Ispan wrote:Another analysis on tactics
A Russian analyst confirmed what I saw, that the Ukrowehrmacht lacks organization and training to attack in more than small battalion sized groups, one of my commentators, a Spanish officer with Afghanistan experience confirms it
https://guerraenucrania.wordpress.com/2022/11/16/ofensivas-y-tacticas-de-ataque-y-defensa-de-ambos-bandos-iv/
Offensives and tactics of attack and defense of both sides (IV)
16 November, 2022 Zhukov
Failures of the Ukrainian army
https://riafan.ru/23721709-poligon_ukraina_chto_meshaet_vsu_pereiti_s_takticheskogo_na_operativnii_uroven_planirovaniya
28 October
(revised and annotated translation for your better understanding)
Ukraine: a testing ground for NATO
What prevents the Armed Forces of Ukraine from moving from planning from the tactical to the operational level
Among the military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who have been captured, "graduates" of European military training centers who have received combat training in NATO countries: Poland, Germany and, above all, in Britain are becoming more and more common.
These prisoners say that most of their training was based on individual training. They were taught the ability to fire personal and collective weapons, provide medical assistance and move correctly on the battlefield. That is, they received basic knowledge about tactical training at the individual level and at the section (platoon) level, nothing more. In principle, it is no longer necessary to teach more than one soldier, if one understands how these troops prepared "according to NATO standards" will be used later in Ukraine.
The Russian units facing the Ukrainian formations, consisting of those who have completed a course in the NATO countries, recognize that the level of these soldiers is higher than that of ordinary fighters, and even more so than members of the "teroborona" (territorial defense, militiamen with almost no instruction). However, there are still many nuances that we will consider.
Tactical employment of Ukrainian units
The main thing you should pay attention to: the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (as well as the NATO command supervising Ukrainian units), which has information on the situation on the entire front line, conducts combat operations with forces of no higher entity than that of tactical company groups (RTGr) or tactical battalion groups (BTGr).
(that is, they fight with companies or battalions reinforced with artillery and armored, but they are still isolated actions of small units, not by brigades and divisions)
In places where the defense of Russian units is not built with sufficient strength or the troops are led by inexperienced commanders, the tactics of the Ukrainian army make it possible to achieve a certain tactical success. The advances achieved in the Balakleya and Izyum areas can be attributed rather to, let's say, the confusion of the command, "surprised" by the bold activity of the Ukrainian units that tried to advance. In the future, this will definitely be studied in the works of military historians, but in this whole story we can highlight one interesting fact. Successfully operating in the first hours and days of offensive operations, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were able to achieve only tactical successes, having achieved a deep breakthrough along an undefended strip. However, tactical success did not turn into operational success, which, in fact, makes all the costs (and losses) suffered in vain.
The reason is simple: the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (and NATO) could not use such forces in this operation that would have been able to achieve such success. The point is that the Ukrainian army, as already written above, operates with group and tactical subgroup, battalion and company forces, which moreover are not part of the same unit, but are assembled from several brigades. Consequently, in purely organizational terms, there is neither a supply, nor support of well-established fires, and cooperation between different units is very doubtful.
Organic, or lack thereof: what are the "donation" units?
In fact, the command of the Ukrainian army, when forming any offensive group, is forced to be content with units of various formations, since there are practically no brigades left in the army structure that have retained their organic integrity.
The fact is that for various reasons, almost all Ukronazi formations are forced to disperse into companies and battalions in different parts of the front. For example, units of the 14 Mechanized Brigade may have been identified simultaneously in Ugledar, Bakhmut, Kherson, Svatovo and in the temporary cantonment in Dnepropetrovsk. And this is not an intelligence error, but quite reliable information. Since the headquarters of this 14 Brigade, according to the combat orders received, was forced to send, for example, a mechanized battalion to Ugledar, a tank company to Svatovo, an artillery group to the Kherson direction and a reconnaissance company to Bakhmut, and at the same time, the headquarters and the remaining units are in Dnepropetrovsk to instruct and frame replacements. This state of affairs is present in almost all brigades of the Ukrainian army. Of course, this excludes the use of whole brigades or divisions.
At the front, separate battalions of the brigades are placed under the command of several temporary groups. At the same time, they remain in the state of "donations" (dowry, like that of the bride, in the original), and the brigade commander often does not even know what his battalion is doing. Accordingly, the brigade commander loses the ability to regularly provide supplies and replacements to a separate unit from the parent unit. And in the group to which the battalion is transferred, this unit remains in the form of a "dowry" or "donation" - this is like someone from outside the family. And when it comes to providing supplies, the "dowry" units are the last, because the commanders give priority to their own units over temporarily attached units that at any time can be withdrawn and sent elsewhere.
The mistakes of NATO are manifested in the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The principles of conducting combat operations by tactical battalion groups come from the United States and were firmly established in the combat regulations of many states, including Russia. In relation to weakly developed countries in military terms, the use of these groups was more than justified, but in the fight against armies with approximately equal combat potential, this tactic is not justified. A battalion operating independently in a designated area can solve only tactical tasks, but it cannot solve operational tasks: which must be carried out by large forces, brigades and divisions-
Given the circumstances, Ukrainian army can not conduct an operation that is more significant than a tactical operation. For a larger purpose, it is necessary to use several full-fledged brigades, the composition of which should provide for staggering, air defense, a breakout exploitation group, as well as a reserve necessary to resolve sudden situations. If the Ukrainian army had carried out such a formation during the advance on Balakleya, it is not known how this operation would have ended.
One gets the impression that, using the example of the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, observers of the North Atlantic Alliance prove to themselves that the concept of BTGr requires changes. To do this, they organize actions that meet the requirements of the combat regulations of the United States and other NATO countries, and look at what this can lead to in a fight with an equal opponent. It is obvious that new concepts of the combat use of Western forces are being developed at the training ground called "Ukraine".
In conclusion, I would like to note that until the Armed Forces of Ukraine move from the tactical to the operational level of organizing combat operations, no individual training of soldiers in the European countries of the Russian army since the beginning of the war, with their missile strikes on training centers does not allow the Ukrainazis to form reserves of material and technical resources necessary to conduct offensive operations.
Observation: This war diary was interrupted on October 21 due to lack of time. Over the past month, I have barely reported on the fighting on the northern front, in Luhansk. Over the past three weeks, it has been repeated with bloody monotony in the communiqués of the Russian army and the reports of correspondents and front fighters how Ukrainian attacks are repulsed over and over again with tens and hundreds of dead and dozens of armored personnel carriers and vehicles destroyed. If on the Kherson front in the largest attacks the Ukrainians at least managed to attack with three or four battalions at once, on the Luhansk front isolated attacks by mere companies are often observed. The withdrawal from Kherson should not obscure the fact that for six weeks now, after the seizure of Krasny Liman after prolonged resistance and at the cost of many losses, the Ukrainian army is literally stuck in the mud in a bloody positional struggle in front of a Russian defense improvised at first and getting stronger with each passing day, and that unlike in Kherson, it has secure supply lines.
(Continue. In the next part will be presented reports on the shortcomings noted in the Russian army)
Home
Latest images
Register
Log in
Krepost
During the raid, two munitions landed near the Polish village of Przewodowy, killing two farmers. According to preliminary reports, a stray AFU S-300 anti-aircraft missile collapsed on Polish territory.
