The Map Tells the Story
elite failure affects everyone
Just a quick note today as the paying gig is only letting me pop in and out of my alter ego's life.
A friend posted the below from Janes' this AM from behind their paywall.
I've had some well informed readers reach out to me after I posted it over on twitter to ask, roughly, "But I keep seeing how the Russians are screwing up the basics of fuel, food, bad comms and chaos."
Well, yes - that is all true. I am also sure that this is not going as smooth as the Russian General Staff briefed Putin how things would go.
The fact remains though that the Russians are making gains. Slower and uglier than they thought, but they are making gains.
The Ukrainians are putting up a plucky fight with what they have, but it is not enough at this point to slow the flow of Russians in to the center of their country. Like a Hawaiian volcano slowly swallowing a house, it is all there to see in the open.
As Russians do, they make up for lack in attention to detail with simple mass. There are no off ramps for Putin. As long as he is in power, he will do what he needs to do to achieve his end state.
Ukraine and the West did not do what they needed pre-conflict to make this an unattractive effort.
Sure, now that the tanks are rolling, the right things are being done, but it is just too late. There were warnings, but no one would listen.
In plain sight the Russians showed what they were planning to do - but the decision makers in Kyiv, DC, Brussels, and various European capitals refused to believe what could happen.
The West is about a year late in giving the Ukrainians the edge they needed to make the invasion calculus such that the Russians wouldn't give it a go, and if they did, blunt that mass the Russians could throw in to the war. The West's politicians, self-preening in their anti-military, green-Gaia worshiping world views, did not signal strength. The grasping and greedy mercantilists were not done extracting more wealth for themselves and their WEF-Davos-Great-Reset fantasies. The press - wanting to join the political fray and leach off the wealth, did little.
The Ukrainians are not blameless. After 2014, efforts were made, but they were an economy of force measure by the Ukrainians and the well meaning nations tried to help ... but it was not enough.
The usual suspects in the Western nomenklatura's Smartest People in the Room™ set refused to convince the Ukrainians to get a larger military faster and are to blame more than anyone else. Their world view and concepts of power are poorly rooted in history or practice. Again, it is all clear to see now for those who did not believe before.
Instead of elevating the Ukrainian President to build civil society, they invited Greta Thunberg to yell at them.
They never appreciated what the Russians COULD do, so they refused to see what they were building up forces TO do.
As a result we are here, either on the brink of a war everyone may lose control of, or we will watch a slow, sloppy, and ugly land grab by the Russians that in the end will only encourage more aggression and land grabs - both in Europe and elsewhere. There is an outside chance that a tide might turn towards a happier place, but that is not the smart bet right now. We'll see in a week.
As for now via the BBC, there is the Russian Army, in the Kyiv suburbs.
Oh, and the economic impact of all this elite failure? Just watch, it's on the way.
Best objective analysis I've read to date
Thanks, most refreshing to see a military man look at this situation and size it up. It seems to me there are two principal strategic objectives: cut off Ukrainian Army elements in Donbas (their crack troops) from retreat to Kiev, and, subject Kiev and other major cities to siege warfare.
Note, Ukrainian air is non-existent since D-1. Lights are on in Kiev and, apparently, all the major Ukrainian cities. Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant was secured on D-1 (most of Crimea gets water from the reservoir, which is not deep because the dam is run-of-river type). Mariupol, steel center, is secured. Ukraine forces there were the genuine Nazi types, horrible soldiers, covered in tats, basically MS-13, Einsatzgruppen types.
Russians don't want to destroy Ukraine. They want to use Ukraine as a buffer against the Franco-Germans, who have a long history of marching east. Note, Germany announces rearmament . . . snarky remark stifled.
Arming Ukrainian civilians was a horribly cynical move, to get them killed so they would make good propaganda pictures. Hamas does this, also ANTIFA, BLM, and drug dealers. The same Euro-American Fascist element controlling Ukraine through Zelensky . . . and getting a foretaste of their just desserts there.
FWIW, the electronics of this campaign intrigue me. I think we have entered a new era of war fighting, comparable in scale and consequence to the US Civil War Between The States doing the same. This one will be studied carefully for clues as to battle-space viability. I think it shows that viability continuing on the trajectory of small, fast, decentralized, and simple.
The IO is so massive as to nearly subdue one's patience. It's order of battle on the ground, of course, that is the real weapon. Soros used the Zelensky cohort to run IO storms against POTUS Trump.
Heavy armor is out (Javelines, which can also hit choppers). Choppers are out (MANPADS). Complex signaling is out. Capital ships are out. Air superiority fighters and possibly bombers are out. Light, very fast and no armor is in (battle-space Ferraris, but not bespoke). Cyber is in . . . until units and equipment get so simple cyber cannot reach them, or can reach them only marginally. Simplifying signally is in, will take some creative thinking. Expect paper and boots on clutches and accelerators to play a part. Massed small air transport and ground support are in, including drones. Massed under-, on-, and over-water drones, along with massed destroyers, frigates, and fast attack-and-run boats are in.
No nuclear-fired propulsion. Shoot, I can see the day when wind-propulsion of wooden ships have a role in US Navy and Marine operations. To escape or at least mitigate the ubiquitous fires by cyber. Cyber is long-range arty, very hot and very effective.
Carriers are huge nuclear and thermobaric bombs waiting for someone to ride in on a piggybacked radio wave, and blow the monster up. No ports will want that danger. US Army has not fielded a MANPAD for ten or twenty years. Javelines and MANADS CIA gave Ukraine are 30 years old. But they work if they have batteries and skilled hands to operate them. Russians and Chinese have made two or three new generations of anti-armor and anti-air weaponry over those 30 years. Main battle tanks, self-propelled fires, and APCs are battlefield waste waiting to happen. Ditto choppers. And ditto capital ships.
These are points of an AAR I at least would offer in the the wake of this action in Ukraine. I think the Russians have gone very easy on the Ukrainians, so far. They could have leveled the country the way Obama leveled the ancient, beautiful section of Mosul at the end of his rule. They do not want to rule the country -- what would be the point of that masochism? -- just have it neutral as between NATO (WEF, Franco-Germany) and Russia. It's all very simple. The Davoisie must be kicked out of the house.