Despite my constant warnings against - and cautions about - drawing
conclusions from the Ukraine-Russia war, governments and militaries around the
world – the US prominent among them – are leaping to conclusions without
considering the context of those conclusions.
The context, of course, is that this is an incredibly unique war that is
unlikely to resemble any future conflict, most especially the one we care most
about which is war with China.
Consider the lessons/conclusions that are being cited. I’m not going to bother citing references as
this is an assembly of many articles, statements, and reports from many
sources. What follows are commonly
claimed conclusions and lessons.
Asymmetric warfare can beat a conventional military.
Asymmetric warfare can most certainly beat a conventional
military if that military opts to be stupid.
The US fell victim to exactly that in Vietnam by restricting attacks on
critical military targets, allowing North Vietnam safe havens, allowing free
and unhindered resupply from the Soviet Union, etc. Failing to learn any lessons, we repeated
many of those same mistakes in Afghanistan with the same result. However, if a conventional military fights
smart (or merely competently), asymmetric tactics will be nothing more than a
minor annoyance. Conventional militaries
can cut off supplies, out-mass, and overwhelm any asymmetric force with
relatively little effort.
Surface drones have rendered conventional naval
operations and ships obsolete.
This is flatly false.
We just did a post on the extremely limited effectiveness of Ukraine
surface drones against the Russian navy (see, “Ukraine-RussiaNaval War”) and yet so many observers have proclaimed the era of
conventional navies to be finished due to drones.
Aerial drones have rendered conventional tanks,
artillery, and troops merely targets waiting to be destroyed.
While aerial drones certainly appear to have been
instrumental in targeting for artillery and have, to some degree, been able to
directly destroy vehicles and infantry, it is erroneous in the extreme to draw
any conclusions from this. The utter
lack of tactics, joint support, and operational expertise being displayed in
the employment of vehicles and infantry accounts for the success of drones
rather than any inherent effectiveness or lethality of the drones
themselves.
Add to this the apparent total lack of any mobile anti-air
defenses tailored to anti-UAV combat and the explanation for drone success is
clear; it’s ineptitude.
The era of the tank is over.
There has been a rush to pronounce the demise of the tank
when, in reality, there’s nothing wrong with tanks. There is, however, everything wrong with how
both sides are using their tanks. The
level of operational and tactical stupidity on both sides is stunning. Tanks are being expended in individual, slow
moving operations with no coordinated, joint support. The proper use of tanks is in fast moving,
massed operations overwhelmingly supported by infantry, aviation, and
artillery. The entire world learned how
to do this in WWII but now seem to have forgotten every lesson learned.
Once again, it is the complete lack of coordinated
air/ground operations that have rendered aircraft only marginally useful. Aircraft need support from electronic warfare
(EW) aircraft, SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) aircraft, AEW (Airborne
Early Warning and battle control) aircraft, and ground forces in order to be
survivable and effective. None of that
has been on display in this conflict.
UAVs have filled in the gap created by ineptitude in the use
of manned aircraft and shortages of manned aircraft. I would speculate that there is also a cost
consideration component. I suspect
Russia is carefully husbanding its supply of aircraft due to their cost. If so, perhaps there is a valuable lesson,
here, about risk avoidance associated with overly expensive assets (looking at
you Ford, Burke, B-2/21).
Summary
Every one of these supposed lessons is wrong in the sense
that they are so severely limited in application as to be useless in terms of
predicting the future of warfare and developing equipment, strategies, and
operations for that future. Despite the
evident wrongness of these conclusions, military professionals, both uniformed
and civilian, have leapt to embrace them and are guiding their militaries down
false paths.
One of the worst offenders is the US Marines who have
latched on to examples that they feel support their isolated, missile-shooting
concept. One can somewhat forgive civilian
military observers but professional, uniformed Marines should know better.
Another problem with leaping to these conclusions and
lessons is that none of them are being tested in exercises representative of
the conditions in which we intend to apply them, namely, a peer war with
China. There’s nothing wrong with
thinking one of these conclusions is valid (well, yes there is since it shows
you’re an idiot) as long as you’re willing to thoroughly test the conclusion
under the conditions you anticipate fighting and are willing to accept the
results that will, invariably prove them to be wrong.
We are literally watching a live fire tutorial on how not to
conduct a war by both sides. Why we
would leap to draw conclusions and lessons from that is a baffling mystery.
We are literally watching a live tutorial on how not to conduct war by both sides. Absolutely spot on, it's just incredible to see the levels of stupidity by militaries in the west. Sad.
ReplyDeleteIt takes the Russians/Soviets 2-3 years to get back up to speed in fighting wars. This is assuming Putin can match Stalin in finding effective generals and then leaving them alone. The Russian should do much better in 2025, until then they're just learning on the job.
Delete"until then they're just learning on the job."
DeleteWhich, if true, says we should NOT be trying to draw conclusions!
So are you concluding that the war could have been over last year had one side or the other been bereft of incompetence?
ReplyDeleteI'm saying that either/both sides have had ample opportunities to display enormously more military strategic, operational, and tactical competence than they've shown and could, thereby, have produced much better outcomes for themselves.
DeleteActually 'winning' a war involves more than just pure military competence. It includes political goals, national will and determination, reserve capacities, industrial resources, and so on. That's outside the scope of this discussion.
People have been insisting that the tank has been dead since the 50s. Hell, in the 60s, tanks were hilariously vulnerable to AT weapons, with the standout being the Leo 1.
ReplyDeleteUltimately the tank persists because it is technologically and tactically robust, like a crowbar to the face. It is the best combination of tactical mobility and protected firepower in one package. So long as there is a need for an armored box carrying a big gun to support the infantry and break through defenses, the tank will remain.
It is interesting to read accounts of recon training being done between American and Ukranian units. The Ukranians have gone heavily on using drones for reconnaisance, while the American approach is slower and more manual, focused on reading the terrain from maps and putting scouts into observation position. The Ukranians say the American approach is slow and manual, while their approach is faster and easier to teach to conscripts.
On the flip side, the low tech american recon will still work in all situations...
Look three factors on whether a weapon is dead or not?
Delete1. Functions remain required?
2. Lethal weapons to make it unable to function
3. Replacement better than itself
People like listen to what they have already believed than reality.
ReplyDeleteLarge scale war with China will go nuclear. Just look US-Soviet Union during the Cold War as both sides avoided fighting directly.
"Large scale war with China will go nuclear."
DeleteSophomoric and utterly ridiculous.
Is it though? Your blog has argued that war with china is going to be a total war, prosecuted to the fullest extent by both sides. This logically holds that nuclear weapons will be on the table for both sides to use.
Delete"This logically holds that nuclear weapons will be on the table "
DeleteNo ... no it doesn't. LOGICALLY, there is almost zero chance of nuclear weapons being used.
LOGICALLY, what is the point/purpose of war? Why, it's to win something (territory, typically) or achieve something. In a nuclear war, there would be nothing left to 'win': no usable land, no thriving home population to govern (and tax so that you, personally, can grow rich which is the point of communist governments), no viable economy left to plunder, no resources left to build on. LOGICALLY, nuclear war would defeat the very purpose that China would go to war for!
Countries don't go to war to lose; they go to war to win. In a nuclear war, there's nothing to win.
China may be evil but they're not stupid.
China has nuclear weapons to frighten the West's simpletons into giving them what they want without having to go to war at all. Fortunately, no one on this blog is a frightened simpleton.
"Winners"
DeleteStatement was deleted for being factually incorrect.
"Countries don't go to war to lose; they go to war to win. In a nuclear war, there's nothing to win."
DeleteThat's a little too much mirror-imaging, isn't it? Just because America and the west has no stomach for the use of force, it feels a little too confident to assume that holds for China.
And one of the reasons you go to war is to remove a threat. We literally dropped nukes on the Japanese to make them surrender, and had the ETO gone worse, we'd have done the same.
China's arsenal may not yet be sufficient for counterforce, but it is quite sufficient for countervalue strikes against the United States' 30 most populous (and important) cities.
More to the point, a RAND study estimated that it would take 200 missiles to completely put an airbase out of action for a period of 12 hours or more. One nuke would settle that job quite handily. Even assuming reciprocal retaliatory strikes, the Chinese have more airbases in the region than we do, and can afford to trade them away if it means keeping american airpower contained.
The other counterpoint to this is that this is a total war prosecuted by America against China, and America's formal nuclear posture allows for first use of nuclear weapons. We BEHAVE as though we'll only nuke back once the other party opens the nuke can, but we've also made it real clear that we can and will use nukes first if we see fit...
(Quite frankly, there are targets in China that we can only service with nukes anyhow. We're not going to be able to reach inland to their heartland industry, ICBM fields, or IRBM TEL bases from the shorelines. And it's not as if we WANT to occupy China to begin with...)
If both sides have a brain, they'll try and keep it to a limited war - likely within the SCS - but well, wars have a way of getting away from you....
"it feels a little too confident to assume that holds for China."
DeleteIt's basic logic. A dictator (which Xi is) lives to enhance his own power and wealth. If war goes nuclear, China's dictator will be dead. Studies have shown that it's difficult to enhance power or wealth when you're dead. If, somehow, he could survive a nuclear war, the dictator would have no usable territory, no viable population, no usable resources, no food, no wealth, no nothing. In other words, the result would be total loss of power and wealth and no hope of regaining it. Assuming such a person isn't clinically insane, there is absolutely nothing to gain from a nuclear war so why do it?
Anyone might respond to a nuclear strike (MAD) but no one is going to initiate one.
"a RAND study estimated that it would take 200 missiles to completely put an airbase out of action for a period of 12 hours"
We've demonstrated the error in that belief. An airbase can be put out of action for very extended periods by destroying the supporting functions, fuel storage being chief among them. We did a post on this.
"A dictator (which Xi is) lives to enhance his own power and wealth."
DeleteThat's an assumption that held true for Deng Xiaopeng, but may not necessarily hold true for Xi Jinping. Consider: Deng surrounded himself with technocrats. His advisors were chosen on the basis of their ability to enrich the nation, and himself. On the flipside, Xi has been purging the technocrats he inherited from the Deng and Hu administrations, and his advisors are philosophers. They're being chosen on the basis of ideology.
Like we found out in the Cold War, people are motivated by the MICE theory: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego.
While I believe people shouldn't let fear of nuclear war paralyze them, neither I would put it past either actor in a (very unlikely) full-fledged war between USA and China.
DeleteOn one hand, current civilian and military "leadership" consists of exactly the mixture of cluelessness, arrogance, stupidity and inadequacy to start atomic escalation without even realizing the consequences, perhaps in a desperate attempt to save face.
On the other, the Chinese Communist Party doesn't hold the world record for genocide by accident, and as a certain someone once said, when the death toll reaches the millions then it becomes a statistic.
Not exactly the Current Western Attitude towards human life.
Again, I think this is an unlikely scenario for an unlikely war (the emperor does not willingly risk his palace), but I wouldn't rule it out completely.
" may not necessarily hold true for Xi"
DeleteOh, come on. He made himself leader for life. He's purged opponents. He's engaged in ruthless suppression of ethnic groups. He's defied world norms. He's engaged in global blackmail. He's ... do I really need to continue?
You're misunderstanding my point. You first defined a dictator as being motivated by enhancing his power and wealth, and are now redefining Xi as a dictator by his actions. I don't disagree on his ACTIONS.
DeleteI was pointing out that your assumption of his motivation may not be the case for Xi, who appears to be motivated more by ideology than wealth or power - China watchers have observed that his actions over the last five years, internally within China and his handling of the economy, are a departure from Deng. Deng surrounded himself with technocrat to enhance his wealth and power; Xi has surrounded himself with philosophers who are chosen for their like-mindedness with him.
I hope that makes it clearer what I was trying to say.
Xi's actions are all about gathering and consolidating personal power. That's a dictator. Dictators prize self-preservation above all else. Thus, he's not going to initiate nuclear war which will, inevitably, lead to his death.
DeletePeople talking drones have to address one reality - China has far MORE drones than US. They can produce more at far higher speed and cheaper prices than US. They have more advanced drones than US. Pentagon needs to address these.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, in Chinese Army, at brigade level, they have BZK-006A drones can perform close-in air support, in addition to numerous smaller one-use suicidal drones. US Army only has MQ-1 at division level which require runway to take off (China's equivalent CH-4, CH-5, etc.).
One key advantage of drones is CONSUMABLE but pre-requirement of this is --- you have a lot and can afford to lose in large number. Unfortunately, it is China than US meet this pre-requirement.
You're assuming drones are combat effective and they are not against a military that is prepared to counter them. They are individually easy to destroy, they can be jammed or otherwise rendered useless by electronic warfare, they're not very lethal, they have relatively short range, and so on.
DeleteHaving lots of ineffective assets is pointless. If numbers were the only thing that mattered, we'd have thousands of combat canoes.
"...we'd have thousands of combat canoes"
DeletePintle mounted M2 on the prow?
Lutefisk
Quantity has a quality all its own ... ... as long as that quantity meets a certain minimum level of quality. Drones do not rise to that level.
DeleteConsider the reports of the drone attacks on the US Navy ships off Yemen. If you believe the reports, the Navy has shot down a few dozen or more drones. Those drones represent quantity without sufficient quality to be effective.
And yet the Red Sea is now being declared closed to various classes of shipping. How cheaply has this been achieved?
DeleteBecause no one is trying to stop the attacks.
DeleteHow can you stop? People launch drones then leave. While you find a drone coming, you don't know where to strike.
Delete"While you find a drone coming, you don't know where to strike."
DeletePer the Comment Policy page, you must have a basic knowledge of naval matters in order to comment.
Your comment is patently false and you are demonstrating that you do not have a basic grasp of naval matters. Please stop commenting until you've been able to educate yourself on surveillance, tracking, UAVs, satellites, HumInt, SigInt, etc.
What we’re seeing in the Red Sea appears - at least to me - to some extent counter your arguments as to the effectiveness and utility of drones in an anti-shipping role.
DeleteThe Houthis - a fairly primitive bunch of people - are attacking US warships with home-made drones or missiles that cost - apparently around $2k apiece, and which carry an explosive payload of around 50kgs. Not enough to sink a warship, but enough to cause significant damage and potential casualties.
The Burkes are dealing with these attacks confidently and effectively with SM-6 missiles that cost around $2m apiece.
So - point 1 - a poor and unsustainable exchange rate for us.
Point 2 - as I understand the situation, we cannot replenish these missile stocks at sea.
Point 3 - our warships are going to exhaust their ability to defend themselves long before the Houthis run out of drones.
What then?
" appears - at least to me - to some extent counter your arguments as to the effectiveness and utility of drones"
DeleteWhen no one is trying to stop you, you can rob a bank with a toothbrush. That doesn't make the toothbrush a powerful weapon. It just means no one tried to stop you.
We're not trying to stop the drone attacks so, of course they work.
The Saudis have been trying to stop Houthi drone and missile strikes for years, with a conspicuous lack of success, despite having comprehensive access to US ISR, no shortage of weaponry and a complete absence of scruples when it comes to civilian casualties.
DeleteHow do you suggest we do a better job than the Saudis?
"How do you suggest we do a better job than the Saudis?"
DeleteI can't answer that because I haven't got the slightest idea what they've attempted. I simply know that missiles and UAVs can be easily and nearly instantaneously backtracked to their point of origin and a missile could hit the location within moments, if we were so inclined (counterbattery fire, basically). I also know that satellite surveillance could track and pinpoint activities, personnel, and locations. In a low threat environment, UAVs could provide continuous monitoring of possible launch sites. And so on.
There is much that could easily be done. What SA has done, I have no idea.
Well as you were suggesting that we’re in some way better able to stop these drone attacks than were the Saudis and their allies (fyi 25,000+ air strikes over nearly a decade, the use of hundreds of M1 Abrams tanks, access to the full suite of U.S., European and Israeli ISR, unlimited bribes paid to anyone and everyone who they thought could be bribed, close to a million civilian death and the destruction of entire cities, all leading merely to a comprehensive Saudi defeat), I assumed that you must have had some idea as to how we might set about this useful task.
Delete"some idea as to how we might set about this useful task."
DeleteI just described some of the many methods we have for dealing with this type of action. Did you not read?
To repeat, I have no idea what SA has, or has not, attempted and clearly you do not, either.
If you wish to comment further, please stick to relevant facts and offer something informative and useful.
>I simply know that missiles and UAVs can be easily and nearly instantaneously backtracked to their point of origin and a missile could hit the location within moments, if we were so inclined (counter battery fire, basically).
DeleteIn other contexts, you've suggested our radar capabilities are overestimated, but here you seem to assume their effectiveness. No naval radar even has any advertised counter-battery fire capability.
And... this really isn't comparable to a traditional counterbattery scenario at all. Counter battery fire works because:
1. The shells are easily detectable because they're big screaming hunks of metal that are following a ballistic path. A flock of low and slow flying drones, won't be so easily detected.
2. The speed involved is orders of magnitude different. A shell is traveling ~ 500m/s. A drone is traveling ~55m/s.
1+2 = 3. When a shell is detected, only seconds have elapsed from the moment it was fired and there is it's difficult to move the artillery that quickly (although it's done). All told, return fire can happen in 2-3 minutes.
With a drone, that doesn't seem feasible. Best case scenario is probably 2-3 minutes to recognize the threat even if we are looking (because again, no counter battery radar and harder to ID the targets). Then more minutes to fire back.
By which time, the guys who launched the drone from the back of their van are going to be long gone.
"No naval radar even has any advertised counter-battery fire capability."
DeleteAegis has the capability but no one has bothered to make the software connection between sensor and weapon. It could be manually done with a very short delay.
"In other contexts, you've suggested our radar capabilities are overestimated,"
Yes, as you noted, in other contexts. The other contexts being detecting stealth aircraft, detecting and tracking sea-skimming missiles, detecting aircraft at distance, engaging terminally maneuvering missiles with penetration aids, and so on. Detecting a basic UAV does not fall into that context.
One of Aegis' problems early on was reported to be that it detected swarms of insects rising from the ground and, at that time, wasn't programmed to recognize it for what it was. Detecting a basic UAV should be no problem.
I also listed a variety of means of detecting drones and missiles.
We know, quite closely, where these things are coming from so, if we wanted to pinpoint and destroy them, one simple solution would be to place long endurance UAVs over the area with missiles on call. It would make for a very short lifespan for the drone launchers.
Also, don't overlook the obvious electronic monitoring. These are, presumably, not $500M super-sophisticated drones with secure, encrypted, satellite comm links. They're almost certainly basic, ?line of sight?, easily detected comm/control links that can be instantly pinpointed and hit, as well as jammed/disrupted.
Knowing the general locations, there's always the option to insert Special Forces to track and destroy the drone operators, if we were serious about this.
As you say, we could never detect and prevent a guy with a $200 Amazon quadcopter from leaning out his window and launching it. Of course, it would have a range of near-zero and absolutely no payload so it wouldn't be a threat.
There's just no threat from these drones unless we allow them to be a threat. Do you really think we don't have pretty exact locations of the people shooting at us? If we don't, we're even more incompetent than the Russians and we've wasted colossal amounts of money on our weapon and sensor systems.
There have been no specifics released about the engagements so I can't be any more definitive.
I agree that there are no lessons to be here for the US or China. Both of our militaries are far, far more competent than what Ukraine or Russia have.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's worth noting there are lots of other countries on this world. Plenty of third world dictatorships out there that either can't train their troops (lacking resources) or simply don't trust them enough to give them the independent command that is necessary for modern warfare. For a tinpot dictatorship with a 3rd-rate army, there are plenty of lessons to be drawn.
There are plenty of lessons from this conflict for all levels of military but not the lessons that everyone seems to be jumping to. Most of the lessons for higher militaries are of the 'how not to' variety.
DeleteI’m unaware of any empirical evidence that our military is ‘far, far’ more competent than the military forces of either our Ukrainian friends or our Russian adversaries.
DeleteIf you have any such evidence, please do share..
"I’m unaware of any empirical evidence"
DeleteThen you're unaware of the state of militaries, in general.
The US can point to overwhelming success in Desert Storm as an example of competence in large scale conflicts. The US also regularly demonstrates a good grasp of world wide military logistics. Frequent large scale exercises, both internal and with foreign entities, further demonstrate basic doctrine and competence. Smaller scale unit ops and special forces ops are generally successful and competently executed. The Navy is struggling but even they have very high end submarine and carrier forces that routinely deploy around the world and stay operationally current. And so on.
China is conducting an endless series of large scale, realistic training exercises (better than the US, from what I can glean). Their forces are modern, well trained, and well motivated with some excellent equipment.
In short, all indications are that the US and China militaries are far above the competency levels of Ukraine or Russia.
Your comment was sophomoric, at best. In the future, try to offer something substantial and positive rather than useless and argumentative or, if you can't do that, refrain from commenting.
Russia's aircraft have gotten more effective lately because of inexpensive glide bombs. They aren't nearly as accurate as a JDAM but they are still ~2000 lb bombs landing within a few hundred meters of a target. And they can launch them from a distance that avoids Ukrainian surface to air batteries. Before the rockets and gravity bombs they were using were mostly ineffective and put the aircraft at risk.
ReplyDeleteUkraine's main hope for the old F-16s they are getting is to better counter the glide bomb angle, then maybe they can launch some of their own (or we give them more JDAMs).
Also worth pointing out a few examples that show that insurgency isn’t always that effective. The Tamil Tigers were completely destroyed when the government took the gloves off. And the current Israeli invasion of Gaza also showcases that. If you turn every building to rubble, shoot anyone who moves in the exclusion zone, and fill tunnels full of sea water then there isn’t much room for insurgency.
ReplyDeleteIf the gloves off approach is too much then it’s probably not worth being involved.
East of the Dnieper it’s flat steppe land. Huge open country broken up by a few belts of birch and spruce plantations. The people are almost exclusively ethnic Russians, or Russian speakers.
DeleteHard to imagine a landscape less suited to a successful insurgency.
"East of the Dnieper"
DeleteI have no idea what point you're trying to make, if any. Please clarify.
To be honest this war is not unique at all and really is going exactly how one would expect given a knowledge of military history and the current state of technological advancement vs the participants' weapons inventories. It was entirely predictable that Russia could do a lightning armored advance deep into Ukraine and given the knowledge of how many infantry Russia initially dedicated to the "SMO" and that Ukraine wouldn't be intimidated into surrender, it was entirely predictable that the war would grind down into a stalemate of trenches. Much of what you're calling incompetence though is simply a logical adaptation to the situation that Russia and Ukraine now find themselves in. Much of doctrine has to be abandoned because it was written under certain assumptions that don't hold true in this war such as the sheer quantity of recon drones and NATO ISR assets that can't be shot down without massively escalating the war.
ReplyDelete"To be honest this war is not unique at all and really is going exactly how one would expect"
DeleteI'm sorry but NO ONE predicted this course of events, myself included. You're speaking purely from hindsight.
You then contradict yourself by stating,
"Much of doctrine has to be abandoned because it was written under certain assumptions that don't hold true in this war"
You're flat out acknowledging that this war is unique after having started by saying it's not unique! Well, which is it?
"Much of what you're calling incompetence though is simply a logical adaptation to the situation that Russia and Ukraine now find themselves in."
No, I called it incompetence at the very beginning of the war when Russia failed to properly execute a valid armored thrust (no reinforcements and no logistical support), failed to execute a simple air assault, and on and on. What I'm calling incompetence was military incompetence, evident from day one.
The incompetence continues to this day with Russia failing to defend against simple surface and aerial drones, expending armored vehicles in slow moving, unsupported, isolated actions, and on and on. This is not adaptation, it's incompetence.
"NATO ISR assets that can't be shot down without massively escalating the war."
There is nothing preventing Russia from shooting down any asset, NATO or otherwise, in a war zone. NATO isn't going to war over a few ISR assets that were over a war zone they shouldn't have been in.
I have to say, this was a really low quality comment. Do better or refrain from commenting.
Of course I can't prove it to you but I predicted this general sort of situation emerging from a conventional fight between two relatively modern militaries to people personally for several years prior to this war. We are ruled by idiots though who seem to know and care very little about history or technology so of course they come to terrible conclusions
DeleteThe NATO assets don't fly over Ukraine, they fly over the black sea, or other neutral places or are satellites feeding Ukraine information. You're statement that NATO won't go to war over Isr assets is just a guess and a bad one since they are already in a proxy war anyways. There is a multitude of retaliation options and the question Russia is asking itself is can they afford to roll the dice on that retaliation
Delete"I can't prove it to you but I predicted this"
DeleteSure you did. Now, do you have anything worthwhile to offer the discussion?
"You're statement that NATO won't go to war over Isr assets is just a guess and a bad one"
DeleteDo you follow military matters at all? It would seem not. The US has ignored force downs and seizures of aircraft (Chinese seizure of EP-3, for example), shoot down of drones by Iran, seizure of UUVs by China, seizures of ships by Iran and NKorea, unsafe encounters by Russian and Chinese ships and aircraft, physical ramming by Russian ships, seizures and mining of merchant ships by Iran, direct missile and drone attacks by Yemen/Houthis, and on and on. If none of those elicited war by the US/NATO, I don't think attacks on surveillance assets operating too close to a war zone are going to do anything.
All Russia has to do is declare an exclusion zone around Ukraine, the Black Sea, or anywhere else and then we operate at our own risk.
You seem to have authored a recent spate of low quality, uninformative, unhelpful comments. I think it's time for that to end. Fair warning.
It isn't unique in that it clearly is following a pattern of previous wars but now that certain new technologies are available it is slightly different but only different in the ways that one can easily predict knowing what tech has changed. Doctrine was developed to fight a A type war, but situation B evolved and since the people in charge either were incapable or chose not to do their jobs they now have a B type war that they weren't adequately prepared for.
ReplyDelete"only different in the ways that one can easily predict"
DeleteDespite this easy predictability, you then write,
"Much of doctrine has to be abandoned because it was written under certain assumptions that don't hold true in this war"
So, which is it? Is it easily predictable or not? You've claimed both.
Honestly, you're wasting my time and the blog's space. Offer something worthwhile or refrain from commenting. I'm not going to allow this kind of pointless comment to continue. Fair warning.
"as long as you’re willing to thoroughly test the conclusion under the conditions you anticipate fighting and are willing to accept the results"
ReplyDeleteBut that's the real problem here, isn't it? That the USN has not been willing to test ideas thoroughly and under the conditions that are anticipated as fighting under? The interwar Fleet Problems demonstrated that the USN had some good ideas and some very bad ones, and the lessons learned unquestionably helped win WWII.
We need something like the Fleet Problems or even the RN's Springtrain on an annual basis. And we need snior naval officers who are more interested in winning wars than in saving their careers and protecting their rice bowls.
One lesson that our navy has seemingly forgotten is mitigating the problem of mine fields with proper mine hunting /removal . I recall you had a post on this, where a foreign mine hunting /mitigation system could show some promise.
ReplyDeleteThe USN has not taken mine warfare seriously for decades. What's needed is some way to sweep mines (probably using helos or drones) for quick clearance to some acceptable risk level, and some way to hunt and destroy mines for complete clearance. I've proposed two types of MCM vessels, a drone/helo mother ship like a small LSD/LPD for the sweep part, and a minehunter for the hunt part. I also like ComNavOps's suggestion that I have called wild walrus, of sending a number of underwater vehicles through the area you wish to clear, programmed to go to anything that might be a mine and rather than waste time with classification, simply blow it up.
Delete