Compass Points – Secrets from Ukraine
Bridging, mortars, and UAS must be available at scale
As part of the broader discussion of the best way forward for the Marine Corps, those advocating either FD 2030 or Vision 2035 should absorb lessons, both old and new, from this country and from countries across the globe.
One Compass Points reader, Cfrog, has given generously of his time to review the recent RUSI report that provides the first comprehensive set of lessons from the early fighting in Ukraine. The outcome in Ukraine remains in doubt, and final lessons may take years of study. Even in these early days, though, there are lessons.
Many thanks to Cfrog. Let discussion flourish!
RUSI: Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February-July 2022
by LtGen Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Ukrainian Armed Forces, et all
I. Key Conclusions
a. “War in Ukraine has demonstrated that consumption rates in high intensity warfighting remain extraordinarily high and that resilience demands a capacity to build new units, produce spare parts and ammunition, and have sufficient stockpiles to remain competitive in the opening phases of fighting.” (p.64)
b. “UAF [Ukrainian Armed Forces] were competitive against their adversaries not because of superior equipment in the early phases of the war but because they were adaptable – especially at the tactical level – and rapidly innovated new capabilities and concepts of employment to address specific areas of vulnerability where the Russians had achieved overmatch.” (p.64)
c. “Legacy systems, from T-64 tanks to BM-21 Grad MLRS have proven instrumental in Ukraine’s survival. That does not mean, however, that historical concepts of employment for these systems remain advisable. The key priority is to understand how new capabilities not only offer opportunity in and of themselves, but also enable and magnify the effects deliverable by legacy systems….In modernizing, therefore, forces need to examine how old and new form novel combinations of fighting systems, rather than treating modernization as a process of deciding what should be procured and what should be discarded.” (p.65)
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II. Disperse and Move (Lessons for British Military from Chapter V)
a. There is No Sanctuary
i. “…the enemy can conduct strikes on targets throughout its adversary’s operational depth with long range fires”. (p.53)
ii. “The Integration of human intelligence (HUMINT) into Russian long range precision fires kill chain is critical.” (p.53)
iii. “…unlikely that states can plan on the assumption that they can conceal key sites, or the movement of materiel…” (p.53)
iv. “For the UAF(Ukrainian Air Force)…the ability to conduct dispersed operations was critical to survivability.” (p.53)
v. “…a critical question for it’s[UAF] survivability is the number of deployable maintenance kits available for its aircraft and the capacity to use secondary and tertiary airfields to disrupt enemy planning.” (p.54)
vi. “The Ukrainian Ground Forces similarly found that long range precision strikes were used against their stockpiles, against training establishments and against maintenance facilities when these were identified. Maintenance facilities had to be situated a long way from the front and dispersed, not because distance assured protection, but because increasing the space over which the enemy had to search for them improved survivability.” (p.54)
vii. “Much UK Commando Force thinking about ship-to-shore maneuver for raiding currently emphasizes the exploitation of clutter in the littoral environment and the noise of civilian shipping. Ukraine demonstrates that once mines are in play during a major conflict, this clutter rapidly evaporates.” (p.54)
viii. “There has been a lot of attention given to Russia’s depleted stocks as regards these capabilities [precision munitions], given the rate of expenditure in Ukraine. This is an issue…it can be assumed that its replenishment will be a priority for the Russian military. With China and Iran both relying heavily on similar complexes, and the proliferation of knowledge on how to achieve precision with these weapons, it must be assumed that a convergence in systems design between these states will create economies of scale.” (p.55)
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III. Logistics (Lessons for British Military from Chapter V)
a. Warfighting Demands Significant Slack Capacity
i. “At the height of fighting in Donbas, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire British military has in stock. At Ukrainian rates of consumption, British stockpiles would potentially last a week. Of course, given that the UAF fielded more than 10 times as many operational artillery pieces as the British army at the beginning of the conflict, it might take more than week for the British Army to expend all its available ammunition. All this demonstrates, however, is that the British Army lacks the firepower to deliver the kind of blunting effect that the UAF [Ukrainian Armed Forces] achieved north of Kyiv.” (p.56)
ii. “…a cursory study of procurement data and, for the land environment, an examination of the units available for air defense, shows that there is insufficient depth of munitions for these systems to be credible in high intensity conflict. The survivability of Ukrainian units has demanded organic MANPADS [Man Portable Air Defense Systems] to be available at all echelons and across all arms.” (p.56)
iii. [Manpower and replacements] “Ukraine mobilized its instructors from training establishments early in the conflict and this has contributed to difficulties in training additional forces. Russia has suffered even more from this problem because it delivers a significant proportion of training in unit, which is not possible for units that are deployed. The British Army, therefore, must not squander its resilience in training capacity for the sake of efficiencies in the short terms.” (p.56)
iv. “Another area where slack capacity is invaluable is logistics and maintenance”. (p.57)
v. “It is also important to appropriately establish which platforms, whether because of their ubiquitous utility, or the inherent vulnerability of their tasks, demand mass. Some, such as pontoon bridging, mortars, and UAS must be available at scale.” (p.57)
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Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (rusi.org) 11/30/2022
Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February-July 2022
By Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, and Nick Reynolds.
Executive Summary
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has provided an invaluable opportunity to assess the capabilities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AFRF) and the implications of a range of capabilities for modern warfare. Many publicly made judgements on these issues have lacked supporting data or insight into Ukrainian operational planning and decision-making. To ensure that those drawing lessons from the conflict do so from a solid foundation, this report seeks to outline key lessons, based on the operational data accumulated by the Ukrainian General Staff, from the fighting between February and July 2022. As the underlying source material for much of this report cannot yet be made public, this should be understood as testimony rather than as an academic study. Given the requirements for operational security, it is necessarily incomplete . . .
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About the Authors
Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi was born in 1973 in Dnipro, Ukraine. From 15 December 2014 he was assigned as the Airborne Forces Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Promoted to Lieutenant General, he became Commander of the Joint Forces Operations area. Today he serves as First Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the Supreme Council of Ukraine on National Security, Defense and Intelligence. He has been awarded with state awards, including the Golden Star (with the Hero of Ukraine status),
Jack Watling is Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at RUSI. Jack works closely with the British military on the development of concepts of operation, and assessments of the future operating environment, and conducts operational analysis of contemporary conflicts. Jack is a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC.
Oleksandr V Danylyuk served as the Special Adviser to the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, and as an adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Defence.
Nick Reynolds is the Research Analyst for Land Warfare at RUSI.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defence and security think tank.
https://static.rusi.org/359-SR-Ukraine-Preliminary-Lessons-Feb-July-2022-web-final.pdf