Canada vs Brits in Latvia

[Kirkhill]

 

[KevinB]

I'm still laughing from the Canadian saying they bring Mass and Size to the battle

 

[CountDC]

All relative - you have to know compared to what.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

The Cdn-led eFP BG is, actually, quite big. I imagine he was referring to the eFP BG writ-large.

Having enemy-force exchanges like this is excellent. Good training for all involved.

 

[KevinB]

The Cdn-led eFP BG is, actually, quite big. I imagine he was referring to the eFP BG writ-large.

BG and big wouldn’t be words I’d use together.
Considering it’s in Europe, where V Corps is bringing mass and size…

Having enemy-force exchanges like this is excellent. Good training for all involved.

I’d have been a lot more impressed if it was fully instrumented. The Brit’s Recce Sqn GPMG charge of the Light Bde seemed a little bizarre in the face of tanks and LAV. It reminded me of scripted enemy force parameters to probe aggressively then die gloriously to the Blue Force counter attack.

Honestly I was fairly disappointed, as the lack of UAS and other enablers showed me was a bunch of NATO Armies that really haven’t adapted much from GWOT.

 

[IRepoCans]

I maintain the only Army components actually exercising under conditions that honestly tests our capabilities are the light battalions going to JRTC and JPMRC.

Everything else seems to be checks in the box where things don't actually get to fail.

 

[Infanteer]

BG and big wouldn’t be words I’d use together.
Considering it’s in Europe, where V Corps is bringing mass and size…


I’d have been a lot more impressed if it was fully instrumented. The Brit’s Recce Sqn GPMG charge of the Light Bde seemed a little bizarre in the face of tanks and LAV. It reminded me of scripted enemy force parameters to probe aggressively then die gloriously to the Blue Force counter attack.

Honestly I was fairly disappointed, as the lack of UAS and other enablers showed me was a bunch of NATO Armies that really haven’t adapted much from GWOT.

It's actually a Bde(-), all things considered. There are more guns in that BG than in a CMBG.

The comment on mass is probably applicable when you consider the host nation's military, and how the eFP contributes to its national defence plan.

 

[KevinB]

It's actually a Bde(-), all things considered. There are more guns in that BG than in a CMBG.

Not helping

The comment on mass is probably applicable when you consider the host nation's military, and how the eFP contributes to its national defence plan.

Fair point.

All things considered I was just rather unimpressed with the appearance of the Ex, and the rather ‘typical red force death’ was reported.

Granted it’s a public video and a lot of stuff wasn’t shared that NATO probably is not wanting to broadcast, but I was left underwhelmed.

 

[Kirkhill]

Honestly I was fairly disappointed, as the lack of UAS and other enablers showed me was a bunch of NATO Armies that really haven’t adapted much from GWOT.

Ukraine would be doing worse against Russia if it fought like Americans do, US veteran in Ukraine says

Ukrainian soldiers have to fight Russia differently from the way US soldiers would be made to do it, a US veteran in Ukraine told Insider.

www.businessinsider.com

Ukraine would be doing worse against Russia if it fought like Americans do, US veteran in Ukraine says​

Sinéad Baker
Sep 26, 2023, 3:55 AM MDT

Ukrainian soldiers stand next to the Leopard 1A5 main battle tank in Klietz, Germany, in August. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

• Ukraine would "have a bad time" if it used US fighting doctrine against Russia, a US veteran said.
• He said Ukraine was ahead of the US in using drones as part of its military operations.
• He added that NATO training for Ukraine's troops included discipline, which he said was unnecessary.

A US Army veteran who's training Ukrainian soldiers told Insider that Ukrainian forces would be worse off if they followed American battlefield doctrine and that they were actually better at understanding some types of modern fighting.
"If we use American doctrine here, we would definitely have a bad time," the trainer, who goes by the call sign Jackie, told Insider.
Jackie fought in Afghanistan and Iraq before working as a training contractor for the US military and has since gone to Ukraine to help train its troops and to fight alongside them.
He said Ukraine's military was ahead of the US in some obvious ways.

"We don't even have a clear doctrine for small drone use really at this time," he said of the US, adding: "The Ukrainians are quite advanced in that fact. The Ukrainians are quite ahead of us on integration of these small drone systems and small, medium drones."
He also said Ukraine had to operate in "guerilla stealth mode" even when doing big operations because its forces were so disadvantaged as to be considered "insufficient by any NATO country standard to breach the forces on that part of the line."
Ukraine has repeatedly thanked its Western partners for support and training, saying it has helped its troops. But some on the ground say they have to adjust that training to survive and win on the battlefield.
Jackie's comments mirror those made in September by a Ukrainian commander trained by US, British, and Polish soldiers, who said: "If I only did what [Western militaries] taught me, I'd be dead."


The war in Ukraine looks very different to those fought by Western countries over the past few decades, including conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where Western troops had significant equipment and weapons advantages, Insider previously reported.
A former Army Ranger who fought in Ukraine said the fighting there was worse than what he experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While some Ukrainians are getting trained by the country's allies, including the US training troops in Europe, Jackie said that training Ukrainian soldiers "from the ground up" was not appropriate given how much the soldiers had already fought and the scale of the fight they had left behind.
He said some of the soldiers he worked with returned from NATO training and told him they were standing in formation for two hours "so they could learn discipline and leadership."


"Guys, their people are dying," he said. "You don't need to convince them to stand for two hours in formation to learn what discipline means. Their relatives' blood is on the ground, so teach them how to fight."
Jackie also pushed back against the idea that Ukraine should rigidly follow NATO standard training and even argued that such a thing didn't really exist.
"I keep hearing 'NATO standard' getting thrown around, and 'NATO standard training' or 'NATO standard doctrine,'" he said, adding: "The Polish infantry does not fight the same way as the American infantry."
To those training Ukrainians, he said, simply: "Don't get worked up about the procedures and the organizational stuff and ribbons and medals."

He said instead to look at Ukraine's progress and see whether they had any specific training or equipment that could help. "Get them something they can use and the thing you teach them to do, they're going to do that," he said.

 

[Kirkhill]

Double posting, I know.

The manoeuvre phase of this war has passed.

Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context - War on the Rocks

Among the vineyards seeded with improvised explosive devices in Zhari, Kandahar, there was no possibility of maneuver. By 2012, the Taliban had place so

warontherocks.com

The U.S. Army does not train for this type of attritional fight. Any commentator who thinks that Ukraine is failing due to insufficient training from the West in “combined arms maneuver” should observe an American brigade training rotation at a combat training center. Any of the failings found in Ukraine’s attack — such as the timing of a suppressive artillery barrage or vehicles not identifying a cleared lane through a minefield — I have personally observed with nearly every brigade training at the 30 rotations I have participated in at the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center. While the combat training centers provide these brigades with superb training, they are not replicating the problem set experienced by the Ukrainian army (nor should they; they should replicate the context in which the U.S. military expects to fight).

During training, opposing forces are not tied into a continuous defense in depth. They are thinly spread and provide attacking forces opportunities for enveloping or bypassing them. Opposing forces do not employ mines anywhere near the density faced by the Ukrainian military, they do not mass artillery with decisive effects (it is unproductive to wipe out a battalion after a few minutes of training an attack when it spent millions to come to the training), and they do not employ operational-level reserves for counterattacks.

Meanwhile, when working with the Army, the U.S. Air Force focuses on the corps-level deep fight against high-payoff targets. Some commentators think that American airpower would clear enemies from their trenches, but the Air Force has moved away from close air support and is not employed for such tasks during the Army’s simulated warfighter exercises. Furthermore, the Army is centralizing artillery in divisions to concentrate on the deep fight, so it is unclear how the United States would provide massed, sustained, and responsive fires during an attack on a large-scale trench system to achieve a breakthrough.

 

[Infanteer]

The author makes numerous erroneous assumptions and falls on the familiar trope of manoeuvre vs attrition, a false dichotomy. Manoeuvre and attrition are simultaneous and complementary effects on the battlefield.

The Ukrainians are not conduct breakthrough and exploit offensive operations, but rather bite-and-hold. This is likely due to their inability to overmatch the Russians in a few aspects of the battle. As a result, they've had to adapt their combined arms tactics towards a much more methodical, slow approach.

Casualties are still high, and we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that Ukraines approach is resulting in low cost battlefield success.

 

[Kirkhill]

The author makes numerous erroneous assumptions and falls on the familiar trope of manoeuvre vs attrition, a false dichotomy. Manoeuvre and attrition are simultaneous and complementary effects on the battlefield.

The Ukrainians are not conduct breakthrough and exploit offensive operations, but rather bite-and-hold. This is likely due to their inability to overmatch the Russians in a few aspects of the battle. As a result, they've had to adapt their combined arms tactics towards a much more methodical, slow approach.

Casualties are still high, and we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that Ukraines approach is resulting in low cost battlefield success.

Major Rose agrees. From the same article.

Maneuver and attrition are on opposite ends of a sliding scale. All combat involves a blend of the two.

Biting and Holding

To deal with these threats, Ukraine leads attacks with small groups of infantry supported by tanks and artillery in a combined arms approach. This method is similar to Australian General John Monash’s synchronized, limited attacks in 1918. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery later said, “I would name Sir John Monash as the best general on the western front in Europe.” Monash valued his soldiers’ lives and pursued well-synchronized, limited attacks at favorable casualty rates compared to the war’s earlier offensives. Monash wanted to avoid the “inefficiency” of previous victories.

By 1918, the Allies had recognized that the context of the war meant that a massed “big push” as so murderously attempted at the Somme would not create a breakthrough against an enemy defending in depth with large operational reserves. In 1917, the German military had developed an effective, elastic defense that could absorb attempts at a breakthrough. The German military’s elastic defense placed fewer troops in the first lines of trenches, which minimized losses from artillery barrages. Troops were postured in successive trench lines to counterattack the flanks of vulnerable Allied troops after the attackers culminated by pushing out of artillery and logistics range. The Russian military follows the fundamentals of Germany’s elastic defense today in Ukraine.

In response, the British military developed the “bite and hold” approach that Monash perfected. The approach put Germany’s elastic defense in a dilemma. British attacks did not attempt to exploit initial successes but instead transitioned to the defense and defeated Germany’s expected counterattacks. “Bite and hold” took advantage of the German military’s thinly defended forward trench lines and did not risk culmination. The Germany military could either abandon its elastic approach or gradually lose in a war of exhaustion.

Another presentation making the same argument about nibbling and not smashing.

 

[Infanteer]

Except they are not ends of a sliding scale. Manoeuvre is the use of fires and movement to gain a position of advantage, and attrition is simply the destruction of stuff. Attrition stems from manoeuvre, enables it, and is enabled by it. Attrition can also occur through other battlefield activities, such as barrages, wastage, etc.

Two separate concepts that a shitty theorist confused a long time ago.

What the author is really trying to get at is the difference between positional and mobile warfare. As I said in my first post, he makes erroneous assumptions about why the Ukrainians tended to the latter after first trying the former.

 

[KevinB]

The author makes numerous erroneous assumptions and falls on the familiar trope of manoeuvre vs attrition, a false dichotomy. Manoeuvre and attrition are simultaneous and complementary effects on the battlefield.

The Ukrainians are not conduct breakthrough and exploit offensive operations, but rather bite-and-hold. This is likely due to their inability to overmatch the Russians in a few aspects of the battle. As a result, they've had to adapt their combined arms tactics towards a much more methodical, slow approach.

Casualties are still high, and we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that Ukraines approach is resulting in low cost battlefield success.

Last night it appears that the AFU went for a breakout.

https://x.com/noclador/status/1706751337721889194?s=46&t=fCYJdxwzyypPWGOhHnLHLw

Multiple OS reports of massed Arty fire and several Bde’s moving through a gap in Russian lines.

Now we shall need to wait and see what occurs today.

 

[KevinB]

UKR report on Russian/Iranian Drones and their part sources.

https://x.com/maks_nafo_fella/status/1706934210768896369?s=46&t=fCYJdxwzyypPWGOhHnLHLw

 

[KevinB]

Wagners’s last flight in Mail

https://x.com/heroiam_slava/status/1706966786246094933?s=46&t=fCYJdxwzyypPWGOhHnLHLw

 

[KevinB]

Ugh wrong thread sorry for the last posts

 

[markppcli]

I'm still laughing from the Canadian saying they bring Mass and Size to the battle

Have you seen the average Canadian soldier? I assure you we provide a great deal of mass and size.

Fe the UAVs, I probably worked more with UAVs in Latvia that I ever have in Canada. Is, the Spanish, and the Italians all had RQ-11s.

 

[GR66]

Maneuver and attrition are on opposite ends of a sliding scale. All combat involves a blend of the two.

Except they are not ends of a sliding scale. Manoeuvre is the use of fires and movement to gain a position of advantage, and attrition is simply the destruction of stuff. Attrition stems from manoeuvre, enables it, and is enabled by it. Attrition can also occur through other battlefield activities, such as barrages, wastage, etc.

Two separate concepts that a shitty theorist confused a long time ago.

What the author is really trying to get at is the difference between positional and mobile warfare. As I said in my first post, he makes erroneous assumptions about why the Ukrainians tended to the latter after first trying the former.

One author (can't remember who at the moment) described Maneuver and Attrition as being on a sliding scale in relation to distance from the enemy. Distance from the enemy gives you room to maneuver into a favourable position but the closer you get to the enemy the less room to maneuver and the greater the reliance on attrition (i.e. destroying stuff). They are not separate forms of warfare, just different phases of the fight.

 

[Infanteer]

One author (can't remember who at the moment) described Maneuver and Attrition as being on a sliding scale in relation to distance from the enemy. Distance from the enemy gives you room to maneuver into a favourable position but the closer you get to the enemy the less room to maneuver and the greater the reliance on attrition (i.e. destroying stuff). They are not separate forms of warfare, just different phases of the fight.

If I am far away, I can still pound the enemy with indirect systems to cause attrition. If I am close, but the enemy is suppressed or neutralized, I still have room to manoeuvre. One is related to time and space, while the other is related to force.