About Those "Unjammable" Fiber Optic-Controlled Drones...

File that info away for future reference.

Looks like not much has changed since Private Reese was dealing with Skynet.

Yeah...Not So Much

 

It's foolishly suggested that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shifted the paradigm of war, demonstrating Russia's grasp of the new paradigm, and hopelessly outclassing NATO.

The trouble with that argument is it ignores facts from both history, and current events.

Battleships didn't become obsolete because of events at Taranto, nor Pearl Harbor, nor even because of the sinkings of two British battleships off the Malaysian coast. In point of fact, ignored wholly by Piggott, battleships continued to be deployed, successfully, for the rest of WWII (he might have noted the final Japanese surrender instrument was signed on the deck of USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, had he the historical acumen to summon that factoid), and Korea, and Vietnam, and GW1, before the final retirement of ships then over 50 years old. Half a century of action after supposed obsolescence is quite a long time. 

And they weren't retired because of obsolescence, but rather because they were simply aged ships, requiring more in staffing and maintenance than they delivered in capability, and their main-gun ammunition was becoming notably wonky. Naval gunfire is fantastic, and nigh irreplaceable, but running oil-fired bunkers on a 2000+-man ship whose capabilities can be parceled out more economically among other platforms was the end game for the battleships. It was that simple. (OTOH, the defense plan if one was rammed by a speedboat IED, or hit by an Exocet or Silkworm in the multiple belts of foot-thick side armor, was to come about 180°, lower a seaman over the side with a brush and a bucket of gray enamel, and paint over the scorch mark in the hull that would result from such an attack.) 

Carriers didn't become obsolete after Midway, either.

Bad carrier tactics, yes.

Carriers, no.

Particularly against people with no defense against them. (Which is most of 185 nations out of 195 total.)

Piggott nonsensically waves the Russian hypersonic scramjet missiles as the death blow for anything in their path. They can cover 180 miles (their operational range) in a couple of minutes.

Okay, spiffy. Russia has new toys, based on technology around since the 1950s, some 70 years ago. So, had he more perspicacity, the obvious follow-up questions would be:

What are you going to do about targets 190 miles away?

How accurate are those missiles?

How easy are they to jam, spoof, or shoot down?

How are you targeting objects BVR?

How many have you got to shoot?

Where are they?

Those are questions a plebe at West Point or Annapolis would have thought of; Piggott, not so much. What he grasps about warfare in general, or in specifics, could be written longhand with a Sharpie on butcher paper and fit inside a thimble, with room to spare.

And the most obvious question is, if these missiles are so revolutionary, why is Russia in an endless meat-grinder conflict, rather than sitting atop the pyramid of victory in mere minutes, as they expected, and Piggott's suggestion predicts?

The obvious answer is, because all those questions show the utter dearth of ability of those "revolutionary" missiles to effect anything that looks like victory.

Might they have some utility? Perhaps. It remains to be seen. 

Are they a "paradigm shift" in warfare? No. They are a fart in a windstorm in the grand scheme.

Grunt Law: When you declare victory, be sure to inform the enemy.

Offense/Defense Corollary: There ain't a horse that can't be rode, and there ain't a rider that can't be throwed.

IOW, fast missiles are anything but world-beating game-changers.

It would take pages to fisk the multiplicity of military errors, from strategy, to tactics, to logistics, that underpin this pile of gelatinous shit plopped out at the link, but suffice it to say that war has not transformed in 6000 years of recorded human history, and neither have the conditions for obtaining victory. (The plural of 27 fallacious conclusions is not "wisdom". When you ask the wrong questions, and draw the wrong conclusions, you get the equivalent of gibberish from a baboon. For but one example, the machinegun didn't make infantry obsolete. It made head-on infantry charges obsolete. Wee difference, but Piggott doesn't know what he doesn't know - or else ignores it because facts mess up the flow of effluvia in his narrative.)

Hypersonic missiles haven't changed that calculus, and the failure of the Russians to sweep all opposition off the chessboard merely underlines the idiocy of the suggestion that they have.

If ICBMs with nuclear weapons didn't make armies and navies obsolete, there's little likelihood that a few missiles will do so now. The suggestion is risibly ludicrous, and only a rank amateur and total military loon would suggest otherwise. The first prerequisite of being the smartest guy in the room, is that one be smart.

Epic Fail.

Somebody wants to talk about actual new tech in this war, we can do that. But this article wasn't it.

Addendum: For the incorrigibly stupid who need this spelled out with wooden blocks, we lost our first aircraft carrier in 1942. Carriers were vulnerable 80 years ago: This is not news. We started WW II with a total of 7 carriers. We were so distraught and paradigm-shifted by the wholly unsurprising news that they could be sunk, that by war's end, we had 99 aircraft carriers afloat by VE day. And if anyone were to start lobbing missiles at any one of the 11 carriers we currently possess and had the misfortune to sink one, the life expectancy of their fleet, and capitol city, would be measured in minutes. Which is reason #27 why hypersonic AS missiles are largely irrelevant to any serious discussion of anything military-related beyond "What's a great way for a country to initiate national suicide by radiation poisoning?".

After all of the preceding, if anyone is still willing to carry water for Piggott's jackassical thesis, kindly turn up the brightness on your keyboard.

Um, No

 

Angus has undertaken to give historical background to the Ukrainian artillery tactics we described last week.

I am sure his artillery history per se is excruciatingly correct, and beyond dispute, and you are unhesitatingly recommended to read the exposition given.

The problem, however, is that his explanation of how this current thing is not new, basically did a face plant.

Firstly, what he describes, a Time On Target (TOT):

Multiple guns in multiple batteries fire all their tubes at different times (based on flight time) such that all the rounds land on that single target nearly simultaneously, or at least, close enough as makes no difference. Infantry mortars and even air-to-ground munitions can be added, just for grins. Any way you do it, at any size, it's Hell, in a very small space.

TIME ON TARGET:
Each battery of 6-8 guns fires their rounds the indicated number
 of seconds prior to the planned TOT.
Think "Whump...Whump......Whump.....Whump...Whump....."
Then all 30-40 of those shells impact within 1-2 seconds.
"FOOM!FOOM!FOOM!FOOM!FOOMFOOMFOOM!!!"
The only thing more awe-inspiring would be God's own
thunder from a lightning strike (or 40 of them in
a second or two, at one spot), but the devastation is
near identical for anything at that address.

Having participated in everything up to a regimental TOT, where every tube in the 10th or 11th Marines (90+ tubes, from 16 batteries with 6-8 towed and SP pieces each, at the time) dropped their shells from 105s, 155s, and 203s all on one specific given point within 1-2 seconds of each other, I will allow that they are properly glorious for everyone involved, other than anyone inhabiting said target. Which is rather the point.

They do that because artillery per each is inherently inaccurate, and thus an area weapon, fired like a shotgun. A TOT is like firing all the rounds in a single shotgun at once, at whatever poor SOBs are in that impact area.

That is NOT what Herr Oberst Reisner was describing in the linked video.

The Ukrainians spread those 6-8 gun batteries down to 1 or 2 tube sub-units, all linked on StarLink, and all using the GIS ARTA targeting program, (neither of which anyone had before) and each one picks an identified target, and shoots at it as soon as they're ready. Then they look at the update, and see what hasn't been waxed, and shoot at that, until there's nothing left to shoot at. Each sub-unit shoots when it wants, and then the guys (as we covered in an earlier ITC video) scamper in the rare case of counter-battery return fire, while other sub-units pick up the fight from a different position until there are no more Russians to shoot up, either from their destruction in smoking heaps, or their hasty retreat. Usually a couple of minutes either way.

Counter-battery fire is somewhere between pointless to impossible, both because Vlad's artillery counter-battery assets work as well as the rest of his Potemkin military to date, and because hitting 10, 20, 50 or more different single-tube targets would take hours, and require more artillery than there is in the entire Russian Army, and metric fucktons of ammo to splatter-fire an entire grid square just to take out one single tube, and 3-6 guys, plus a couple of dozen unfired rounds. If Vlad wants to try and use 500 rounds to kill one gun, even the Ukes (hell, even Ewok log and rock catapults) can play that game all week long, and twice on Sundays, from here to the next millenium, and come out ahead.

That looks like this:

Ukrainian artillery bushwhack ca. 2022
AKA: How To Erase An Enemy Regimental Task Force,
In 5 Minutes Or Less

The Ukes DGAF when rounds land on the multiple targets, nor are they synchronizing any attacks (which is the entire point of doing a TOT), nor are they having all tubes/weapons impact the same rough patch of real estate. Their only concern is that all visible targets get serviced as rapidly as possible. The whole point is to get first- or second-round direct hits.(Word To Your Mother: Until very recently, artillery doesn't GET first-round direct hits. Period.) They're inviting, via that GIS ARTA app, every single weapon system that can be brought to bear to hit anything and everything within their own range fan, which targets are also dispersed, and which is something nobody did with arty before now, including us, because now arty can drop a shell with accuracy rivalling that of tank cannon in direct fire, so that instead of shooting up a vehicle from a couple thousand yards, they're dropping heavy arty on a target from a dozen or more grid squares away. (Our preference to date is to do that with LGBs from aircraft.) 

It is exactly the company of long range snipers I described in the OP, rather than the historical artillery idea of a mob of musketeers doing a group mugging, which ain't nobody been able to do before now, and you can't "invent" that if you can't do it. This is why Edison gets credit for inventing the light bulb, and the Wright Brothers with inventing the airplane, because their versions worked, and which is why we don't give the credit to some nameless fantasizers who thought "Wouldn't it be great to light the room with electricity instead of fire?" or "Wouldn't it be cool to fly a heavier-than-air craft wherever you wanted?"

The Ukes are thus not doing anything like a TOT. So thanks for playing, but we know whereof we speak, from firsthand experience, and we know the difference between this, and a TOT. The two are worlds apart.

They didn't invent all the components, but they synthesized those other things together into a coherent whole like no one has ever done with artillery, and when they do it well, they're erasing Russian units up to regimental level (1000-2000 guys, and all their equipment larger than a Toyota) in a few minutes.

We don't even do this now. (Nor, AFAIK, does anyone else. YET.) We drop a round, adjust, drop another round, adjust, and so on, and then fire for effect (i.e. drop a shit-ton of rounds on the last spot) once we're on the bullseye. If we had this level of artillery accuracy (which two words, to this point in history, were generally understood to be an oxymoron on the level of jumbo shrimp, government help, or military intelligence) in Iraq/A-stan, we would have deployed all our available arty assets in firebases, along with Predator drones to spot, and simply erased the Taliban and Iraqi insurgencies one shell at a time, with virtually zero risk, unless they tried to mob attack a FSB, and walked into interlocking fields of fire from miniguns.

Traditionally, artillery is a shotgun, fired by a blind man, and coached by someone nearby; the Uke concept of operation is using it as a sniper rifle, and it's kicking the shit out of Vlad's minions, over and over again. The observable secondary explosions after arty impacts on video after video are the proof of the pudding. Welcome to the Big League, rookies.

Anybody who still thinks this current employment is a TOT, or has been done before as-is, is free to specify who made it work like this, and explain why it isn't therefore the universal artillery tactical rule, instead of the exception, being some mythical number of decades old, for all artillery since whatever mythical invention date so specified, and how come it's become so devastating to the Russians, who should have known better, being formerly thought of as the world Subject Matter Experts on artillery usage in combat up until 1945, or even 1985.

This is like explaining that Moses and the Israelites really only escaped through a marsh a few inches deep, and then having to explain how that water level drowned all of Pharoah's pursuing army and charioteers.

Sorry, but that's how it works. It's theoretically possible that I got it all wrong, along with the Austrian Army's head of R and D, and that despite his PhD, and everything he used to illustrate the point, he's historically ignorant about his entire profession.

But that's not where I'd put my chips if the wheel was spinning.

UPDATE: 

Something else Angus gets right is this news:

Russia is bringing T-62 tanks out of mothballs to replace the loss of T-72s and T-80s, which indicates that

1) The Russians aren't "winning" for any value of that word other than either "Pyrhhic" or "Mariupolic", and

2) They're now being forced to rely on vehicles that the Israelis were bitch-slapping around the Middle East 50 years ago, because modern AT missiles ate their lunch. Which things were what made those T-62s obsolete in the first place.

They're more advanced than lawn tractors, but if you couldn't win with top-tier gear, you aren't going to get it done against the same Javelins and NLAWS that kicked your ass earlier by using machinery that was obsolete almost before Vlad was born.

This is annoying for the Ukrainian forces, but mainly only if they run out of Western-supplied AT missiles before Russia runs out of mothballed crap from the 1970s to throw at them.

If Russia gets down to pulling T-34s from WWII out of museum displays, dollars to donuts they'll be using them for advancing on the Kremlin, not the Donbas.

But if Russian troops keep attacking, and can sop up enough AT missiles faster than they can be replaced, they might start to outlast the Uke resistance, and start to get some traction. It's unlikely given their past performance, but the law of averages says they can't stay incompetent forever.

Their attack is going to become a scorched-earth offense, which is going to tear the hell out of all the formerly Russia-friendly areas they hold now, which is where the war is being fought to a slogging standstill.

Remember please that Russia has no stomach for this endless slog; only Putin does. Putin's gamble is that he can maintain his tenuous grip on power long enough to eke out something like a win (which bus left the depot on about February 26th of this year). His victory conditions are not Ukraine's, and they only have to continue to exist. If/when Putin gets whacked or dies, the Ukes have an excellent shot at evicting what's left of the Russian incompetent and unmotivated hordes out of Crimea and the eastern districts forever, and based on current performance, the blood feud is going to make de-Russification of the entire Ukraine a territorial imperative they'll pursue with gusto.

And then join NATO, just for spite, making Putin's failure absolute.

*PAY ATTENTION TO THIS LAST BIT:

And for those that need this explained in explicit detail:

This means Ukraine's continued existence is now at the whim of the West, not Putin.

Putin hasn't been able to overcome them in three months of trying.

The West, OTOH, could make Ukraine's candle wink out with the snap of a finger.

Now you know the answer to "Who run Bartertown?"

And you also now know why Gondor didn't want to ask Rohan for help against Mordor.

The fear of "strings attached".

In the real world, "help" always comes with strings. Of steel.

TANSTAAFL

UPDATE II: Color me shocked!, Angus is butthurt that his sup-par mis-explanation of what the Ukrainians are doing got taken to task in painstaking detail. I laid out the substance a successful counter-argument would need to provide, above. With the whole internet to drop a link to, if any such existed. But no. Instead, we get a pigeon playing chess: knock the pieces over, shit on the board, and pretend you won. Well-played.

The Ukrainians aren't doing a TOT, nor anything like it. 

They aren't using tactics from 75-100 years ago that nobody could ever make work. 

They're doing something in combat that hasn't been seen before, because they can, and making it work, like no one else has done, for the first time in military history. Having a metaphorical sword at one's throat makes people do things like that.

(And no, Angus, I let the nonsense slide, but we didn't widely disperse individual tubes; not in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or any other place you could name. We don't do it now, either {Yet.}. And yet we have computers and GPS that would supposedly "make it easy". So why not? Because it would take 6-8 times as long just to lay the battery, and then you'd have to register each individual gun, just to know WTF you're hitting. But you don't know that, because you never had to lay a battery, or register a gun, and don't know what you don't know. And a TOT was and is multiple batteries, which were already dispersed, firing at a single target. Not single dispersed tubes from the same battery. It wasn't done to avoid counter-battery fire, it was done to provide a devastating effect on a single target, before people could dive for cover, so that instead of the first round, they got 30-50, or more, all at once, which is exactly NOT what the Ukrainians are doing in any way, shape, or form. 

They also aren't doing "shoot-and-scoot", which we did practice {it was SOP in the 1980s}. They're doing "shoot and take shelter in place while waiting to see if Ivan can even do counter-battery fire". Which lesson has been overwhelmingly, "No, he can't do that, and he can't even find his own ass with both hands and a map."} Not knowing any of this is why you should have stayed in your lane, or at least watched the Austrian Army video and learned a thing or two. You didn't set a clever trap; you simply don't know what you're taking about, but worse than that, you don't know what you don't know.)

And rather than shrug off the mistake, some people aren't happy until they aren't happy. Okay. Whatever floats your boat, chief, but you're still wrong, and now just being deliberately ignorant when corrected. This is what happens when apes read philosophy: they don't understand it. Best wishes with that plan going forward. 

And Another Thing

 

We commented on this at the time, but let it lay. Wholly apart from the facts of why and how it was totally unnecessary and entirely superfluous for Ukraine to get USN help in sinking Moskva (and let's face it, the ham-fisted "explanations" of how the Ukes didn't do it by Russia sound less convincing than your five year old's story about the man who came in the window and tore the house up, then ran away before Mom and Dod got home), Russia has a much bigger problem regarding their Black Sea Fleet.

The Ukrainian Neptune missile system is a monstrously huge pain in their ass, going forward. 

The entire US and allied militaries, with ten times the combat and intelligence resources of the current Russian Army on their best day, couldn't stop Saddam from dropping SCUD missiles in Israel during GW I, try as they might. Two different Special Forces teams, one Brit SAS, and one US Army SF, in epic tales, were compromised and beaten to doll rags trying to hunt down those launchers.*

In a country that's mostly pool-table flat, and barren as the arctic tundra.

The Iraqis evaded the entire US Air Force and American and Brit satellite surveillance, combined. They hid the TEL trucks in wadis under bridge culverts, FFS.

The Uke Neptune system is far easier to hide, in a country far less amenable to recon and air strikes than western Iraq was in 1990.

We dedicated whole air squadrons to doing nothing but SCUD hunting, back when our Air Farce, even just in-country in Saudi, was yuuuuuuuge. And hit damned near nothing for our trouble.

Vlad's got a serious problem on his hands.

If you're wondering, here's the Neptune Danger Zone in the Black Sea, in orange:

All that area, at minimum, can be hit with Neptune missiles fired from land that Ukraine controls.

That means that Russian warships can be hit almost as soon as they sail out of their home port at Sevastopol.

The only limiting factors are naval over-the-horizon (OTH) intelligence, and the supply of Neptune missiles available to Ukraine. 

At the equivalent of $500K@, you want to hit capital ships with them, not patrol boats.

That'd be cruisers and destroyers.

And if Russia pulls those ships outside that fan to safety, they've effectively given up on naval support, and the Black Sea Fleet is a non-issue for Ukraine, UFN. In chess, that's losing a castle or two, in the opening moves.

And if the Ukrainians are the sneaky little shits they've been so far, they bait a couple of decoy launchers, and wait to bushwhack the attacking Russian aircraft when they show up.

In warfare, when properly conducted, there are no fair fights; you want to be the hunter going after baby harp seals with a club.

This is what winning actually looks like when your enemy is not ready for prime time.

*(Side note: both teams were compromised by kids herding goats, much like the SEAL team two decades later in Lone Survivor. You'd think in twenty years' time, someone in special forces would have learned that lesson, and come up with TTPs and ROEs for dealing with nosy kids stepping on your recon team, but you'd obviously be wrong there.)

Amateur Hour

For those with ears to hear, and a head used as something more useful than a hat rack, we give you some off-the-cuff down-in-the-weeds military analysis of a couple of videos from Ukraine, which are neither propaganda, nor assailable on any number of grounds, but which nonetheless make our non-dominant eye twitch.

This is Military Science 101 stuff. Why? Refresh the warning from Gunny, above, in your mind.

A) How To Tell Us You're Using Retarded Conscripts Without Telling Us You're Using Retarded Conscripts

So what?

Here you have a Russian "hasty" (as opposed to deliberate, i.e. well-thought out and executed) AT (anti-tank) minefield. Where the primary value of the word "hasty" is half-assed, slipshod, and damned near total waste of time.

Why?

1) A minefield is an obstacle. In order to be effective, (say it with me grunts of the world): obstacles must be under constant observation, and covered with direct or indirect fires.

2) What you have here, is neither, and thus totally ineffective. When someone in a sedan can defeat your barrier, you're a No-Go faceplant at the "Hasty AT Minefield" station.

3) Some dumbass, or dumbasses - plural, thought, or were told, that strewing a few dozen (it looks to be 30-40) AT mines across a hard-surface road was a good idea, because reasons. F^(# NO, it's NOT.

4) The brave idiot-savant civilians in the video defeated it by simply driving diagonally over it. With enough time to get out and video the feat.

5) Yet no mortar or MG fire, thus no observation, thus pointless waste of AT mines.

6) As the video notes, it takes 300+# of pressure to detonate one of these (to keep from wasting them on squad-level snuffies, and cheap sedans). You want tanks, or troop-laden APCs to blow one of these.

7) None of that happens. And it looks, for all the world, like Pvt. Ivan Jackassovich just laid them out in neat little rows, probably with not only no observers nor covering fires, but without any anti-handling devices. Meaning any dipshit could walk up, grab the carrying handle, and pick them all up and carry them to the side of the road. An anti-handling device means besides the pressure plate fuze on top, there are 1-3 other places where you can put a pressure-release or pull-triggered fuze, so that if you push, pull, lift, or try to carry off Mr. TankF**Ker, or any of his 40 other little round friends in the picture, he will blow you into bitsy pieces travelling up and outward at several hundred feet per second. IOW, they just set them on the road, and walked away.

8) I could be wrong, but I'm not stupid. Assuming no EOD, you simply get a length of rope or wire, long enough (say, 50-100m in length, long enough to be hiding well away from the blast) to tie onto one or more of those nasty little things, and drag them out of the way, without becoming one with the universe in a pink mist. If you have enough length, you lasso the whole bunch, and use a vehicle to pull the lot off to the side of the road. If that works, you now have 40 AT mines you can re-purpose. More about that in a moment. If not, your ears are ringing, and you need a new length of cord.

9) If 1 (or more) out of 40 were properly anti-handling bobby-trapped, your road has a new "men at work" hole in it, and the blast alerts sleeping Ivan Jackassovich nearby that it might be time to lay some RPD, mortar, or artillery fire on your AO at those co-ordinates, and doom on you.

10) What else did Ivan forget? The way you stop that sort of silly sh*t, is by sprinkling some anti-personnel (AP) mines amongst and amidst the AT field, so that little Jimmy YouTuber can't get close enough to screw up your handiwork without going all explodey. Think Russki versions of Claymore and Bouncing Betty mines, and again, all with anti-handling devices. Now no one wants to drive through your minefield any more, and it's an actual military obstacle.

11) But they didn't do that, so they were noobs, idiots, and time-wasting wankers, along with too stupid to know that, not supervised by any NCO with at least half a brain, and/or don't have AP mines, anti-handling devices, anyone with the wit and skill to emplace them, nor OPs, binoculars, radios, mortars, machineguns, or artillery to spare for such a basic Infantry 101 function. Thus, f**king amateurs.

12) Takeaways you can use: 

a) In the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Hungarian partisan townies in Budapest stopped Russian tanks with this tactic. Using green-painted upside-down dinner plates. Yes, really. If you have plaster or concrete, you can make your own AT mine mold, and crank out as many realistic looking AT mines as you like. If, unlike Ivan Jackassovich, you cover that obstacle by observation and direct fire, you can stop a tank with 5 pounds of concrete and some dark green spray paint. At least for a good while. If you sprinkle in a couple live ones, with anti-handling boobytrap devices, you can make a few real mines seem like dozens to hundreds. Only combat engineers and several hours' time, under fire, will be able to figure out what's what. While they're getting shot at. (There are higher-tech ways to breach minefields, like combat engineer vehicles (CEVs, i.e. tanklike killdozers) which throw detonation cord explosives a couple hundred yards over such a field, and blow a pathway through it. Maybe 2-4 times, before they're out of line charges. Then it's back to doing it the hard way. So, how many fake, or thin but realistic, minefields before you've still halted an advance for hours, days, or weeks? That's up to you.)

Thought Exercise: If someone (you, me, whoever),
decided to 3D print the fuse assembly and prongs
at the top X 100, and attach them to 100 metal coffee
or paint cans painted green with suitable markings,
and buried them appropriately with the trigger
prongs sticking out of the ground, who wants
to go up to them and see if they're real?
And what if one or two of them were?
{cf. F**ked Around, Found Out}

b) If you collect those unguarded AT mines, you can cart them somewhere else and emplace them for your own purposes. Like properly buried, waiting for Ivan Tankovich to come lumbering by, and blow himself into vapor. Even in a hole under the hard-surface, with a chunk of the roadway on top, because remember, 20 pounds of concrete or asphalt isn't gong to set off the pressure plate. 50 tons of tank, however, makes a nice fireball, and none of his friends want to come visit their former buddy, Ivan Blownaparte.

c) If you have dummy mines, you can trade live mines for dummy mines, which Ivan Jackassovich and his commanders may check on, not knowing you're driving everything right through that "minefield" whenever it suits you, allowing you to get in places you aren't supposed to be, or get out of places they want to keep you in.

I told you that, to talk about this next video:

B) The Small Ballsy Ambush That Could Have Been Soooo Much Better

We know you can't see this here; sign in, go to YouTube, and WTWT.

1) One or two really ballsy Ukrainians took an NLAW and wasted a Russian tank.

2) Okay. Buuuuuuuuuuut.....These guys were checker players, not chess players.

3) As the scene develops, yes, they got a tank. Which is a nice trade for one NLAW. And they slowed a battalion task force down, because they had to engage the ambush.

4) Now try this, after anticipating what that NLAW would do.

The Con

5) One shot, one kill: Good. Five more seconds of thought and planning, and a couple more pieces on the board: Much better. Let's review the cast of characters:

The Set-Up

6) Suppose we'd brought some help, for what was an entire battalion task force. Because the four tanks and three APCs are at least a motorized rifle company team. And there's another one behind it on the same road. Two companies = battalion.

The Sting

7) So, instead of 1-2 guys with balls the size of church bells, to ambush a T-72/T-80 from less than 100 yards away, we send eight guys, with half a dozen NLAWs, and a machinegun team for backup (or a couple of good designated marksmen with good optics).

8) And all those AT mines we pilfered from Ivan's half-assed minefield? We found someplace to put them, along the sides of the road at our much-better ambush.

9) Our original NLAW team triggers the opening ambush, as before.

Ivan's APCs all move to the far side of the road to take cover and support the counter-ambush.

Where they hit the AT mines on the far side of the road, and blow up.

The tanks, doing a doctrine herringbone to the sides, hit the AT mines on the near side.

Now Ivan's down 3 tanks and 3 APCs, for 1 NLAW, and those scavenged AT mines.

The MG team mops up the dismounts from behind.

The bottom NLAW takes out the point tank.

The top NLAW team goes after anything left alive in the kill zone, or takes on the following company.

10) If the lead company tries to blow through the kill zone, the bottom team stops that.

If the following company moves up, lather, rinse, repeat.

If they sit there in shock, the teams displace, and either retreats unscathed, or have a go at moving into position to hit the stalled company as well.

If the column tries to focus on any one team position, the other teams hit them from the other directions, as cover for the targetted team to displace and get away.

If air support or supporting artillery starts coming online, the ambush team executes the GTFOofDodge maneuver, and lives to fight another day.

11) Now 8 guys, plus half an hour to dig in those two AT mine strips along likely ambush exit routes, have wiped out an entire company, and/or possibly even a battalion task force.

And it's all over in 2-4 minutes, before any air support or artillery fire can be called in on them.

12) Takeaways:

a) Roads/trails are kill zones. Always, always, always.

b) Flank security, if you're the convoy. That means drive on both sides of the road, and ready for anything form any direction.

c) Don't focus in on just the first point of attack, it may be just the opening.

d) If you're the fox, instead of the hounds, bring friends, and plan for the enemy's first, second, and third likeliest responses. Kill everything you can, and then get away. Unless you can wipe out the whole unit, and scavenge.

e) Ambushee: GTF OFF THE "X".

f) Ambusher: Make it very hard to get off the X. Know when it's time to go.

Ukraine, on both sides, is amateur hour. A little more thought can make a big difference either way.

Now imagine you're the one hiding from a large heavy task force like this one, or trying to stop one. Think of other ways to halt or destroy that force with what you have on hand, or could cobble together. No NLAWS? How about molotovs and flammenwerfers? No MGs? What about snipers? No mines? What about anti-tank ditches and obstacles?

There's no horse that can't be rode, and no rider that can't be throw'd.

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

Scavenge anything useful the enemy provides, and give it back to him, pointy end first.

UPDATE: For those of you still swinging long after the 10-count, you should go read this article over at Peter's BRM blog, based on a WSJ analysis of Russia's war-making shortcomings.

TL;DR: The Russians suck at logistics as well as at tactics. 

Show of hands: who thought Russia was good at military logistics, EVER, other than a brief period from 1943-1945, and even then with Murmansk convoys bootstrapping them up to bare competence?

Two Road Maps

 

One runs right under your opponents' noses. The other one rubs his nose in it, right in front of him in plain sight. (Born yesterday? Google them, Baby Duck.)

Neither is the wrong choice, and like chocolate or vanilla, or blondes vs. brunettes, the correct answer is liable to be "Both, please", not either/or.

Open your mind that much.

All it takes for the former is one person: Big X.

The fewer people in your organization, however, and the more jobs you delegate right back to yourself.

Operations, training, logistics, strategic and tactical planning, security, supplies, etc.

Conversely, the more like-minded folks you have, the more you can spread the load.

Over a long enough timeline, one person can do almost anything.

For most of its build history, one man was behind Mt. Rushmore. At a certain point, the scheme caught on in the imagination, and everyone, including the government, got into the act. But it happened at all because one guy thought it'd be a good idea.

The latter idea takes, obviously, quite a lot more people. In their case, people tired of communism's boots on their necks, and willing to dare the Soviets, in front of the world, to trample them once again. 1981 in Gdansk was a different world than it had been in Prague in 1968, or Budapest in 1954, and third time proved to be the charm.

So first lesson, for Plan B, is time your moves, and leverage the optics when they favor you, and make sure you have the numbers.

Ruby Ridge had no numbers, and no optics, going in. Game over.

Waco had better numbers, but all the wrong optics. Flame on.

Malheur was thoroughly penetrated with fed CIs, their main support was getting sent a literal bag of dicks to eat, and it was studied and decapitated by TPTB. End of story.

The Capitol Caper was a dumbass idea, just like the rest of the street games, and was conversely so big, the so-called organizers had no control over those participants either salted in to turn it sideways, or those who self-directed to the stupid switch. Had any number of us pointed that out, yet again, with the fateful prognosis "buffalo jump", no one would have listened. (Stupid is like that.) Looking at things at the end of the day, they might have thought differently.

Surprised by it? No; the surprise is that it isn't a once-a-week exercise, going back decades, and that no congressweasels were actually defenestrated in the traditional meaning of that word, i.e. hung out windows by their own entrails, but we can dream. Condemn it? No. Other than that they didn't actually plan to do that the first time. But note that it didn't help anything? Can't really argue against that. It didn't help anything. In historical terms, it was the Makin Island Raid, which mainly served to make sure that the Tarawa Invasion was a bloody mess.

The trouble with small group actions is getting things done.

The trouble with large group actions is not getting them undone.

Understand that, so that if/when you or "someone" you know undertakes either of them, they know what they're biting off. And maybe they use two wandering brain cells to address those contingencies. (Just kidding; they'll never do that, until they have to, or face death. Then, maybe...)

The days of half-assing things, and plainly assing them up, have finally come to a middle. Those who learn the right lessons will have more harmonious outcomes. Those who don't are looking at domestic terrorism labels, arrests, trials, and sentences.

"We killed the stupid ones first." - OIF/OEF Iraq and Afghanistan after-action assessments

Nobody's saying don't do anything.

Nobody wants anyone going out in a blaze of glory.

Just use your heads for more than a hat rack, and stop fucking things up by the numbers because you thought you could pull a thing out of your ass, on the fly.

Ask around: JSOC Ninjas aren't that because they can do the complicated things right. They are that, because they practice so much they can't do the simple things wrong.

Break things down to simple pieces, and get those right a hundred times.

When you have all the pieces right, you can put the whole puzzle together, in any size.

True for Big X Luftstalag III types of things, true for Gdansk shipyard mass protest kinds of things, true for any kinds of things.

If, and only if, you do the headwork, the legwork, and the homework.

And start by deciding: 

How do you make that decision? You pay attention to CARVER:

Criticality?

Accessibility?

Recuperability?

Vulnerability?

Effect?

Recognizability?

It looks like this:

Everything can be evaluated with that matrix.

Pieces on a chessboard.

Your daily to-do list.

Getting your kid into college.

And every potential target in your AO. In fact, TPTB have had decades to assign people to rating everything you can think of (and a lot you've never thought of) a CARVER value, so they already know the high-value targets in every county in the country.

What they can't do is protect them all to the same degree, so obviously, they have to pick what's most important.

When you're Leviathan, size matters, and it means there's not enough armor for the whole beastie. Not enough assets to protect everything. Hell, even tanks have thick armor in the front, and thinner armor on the top and bottom, and that's why we use mines and missiles that exploit the weak spots, rather than trying to duke it out with the frontal plate.

Anyone wanting to take advantage of that would have to see where the important spots are, and how well protected (or not) they are. They would then be able to find targets that offer disproportionate value for disproportionately low risk.

You're now doing a sort of analysis you may have heard of:

It's the weekend. Do some homework: Watch The Great Escape. Watch Moneyball. Not as entertainment, but as training tools. Then do the mental work behind anything else, and do the math. 

Because you'll find all the stupid things you would
have overlooked, and then not do them, assuming
you're not a total moron.

Find the 30-pt. targets. Work backwards from what you might want them to look like, with what it would take to get them that way. And then decide if that works better with a Big X solution, or a Solidarnösc approach. Which one (if either) can you pull off? (And don't go after any 10-pointers if there are still 15- or 20-pointers on the table. Duh.)

Do. The. Math.

Be different than every failed fucktard you've ever seen, who never bothered to do that much, or that little.

And maybe, just maybe, start chalking up some wins one day, instead of going out in a flaming heap of wreckage.

If only for the novelty of the approach.