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Operations

The last Americans to witness this level of warfare and firepower were those in Normandy. Ukraine should have ceased to exist within three to ten days in February 2022.

On June 4, Kiev launched a counteroffensive in the Yuzhnodonetsk, Artyomovsk and, above all, Zaporozhye directions, though witholding brigades trained by NATO instructors and armed with Western equipment. The Ukrainian Summer offensive sought to recreate in broad outlines the Allied victory at Second Cambrai. The Second Battle of Cambrai began on 08 October 1918. The German army was on its last legs, and by 09 October 1918 the last German troops had fled.

The Allies used combined arms [infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft] to great effect across the rapidly moving battlefront that finally overtook static trench warfare. The heart of the mighty Hindenburg Line on the Western Front was pierced for good, the German line turned from the north and an iron wedge thrown between German forces north and south. More than any other, the Second Battle of Cambrai convinced German generals of the need for peace.

Ukraine planned to attack according to NATO training manuals - with strikes by large armored formations in narrow sections of the front. After breaking through the first line of defense, the infantry had to take up new positions and expand the bridgehead. The acute shortage of aviation was supposed to be compensated through the massive use of long-range high-precision missiles and attack drones. They wanted to paralyze the actions of the Black Sea Fleet with attacks of unmanned kamikaze boats.

The new military equipment was intended to equip 17 brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard - about 60 thousand military personnel. They were trained in the West. The total number of forces involved in the Zaporozhye direction and on the Vremevsky ledge was at least 27 brigades. Among them are three tank, about 13 separate infantry, mechanized and reconnaissance battalions, as well as special forces of the GUR, SBU and SSO.

For six months, Russia had created a serious line of defense in the Zaporozhye direction. Its borders are lined up in several echelons. Fortifications, from which the area was clearly visible, were erected along the dominant ridges and heights. It was impossible to approach them imperceptibly. The depth of defense was 25-30 kilometers. And this was not counting the "foreground": in order to reach the first line, Ukraine needed to break into the advanced fortified areas from dozens of platoon and company strongholds covered by minefields.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine advanced into battle in a column. Ahead was a tank with a mine trawl or an engineering obstacle blocking vehicle. Once discovered, they were hit by artillery or anti-tank missiles from a helicopter. And immediately - fire from everything. Having lost their "guide", tanks and infantry fighting vehicles try to get away from the blow, disperse to the sides, being blown up by mines. And they became easy targets.

War is never exactly the same as training. Western military instructors left their Ukrainian trainees “underprepared” to fight Russiam, CRUX reported. The claim was made 14 August 2023 by a senior intelligence sergeant, ‘Dutchman’, in Kyiv’s 41st Mechanized Brigade. He explained that the lack of preparedness comes from a disconnect between NATO and domestic military training. NATO is based on a modern military force with full air support, something Ukraine doesn't have. NATO had only fought small weak countries. They have never fought a country that was militarily as powerful as they are. Many commntators stated the Dutchman was completely correct about specialized training, with most fighting in Ukraine being trench and open field fighting. In Afghanistan NATO could call in air strikes or SOF anytime they weren’t engaged. Ukraine troops can’t do that for fear or AD or MPads. There are instances of urban fighting but most was artillery duels or trench combat.

Nick Reynolds, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK defence think tank, said that the West’s current training for the Ukrainian military was less realistic, but safer and simpler. He admits that this approach shifts the risk from things going wrong at the training stage to things going wrong during live operations. “We do have a lot of health and safety regulations… yet this means they are going on to the battlefield less prepared,” Reynolds told openDemocracy. Most of the day-to-day tactics used against Russia’s forces, along with combined arms training – where battalions learn to operate together as a brigade – are taught in Ukraine. “The Western training is good and the guys gain experience, particularly in shooting and [the use of] equipment… but the most useful training is still done in Ukraine,” said Dutchman, who joined as a volunteer fighter at the start of the conflict in 2014.

Members of the 41st Brigade said that their instructors often used examples of NATO operations in the Middle East, where the objective was to clear houses and identify potential insurgents among the local population, but “that’s not really relevant to us”. “For the most part, [Western instructors] have fought wars in cities and towns – urban settings. We are on flat ground a lot of the time,” said Dutchman. The tactics that Ukrainian officers and commanders badly want their troops to learn while being trained abroad are either only part of the syllabus or not featured at all. “We need people to understand how to effectively clear trenches, enter them, how to throw grenades effectively, how not to trip on booby traps, to understand what grenades the [Russians] throw – essentially to understand the enemy,” explained Dutchman.

This war was different than anything the US or any NATO partners had fought in the last 70 years. NATO still didn't understand what it was like to fight Russians, particularly without air superiority. Russian forces had gained significant experience and do not make same mistakes they did initially. NATO training did not factor in the impressive minefields that were ahread on all fronts. In US training first and foremost was BASIC, anywhere from 2 to 3 months and maybe longer (depending on the branch). Then there was follow-on training that takes place after that. In total American forces receive 6 months to 2 years of training (depending on their MOS). That includes any special training. NATO instructors, for their part, could bring the lessons learned in Korea and go over them together with the Ukrainian veterans to see if they would apply to the current situation on the battlefield and if they would be likely to help.

NATO trains for maneuver warfare and assumes air superiority. That's not the kind of fight Ukrainian was waging. They face kilometer after kilometer of trench lines, minefields, and machine gun nests arranged for defense in depth. The Russians have more tanks and guns then they do behind said defenses to counter attack when gaps open up. To top it all off Russia has more aircraft. Applying NATO tactics to a non NATO country fighting a top tier military was always a risk.

The US and NATO gave Russia the time to reinforce and dig in. Then they trained the Ukrainians in combined arms, but then didn't give Ukraine the arms to combine. But they expected combined arms results. NATO tactics were failing because the US refused to give the vital required assists to carry out these tactics. NATO would never go into a fight with such a heavily armed and dug in enemy without air support and overwhelming force. The US used mobility and overwhelming air power to flank Saddam’s Republican Guards in the desert. The Ukrainians don’t have that option.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive was far from a failure but the fight ahead will be long and bloody, the top US general General Mark Milley said on 18 May 2023. “It is far from a failure... I think that it’s way too early to make that kind of call,” Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “I think there’s a lot of fighting left to go and I’ll stay with what we said before: This is going to be long. It’s going be hard. It’s going to be bloody.”

Milley said : "Collectively, the coalition has trained 17 brigade combat teams for this offensive and more than 63,000 troops, and the United States alone has trained 15,000 of those, with more training ongoing. Training has included individual non-commissioned officers and officers and staff training, along with artillery, air defense artillery, engineers, logistics, medical, and of course, putting it altogether in combined arms maneuver at night....

"Right now, they are preserving their combat power and they are slowly and deliberately and steadily working their way through all these minefields. And it's a tough fight. It's a very difficult fight.... the various wargames that were done ahead of time have predicted certain levels of advance. And that has slowed down. Why? Because that's the difference between war on paper and real war. These are real people in real machines that are out there really clearing real minefields and they're really dying....

"The casualties that the Ukrainians are suffering on this offensive are not so much from Russian airpower; they're from minefields, minefields that are covered with direct fire from anti-tank hunter-killer teams, that sort of thing. So it's minefields. So the problem to solve is minefields, not the air piece right this minute. And that's what the coalition is trying to provide them: additional mine clearing, MICLICs, line charges, Bangalores -- that sort of thing, in order to continue to work their way through the minefields."

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said "We continue to generate combat power. We're training three -- training and equipping three brigades in Germany right now and there's other training ongoing around the region."

In Iraq in 2003, Americans had refined their tactics based on experience and they moved rapidly but methodically in a style reminiscent of a World War I attack. They liberally used air support and artillery and kept shifting it ahead of them as they progressed, a form of walking barrage that a doughboy would have instantly recognized, except for the speed of the advance. The tanks followed close behind the artillery, using their main guns against any remaining resistance. The Bradleys came next, then the engineers. After all that firepower, in Fallujah, the Marines met no opposition, though much of the urban area was reduced to rubble.

The character of war continues to evolve over time and with each conflict. Major fundamental changes in the character of war was something that occurs seldomly throughout history, such as the invention of gun powder or the use of combined arms warfare. The United States Army has sought the best way to employ artillery in combined arms warfare since 1929. The field artillery is known as ‘the King of Battle’ and the side which has the advantage in artillery would normally hold the advantage in the overall conflict.

Synchronization is an idea that comes directly from Network-Centric Warfare but its foundations lie in complexity theory and the ideas of self-organization and emergent behavior. FM 100-5 emphasized the need to fight by combining fire, movement, and shock action to complete the destruction of the enemy in close combat. The manual also highlighted that the purpose of offensive action was to destroy hostile armed forces in order to facilitate the capture or destruction of a physical objective, be that a body of troops, dominating terrain, or anything else designated by the commander. The purpose of the infantry was still closing with and destroying the enemy, best accomplished that by combined arms employment.

The principal purpose of movement and maneuver was to gain positional advantage relative to the enemy. Through effective maneuver of friendly forces, the enemy can be placed into a position of disadvantage. Chances of successful maneuver are improved with fire support and movement. Fires are the use of weapon systems or other actions to create specific lethal or nonlethal effects on a target.

Fires are normally synchronized and integrated to achieve synergistic results. Fires synchronization seeks to increase speed, with movement, maneuver, and protection actions to achieve desired effects. Air interdiction (AI) operations are conducted to divert, disrupt, delay, or destroy the enemy’s military surface capabilities before they can be brought to bear effectively against friendly forces.

Due to the complexity, sensitivity, and scope of these actions, integration and synchronization of these actions was challenging. There was a requirement for some degree of synchronization for designated actions to avoid “fratricide.” Centralized synchronization cannot keep up with the totality of actions, effects, and assessment occurring throughout the battlespace. Trust, intent, empowerment, and decentralization applies to integration and synchronization of fires.

The emphasis on artillery ammunition suggested that the Ukrainian military was abandoning the tactics of combined arms operations to achieve a breakthrough, as taught by Western experts, and returning to Soviet methods of using artillery to suppress the enemy. Such a position of the Ukrainian command, caused by the slow advance at the initial stage of the counteroffensive and the fear of losses, frustrated the American authorities.

A thorough understanding of the commander’s intent at every level of command was essential for the successful execution of the joint fire support plan as the operational environment changes due to enemy response to friendly actions. But the Russian aphorism “The one who does nothing is not mistaken” indicates a military culture poorly suited to such combined arms operations.

To achieve success in the confrontation with Russia, Ukraine needs to mobilize up to 3 million people. This was stated in an article by Paul Ronzheimer published 20 August 2023 on the website of the newspaper Die Welt. "There is only one way forward: to wage war as seriously as befits a national liberation struggle. The population of Ukraine, it is true, has declined, but is still more than 30 million people, so that the total number of armed forces can reach up to 3 million. Having such military power, Ukraine could win battles and liberate its territory in the old-fashioned way - in a war of attrition, as in most European wars of independence.

Ronzheimer said that neither the possession of high-precision weapons nor drone strikes will lead to tangible success for Ukraine. They can only be effective if they manage to identify strategically significant goals, which was not an easy task. The presence of reconnaissance satellites in Russia and their transmission of information about the actual movement of even individual tanks, "not to mention large military units," makes it impossible to carry out quick maneuvers that would allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine to win on the battlefield without major losses.

According to Ronzheimer, "the transparent battlefield has changed everything." According to him, the Russians could watch the Ukrainian advance in real time and mobilize even more forces. The material also says that the Armed Forces of Ukraine "greatly overestimated" the German Leopard heavy tanks, many of which "became a victim" of the Russian Kornet anti-tank complex. "When the long-awaited offensive of Ukraine began, unfortunately, some of the expensive Leopards, which, in fact, were supposed to pave the way, were destroyed," the article said. “As for the Russian economy, the news is grim, but not grim enough. The war will not end because of the economic capitulation of Russia,” the author stated, pointing out that, unlike China, Russia was able to provide itself with food and fuel and generally produce almost everything needed.

Despite huge leaps in military technology, penetrating a fortified site remains a major challenge to this day. “The Ukrainians are rediscovering trench warfare and adopting tactics similar to those pioneered by Germany's Sturm-Traupen forces in World War I.” stated Thibaut Foyer, Director of the Institute of Strategic and Defense Studies at the French University of Lyon.

In contrast to the centrality that tanks enjoyed in World War II and major regular confrontations, such as the October 1973 War, it seems that the recent conflicts that broke out in several regions have displaced the tank from the throne of ground confrontations. Immediately after the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, pictures of dozens of Russian tanks were destroyed and their turrets were blown away after the Ukrainians attacked them with cheap anti-tank missiles and Turkish “Bayrakdar” drones. This was good news for the Western countries supporting Ukraine, but it was also good news for many armed groups with inferior equipment and equipment facing opponents who possessed technical superiority.

Not only did Russian tanks suffer, but as soon as Ukraine relied on them in its counterattack, it found Russian forces using the same irregular tactics to impede Kiev's attacks and destroy its tanks. Since the war broke out in Ukraine in February 2022, both Russia and Ukraine have lost more than half of the tanks they started the war with. When Moscow launched its war, it had about 3,400 tanks in service, and after about a year, it had lost 1,688 tanks (that is, almost half of what it had previously possessed), while Ukraine began the war with about 900 tanks and lost 459 after a year (also about half). This means that the material cost of a ground attack, given what it costs to build a tank, was much greater than the cheap technology that destroys it easily, which puts the military industries in a big dilemma.

As a result, the war that began with a Russian attack to overthrow the capital, Kiev, followed by a Ukrainian counterattack to liberate the east and south, quickly transformed from a large-scale offensive to a defensive entrenchment. Despite the huge leaps in military technology, penetrating a fortified site remains a major challenge to this day, as evidenced by the war in which the Ukrainians have come to rely on trenches to stop the Russian advance, while the Russians rely on the same tactic to prevent Ukraine from liberating the areas ruled by Moscow. The result was a stuck war, a barely swaying dividing line, fortified positions that do not appear to fall easily, limited battles decided by solid defense rather than open attack, and an economic equation that imposes restrictions on the pace of arms supply.

As the conflict shifted from offense to defence, trenches and fortifications played a central role, as did the complex nature of cities. In their counterattack on Russian positions, the Ukrainians suffered from the fortifications that the Russians built with great efficiency, which include a network of trenches, mines, earthen barriers, and anti-tank barriers known as Dragon's Teeth, in addition to some tunnels used to transport troops, equipment, and supplies. These fortifications are considered... The largest of its kind since World War II. Despite the massive destruction caused to Ukrainian cities due to aerial bombardment, the Russians were unable to achieve their initial goals for which they started the war, while the Ukrainians’ tactics proved successful in stopping the Russian advance despite the difference in the ability to mobilize soldiers and their numbers on the two fronts.

David Johnson, retired American colonel, noted “I believe that what Russia faces in Ukraine is the same as what Israel faced in Lebanon in 2006, but on a much larger scale.”