently Biden will head to Poland late next week, after the NATO summit. Presumably that’s as close to ‘visit Ukraine’ as his security advisers were willing to sign off on.
Roger Moore
@Morzer:
My impression from reading about WWII is that a lot depends on how the losses come. A unit can maintain effectiveness after surprisingly heavy losses if they come slowly enough for the survivors to adapt. Another thing was it turned out it was better to wait until the unit was out of combat before replacing losses.
Adam L Silverman
@jonas: I do not know what is taught in Russian professional military education.
Martin
@dmsilev: Can’t imagine Biden going anywhere that the US didn’t have control over. Maybe meet Zelenskyy at the border, but we won’t know about that until he’s left. Sure as shit not ahead of time.
Kent
A lot also depends on what that unit was being asked to do. If their task is to simply man foxholes on a static front line that is one thing. You just spread people thinner and hunker down. If they are asked to engage in 3-dimensional offensive maneuvers with a lot of specialty jobs and equipment and communications that is an entirely different thing.
Calouste
@Morzer: I read the percentage (of casualties that a unit can sustain and still be effective) somewhere years back, and I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was a lot lower than I thought. I think a unit was considered completely destroyed if it had 20-30% of manpower left. Because at that point the only thing they do is take care of the wounded. Estimating from there, I’d think that a unit ceases to be effective (i.e. it can only defend itself in place) somewhere between 30 and 50% casualties.
jonas
@different-church-lady: Given the amount of “open source intelligence” available in the current war, media outlets are able to pretty accurately confirm (or deny) the casualty figures being bandied about by either the Ukrainians or Russians. Even the Russians are admitting eyebrow-raising casualties, which suggests that, when squared with what the Ukrainians are claiming, a lot of Russian soldiers are dying in Ukraine. Maybe it’s 2000. Maybe it’s 5000. Or something in between. Either way it’s ugly. Recall that in 10 odd years or so in Iraq, we lost a total of ca. 4,400 troops. Russia may have lost that many in 4 weeks.
Ishiyama
@jonas: How did it work for Tsar Nicholas?
Kent
@FlyingToaster: Yes, young educated professionals are streaming out of Russia right now. At some point Putin is going to need to drop another iron curtain around Russia to stem that tide. Which I suspect would be exceedingly difficult in this day and age as he doesn’t have millions of Soviet troops to man the tens of thousands of miles of borders and can’t cut off trade across such borders either.
Here is an article from today’s NYT about young Russian professionals streaming into Armenia: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/world/middleeast/ukraine-russia-armenia.html
I teach HS science in a community that has sizeable Russian and Ukrainian immigrant populations. I was just talking to one of my students last week about the war. He said all his immediate family is now in the US but he has cousins still in Russia. The are in the process of leaving right now through Kazakhstan where they plan to fly onward to India or the UK and then hopefully the US but also maybe not as Russians fleeing Russia don’t exactly have refugee status anywhere right now. So they are basically fucked unless they can set up someplace friendly and start a life.
Martin
If the US can’t send aircraft to Ukraine, maybe we could send some V-22s to Russia instead?
dmsilev
@Calouste: I think that’s about right most of the time. Plenty of examples of outliers in both directions, units falling to pieces after very light losses and others fighting to the bitter end, but for the most part, somewhere between a quarter to half seems to be the critical level.
sanjeevs
The Battle for Kyiv Looms as a Long and Bloody Conflict – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I think this is the same Tetiana Chornovol who broke into Yanukovich’s compound back in 2013/14 to show how much he had stolen, and was then beaten up by his thugs.
gene108
Global population will decline in the next 50-100 years. East Asia and Northern Europe seem to be places population decline will affect first.
The USA has put of problems associated with population decline because of foreign immigration.
Global birth rates are approaching replacement. The only places where birth rates are significantly higher than replacement are Africa, parts of the Middle East, a couple of countries in Central and South America, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but even in those countries birth rates are declining.
I think population decline will be what saves humanity from the environmental clusterfuck heading our way. Fewer people consume fewer natural resources, so nature can recover.
Chris T.
@Martin:
(emphasis mine here) The funny/sad thing is, they have a lot of much better options if they just drop that last proviso.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev: @Kent:
I think a big part is who the casualties are. Losing a bunch of privates will have much less effect than losing the same number of officers and NCOs. This is why the loss of a bunch of generals has to be really concerning to the Russians.
ETA: This is also why units can survive slow, steady losses more easily than sudden ones. The slow losses give the people who have to step up into higher roles more of a chance to do it.
Kalakal
@Calouste: It’s incredibly variable. In WW2 the US & UK considered units to be ‘ineffective’ at around 20-30% casualties, and at 50% or over to be essentially destroyed and requiring rebuilding. The Germans managed to operate effectively at very high loss levels, partially because they had an excellent nco system.
A lot depends on initial morale. The Russians also have a lousy system of ncos and poor low level initative, both of which will degrade their performance faster.
L85NJGT
I doubt Russian units were anywhere near their listed manpower from go. Draftees pay bribes to be no-shows, and someone pockets the payroll. SOP in kleptocratic militaries.
It appears they went in with too few drivers and some screwball attempt at shuttling equipment and supplies. Which is why so much of it ended up unmanned on the side of the road waiting for the Ukrainians to blast into scrap.
RaflW
@Martin: Just gotta make damn sure Marco Rubio isn’t read in on any of the plans. We know he likes to clout-seek with his twitter leaks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:
What were the Soviets fighting for at Stalingrad? What are the Ukrainians fighting for now?
sdhays
@Another Scott: One of the many things that blew my mind in reading those threads is how far back so much of this goes. The Russian Imperial Army was akin to the Confederacy fielding a fully slave army. Serfs (who we really should just call slaves because that’s what they were) were drafted and the only way out of service was pretty much death.
Russia’s army started to freaking disintegrate when they chased Napoleon back to France because soldiers were deserting to marry French women with their own land. It boggles the mind. And this attitude toward the military continues there, apparently. Russian Army soldiers get robbed (and worse) by politically connected gangs.
Society celebrates the victories but detests the army.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: The US standard is >85% Green (fully combat capable), 70-84% Amber (combat capable with deficiencies), 50-69% Red (combat ineffective), and <50% Black (fubar).
Kent
It is a totalitarian dictatorship. The VERY LAST thing they want is junior military officers feeling empowered to make decisions for themselves.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: But there very thing you need for an army in the field (aside from proper logistical support and competent NCO corps) is junior officers who can make decisions for themselves. And plan that doesn’t involve invading someplace at the beginning of mud season. And well maintained equipment. And….
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Something to keep in mind about Stalingrad, the Soviets didn’t want to lose all those men, from Stalin on down felt they had no choice because of the situation. By 1943 the Soviets were much more careful with their attacks.
Kalakal
@Martin: At Stalingrad the Soviets fed in just enough troops at a time into the city itself to keep the battle going and force the Germans to commit more and more of their strenth in order to make any progress. When they judged it the right moment the jaws of the trap snapped shut as 100,000s of fresh troops smashed through the axis flanks, held only by weak axis units eg Roumanian, Italian etc 50 to a 100 miles west of the city. At which point the German 6th Army found itself out of supply a 100 miles behind enemy lines. It was a very cold blooded and very effective strategy, relying on a willingness to sacrifice troops on a massive scale
Frankensteinbeck
@Kent:
One of the things I have read during all of this is that Putin deliberately cultivates a stupid and incompetent officer corps.
EDIT – Another curiosity was reading that the elite paratroopers are a total sham. They are a PR stunt. They are elite riot police, good at intimidating barely armed civilians. When they get thrown into real combat, like in Ukraine, they get ground up like hamburger.
Kent
Well, arguably they never really got that careful with their soldier’s lives.
They lost 81,000 dead and 280,000 wounded in the Battle of Berlin which occurred LONG after the war had already been decided
That is about equivalent to total US casualties in the Pacific theater for the entire war against the Japanese from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa.
sdhays
@Frankensteinbeck: You can have an army that won’t threaten your brutal kleptocratic hold on power or you can have an army that can win a war against a competent, well supplied adversary. But you can’t have both.
Carlo Graziani
@Adam L Silverman:
On the subject of their NCO corps: as of the Soviet era, William Odom’s “The Collapse Of The Soviet Military” describes a completely hapless, disfunctional system, in which conscript seniority within the 2-year, 4-semester-intake draft overrode the authority of NCOs, who were not a separate professional corps, but rather selected for “promotion” from the draftees themselves. Such NCOs found themselves unable to exert authority over conscripts “senior” to themselves in the draft. The traditional perquisites of seniority were too strong, and the regular Army officers did nothing to back up the authority of the NCOs.
Odom points out the significance of this — obvious to people with military experience, worth emphasizing to civilians like me — in Western armies, a professional NCO corps carries the institutional memory of small-unit training and management. Without a functioning equivalent, the Soviet Army was massively over-officered with lieutenants and captains doing corporal and sergeant work.
From recent readings (thanks, Adam) the Russian Army knows this is a problem, and has attempted reform, but success has been decidedly mixed.
RaflW
I realize I’m pretty rusty on a lot of the post 90s Russian sphere of influence nations. I’m thinking CIS and CTSO. Are there countries in either group where, given the apparent weaknesses of the Russian military that seem to be showing, might face internal upheavals again (Kazakhstan was just in an uproar in January)?
I would doubt Georgia wants to really test things, but as a former CIS member who was the test case for Putin’s “special operations” (or whatever the euphemism was in 2008), might they want a nibble of their former territories?
I’d think the Russian power and prestige is looking a bit dented, so could things get weird in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan (to just toss out some notions of places that might need Russian troops to keep the locals “calm”)?
Sebastian
@RaflW:
If I am reading Kamil Galeev right, it’s not just the satellite republics that will crumble but the Russian security system itself. A lot of those casualties are police and security units. You know, thugs who enforce the Kremlin’s will.
Suddenly, when people start making trouble there aren’t as many guys with riot shields and batons available. And so the dominoes start to fall …
CaseyL
@Frankensteinbeck:
They (or the strategists who sent them) thought that’s what they’d be facing in Ukraine.
One big problem for Ukraine is, even if they can wipe out the invading forces, they still get continually hammered by missile strikes originating from within Russia. Hopefully, some of the weapons the West is sending are long-range anti-artillery.
Martin
@Chris T.: Agreed. Don’t think Putin will negotiate that one away.
CROAKER
@Adam L Silverman: See you tagged him KIA in Mariupol.
along with
Senior Sergeants Yevgeny Yegorov and Kirill Vazhenin of the Black Sea Fleet’s 810th Naval Infantry Brigade were both killed in Mariupol.
Ishiyama
When the Germans invaded Belgium, the city of Liege unexpectedly resisted for days. The Germans used heavy artillery and overcame the city’s defenses, but they gave the Allies a vast fund of atrocity stories to inflame public opinion against them as barbarians. In many ways, Putin is repeating this error by reducing Mariupol by bombardment.
John Cole
I think this may be premised on an army with a professional NCO corps. The Russians do not have one.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, that’s why my money is on Ukraine. I’ll fight to the death to protect my family, but I won’t lift a finger if asked to kill yours.
My only point was that Russia does have a history of burning through more than 1000 troops a day and coming out on top, but in a defensive fight, in a very different scenario. I think the list of conflicts where the winners gave up that many troops per day over an extended period of time is pretty short.
Kent
Also, the tide did not really turn for the USSR in WW2 until the US basically took on the task of provisioning and equipping the Soviet armies through Lend-Lease. By the time the USSR went on the offensive with Operation Bagration they were a highly mechanized and mobile force courtesy of US factories while the Germans were still relying on horses for infantry troops. Lend-Lease provided Soviet armies with:
Ishiyama
@Martin: U.S. Grant: “I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
terry chay
@different-church-lady: I believe the 7k number is Pentagon estimates which are middling. The numbers coming out of Ukraine MOD are higher. It is a rule of thumb in a modern military that if a unit KIA 10% they are combat ineffective. From the anecdotes, some units are much higher than that and some are less so, but the number is still staggering.
The U.S. does combined arms on a complex scale, you can’t just swap a few people in and do what we do. Russia wants to pretend they do it this way but they don’t.
prostratedragon
@RaflW: Iron hospital gown strategy?
Frankensteinbeck
@CaseyL:
The Russian intelligence letters guy said that Putin planned the war based on a whole mythology they built for him with stuff like thousands of Russian loyalists in every Ukrainian city ready to rise up and take control. It was what Putin wanted to hear, and you get seriously dead telling Putin what he does not want to hear. It’s hard to know what he knows now, because that problem has not changed and he sure doesn’t want to hear how bad things actually are.
terry chay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I should mention in reply to my own post that 10% KIA is around 40% casualty rate.
Mallard Filmore
My worry is what happens when Putin understands he will not win the war. Does our survelance capabilities let us know if chemical weapons are getting transported and primed?
I hope Biden discussed with Xi what China will do if Russia goes down that path, or throws any nukes.
James E Powell
Soviet Great Patriotic War veteran I met years ago spoke fondly of Studebaker trucks.
JAFD
In one of the chapters of Max Hasting’s Overlord he copies a report from a commander of a British battallion in Normandy in 1944 ‘my unit is, essentially, destroyed’. What ‘taking a counter off the board’ means in real life.
Sebastian
@John Cole:
Yes, pretty much so. The German Wehrmacht was able to execute the combined arms warfare because of their superb NCO corps (technology and processes would enable it then more broadly later). The excellent NCO corps also helped them perform under heavy losses. If I am not mistaken this is a remnant of their Prussian military history.
The armies without one, however … fall apart.
CROAKER
Yesterday’s losses included
331st Russian Guard Regiment – Destroyed – not sure what the regimental strength was at the time of the battle on paper 2k w 200 vehicles
Report of a combined detachment of 6th Guards Lvov Tank Regiment (from 90th Tank Division) has been destroyed & the commander, Col. A. Zakharov, is KIA.
terry chay
@CaseyL:
It’s unclear to me that is sustainable. That medium range missile/long range artillery is predicated on parts coming from the West into Russia. It doesn’t sound like that is available anymore. A lot of those parts were dual-use (both civilian and military use) and they have been completely cut off from that, so while they could continue to build it after 2014 sanctions, they can’t anymore and didn’t prepare for this level of sanctions.
Without any sanctions on it, they have been slowly loosing capability to build space rockets, and that stuff was a positive profit center for them. I can’t imagine what their capability looks like with respect to their military, and it probably explains why we haven’t seen any advanced jets or these fabled T-14 tanks in theatre—they’re potemkin equipment. I should have known it when they were claiming their next-gen “Ratnik” equipment would have “no IR signature” (e.g. somehow violate the laws of physics). Even their latest tanks seem to have training dummy units instead of actual reactive armor.
OTOH, I don’t believe the counterbattery stuff, if any, given to the Ukraine can target inside Russian territory. Before 2014, the counterbattery radar and such that the U.S. sold Ukraine was quickly captured by Russia so we’ve been burned by that. It explains why their drones have been coming from Turkey not us. After that, anything given that could target into Russia was considered an offensive posture so a lot of things like counterbattery radar were crippled in a manner that would provide accurate targeting only within Ukraine’s borders but not into Russia.
Obviously, I don’t know if the Switchblades were crippled in that way, or even if that is even possible. But a delivery of only 100 sounds to me either a PR stunt or a testing the waters to see how it goes sort of thing.
Not sure it matters, if Russia pulls out their forces from Ukraine, there is still the stuff they took in 2014 that they’d have to pull back from. And if they do any of that, it looks like defeat. Not sure they can lob anything across the border at that point. Besides, if a single bomb is going off in Ukraine, no Western country is going to relax their sanctions placed.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
The whole thing about the people around Putin being afraid to tell him the truth should terrify us. It means that even if he’s completely rational, he still won’t be predictable because we don’t know what set of “facts” he’s working from.
Kent
Each Switchblade unit contains a package of 10 drones, so we are talking about 1000 armored drones not 100. But still, that isn’t really very many.
It is also hard to know how many they actually have in surplus and ready to send.
Kent
One assumes he has internet and can see what is happening himself. Even an older dumbfuck like Trump knew how to use the internet and Putin neither that old nor as much of a dumbfuck as Trump.
What he might have believed pre-war about Ukraine is one thing. That was a subject for intelligence services. But any ordinary joe with a cell phone can see what is happening today.
terry chay
@Roger Moore: He’ll be predictable (and has been) to U.S. intelligence at least. It seems we have access to all his intelligence from the lead up to the war, right down to thinking, like his people did, that Kiev would fall within 72 hours.
terry chay
@Kent: Oh cool. But it also sounded that the bulk of them were the smaller ones that are not HEAT (high explosive anti-tank). From the ads, it sounded like attacking individuals or radio towers or some such. Is artillery considered a soft target or hard one?
I hope it works and is effective. If it does, it’s potentially quite revolutionary, don’t you think?
sanjeevs
(1) Nathan Ruser on Twitter: “Ukrainian troops have pushed back against Russian troops, recapturing Makariv, Makovyshche and pushing towards Berezivka. This move threatens the supply of one of the major groups of Russian troops to the West of Kyiv (map shows estimates). https://t.co/j7b8Ojql4e” / Twitter
terry chay
@Kent: Oh so I’m off by an order of magnitude. That’s interesting. Though the bulk of them sound to me to be the smaller versions (for individuals, communications array, etc), and not High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT). Is artillery a hard target or soft one?
It’ll be interesting because if it’s effective, it has the potential to change a lot of doctrine and strategy. Heck, even in tiny numbers the morale effect of it is downright scary. Turkish Bayraktar is already stuff of legend and they have a “Saint” for the Javelin. Could be similar, even in small numbers.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Oh, that is wicked, Martin. Just wicked.
Villago Delenda Est
@James E Powell: Stalin himself credited the Studebaker trucks with victory. They kept the beans and bullets and fuel flowing to the Red Army as it marched and rolled across the North European Plain to Berlin.
Villago Delenda Est
@terry chay: All that modernization of the Russian Army seems to have been invested in superyachts that have been impounded in Western Europe. Or stuck in Norway with no fuel and no one willing to sell them any.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sebastian: I could not have possibly done my job as an officer, at any level, without competent NCOs. They are the true backbone of any army. Plus they teach shavetails how to lead in the real army as opposed to the academic army.
Kent
I honestly have no idea. I just know they come in boxes of 10 drones each. I think that essentially you have one control system with video screen, etc. and 10 “bullets” to accompany it. It would make no sense to just send one drone with each control unit.
But even if they can’t take out heavy armor like tanks, they can still certainly be effective by targeting soft targets like fuel trucks, or even perhaps the control systems of artillery, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft and missile defenses and such. You don’t need to blow up a piece of artillery if you make it impossible to aim the thing and fire it.
They are essentially video-guided slow moving RPGs that you can fire from 50 miles away and that are reportedly nearly undetectable using conventional radar as they are so small and non-metallic and designed to be radar stealthy. If you can’t see them coming you can’t defend against them.
I would use them against aircraft and helicopters on the ground and things like that. Biggest bang for the buck. Take out a $10 or $20 million aircraft with a $5,000 drone.
Ruckus
How many of the Russian solders have been captured or just given up, besides the numbers being killed?
A lot of Russia does not seem to be enthralled with this war, I imagine that applies to those fighting as well.
Add in the drones and weapons that didn’t exist in WWII and given what we’ve seen from Russian equipment readiness being generally less than up to date this sure isn’t the walk in the park that vlad envisioned. Given the command structure and command losses added in this is seeming more and more like vlad really, really fucked up. Yes a lot of death and destruction but a lot of it seems to be ending up on vlad’s side of the scoreboard.
eddie blake
@Kent: would imagine if they were precise enough, you wouldn’t have to kill a tank with one, you could take out its optics or tracks and make it combat ineffective even with the smaller charge.
(and you could probably hit the targeted spot repeatedly with more switchblades until whatever you were aiming at broke)
Poptartacus
C&C=Command and conquer
https://youtu.be/e3YzmjmAGoI
Kent
The Ukrainians have plenty of anti-tank weapons I think. These are more sophisticated long-distance weapons designed to reach far behind enemy lines and take out critical hardware with pinpoint accuracy. I’m sure there are higher priority targets than random tanks sitting 25 or 50 miles behind enemy lines
I would send them to take out aircraft sitting on airfields far behind enemy lines. Or use them to destroy railroad bridges that are carrying equipment to the front.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
As a navy NCO it amazed me that the system worked at all. A large percentage of the senior, lifer NCOs were taking up space till retirement, about 1/3 of the officers didn’t know their asses from a hole in the water and better than half the enlisted were spending most of their time filling in their days left calendars. I have no idea how widespread that was but I spent over 2 yrs total on 2 ships and didn’t notice a lot of difference between them. Now I will say that when we did have to man general quarters for real everyone seemed to get their shit in a small enough pile to manage.
What I’m saying is that I have no idea what other branches were like or what it’s like in the military today but 50 yrs ago there didn’t seem to be a lot of desire to actually be in.
patrick II
@Frankensteinbeck:
So much of this self-delusion is reminiscent of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, in this instance particularly, Cheney asserting the Iraqi population would be waving flags and welcome us with open arms.
Medicine Man
@Frankensteinbeck: But how could that be? They look so big and impressive.
</sarcasm>
Martin
@Kent: The Switchblade 600 is carrying a Javelin, so no problem taking out anything a Javelin can, but instead of a 3mi range, its designed to go out 25 miles.
The smaller one is designed for personnel, a fuel truck, etc. Basically it’s a grenade that can be better targeted. Range of 6 miles.
Those are pretty impressive numbers actually.
bjacques
At this rate, will the Red Army Chorus add to their repertoire “I’m The Very Model Of A Martyred Major General”?
What still baffles me is that, until February 24, Putin had the reputation as an 11-dimensional chess Grandmaster in firm command of a Red Army of heroes and an Oprichnina of thugs, owner and proprietor of a more or less viable economy, and supported by far-right fifth columnists (including also Tories and the GOP) as allies. Ukraine, even without being partly occupied by Russia, would have taken many years of consistently committed, honest government to be allowed into NATO and the EU. Putin would have had plenty of time to sabotage that, in Ukraine and within NATO and EU member countries. He was on his way to peeling at least the US and Hungary out of NATO. In the US alone, we periodically get bored with good government, while the thoroughly compromised Tories are in for the long haul.
Now that’s all evaporated…it lends credence to the rumors that Putin running out of time.
I wonder if 1:50 occupation ratio of soldiers to civilians still holds when terror and reprisals are options, but Russia seems to be failing at that also
Martin
The insurgency has begun.
Ukrainians inside Kherson are starting to assassinate those that cooperate with the Russian govt. Those molotovs might start getting some use now as well. Report of an assistant to one of the collaborators, killed in his car like you would imagine a mafia hit.
Sebastian
@CROAKER:
Guards units are elite in the sense they have history, no? Not implying those are as famous as the US 101st Airborne, but the names carry some weight because they fought in many wars I suppose.
With all those generals lost and regiments destroyed, these are not just casualties, we are talking lost battles here. Places and dates.
oldster
All I can say, John, is from your mouth to the FSM’s orecchiette.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
On top of the KIAs and wounded is the high desertion rate. Moreover, Michael Weiss says Estonian Intelligence tells him Putin only has 2 months of supplies left and then they’re
fuckedcombat ineffective.David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
5 years doing reconnaissance, during peace time in a friendly country. He’s not Sidney Reilly. Yet he gets portrayed as a grand military strategist.
Tony Jay
At the end of the day the only reason WW2 didn’t end in an Axis victory was because the Allied side worked together and made up for each other’s deficiencies. Which is a lesson the West seems to be applying to the fight for Ukraine, with most countries taking on whatever share of the greater effort is most suited to them and their resources. The UK, for example, is filling the role previously taken by South American countries of “place you can continue to stash your cash and live in luxury as long as you hide it well and make mouth noises about not supporting the bad guy.”
See? Team effort!
But yeah, without Britain staying in the War, there goes North Africa and any possibility of a trans-Atlantic invasion. The Nazis get Persian oil and a southern front threatening Russia, while the Japanese get to declare victory over European Imperialism and a steady supply of the raw materials they desperately needed. Without Russia staying in the War the Nazis have effectively won, there’s zero chance that the Western Allies can beat the Wehrmacht on their own. Japan gets access to Siberia (probably) and the very ‘best’ outcome we can look forward to is atomic bombs hitting European cities sometime in the late 1940s. Without the USA getting into the War, both Britain and the USSR were fucked no matter what they did. Britain is forced to the negotiating table by famine and lack of funds, the USSR can’t move, supply, feed or arm their armies.
But always remember, for all of their disfunction, wasted effort, strategic lunacy and complete disinterest in an actual coalition of equals, the Axis could and arguably should have ‘won’ WW2 at any point up to 1942. We got lucky (for certain very bleak values of ‘lucky’) but it didn’t have to turn out that way.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Tony Jay: Frighteningly, all Hitler would have had to do was not backstab Stalin for a few more years, and he would have successfully conquered all of Europe.
oldster
If you compare John’s post with Adam’s first comment, you can see what proper command and control in a functional hierarchy looks like: the officer gives an order, and the NCO salutes smartly and says “yes sir!”
(I keed, I keed! I know that Adam ain’t going to sign off on any opinion that has not stood up to his own independent scrutiny.)
Jay
I don’t think people REALLY appreciate how big of a deal that can just crush morale. An RCO in America is a full bird Colonel, and they are pretty much gods in their fiefdoms.
What about the morale boost when some unpopular doofus gets killed? Not everyone is popular.
debbie
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Only Sam Neill could be Sidney Reilly.
Tony Jay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Yup. It’s frightening how reliant Allied victory was on the Axis being led by fuckwits.
Can’t always rely on that.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: A briefing last night by a Pentagon official was reported on by the Times of Israel. The official told reporters that the U.S. is seeing indications that the Russians may be giving up on planned gains in northern Ukraine, taking Kyiv for instance. Instead they are now concentrating on the south and securing a “land bridge” fom the Crimea to Russian territory further east along the Black Sea (Mariulpol stands in the way of this). The Pentagon said these were indications, but not more certain evidence.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: The method there was a message.
Mike Field
@West of the Rockies: Surfuce-to-air missles. Command and control.
Don’t you hate the military’s obesession with initialisms? I sure do. I had to look those things up!
Brit in Chicago
@Tony Jay: Can’t you though? There’s so much fuckwittery around that if anything goes on long enough there’s going to be some awfully bad decisions made, one of which may well prove fatal.
(One reason I’m not a conspiracay theorist is that stories about conspiracies always assume everything went exactly according to plan. Also I think that confusion and stupidity play a much larger role in human affairs, along with inertia and idleness. But maybe that’s just me.)
Geminid
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Hitler knew that the U.S.S.R was stepping up it’s production of military equipment and the rebuilding of an army still crippled by the purge of Marshall Tukashevsky and others in 1937. Hitler feared that the Soviets’ material advantages would translate into military superiority if he waited until later to launch a war he believed was inevitable.
Hitler also underestimated the Soviets’ current capabilities. “Kick in the door and the whole house will fall in,” he told his generals.
Stalin, on the other hand, probably overestimated France’s military capability. In retrospect, Stalin looked foolish for signing the pact with Hitler a few days before the latter invaded Poland. But no one forsaw France’s military collapse in May of 1940, which in no way was inevitable.
Stalin had already tried to achieve a millitary alliance with France and England. The French were willing but the British were not, and the two countries’ negotiators were leaving for home even as Hitler’s Foreign Minister arrived in Moscow. It took Ribbentrop and Molotov less than 48 hours to negotiate their pact.
This story is recounted in a fascinating book, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1989?). David Fisher was one of two authors. The book covers the period from the Munich “Agreement” in 1938 to the German invasion of Russia in June of 1941. The authors focus particularly on the intricate process that led to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.
Geminid
@Mike Field: You need a tighter OODA Loop!
TonyG
@West of the Rockies: I think it stands for Command and Control and Surface to Air Missile. Not sure. My only military experience was worrying about the Vietnam War draft fifty years ago.
Carlo Graziani
@Mike Field:
But thry make Pentagon-generated PowerPoint slides so much more informative and easy to take in at a glance!
<Ducking…>
SW
@Omnes Omnibus: The destruction of the enemy.
Jinchi
I don’t either, but I’ve read that the original definition of ‘decimate’ is to kill one out of every 10 soldiers.
So when the Russian losses ever reach 20,000, Ukraine can legitimately claim to have decimated Putin’s army.
Omnes Omnibus
@SW: I was going for defending their country, but I will give you points for that one.
SW
The Marines lost 6800 KIA in 36 days at Iwo Jima I believe. It was stupid but it doesn’t compare with this.
VOR
Comms could be a reason for these Colonels and Generals getting killed. I saw an article a couple days ago claiming the much-vaunted Russian encrypted communications gear was not functioning in the field. So the Russians may be using non-encrypted or civilian gear. Cell phones, even. The Ukrainians may be able to find the emissions sources and target the biggest ones, which would be where the commanders are.
matt
@gene108: India population at 1.38 billion, still growing fast.
stinger
@Carlo Graziani:
I think you mean PPT slides!
Geminid
@VOR: The senior officers killed might well have come closer to the firing line than is normal, to press attacks that subordinate commanders were hesitant to order.
Seanly
@Adam L Silverman:
Not military myself, but to elucidate for the other non-military members:
There are 2 very important strengths to the US military. One is a strong non-commissioned officer (NCO) core (aka, the sergeants & petty officers). The NCO’s get the work done.
The second is that initiative is highly valued. The front line troops need to be able to exploit opportunities that present themselves.
A possible third strength is that we actually maintain our vehicles…
tokyokie
@Adam L Silverman: Given what I’ve read from Kamil Galeev and the deliberate downgrading of the power and influence of the Russian military, I wonder whether there is really any education of Russia’s officer corps.
tom
@different-church-lady: Amen: I’m old enough to remember all the inflated casualty counts in the Vietnam war.
Bill Arnold
@Martin:
My preliminary guestimate of the half-life of quislings in Ukraine was 2 months, but that estimate may be high.
Jack the Cold Warrior
@jonas: The Egyptians had adopted Soviet weapons and tactics. Much as the Iraqis in the Gulf War. The results speak for themselves, even though the Iraqis had the 4th largest Army in the world. Junior leaders in the US Army are taught to use their initiative, and that most war plans fall apart after first contact with the enemy.
Morzer
@Carlo Graziani:
Don’t forget to cover!
Jack the Cold Warrior
@Ruckus: That was the 70’s post Vietnam VOLAR (VOLUNTEER Army) and military. The Draft was gone. The fall semester after that my ROTC lost 60% of its cadets. I was an infantry officer Active duty 75-80. We had constant low manning issues (like a platoon with only 16 instead of 33). And lots of drug problems. But we had NCO’s and officers with combat experience and a desire to learn from the mistakes of Vietnam. During the 80’s they built the Army that triumphed in the Gulf War…