Lessons from the Ukraine War. By David Archibald. Excerpts from the pdf of his recent lecture.
Lessons learned:
Survivability depends on dispersing ammunition stocks, command and control, maintenance areas and aircraft. …
Precision is not only vastly more efficient in the effects it delivers but also allows the force to reduce its logistics tail and thereby makes it more survivable. …
The average life expectancy of a quadcopter remained around three flights, of a fixed-wing UAV was around six flights. …
There is no sanctuary. The first clear lesson from the war in Ukraine is that the enemy can conduct strikes on targets throughout its adversary’s operational depth with long-range precision fires. …
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. …
For the most part, the Russian missile systems are reliable and accurate. Cruise missiles can be intercepted, but the Russians routinely adapted flight routes for every mission and such missiles were observed to make up to 80 changes of course on their way to a target …
The Russian targetting protocol for cruise missiles had a 48 hour OODA loop. They would often hit an empty location. …
Ukrainian fighter pilots have been shot down while flying at altitudes as low as 15 ft by SA-21 SAMs fired from over 150 km away …
Russia now has four infantry unit types: disposable; line; assault; and specialised. Prisoner and conscript troops appear to be under the influence of amphetamines or other narcotics. Under threat of being shot for retreating, they find points of weakness in the Ukrainian defences where these troops make surprising amounts of progress or face very limited fire. Alternatively, where the defence is strong, the revelation of Ukrainian firing positions allows specialised troops to begin targeting them. 152-mm howitzers fire until the assault is 400 m from the target position, after which fire is taken over by 122-mm howitzer or 120-mm mortar fire until the assault closes to its final assault positions. The final advance is covered by infantry mortars and then grenades are used before entering the target position.
Once Russian troops have taken a position, it is reliably fortified within 12 hours through the digging of fox holes or blasting on less favourable ground.
It is typical for there to be between 25 and 50 UAVs from both sides operating over the contested area between the forward line of own troops (FLOT) and forward line of enemy troops (FLET) at any given time for each 10 km of frontage. …
Russia has largely given up using tanks in assault. … Russia has pulled T-55 tanks out of storage in Siberia. The prototype was produced in 1945 so now close to 80 years old. Likely use is field artillery, not leading assaults. …
What is best in tube artillery systems? The experience of the Ukraine War is that utility is: Wheeled > Tracked > Towed. The Ukrainian experience is that artillery fire is quickly subject to counter-battery fire so that wheeled or tracked is better than towed. The tracked systems in the Ukraine, including the German Panzerhaubitze 2000 and the Polish/Korean Krab, are having a lot of downtime for maintenance and are much slower on the ground than the wheeled systems which can drive to maintenance depots under their own power.
Drones Directing Artillery: A standard platoon defensive position took normally took 60 to 90 artillery rounds to destroy. But with drone-guided fire this was reduced to just 9 rounds. Drones had been supplied to all Ukrainian artillery units. …
The Russian killed to wounded ratio is 1: 4.8, and possibly as bad as 1: 2. The Ukrainian killed to wounded ratio is 1: 7.3 due to better treatment in the field. Russian casualties are now running at about 300,000 per annum. The Russian military is bashing itself to death in Ukraine …
Read it all, for those interested in military affairs.
