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Originally Posted by HaplessOperator
I find it far more interesting that these depletion levels are coming from engaging a single country on their border under conditions generously described as air parity, with no NATO involvement, and with the thing starting off with some of the most modern ground branch equipment they had in stock, thrown against anti-armor systems that was new 25-30 years ago.
I mean, BMPs weren't any tougher 30 years ago than they are now, and you can still kill them with platforms throwing 40mm grenades or .50AP and SLAP. Hell, the Ukes logged a T-80U kill with a Carl Gustav, and volleyed AT-4 hits seem just as effective on the homegrown stuff as the "monkey models."
Given what we've seen of their hardware on live fire ranges, I think it's a lot more likely that we spent 75 years doing what we do best: overestimating our enemy and assuming the worst to ensure overmatch. We saw more or less the same thing in Chechnya; the only real success they managed was when they massed DIVARTY or corps-level artillery assets and delete entire settlements and called it square. First sign of significant, organized resistance using even equivalent hardware, and they melt about as quickly as the Republican Guard did.
Their problems (hardware and wetware both) seem to stem much further back than the Cold War ending with the collapse, and reached far deeper than poor warehousing of vehicle stocks; Cockburn had a fairly insightful look into this with The Threat: Inside The Soviet Military Machine as far back as 1985.
I get the feeling that thousands of Leopards, Challengers, Abrams, F-15s, F-16s, and F-22s wouldn't exactly help their situation much even if you were to somehow double the size of their military; you'd just harvest more meat, and faster.
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For the most part, I agree. The Soviet... er, Russian army has always performed best when wielded like a blunt instrument. Since the fall of the USSR, they've tried to ape Western operational doctrine with little success. For example, its early-war attempts at decisive "thunder runs" against Grozny and Kiev were catastrophic failures.
Instead of bludgeoning away at a narrow segment of the front line with a tank army backed by entire regiments of heavy artillery like they did in WW2, the Russians attack piecemeal, across a broad front, in dribs and drabs. They throw a company of tanks or motorized infantry at a perceived soft spot in the Ukrainian defenses, get wrecked, then try again, and keep trying, until the Ukrainians are forced to pull back. Gains are often minimal, but the costs are still high. Since February 2022, I've been wondering why this has been the case. Yeah, by employing late-WW2 operational tactics, the Russians would be losing a regiment or division at a pop, but they'd much more likely force a significant breakthrough that would collapse Ukrainian defenses and lead to bigger, faster territorial gains. In the long run, though, the Russians don't seem too concerned about incurring casualties. It's weird.
In any case, what the Russians have succeeded at, once again, is absorbing massive manpower and materiel losses without significant negative political or economic consequences (at least, to date). The West has not demonstrated, since WW2, that it can do the same. And, despite decimating its own military in the process, as things stand, Russia will probably win a strategic victory over Ukraine (as it did v. Chechnya).
Quote:
Originally Posted by HaplessOperator
I think it's a lot more likely that we spent 75 years doing what we do best: overestimating our enemy and assuming the worst to ensure overmatch.
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History shows that the US did the exact opposite with both Vietnam and Afghanistan (and, nearly, Iraq). That is the purpose of this particular thread- to gird against
underestimating an adversary.
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