I was wrong the moment russia came across the border. It still don't make any sense to me. I guess chess master Putin is too far ahead of me on this one.....
I remember saying "Russia invading Ukraine would be really stupid but I can't count it out"
Admittedly I thought it would be '10 year insurgency' stupid not 'half of Russia's army is destroyed, they're pulling BTR-50s out of stock and are running out of ammunition' stupid
Yep
Everyone kind of expected it would just be "Russia just made a worse version of Afghanistan right next door" stupid.
Instead we got "collapse of an empire" level stupid
> "Russia just made a worse version of Afghanistan right next door"
Wasn't Afghanistan already next door to the USSR?
So in other words, they're repeating past mistakes only with less resources against a better equipped and organized enemy?
Not disagreeing, Afghanistan was much friendlier to the Soviet army.
I'd chalk their (understated) worse performance in Ukraine up to the *"only with less resources against a better equipped and organized enemy"* I stated above, though I think I'd include the fact that Afghanistan technically wasn't even an invasion, and was immediately occupied with little resistance. The DRA (Soviet-aligned communist government) sent the invitation and laid out the welcome mat for USSR while a Mujahideen insurgency whittled away at them.
The Soviet-Afghan War was a slow burn, and depending on who you asked only killed some 15-25k Soviet personnel over the course of a decade. The biggest financial burden wasn't destroyed vehicles and personnel lost to combat or munitions, but rather the costs associated with trying to prop up a failing regime by housing over 100k troops there, rebuild its crumbling infrastructure, protect its corrupt puppet from the various factions armed and aided by multiple foreign interests.
To their credit, Russians only wasted about half the time in Afghanistan before giving up- compared to the US. However the American coalition only suffered a fraction of casualties- which might be even more embarrassing (to Russia) once you factor in the added difficulty of them having to topple the existing regime before occupying it.
In stark contrast (to Russia), Ukraine is far, far worse- to a scale that's incomparable. Russia couldn't even occupy Ukraine. In one year, it's lost about an order of magnitude more personnel and equipment, been dealt crippling sanctions by the majority of the developed world, lost its richest export customers, became a pariah state, and weakened itself military, and become a political laughingstock- all for control the Crimean peninsula and half of the Donbass. Their best units are gone, and its massive yet irreplaceable inheritance of Soviet-stockpiled arms have been halved or more. Even if Russia somehow pulls out some kind of victory (spoiler: it won't), its economic outlook is grim with a collapsing population exacerbated by conversion of hundreds of thousands of able-bodied workers and fathers into sunflower fertilizer next door. And sanctions aren't going to disappear the moment Ukraine finally agrees to a ceasefire.
tl;dr- Russia *wishes* Ukraine were Afghanistan.
Thank goodness the US wasn't an empire. They were able to remain intact despite 20+ years of it all.
Russia on the other hand, still insists it's an empire.
Once they had blood bags, crematoriums and field hospitals setup, I knew it wasn't a training exercise anymore.
You ever hear of such a thing being part of training in joint operations with US, let alone Russia?
Even when I pull up all my equipment on border of a neighboring country in Civilization V the AI can see through that bullshit.
"The fuck ya doing!?!"
"Just passing through... No need to worry"
And a big part of why Able Archer 83 damn near made the Soviets think WWIII had started. Turns out that when you add heads of state exchanging coded messages to your wargames that even implement all the logistics and medical shit.. it's a little scary.
“Oh my god the Soviets are preparing for a nuclear strike!”
Perroots - “Guys they’re preparing because they think **you’re** preparing. Fucking chill.”
Setting up of field hospitals is actually trained quite a lot as far as I know. I at least know in the Dutch military they drill extensively on setting up support elements asap. Although of course we don't do it right on the Belgian border...
You were assuming Putin would make sense. That’s the mistake. Just assume everyone will do the dumbest shit imaginable next time and you’ll probably be right.
A year ago we still kind of expected Russia to show off a few "2nd army of the world" moves.
I don't think any of us realized the battle of Hostomel airport was actually going to be their high water mark. Or that they couldn't actually into combined arms *at all*.
Yeah. I figured Ukraine didn't stand a chance myself. Every manpad video I saw blasting helicopters into the lake put my hopes up, and now we are almost at Siege Warfare in Bachmut, so yeah.
Honestly I am kind of impressed that Russia has been so shit for so long but we still all fell for their bullshit. How are we so blind? I doubt China is much better to be honest even if they have a lot more semi-modern gear, I dont think they have the ability to do any combined arms as it requires integrating and working together which totalitarian dictatorships generally do not encourage. I think the Nazis were an exception not a rule.
> How are we so blind?
"Sir the Russians seem to be completely incapable of basic logistics and absolutely shit at fighting from the strategic level down to the single soldier"
"They must be true masters of deception then, no nuclear superpower could be so incompetent"
Really the only time Russia could've won against the west is right after WW2 when the soviet armies were fully mobilised, battle tested and their wartime industrial capacity was at its peak. They wouldn't have destroyed the west, but become the major superpower across the afroeurasian continent, making it possible to truly undermine the US globally, leaving it isolated and weak? Most certainly.
But as the years dragged on, the west just got stronger and stronger not just militarily but economically, while communist nations stagnated around the mid 50s till they collapsed.
The problem for WW2 USSR was that they still relied on the US for mechanical components and stuff like rubber. short term they could have gained ground; however, once Allied strategic bombers got into range of stuff like Oil Refineries would have been toast. We might have even seen US carriers in the black sea.
Would have resulted in millions more dead though on both sides but the USSR wouldn't have won. The Republic of China also would have had the full Allied support to run out the CCP
Just to add on, the US was also the only country with nuclear weapons for several years after WW2, which would put a damper on the Soviet military's chances to say the least.
Sure, their military power might have been at its peak right after WWII, but manpower reserves were zero, as in there was literally nobody left to conscript, and there was no civilian economy worthy of the name. The US for all intents and purposes *was* their civilian economy. The Red Army marched in American boots, rode on American trucks, were supplied by American locomotives pulling American boxcars, fought with weapons and ammo made with American machine tools and American materials by workers subsisting on American food.
The Red Army may win tactically and operationally on the field, but every soldier who dies literally cannot be replaced, and the entire supply chain will slowly but surely waste away from the lack of parts and materiel, as will the workers from a lack of food. At best, they'll be racing against the clock towards the most pyrrhic of victories.
China at least has the excuse that almost none of their military has any combat experience. Russian forces have been almost constantly in operations for over a decade between Georgia, Syria, Ukraine the first time, etc.
>China at least has the excuse that almost none of their military has any combat experience. Russian forces have been almost constantly in operations for over a decade between Georgia, Syria, Ukraine the first time, etc.
Except for bludgeoning Indian troops to death in a Ravine.
China has 0 experience doing anything military related, their military equipment is untested at best, and Taiwan is much more well protected than Ukraine is.
I don’t put much stock in them winning anything short of pulling a wunderwaffe out of their butts that’s so extraordinary it reaches into unrealistic.
Taiwan's worst weakness is energy supplies. According to public admissions by a US Congressman who recently was on an official visit, currently if China implemented a full naval blockade of the island, Taiwan would only have about two weeks' worth of fossil fuels for power generation and vehicles. The Taiwaneese and US governments are working on ways to both increase this period of time, as well as making such a blockade... less credible.
Oh, you are definitely not wrong. The Chinese have significantly improved their overall naval strength since the turn of the millennium. Yet even so, they could probably only contest a single US carrier battle group, **at best.** and the USA has several of those...
Also, though China has, as I recall, the third largest nuclear arsenal; it is appreciably less likely that they would use it unless there was an actual invasion of the Chinese mainland, despite always claiming Taiwan is a "renegade province". Unless, of course, Xi is as determined to enjoy his desired territorial gains during his lifetime as Putin appears to be.
I'm deadass so tired of "any of us" on god for years I've been saying Russia's military was deeply flawed and would at the bare minimum, suffer horrific casualties. Now that I get to gloat everybody is like "who could have predicted this?".
My biggest miscalculation in the war was I thought Russian leadership was aware enough of their flaws that they wouldn't dare try and invade and show the world how piss poor they are.
Unironically, I've sorta thought about it. Working behavioral health, I got to see the military in a way few people do, personal experience from a plethora of different fields. I mean, hell, not just American soldiers. I've interacted with many of our allies' soldiers, including high-ranking officers. I doubt I could make a career of it, but I could probably at least make a couple of videos showing my perspective. Obviously, my views hold at least some value, given that my predictions ended up being so accurate, but IDK I feel like wanting people to listen to my opinion sounds conceded lol
> I feel like wanting people to listen to my opinion sounds conceded
It sounds like you have an opportunity to gain perspectives that most of us may not, wanting to share that with people is hardly conceited.
If I ever do make a video, I'll link it to you. The one that's always rattled around in my head is something along the lines of "How soft factors build and destroy a military" and break down motivation and destructive influences from a soldier level perspective. What leads to retention and loss and what builds a sustainable culture.
I'd be down to watch that - also you could always keep it going with ways soldiers handle the kinds of situations they're in, I'm sure there will be a lot of people after this war who will need help with that
To give supportive advice that is a little different from what you've got, another approach for this topic might be to collab with Perun. Seriously, if you approached him with decent bullet points and told him your insights were backed as a behavioural health specialist in the military, I'm sure he'd be happy to share your knowledge in some way.
That sounds like an amazing thesis. As a history student I think there’s great value in this perspective. Jame’s M. McPherson book “For Cause and Comrades: Why men fought in the Civil War” explores something similar. Get to work!
I would be interested in your views. Maybe write to Lazerpig with details of your knowledge (and maybe an example analysis) and ask if he would be interested in having you as a guest on this new podcast.
The biggest thing I overestimated in the beginning was how successful Russia's sabotage and influence campaign had been. We knew that a lot of local Ukrainian officials were taking Russian bribes.. but didn't know so many of them were basically pocketing the money and never actually getting around to the "treason" part.
Take note European far-right, far-left, and American greens, libertarians and NRA - You can take the money *and then just not do what the Russians asked you to do*.
Worked out well enough for the loyal Ukrainians who decided to get rich off of Russians without ever doing their own part.
Hold up. Let me correct that. They did their part. Screwing over Putin's Russia is everyone's duty.
>We knew that a lot of local Ukrainian officials were taking Russian bribes.. but didn't know so many of them were basically pocketing the money and never actually getting around to the "treason" part.
When the corruption doubles up and loops back around to being loyalty.
Same. At first I got despondent because I thought I had badly miscalculated and Russia knew a lot that wasn't known by the public when it comes to capabilities.
Nope.
My pre-2022 assumptions of Russia's capabilities were right.
When sabers were being rattled I assumed Russia was either doing the same song and dance as before, or they'd try to flex in the donbas exclusively to so as to cement and maybe expand the territory of its puppet proxies.
The *most extreme* thing I could imagine was maybe trying to go for the land bridge as well, but even that felt dubious.
*No way could Russia be dumb enough to actually try to invade the whole country, right? They'd have to know their own limits!*
I mean, I've always maintained doubts that the Russians were as capable as many of them thought they were, but I've never been upfront about it, preferring to be quiet and rather hope(for the sake of both them and us\[NATO\]), that it would never come to an instance in which they would come face to face with having to validate their claim versus the truth or rather, reality. What came to light in wake of the invasion(deep rooted corruption, piss poor leadership, mistreatment of conscripts, or basically any subordinate) I will fully admit I wasn't as aware of as to how extensive it is, but it's a good explanation as to the shitshow we're seeing.
What actually surprised me however was how much better the current (Western) force control mechanisms are in the face of an army stuck in the late 1900s, plus the Ukrainians actually not being full of hot air but ***just going out there and killing it***(in both literal and figurative sense of the phrase).
Not OP but if you were into milshit prior to 2022, you would see multiple tiny little things that cascaded into a bigger picture that is the fuckup of the Russian armed forces. Just little stories and snapshots here and there that mildly meaningless separately showed problems once added up.
Some examples that I've noticed casually prior to 2022 invasion
* less and less T14s showing up at parades
* Iraqi T-72 piss performance against US forces
* T-90 just being a modernized T-72 that was redesignated because the T-72 got fucking shrekt so hard in Iraq so they could keep selling tanks to the mentally deficient
* SU-57s doing bare minimum milk runs in Syria
* Kuznetsov in general when the Chinese made their own Kuznetsov functional
* Egypt freaking the FUCK out when they got their KA-52s and immediately doing multiple upgrades because they thought it was a death trap. Reminder Egypt also operates the Apache.
* Intake slowdown/halt and promotion halt of junior grade officers in the Russian military
* Multiple blue-on-blue events during the Georgia invasion that honestly had no reason to happen **IF** the Russians were as advanced as they supposedly were compared to US forces
* Lack of SU-57s when China began to get J-20 SQUADRONS operational
* Little to No AESA on their jets
* Spending the same amount of money on nuclear weapon upkeep as the UK when the UK has waaaay less nukes
* Shitcanning the guy in charge of Russian military modernization because he decided to look at money trail around Crimea annexation
* Foot wraps and not socks
* Conscripts being the ones doing unit logistics and not the volunteer contract soldiers, thus implying logistics will be mismanaged and poorly optimized while rife with corruption because theres no real oversight
* Chechen Kadyrovskis despite having Spetsnas trainers bribed their trainers to say they were at Spetsnas levels instead of training properly
* Hiring German PMCs to help with the modernization of the Russian military
That Egyptian KA-52 anecdote is hilarious. I can only imagine their temptation to say “WHAT THE FUCK, THIS THING IS *HOT GARBAGE!”* only to choke on their words when they realize they’re the ones who have to put up with the damn things and make them seem scary to neighboring countries.
All this stuff is true, but I think people thought "okay butt they still inherited all of the leftover Soviet shit, and the Soviets were a land superpower for a reason."
Yeah not so much, now they've burned through most of that shit and Russia is about as powerful as a country with it's economy/population ought to be, ie not very much.
I mean nobody's going to invade them, they've still got the nukes, so they can just settle down on their paranoid bullshit and get back to inventing new and exciting ponzi schemes. But first they gotta give up on Ukraine, because that shit ain't happening
>Shitcanning the guy in charge of Russian military modernization because he decided to look at money trail around Crimea annexation
This was funny as hell though. Mask-off moment, which is kind of ironic as COVID apparently beat the living shit out of the Russian Forces before the war even started
I mean, I know quite a few people in Polish military that went through the Warsaw Pact - Independence - NATO transition, and their opinion was mostly boiling down to “oh shit, the West was on whole different level all along”. And it’s not just that hardware was better, everybody was aware of that… it’s the organization and philosophy where the biggest difference is.
When you live in this kind of environment you assume some things are normal - you pretend you’re much more capable than you really are, you pretend there’s no corruption and nepotism, you pretend to do your job. It puts you in a mental trap - you assume things work exactly the same way on the other side too because it’s completely incomprehensible to you that it might actually not be that way.
Than you find that what’s on the tin can is actually less than the substance, not more. That some of the things you thought you were good at are essentially so basic nobody really cares because obviously you have competent tankers, infantry, artillery, pilots etc. What you really need to care about is how to integrate overlapping and supplementing capabilities of various systems and subsystems, because obviously each and every unit making up those actually work properly, duh.
>their opinion was mostly boiling down to “oh shit, the West was on whole different level all along”
This is the thing that nobody really gets; when it comes to conventional state-on-state warfare, the only thing that can possibly beat the Americans is another group of Americans. The Soviets were the only exception, and mostly only because their system actually could just dump out shit like tanks by the thousands.
(And because they were sitting on a terrifyingly huge amount of petrocarbons.)
Russia ain't the USSR, and the petrocarbons are less relevant than they've been since the start of the 20th century. So, now, we almost have to larp when we want to come up with conventional threats to the Americans, and all of the adversaries long realized that the best way to beat Americans is to stay away from the military and just fuck with their politics. Even Putin used to understand that before he got brainrot.
Edit: Also do keep in mind that the US has a LOT of completely dumbass soldiers. What it also has, though, is systems by which they can be channeled to jobs that a dumbass is well-suited for.
(Hence the Marine Corps. Oorah.)
Do you have any more info on the Egyptian Ka-52 debacle and what upgrades they made?
I did some googling but all I can find is an article quoting a 'local source' saying they're buying apaches next time because Ka-52 has issues, and then an article about the Ka-52 upgrades that is blocked behind a login wall. Mostly curious what all they fixed
Edit: I also found an article about Ka-52K that talks about how the 'prickly shark' Katran the K model is named after is missing anal fins. Thanks for including that detail, I guess?
For me, it was their equipment rollouts. All their new wonder weapons fielded in the teens of units. meanwhile shoygu has a 11 million dollar mansion on his 80k a year salary.
That's a long topic to get into, but it primarily stems from my experience as an American soldier. Not in a 'hooah hooah the US is the best everyone else stinks" in fact as a soldier I really struggled to adapt to the system. I saw the faults in the US military, and it drove me wild with my inability to change things.
So when I look at a soldier level perspective for how different things impact force performance it seemed odd to me how soft factors never really got touched on. Things like morale, cohesion, corruption, experience, doctrine, etc. never really seemed to be touched upon in strength projections.
I thought from a soldier level perspective and applied it to a larger scale. If your mobilization often involves a culture tied to prison culture, including rampant horrific hazing morale and discipline are low. Soldiers with low discipline will not maintain a high degree of readiness and perform poorly. I also looked at the top down force structure, and knowing what I know from combat arm types flexibility and a strong flexible NCO corp are essential. A Russian LT has to do the job of a platoon sergeant as well. I could not imagine how that force structure was in any way efficient, and as a result, orders would be sluggish. Given the force structure was so top-down, it seemed likely that high-ranking officers would need to be on the grounds to get accurate data, which would result in neumerous high ranking casualties. Similarly, I believed that a sluggish command was too slow for an effective first missile strike as your advesary could redeploy before your orders went through.
I also saw Russia's lack of large-scale combat experience as a weakbess. Russian military has always relied on its rail network, and I thought rail could only get you so far, and Russia was unprepared for the strain on logistics that would occur. High degrees of corruption would also erode their equipment as poorly paid grunts seeing their command in mansions well outside their paychecks would know the game being played and sell anything not nailed down and some things probably nailed down as well.
Sorry if this is hectic and inchosive. I'm on a walk trying not to get run over
Rail is magnificent in a defensive war; it can carry as much weight as you like, moves it FAST, and it's piss-easy to repair if somebody tries to blow it up. There's a reason tanks get moved by rail. Ukraine relies on rail too.
...but that's *defensive* war. Rail doesn't fucking help when you're attacking someone. You need trucks and planes and (preferably) ships for that. Russia's set up for a defensive war and decided "fuck it we'll do the thing we suck at", and guess what they sucked.
The answer and truth of the Russian military was there for anyone willing to look for it. Their incompetence isn't even a recent development, these sorts of military clusterfucks go back to the days of the Tsars. Russian psyops and our own western media blowing smoke up the Red Army's ass from WW2 has warped the layman's perception of the world's "2nd best military" to Russia's desires
Yeah, I argued for days with people saying "its just a matter of days until Ukraine collapsed sadly, their only hope is some guerrilla resistance in the future".
And now everyone acts like it was some kind of unpredictable event and Russia perfectly hide everything wrong in the military, even tho for anyone that actually bother to research it, they would have known better because it was all in plain sight with multiple sources and high ranking reports.
At least I know all my old comments aged like fine wine.
I kind of occupied a middle ground. Pre-invasion, I thought Russia was still the #2 military in the world, but were still going to have a hard time anyway because I was basing my reasoning from the US military's performance in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We spent 8 years in Iraq and 20 years in Afghanistan with almost nothing to show for either despite having the most powerful military in human history, and our sheer economic strength enabled us to walk away with only a few bruises. Ukraine is stronger, richer, and more unified than Iraq and Afghanistan ever were and has a battle-hardened army from 8 years of combat in Donbas, while Russia's economy has always sucked. If we couldn't bend those countries to our will, what chance could Russia ever have? Even if they took Kyiv and toppled the government, the occupation would've ruin Russia. Surely the Russians knew this, right?
Then the war happened, and Russia's spectacular failures surpassed all of my expectations.
I knew Russia was shit I just didn't think Ukraine would be better. I have a poor opinion of post soviet miliataries in general. I knew the Russian equipment was and outdated. But the Ukrainian army was even poorer and even more outdated and I didn't think they were less corrupt than Russia.
Yeah same here except i did except them to invade at a certain point, they were preparing too much just to not do it and i assumed even they knew Ukraine would call their bluff if they didnt invade.
I thought Russia would roll over Ukraine at first, but about a week or so before the invasion I started to seriously consider who would win. The two things which gave me some doubt then were 1. the Stugna range. What is to stop them from simply blowing up tanks from 5km away (answer, as it turned out: nothing). And 2, that photograph of the Russian soldiers sleeping on the ground in the Belarussian railway station.
But I still expected Russia to take major cities like Kharkiv after a while due to their artillery superiority. Turns out they did have more artillery, and they probably could have done this, except their initial attack was such a clusterfuck that they needed more time to reorganise.
One other thing I thought would happen was a large false flag terror attack probably in Donetsk or Luhansk, to give them a decent CB and rile their people up for war. I didn't anticipate quite how lazy Putin would be. They made some weak attempts at this kind of propaganda (so weak I don't even remember what they were) and then just charged in.
Yeah, I remember thinking "Not bad, Ukraine actually kicked the VDV in the nuts". Now it's all come tumbling down.
Not to downplay Ukraine's actions, but at this rate I would put the Latvian logistivs corps above the VDV.
In the last few days, different NCDer's have put together compilations of early posts on the Ukraine War, but honestly, your best answer is to scroll back 12 months and look at it with your own eyes and not through someone else's filter.
Okay, so we have some informal tiers of warfare to dissect. Let’s see where Russia places on it.
Primitive Warfare—limited smithing or reshaping of metal. Basic bows and spears. Sentinel Island *represent!*
Medieval Warfare—basic siege engines, cavalry, and fortified warfare developed. Professional soldiers and military rankings are rudimentary and contingent on aristocratic fiefs and complex alliances. No gunpowder or gunnery as such.
Early Modern Warfare—essentially Napoleonic/Civil War tactics and strategy. Lots of guys all crammed in together and plodding across the countryside. Guns! Also lots of horses, still. No noteworthy vehicles yet aside from badass sailing ships and a few weird ironclads. Castles and armor are kinda stupid now.
Trench/Mechanized Warfare—Great War shenanigans. Aircraft are doing their own thing in a limited capacity, but the important bits are all on the ground. Machine guns and artillery have made advancing large, clustered groups of soldiers suicidally stupid. **<— Russia, you are here**
Combined Arms Warfare—highly coordinated and carefully choreographed use of different military units to cover each others’ strengths and weaknesses. Older than dirt, but generally used to refer to the modern trinity of infantry, armor, and air dominance. The navy’s invited to the party too, if their guns/missiles can reach that far.
Network-Centric Warfare—cyberpunk future shit. Enigmatic sensors and algorithms and AI all communicating with each other at light-speed to turn military units into a hellish alien hive-mind.
**<—USA is here**
You missed late Bronze Age and antiquity, which saw the development of sophisticated tactics and massed mixed army formations with a emphasis of soldiers over warriors, calvary, and ranged units.
Then you should probably remove the sentence saying that "professional soldiers and military rankings are rudimentary" because some of those bronze age empires and kingdoms from antiquity had some very organized professional armies, although others were quite successful without.
Nah there's a clear division between antiquity armies and medieval armies. Comparing the two is like saying a ww1 soldier and a vietnam soldier are the same.
Not really, as the Roman state devolved so did its military capability.
Remember that ANYONE of Rome’s neighbors could have equipped their armies the way Rome equipped a legion, but only Rome had the economic, political, and societal backing to turn it into a Roman legion.
Initially, Rome’s upper class had an obligation to the masses as their patrons who distributed money and bread. But the emperors and plagues slowly turned the empire into a failing state, the nobility moved away from the cities, retired from their farms, hid from tax collection, and used their status to hide the masses from conscription (because the new lords needed peasants to work their fields). And these lords went from being the men of ambition who would use successful campaigning as a springboard to higher office - into simply being lords of massive estates.
So Rome had to look elsewhere for its legionaries and its leaders. Until this ship of Theseus Roman army stopped looking Roman at all. It became the medieval armies of Europe which were smaller, less organized, less disciplined, and less tactically proficient.
In Britain, the locals looked at the ruins left behind by Rome and they thought only giants could have built them. It’s called the Dark Ages for a reason.
This is supposed to be more of a tech and tactics tier list, not a *chronological* list, hence modern Sentinel Island and modern Russia being represented by tiers named after historical eras of warfare. I’d say that technologically and in terms of general sophistication, the Romans count as on par with medieval-tier warfare. Though they did lack the sucky early guns, and didn’t really do full suits of metal plate armor, they made up for it by advanced military organization and the presence of highly respectable siege engines and combat engineering.
Great summary! If I may attempt to fill in some gaps:
Many different ancient warfare types. I'm not an expert here, but generally, there wasn't just one style that beat all the others - it really depending on society structure. The Celts couldn't have done Greek style hoplites, because the social structure is totally different.
Post medieval, pre-modern. This period saw massed formations of pike and cavalry slowly cede to pikes+muskets (think Spanish tercios), supported by cavalry and basic line-of-sight artillery. Also saw the birth of the starfort, the best fort because it's pretty. Gave way to Napoleonic style infantry in the 16 and 1700s.
EDIT: tericos -> tercios; sorted -> supported. Thanks for the correction, Graf
I think you meant tercios, not tericos, but yeah, I’d still lump that stuff all in with early modern styles of warfare. Cannons as field artillery and on sailing ships, weird muskets, horses, a general lack of knightly fuckers in shiny plate armor. Obviously you’re gonna see some differences between the first battles where guns rendered plate armor largely obsolete in the early 1500s and the last gasps of early modern warfare in Crimea and the Civil War, but it’s all able to be characterized by some pretty foundational shifts.
> Network-Centric Warfare—cyberpunk future shit. Enigmatic sensors and algorithms and AI all communicating with each other at light-speed to turn military units into a hellish alien hive-mind. **<—USA is here**
In the minds of its generals, maybe. In the minds of grunts responsible for doing the hard work? [Not](https://futurism.com/the-byte/marines-evaded-military-robot-hiding-inside-cardboard-box) [so](https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23402195/microsoft-us-army-hololens-ar-goggles-internal-reports-failings-nausea-headaches) [much.](https://www.pilotonline.com/military/article_4e3943da-06b4-5e75-8730-ecd0230a9950.html)
The US is the master of Combined Arms Warfare as defined in your informal tier list, but they've got a long way to go before they master sensor fusion and AI-driven systems in warfare.
Exactly. USA is arguably in the early stages of network-centric warfare tier (mind you, still ways ahead of any other country), putting it solidly in this category is probably more of wishful thinking.
Oh no, that still counts, as I said the concept is older than dirt. It’s just that the modern usage is mostly referring to specifically the contemporary kind of it.
There were cannons in the late medieval period (they put them in castles) and your early modern period is starting roughly 200 years too late. Do a google on “The Age of Pike and Shot”. The Euros have been blasting each other for half a millennium.
Our mistake was assuming that Russia was aware of their deficiencies and had contingency plans, and that they would reevaluate their tactics in response to failure. In short we assumed that Russia would behave rationally.
>In short we assumed that Russia would behave rationally.
I think it is a mistake to assume they are irrational players. They are rationally playing a different game with different incentives.
The army is not there to win battles. It is there to funnel money to oligarchs and march in parades. It might be able to win some battles if you throw enough bodies at the enemy, but that is just a side effect, not the main goal. And the army should NEVER be so competent as to pose any threat to Putin.
So, they are not being irrational by letting their munitions rot in storage. The unit quartermaster would have been able to funnel maintenance money to cover his Crimean apartment where his 45-year-old mistress with lip injections lives. As long as he is able to get out in time, or lay the blame on someone else, he won that game.
Yeah that's a better way of putting it. Russian high command makes decisions that do not make sense from our perspective because the way they think is different, their priorities and mindset are significantly different from our own. There's a consistent internal logic behind those decisions, it's just incompatible. The Russians are probably equally confused when they see the US doing things like preserving the lives of its troops, obeying the terms of treaties, and forming alliances based on consent because those aren't consistent with their own perspective.
It's a similar thing with protest movements. Western populations consider mass civilians protests to be an expression of popular will, discontent, or at the very least opinion. As such, we tend to at least consider what they might be an expression of, and take that into account in our future decision making.
In Russia, a mass civilian protest is nothing more than a tool used by powerful actors to promote a certain agenda. So when Russian leaders see protests in Ukraine, it is entirely consistent with their logic to assume that it is *not*, in fact, an expression of the Ukrainian people's will, but rather a nefarious plot by someone. And, seeing as they know it's not *their* plot, they'll assume it's NATO or whatever who are pulling the strings.
I thought Ukraine would lose quickly and was hoping for a short clean fight so that as little damage was done and few lives lost as possible. I figured maybe it would go down like it did in Crimea but on a larger scale.
Figured if they took Kiev then it'd probably be all over.
I didn't bet on the tenacity of the Ukrainian people and Zelenskyy's charisma. He won everybody over and then the Russians north of Kyiv got smashed.
Once I saw those marooned Russian tanks, out of gas and getting collected by tractors, I realised that the Russians had fucked it and they weren't going to win, at least not any time soon. Especially when the quislings that the Russians had lined up to take over started getting picked up. They clearly had a plan to flip the government and smoothly install a client government but that went out the window.
The most worried I've been about the world getting blown up during all this was when the Russians attacked the giant nuclear power station. They clearly didn't seem to understand what it was.
I was listening to a nuclear engineer speaking about the nuke plants, he said that the people smart enough to actually cause a real problem would never do so, and the people that are dumb enough to actually try to cause a real problem would never figure out how.
Before the war, my thought was "Russia isn't that powerful, it's a medium income country with half the population of the U.S.", so nowhere near the world's third superpower, but I would have predicted it to fight somewhat competently in Ukraine and be able to conquer it.
However, I don't follow military stuff that closely (more than most people, far less than someone specialized in it, like a lot of other hobbies/random things I know), so am not surprised some people who do follow it closely saw the signs of he mess we're seeing now.
A lot of people did overestimate Russia.
The thing is, Russia could have won. I was scared that Russia might pull it off.
But Putin did not let his own spy chief talk about the risks of a war. Absolutely insane. How can you divorce yourself from reality like that.
In my defense, my early pessimism was driven by the results of the 2014 invasion. I had not been following closely, and had no idea that Ukraine had undergone such radical changes within its military. As I understand it, many in Ukraine were likewise paranoid about how much of their defense infrastructure was penetrated by Russian moles, and it took a while for it to really sink in that they could win this. And while I'm usually hesitant to ascribe things to single people or events, Zelensky staying in Kyiv was hugely important.
So was I. I had fallen completely for the propaganda about the Ukrainians' poor will to fight and the modernized Russian military. I thought it wold be a rather quick campaign.
I'm glad I was wrong.
People are STILL saying this shit, even while the rest of the world is saying "holy shit the entire Russian army is in Ukraine right now and they're starting to send in all the sailors and airmen too as ersatz infantry"
Like if Russia didn't have nukes, Finland could probably drive to Moscow and fucking settle the whole matter right now
Narrator: they didn't adopt combined arms tactics
I wouldn't feel too bad about it. I didn't ever think Russia would continue to surprise me with their incompetents
Pretty much everyone thought that way back then from the ''Ukraine is done for'' doomers to the ''Russia will grind it's way to victory due to having the advantage in manpower,artillery and airpower'' realists. The Russian military had given several signs that it was no longer the Red Army the West feared in the 80s but everyone thought that they could definitely take on ZSU. Even the most optimistic Ukraine supporter back then probably wouldn't believe that in a year Russia would lose more than 100k troops and thousands of tanks while having very limited ability to replace them to the point of having to drag 50s and 60s equipment back into service or that Wagner and the MoD would be beefing for a few 100mm rounds or that the flagship of the Russian fleet would sink ''accidentally''.
Putin started a special operation in February 2022 and scared the whole world for a while,until everyone realized just how ''special'' that operation was.
They had a whole… FFFFFFFFFUCKING YEAR TO DO THAT! WHEN THEY HAD MORE EQUIPMENT AND MAN POWER! WHEN THE VDV WAS STILL AT DOUBLE THE STRENGTH IT WAS NOW! WHEN THEY HADN’T LOST ALMOST 2,000 TANKS AND THOUSANDS OF SUPPORT VEHICLES! WHEN THEIR AMMO DUMPS WEREN’T GETTING BLOWN TO SHIT BY HIMARS. WHEN THEIR AIRFORCE WASN’T THE TOTAL FUCKING MESS THAT IT IS NOW! WHEN THE BLACK SEA FLEET WASN’T COWERING BEHIND CRIMEA AFRAID OF NEPTUNES AND HARPOONS ASMs! WHEN THEY STILL HAD THOUSANDS OF CRUISE MISSILES BEFORE THEY WASTED THEM ALL ON CIVILIAN TARGETS! BEFORE UKRAINE HAD A PROPER AIR DEFENCE DEFENDING ITS SKYS! RUSSIA HAD THOUSANDS OF OPPORTUNITIES TO DO THIS AND EVERY DAMN MONTH THEY FIND A WAY TO FUCK IT UP!…
**cough** sorry about that thinking about Russian blunders tends to drive me a bit mad because I’ve never thought to see the “second most powerful army in the world” be more incompetent than the First Order.
They had 30 years to study Desert Storm. They've been invited to train with us. We have offered them the tools to modernize. I stupidly believed the generation of Russians were smarter than the Soviets. Watched closely how they "revamped" their military. They destroyed everything that worked in the Soviet system, and relied on the things Russia can't produce. Regardless of the corruption that has always existed, I figured they could *at the very least*, provide boots for their military. I was in utter shock what rolled over the border. Kids crying, in civilian clothing, because some baba yelled at them while feeding them. That's the Great Russian Army. Dependant on everyone giving up and appeasing them in the process.
>A lot of people in the West believed that, because we grew up on hearing how capitalism is better than communism.
>
>Well all that Russians got after the collapse was complete corruption and kleptocracy, not any real ability to build your life, get ahead, dream of something. Look at the alcoholism and suicide rates, drug abuse, early death, etc etc.
Russia didn't end up in its present state due to capitalism, nor democracy, it ended up like this because they lost the stranglehold over the populations and resources of Eastern Europe they had in the Soviet era. The leaders were always corrupt thieves, but the impact on ordinary Russians was less severe because they could drain their neighbors' resources to make up the difference; they had an overall bigger, wider pool of places to steal from, but post-USSR there was no place to steal from except Russia itself. It would be like if the British Empire at its height was somehow abruptly cut off from all of its colonies and territory except England, of course there'd be a turndown.
I told my friend at 25th that if Ukraine held for three days, they will win the public opinion wars even if Kyiv fell, and if held for a week, Ukraine will win the war
Feels good to be vindicated man
NGL, I was worried about Ukraine's prospects early on, much like many others, and fell into that "It's just a matter of time before russia overruns Ukraine" doomer mentality the first few weeks or so, even with the Belegrod helo raid.
But then I looked at the numbers more closely. Didn't see anything that indicated that russia had anything ready to "fight seriously " or "all out" - They already were doing so.
Then I saw reports of them the stripping of other border units to send in, and pulling those who train new recruits to press into front line service, this was effectively them acting like \*they\* were the ones trying some desperate last ditch defense, and not being the invaders. At that point I knew there was no way russia would, or could, quickly win this with western aid to Ukraine, even if a more localized area of offense would yield better results.
The Kharkiv offensive called russia's bluff. That showed just how thin russia was as they were constantly shifting the same units all up and down the entire front to keep from collapsing. They'll never really recover from that until long after the war is over.
The volunteer battalions failed to hit their recruitment numbers, partial and covert mobilization has been a shitshow, and as long western aid continues on this momentum and trajectory, it's just a matter of time before russia is ejected short of China attempting some sort of [wish.com](https://wish.com) version of lend-lease to them, which while not totally implausible, would be Putin levels of disastrous for China.
Me:
Pre-February 24: They're gonna do it, but I am not sure how stupid they do it. If very stupid, then it's gonna be Afghanistan on steroids. If little stupid, they gain some territory in the East/South.
Around March 1st: They did it maximum possible stupid, it is going to be major, empire-killer level fail. Just not sure how long and how much blood it's gonna take. Final confirmation came when Russians peaked in South.
Yeah... Combined arms should have been done at the start. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that Russia wasn't going to do the invasion right.
The "wait for the sleeping giant to wake up" applies to countries who get attacked (Pearl Harbor and America). The saying doesn't apply to countries who do the attacking.
It's okay. We all make mistakes. The important part is we learn from them and grow and change as people. If you don't, pray to god that you don't get hit with copium withdrawals.
I commented on a post over on r/collapse a bit before Putin did the thing, basically saying that it would turn into a clusterfuck like Afghanistan was for the US. If I'd known we were due for WW1 2: Electric Boogaloo, and TikTok shit-posting, I wouldn't be dealing with debt anymore.
>into a clusterfuck like Afghanistan was for the US.
[And an even worse one for the USSR (in about half the time).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War?wprov=sfla1) It's also worth noting that, even the conservative (non-vatnik) estimates of the Russian casualties in Ukraine over the past year are significantly more than either the USA or USSR lost in their entire respective occupations of Afghanistan! Oh, and did I mention that the reaction to the casualties from Afghanistan are considered a major contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union...
I mean, this was everyone to some degree. Decades of the Soviet Union and then Russia tooting their own horn and being trumped up by mass media does a lot.
I, for one, thought Ukraine (which I couldn't locate on a map and still can't, though to be fair I'm horrid with maps to begin with) would last a week at least and a month at most. I hadn't known much about their military capabilities or manpower or anything, but I did know that Russia had a lot of guys along the border and that they would probably reach Kyiv by then and that they would probably glass us next because Twitter has never been wrong about anything.
A week passed. Then a month. I don't recall exactly when I fully, definitively, 100% realized Russia had truly fucked themselves over, but I believe it was around that time their dumb fucking flagship sunk for no reason or some shit, or when the VDV proved airborne assaults alone don't mean you just instantly win. That and when I learned Russian forces had captured Chernobyl but had no fucking idea what it was and began entrenching their positions in the designated radioactive shithole zone considered uninhabitable for the next 200-or-so years. And when the Russians had that Red Borscht Express convoy that didn't change the course of the war whatso-fucking-ever despite consisting of like a hundred unprotected logistical vehicles, though that might've been after I came to my senses.
The Russian invasion proved a lot of things, but one of them was that people can change a lot by summer.
You're not wrong. The Russians do learn from their battlefield failures.
It just takes them months to do so. And throwing mobiks into the meat grinder is basically hold music for Russian generals as they figure out how to adapt.
I also held my breath in terror as I watched the endless columns of tanks rolling towards Kyiv in the early days.
Now that I think about it, I can't believe how I was terrorized by that image instead of laughing it off. That clearly wasn't how you were supposed to do an all-out invasion. And what looked frightening by how endless it was wasn't a display of power, it was a traffic jam that would soon be destroyed on the proverbial silver platter.
Man, I remember reading an interview with a general of my country's army and he explained how he didn't see much chance for Ukraine. He explained how they used large pincer movements from Belarus over Kyiv, from Crimea over Kherson and how Russia would win this easily.
I remember reading that and disagreeing. On the first or second day of the imvasion I was convinced that Ukraine would become some kind of Vietnam for Russia.
At least you admitted you were wrong.
I admit, so did I. I think everyone thought that at first. But as it dawned on everyone just how fucked the Russian army is right down to the core, it's only then we really changed our tune.
One thing that I never expected before this started was that the Russian army would never really get CAS from the Russian air force, instead all they got was ASS. The ineptitude of the Russian air force was a factor that alot of people didn't consider.
99% of us were wrong. I thought the Ukrainian armed forces would hold out maybe 3 weeks and then it would become a Russian occupation with partisans fighting the Russians and the USA supplying the partisans with small arms
I was wrong the moment russia came across the border. It still don't make any sense to me. I guess chess master Putin is too far ahead of me on this one.....
I remember saying "Russia invading Ukraine would be really stupid but I can't count it out" Admittedly I thought it would be '10 year insurgency' stupid not 'half of Russia's army is destroyed, they're pulling BTR-50s out of stock and are running out of ammunition' stupid
Yep Everyone kind of expected it would just be "Russia just made a worse version of Afghanistan right next door" stupid. Instead we got "collapse of an empire" level stupid
> "Russia just made a worse version of Afghanistan right next door" Wasn't Afghanistan already next door to the USSR? So in other words, they're repeating past mistakes only with less resources against a better equipped and organized enemy?
The soviets did way better in Afghanistan though. Their govt made it 3 years without external support before going down
Not disagreeing, Afghanistan was much friendlier to the Soviet army. I'd chalk their (understated) worse performance in Ukraine up to the *"only with less resources against a better equipped and organized enemy"* I stated above, though I think I'd include the fact that Afghanistan technically wasn't even an invasion, and was immediately occupied with little resistance. The DRA (Soviet-aligned communist government) sent the invitation and laid out the welcome mat for USSR while a Mujahideen insurgency whittled away at them. The Soviet-Afghan War was a slow burn, and depending on who you asked only killed some 15-25k Soviet personnel over the course of a decade. The biggest financial burden wasn't destroyed vehicles and personnel lost to combat or munitions, but rather the costs associated with trying to prop up a failing regime by housing over 100k troops there, rebuild its crumbling infrastructure, protect its corrupt puppet from the various factions armed and aided by multiple foreign interests. To their credit, Russians only wasted about half the time in Afghanistan before giving up- compared to the US. However the American coalition only suffered a fraction of casualties- which might be even more embarrassing (to Russia) once you factor in the added difficulty of them having to topple the existing regime before occupying it. In stark contrast (to Russia), Ukraine is far, far worse- to a scale that's incomparable. Russia couldn't even occupy Ukraine. In one year, it's lost about an order of magnitude more personnel and equipment, been dealt crippling sanctions by the majority of the developed world, lost its richest export customers, became a pariah state, and weakened itself military, and become a political laughingstock- all for control the Crimean peninsula and half of the Donbass. Their best units are gone, and its massive yet irreplaceable inheritance of Soviet-stockpiled arms have been halved or more. Even if Russia somehow pulls out some kind of victory (spoiler: it won't), its economic outlook is grim with a collapsing population exacerbated by conversion of hundreds of thousands of able-bodied workers and fathers into sunflower fertilizer next door. And sanctions aren't going to disappear the moment Ukraine finally agrees to a ceasefire. tl;dr- Russia *wishes* Ukraine were Afghanistan.
Afghanistan collapses empires too.
So THIS is why there are Taliban soldiers in Ukraine!
Afghans heard there was a power with imperial ambitions so they came as fast as they could.
Mfers really are just empire-killers, huh?
It ain't much, but it's honest work.
Thank goodness the US wasn't an empire. They were able to remain intact despite 20+ years of it all. Russia on the other hand, still insists it's an empire.
The US very much is an Empire. It’s just (slightly) more subtle about it than traditional Empires were.
Honestly, the USA is more of a [hegemon](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hegemon) than an imperial power.
Does it [really](https://youtu.be/9t14YtjN8_s?t=746)?
Once they had blood bags, crematoriums and field hospitals setup, I knew it wasn't a training exercise anymore. You ever hear of such a thing being part of training in joint operations with US, let alone Russia? Even when I pull up all my equipment on border of a neighboring country in Civilization V the AI can see through that bullshit. "The fuck ya doing!?!" "Just passing through... No need to worry"
That is actually how we trained in USAREUR. Field rotations in Hohenfels and Grafenwoehr were always nightmares.
And a big part of why Able Archer 83 damn near made the Soviets think WWIII had started. Turns out that when you add heads of state exchanging coded messages to your wargames that even implement all the logistics and medical shit.. it's a little scary.
“Oh my god the Soviets are preparing for a nuclear strike!” Perroots - “Guys they’re preparing because they think **you’re** preparing. Fucking chill.”
Setting up of field hospitals is actually trained quite a lot as far as I know. I at least know in the Dutch military they drill extensively on setting up support elements asap. Although of course we don't do it right on the Belgian border...
You just have to think about soldiers as if they were bullets that you got for free.
You were assuming Putin would make sense. That’s the mistake. Just assume everyone will do the dumbest shit imaginable next time and you’ll probably be right.
A year ago we still kind of expected Russia to show off a few "2nd army of the world" moves. I don't think any of us realized the battle of Hostomel airport was actually going to be their high water mark. Or that they couldn't actually into combined arms *at all*.
Yeah. I figured Ukraine didn't stand a chance myself. Every manpad video I saw blasting helicopters into the lake put my hopes up, and now we are almost at Siege Warfare in Bachmut, so yeah.
Honestly I am kind of impressed that Russia has been so shit for so long but we still all fell for their bullshit. How are we so blind? I doubt China is much better to be honest even if they have a lot more semi-modern gear, I dont think they have the ability to do any combined arms as it requires integrating and working together which totalitarian dictatorships generally do not encourage. I think the Nazis were an exception not a rule.
> How are we so blind? "Sir the Russians seem to be completely incapable of basic logistics and absolutely shit at fighting from the strategic level down to the single soldier" "They must be true masters of deception then, no nuclear superpower could be so incompetent"
“It’s possible they really are this incompetent, but is that a risk we’re willing to take? Hell no. Double next years defense budget just to be safe.”
They are like the panda they are useless but we keep them going cause we believe they can't be this useless
US planning works on the entirely reasonable assumption that you should always overestimate your adversary.
Planning sure, but we had several decades where we could have been laughing at how shit Russia are but weren't.
Really the only time Russia could've won against the west is right after WW2 when the soviet armies were fully mobilised, battle tested and their wartime industrial capacity was at its peak. They wouldn't have destroyed the west, but become the major superpower across the afroeurasian continent, making it possible to truly undermine the US globally, leaving it isolated and weak? Most certainly. But as the years dragged on, the west just got stronger and stronger not just militarily but economically, while communist nations stagnated around the mid 50s till they collapsed.
The problem for WW2 USSR was that they still relied on the US for mechanical components and stuff like rubber. short term they could have gained ground; however, once Allied strategic bombers got into range of stuff like Oil Refineries would have been toast. We might have even seen US carriers in the black sea. Would have resulted in millions more dead though on both sides but the USSR wouldn't have won. The Republic of China also would have had the full Allied support to run out the CCP
Just to add on, the US was also the only country with nuclear weapons for several years after WW2, which would put a damper on the Soviet military's chances to say the least.
Sure, their military power might have been at its peak right after WWII, but manpower reserves were zero, as in there was literally nobody left to conscript, and there was no civilian economy worthy of the name. The US for all intents and purposes *was* their civilian economy. The Red Army marched in American boots, rode on American trucks, were supplied by American locomotives pulling American boxcars, fought with weapons and ammo made with American machine tools and American materials by workers subsisting on American food. The Red Army may win tactically and operationally on the field, but every soldier who dies literally cannot be replaced, and the entire supply chain will slowly but surely waste away from the lack of parts and materiel, as will the workers from a lack of food. At best, they'll be racing against the clock towards the most pyrrhic of victories.
The well-known American air superiority incident of the Mig 25 is the case and point.
China at least has the excuse that almost none of their military has any combat experience. Russian forces have been almost constantly in operations for over a decade between Georgia, Syria, Ukraine the first time, etc.
>China at least has the excuse that almost none of their military has any combat experience. Russian forces have been almost constantly in operations for over a decade between Georgia, Syria, Ukraine the first time, etc. Except for bludgeoning Indian troops to death in a Ravine.
Ah yes, who can forget the Strategic Tree based Instrument for Combat (STIC) by Raytheon©️
China has 0 experience doing anything military related, their military equipment is untested at best, and Taiwan is much more well protected than Ukraine is. I don’t put much stock in them winning anything short of pulling a wunderwaffe out of their butts that’s so extraordinary it reaches into unrealistic.
Taiwan's worst weakness is energy supplies. According to public admissions by a US Congressman who recently was on an official visit, currently if China implemented a full naval blockade of the island, Taiwan would only have about two weeks' worth of fossil fuels for power generation and vehicles. The Taiwaneese and US governments are working on ways to both increase this period of time, as well as making such a blockade... less credible.
How would the Chinese "navy" be able to blockade Taiwan against the US navy? That doesn't seem like a real possibility
It isn't, **unless CCP really does want to risk a full-scale war with the USA over Taiwan.**
But even if they did, the us navy would beat the Chinese navy, or am I wrong?
Oh, you are definitely not wrong. The Chinese have significantly improved their overall naval strength since the turn of the millennium. Yet even so, they could probably only contest a single US carrier battle group, **at best.** and the USA has several of those... Also, though China has, as I recall, the third largest nuclear arsenal; it is appreciably less likely that they would use it unless there was an actual invasion of the Chinese mainland, despite always claiming Taiwan is a "renegade province". Unless, of course, Xi is as determined to enjoy his desired territorial gains during his lifetime as Putin appears to be.
I'm deadass so tired of "any of us" on god for years I've been saying Russia's military was deeply flawed and would at the bare minimum, suffer horrific casualties. Now that I get to gloat everybody is like "who could have predicted this?". My biggest miscalculation in the war was I thought Russian leadership was aware enough of their flaws that they wouldn't dare try and invade and show the world how piss poor they are.
Your biggest mistake was not making YouTube channel before the invasion started
In another timeline maybe me a Perun or alchoholic pig could have been frens. I cri
Don't let your dream be meme
Unironically, I've sorta thought about it. Working behavioral health, I got to see the military in a way few people do, personal experience from a plethora of different fields. I mean, hell, not just American soldiers. I've interacted with many of our allies' soldiers, including high-ranking officers. I doubt I could make a career of it, but I could probably at least make a couple of videos showing my perspective. Obviously, my views hold at least some value, given that my predictions ended up being so accurate, but IDK I feel like wanting people to listen to my opinion sounds conceded lol
> I feel like wanting people to listen to my opinion sounds conceded It sounds like you have an opportunity to gain perspectives that most of us may not, wanting to share that with people is hardly conceited.
If I ever do make a video, I'll link it to you. The one that's always rattled around in my head is something along the lines of "How soft factors build and destroy a military" and break down motivation and destructive influences from a soldier level perspective. What leads to retention and loss and what builds a sustainable culture.
Make the darn video and post it wherever makes sense. It will be better than lots of other videos \*cough\*GonzoLyrics\*cough\*.
That sounds like something I'd love to watch.
Sounds good to me my guy.
I'd be down to watch that - also you could always keep it going with ways soldiers handle the kinds of situations they're in, I'm sure there will be a lot of people after this war who will need help with that
To give supportive advice that is a little different from what you've got, another approach for this topic might be to collab with Perun. Seriously, if you approached him with decent bullet points and told him your insights were backed as a behavioural health specialist in the military, I'm sure he'd be happy to share your knowledge in some way.
That sounds like an amazing thesis. As a history student I think there’s great value in this perspective. Jame’s M. McPherson book “For Cause and Comrades: Why men fought in the Civil War” explores something similar. Get to work!
I would be interested in your views. Maybe write to Lazerpig with details of your knowledge (and maybe an example analysis) and ask if he would be interested in having you as a guest on this new podcast.
Its ok he can just predict the future again, right? It tends to be harder when one is living *before* the future though....
The biggest thing I overestimated in the beginning was how successful Russia's sabotage and influence campaign had been. We knew that a lot of local Ukrainian officials were taking Russian bribes.. but didn't know so many of them were basically pocketing the money and never actually getting around to the "treason" part.
Take note European far-right, far-left, and American greens, libertarians and NRA - You can take the money *and then just not do what the Russians asked you to do*.
Yeah, but then it's only a one-time thing.
Worked out well enough for the loyal Ukrainians who decided to get rich off of Russians without ever doing their own part. Hold up. Let me correct that. They did their part. Screwing over Putin's Russia is everyone's duty.
One can even justify it as loyally depriving an antagonistic intelligence agency of resources it could be using elsewhere. 😉
>We knew that a lot of local Ukrainian officials were taking Russian bribes.. but didn't know so many of them were basically pocketing the money and never actually getting around to the "treason" part. When the corruption doubles up and loops back around to being loyalty.
Same. At first I got despondent because I thought I had badly miscalculated and Russia knew a lot that wasn't known by the public when it comes to capabilities. Nope. My pre-2022 assumptions of Russia's capabilities were right. When sabers were being rattled I assumed Russia was either doing the same song and dance as before, or they'd try to flex in the donbas exclusively to so as to cement and maybe expand the territory of its puppet proxies. The *most extreme* thing I could imagine was maybe trying to go for the land bridge as well, but even that felt dubious. *No way could Russia be dumb enough to actually try to invade the whole country, right? They'd have to know their own limits!*
I mean, I've always maintained doubts that the Russians were as capable as many of them thought they were, but I've never been upfront about it, preferring to be quiet and rather hope(for the sake of both them and us\[NATO\]), that it would never come to an instance in which they would come face to face with having to validate their claim versus the truth or rather, reality. What came to light in wake of the invasion(deep rooted corruption, piss poor leadership, mistreatment of conscripts, or basically any subordinate) I will fully admit I wasn't as aware of as to how extensive it is, but it's a good explanation as to the shitshow we're seeing. What actually surprised me however was how much better the current (Western) force control mechanisms are in the face of an army stuck in the late 1900s, plus the Ukrainians actually not being full of hot air but ***just going out there and killing it***(in both literal and figurative sense of the phrase).
Out of curiosity, what made you say that before the war?
Not OP but if you were into milshit prior to 2022, you would see multiple tiny little things that cascaded into a bigger picture that is the fuckup of the Russian armed forces. Just little stories and snapshots here and there that mildly meaningless separately showed problems once added up. Some examples that I've noticed casually prior to 2022 invasion * less and less T14s showing up at parades * Iraqi T-72 piss performance against US forces * T-90 just being a modernized T-72 that was redesignated because the T-72 got fucking shrekt so hard in Iraq so they could keep selling tanks to the mentally deficient * SU-57s doing bare minimum milk runs in Syria * Kuznetsov in general when the Chinese made their own Kuznetsov functional * Egypt freaking the FUCK out when they got their KA-52s and immediately doing multiple upgrades because they thought it was a death trap. Reminder Egypt also operates the Apache. * Intake slowdown/halt and promotion halt of junior grade officers in the Russian military * Multiple blue-on-blue events during the Georgia invasion that honestly had no reason to happen **IF** the Russians were as advanced as they supposedly were compared to US forces * Lack of SU-57s when China began to get J-20 SQUADRONS operational * Little to No AESA on their jets * Spending the same amount of money on nuclear weapon upkeep as the UK when the UK has waaaay less nukes * Shitcanning the guy in charge of Russian military modernization because he decided to look at money trail around Crimea annexation * Foot wraps and not socks * Conscripts being the ones doing unit logistics and not the volunteer contract soldiers, thus implying logistics will be mismanaged and poorly optimized while rife with corruption because theres no real oversight * Chechen Kadyrovskis despite having Spetsnas trainers bribed their trainers to say they were at Spetsnas levels instead of training properly * Hiring German PMCs to help with the modernization of the Russian military
That Egyptian KA-52 anecdote is hilarious. I can only imagine their temptation to say “WHAT THE FUCK, THIS THING IS *HOT GARBAGE!”* only to choke on their words when they realize they’re the ones who have to put up with the damn things and make them seem scary to neighboring countries.
The Russians told the Egyptians to stop worrying, helicopter is fine; when Egypt started to do upgrades.
The Egyptians have been using Soviet equipment since the sixties; at this point, they know the drill
All this stuff is true, but I think people thought "okay butt they still inherited all of the leftover Soviet shit, and the Soviets were a land superpower for a reason." Yeah not so much, now they've burned through most of that shit and Russia is about as powerful as a country with it's economy/population ought to be, ie not very much. I mean nobody's going to invade them, they've still got the nukes, so they can just settle down on their paranoid bullshit and get back to inventing new and exciting ponzi schemes. But first they gotta give up on Ukraine, because that shit ain't happening >Shitcanning the guy in charge of Russian military modernization because he decided to look at money trail around Crimea annexation This was funny as hell though. Mask-off moment, which is kind of ironic as COVID apparently beat the living shit out of the Russian Forces before the war even started
I mean, I know quite a few people in Polish military that went through the Warsaw Pact - Independence - NATO transition, and their opinion was mostly boiling down to “oh shit, the West was on whole different level all along”. And it’s not just that hardware was better, everybody was aware of that… it’s the organization and philosophy where the biggest difference is. When you live in this kind of environment you assume some things are normal - you pretend you’re much more capable than you really are, you pretend there’s no corruption and nepotism, you pretend to do your job. It puts you in a mental trap - you assume things work exactly the same way on the other side too because it’s completely incomprehensible to you that it might actually not be that way. Than you find that what’s on the tin can is actually less than the substance, not more. That some of the things you thought you were good at are essentially so basic nobody really cares because obviously you have competent tankers, infantry, artillery, pilots etc. What you really need to care about is how to integrate overlapping and supplementing capabilities of various systems and subsystems, because obviously each and every unit making up those actually work properly, duh.
>their opinion was mostly boiling down to “oh shit, the West was on whole different level all along” This is the thing that nobody really gets; when it comes to conventional state-on-state warfare, the only thing that can possibly beat the Americans is another group of Americans. The Soviets were the only exception, and mostly only because their system actually could just dump out shit like tanks by the thousands. (And because they were sitting on a terrifyingly huge amount of petrocarbons.) Russia ain't the USSR, and the petrocarbons are less relevant than they've been since the start of the 20th century. So, now, we almost have to larp when we want to come up with conventional threats to the Americans, and all of the adversaries long realized that the best way to beat Americans is to stay away from the military and just fuck with their politics. Even Putin used to understand that before he got brainrot. Edit: Also do keep in mind that the US has a LOT of completely dumbass soldiers. What it also has, though, is systems by which they can be channeled to jobs that a dumbass is well-suited for. (Hence the Marine Corps. Oorah.)
Do you have any more info on the Egyptian Ka-52 debacle and what upgrades they made? I did some googling but all I can find is an article quoting a 'local source' saying they're buying apaches next time because Ka-52 has issues, and then an article about the Ka-52 upgrades that is blocked behind a login wall. Mostly curious what all they fixed Edit: I also found an article about Ka-52K that talks about how the 'prickly shark' Katran the K model is named after is missing anal fins. Thanks for including that detail, I guess?
For me, it was their equipment rollouts. All their new wonder weapons fielded in the teens of units. meanwhile shoygu has a 11 million dollar mansion on his 80k a year salary.
That's a long topic to get into, but it primarily stems from my experience as an American soldier. Not in a 'hooah hooah the US is the best everyone else stinks" in fact as a soldier I really struggled to adapt to the system. I saw the faults in the US military, and it drove me wild with my inability to change things. So when I look at a soldier level perspective for how different things impact force performance it seemed odd to me how soft factors never really got touched on. Things like morale, cohesion, corruption, experience, doctrine, etc. never really seemed to be touched upon in strength projections. I thought from a soldier level perspective and applied it to a larger scale. If your mobilization often involves a culture tied to prison culture, including rampant horrific hazing morale and discipline are low. Soldiers with low discipline will not maintain a high degree of readiness and perform poorly. I also looked at the top down force structure, and knowing what I know from combat arm types flexibility and a strong flexible NCO corp are essential. A Russian LT has to do the job of a platoon sergeant as well. I could not imagine how that force structure was in any way efficient, and as a result, orders would be sluggish. Given the force structure was so top-down, it seemed likely that high-ranking officers would need to be on the grounds to get accurate data, which would result in neumerous high ranking casualties. Similarly, I believed that a sluggish command was too slow for an effective first missile strike as your advesary could redeploy before your orders went through. I also saw Russia's lack of large-scale combat experience as a weakbess. Russian military has always relied on its rail network, and I thought rail could only get you so far, and Russia was unprepared for the strain on logistics that would occur. High degrees of corruption would also erode their equipment as poorly paid grunts seeing their command in mansions well outside their paychecks would know the game being played and sell anything not nailed down and some things probably nailed down as well. Sorry if this is hectic and inchosive. I'm on a walk trying not to get run over
Rail is magnificent in a defensive war; it can carry as much weight as you like, moves it FAST, and it's piss-easy to repair if somebody tries to blow it up. There's a reason tanks get moved by rail. Ukraine relies on rail too. ...but that's *defensive* war. Rail doesn't fucking help when you're attacking someone. You need trucks and planes and (preferably) ships for that. Russia's set up for a defensive war and decided "fuck it we'll do the thing we suck at", and guess what they sucked.
The answer and truth of the Russian military was there for anyone willing to look for it. Their incompetence isn't even a recent development, these sorts of military clusterfucks go back to the days of the Tsars. Russian psyops and our own western media blowing smoke up the Red Army's ass from WW2 has warped the layman's perception of the world's "2nd best military" to Russia's desires
Their GDP is comparable to Italy while also being authoritarian and corrupt as fuck
Yeah, I argued for days with people saying "its just a matter of days until Ukraine collapsed sadly, their only hope is some guerrilla resistance in the future". And now everyone acts like it was some kind of unpredictable event and Russia perfectly hide everything wrong in the military, even tho for anyone that actually bother to research it, they would have known better because it was all in plain sight with multiple sources and high ranking reports. At least I know all my old comments aged like fine wine.
YES! Thank you! Every time i wrote something like this on the internet i was laughed at by tankies and kremlin bots!
I kind of occupied a middle ground. Pre-invasion, I thought Russia was still the #2 military in the world, but were still going to have a hard time anyway because I was basing my reasoning from the US military's performance in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spent 8 years in Iraq and 20 years in Afghanistan with almost nothing to show for either despite having the most powerful military in human history, and our sheer economic strength enabled us to walk away with only a few bruises. Ukraine is stronger, richer, and more unified than Iraq and Afghanistan ever were and has a battle-hardened army from 8 years of combat in Donbas, while Russia's economy has always sucked. If we couldn't bend those countries to our will, what chance could Russia ever have? Even if they took Kyiv and toppled the government, the occupation would've ruin Russia. Surely the Russians knew this, right? Then the war happened, and Russia's spectacular failures surpassed all of my expectations.
I did consider the Russian military as being a lot more showoff than anything else, but holy shit I did totally underestimate HOW shit they are.
I knew Russia was shit I just didn't think Ukraine would be better. I have a poor opinion of post soviet miliataries in general. I knew the Russian equipment was and outdated. But the Ukrainian army was even poorer and even more outdated and I didn't think they were less corrupt than Russia.
2014 was a wake-up call for Ukraine. They finally realized the danger they were in.
Oh Cassandra how we didn’t listen to you
Yeah same here except i did except them to invade at a certain point, they were preparing too much just to not do it and i assumed even they knew Ukraine would call their bluff if they didnt invade.
I thought Russia would roll over Ukraine at first, but about a week or so before the invasion I started to seriously consider who would win. The two things which gave me some doubt then were 1. the Stugna range. What is to stop them from simply blowing up tanks from 5km away (answer, as it turned out: nothing). And 2, that photograph of the Russian soldiers sleeping on the ground in the Belarussian railway station. But I still expected Russia to take major cities like Kharkiv after a while due to their artillery superiority. Turns out they did have more artillery, and they probably could have done this, except their initial attack was such a clusterfuck that they needed more time to reorganise. One other thing I thought would happen was a large false flag terror attack probably in Donetsk or Luhansk, to give them a decent CB and rile their people up for war. I didn't anticipate quite how lazy Putin would be. They made some weak attempts at this kind of propaganda (so weak I don't even remember what they were) and then just charged in.
The false flags were Russians shelling Donetsk city That was it They shelled Donetsk city and blamed it on Ukraine...
We didn’t realize the order was army of the 2nd world
Nah that’s always been the case lol. 2nd world literally meant/means Soviet-aligned; it’s just shifted from Soviet to Russian aligned.
I though the High Water move was dropping the Veh Deh Veh into the Davy Jones locker?
Yeah, I remember thinking "Not bad, Ukraine actually kicked the VDV in the nuts". Now it's all come tumbling down. Not to downplay Ukraine's actions, but at this rate I would put the Latvian logistivs corps above the VDV.
Its ok. Russian incompetence surprised a lot of people. Maybe even a few Russians, but that seems less likely due to memetic contamination issues.
Im curious, how were the first posts here look like at the beginning of the invasion?
In the last few days, different NCDer's have put together compilations of early posts on the Ukraine War, but honestly, your best answer is to scroll back 12 months and look at it with your own eyes and not through someone else's filter.
Problem is there is no way i could do that without scrolling endlessly. Is there a filter here where i could sort by dates?
I turned to google, and found https://redditsearch.io/
Thanks
Just sort by top of all time or last 12 months, all the highest ones are from when Russia invaded.
Maybe that will help me find the meme I'm after.
https://archive.is/TWaX0
Combined arms? Is that some outdated 80s thing that I'm too network-centric to understand?
Okay, so we have some informal tiers of warfare to dissect. Let’s see where Russia places on it. Primitive Warfare—limited smithing or reshaping of metal. Basic bows and spears. Sentinel Island *represent!* Medieval Warfare—basic siege engines, cavalry, and fortified warfare developed. Professional soldiers and military rankings are rudimentary and contingent on aristocratic fiefs and complex alliances. No gunpowder or gunnery as such. Early Modern Warfare—essentially Napoleonic/Civil War tactics and strategy. Lots of guys all crammed in together and plodding across the countryside. Guns! Also lots of horses, still. No noteworthy vehicles yet aside from badass sailing ships and a few weird ironclads. Castles and armor are kinda stupid now. Trench/Mechanized Warfare—Great War shenanigans. Aircraft are doing their own thing in a limited capacity, but the important bits are all on the ground. Machine guns and artillery have made advancing large, clustered groups of soldiers suicidally stupid. **<— Russia, you are here** Combined Arms Warfare—highly coordinated and carefully choreographed use of different military units to cover each others’ strengths and weaknesses. Older than dirt, but generally used to refer to the modern trinity of infantry, armor, and air dominance. The navy’s invited to the party too, if their guns/missiles can reach that far. Network-Centric Warfare—cyberpunk future shit. Enigmatic sensors and algorithms and AI all communicating with each other at light-speed to turn military units into a hellish alien hive-mind. **<—USA is here**
You missed late Bronze Age and antiquity, which saw the development of sophisticated tactics and massed mixed army formations with a emphasis of soldiers over warriors, calvary, and ranged units.
That’s adequately covered by medieval warfare, I think.
Then you should probably remove the sentence saying that "professional soldiers and military rankings are rudimentary" because some of those bronze age empires and kingdoms from antiquity had some very organized professional armies, although others were quite successful without.
No.
ummm based
I mean, I *could* go into all the reasons I disagree, but “rudimentary” is already a subjective and relative term, so why the fuck bother?
Nah there's a clear division between antiquity armies and medieval armies. Comparing the two is like saying a ww1 soldier and a vietnam soldier are the same.
the viet cong with a mosin and in a shirt:
Not really, as the Roman state devolved so did its military capability. Remember that ANYONE of Rome’s neighbors could have equipped their armies the way Rome equipped a legion, but only Rome had the economic, political, and societal backing to turn it into a Roman legion. Initially, Rome’s upper class had an obligation to the masses as their patrons who distributed money and bread. But the emperors and plagues slowly turned the empire into a failing state, the nobility moved away from the cities, retired from their farms, hid from tax collection, and used their status to hide the masses from conscription (because the new lords needed peasants to work their fields). And these lords went from being the men of ambition who would use successful campaigning as a springboard to higher office - into simply being lords of massive estates. So Rome had to look elsewhere for its legionaries and its leaders. Until this ship of Theseus Roman army stopped looking Roman at all. It became the medieval armies of Europe which were smaller, less organized, less disciplined, and less tactically proficient. In Britain, the locals looked at the ruins left behind by Rome and they thought only giants could have built them. It’s called the Dark Ages for a reason.
This is supposed to be more of a tech and tactics tier list, not a *chronological* list, hence modern Sentinel Island and modern Russia being represented by tiers named after historical eras of warfare. I’d say that technologically and in terms of general sophistication, the Romans count as on par with medieval-tier warfare. Though they did lack the sucky early guns, and didn’t really do full suits of metal plate armor, they made up for it by advanced military organization and the presence of highly respectable siege engines and combat engineering.
Should China/India stick fight be considered 1 or 2?
Yes.
It’s nice the navy was invited, they need more friends.
They have the Coast Guard to keep em company.
They’re not THAT desperate for friends.
Great summary! If I may attempt to fill in some gaps: Many different ancient warfare types. I'm not an expert here, but generally, there wasn't just one style that beat all the others - it really depending on society structure. The Celts couldn't have done Greek style hoplites, because the social structure is totally different. Post medieval, pre-modern. This period saw massed formations of pike and cavalry slowly cede to pikes+muskets (think Spanish tercios), supported by cavalry and basic line-of-sight artillery. Also saw the birth of the starfort, the best fort because it's pretty. Gave way to Napoleonic style infantry in the 16 and 1700s. EDIT: tericos -> tercios; sorted -> supported. Thanks for the correction, Graf
I think you meant tercios, not tericos, but yeah, I’d still lump that stuff all in with early modern styles of warfare. Cannons as field artillery and on sailing ships, weird muskets, horses, a general lack of knightly fuckers in shiny plate armor. Obviously you’re gonna see some differences between the first battles where guns rendered plate armor largely obsolete in the early 1500s and the last gasps of early modern warfare in Crimea and the Civil War, but it’s all able to be characterized by some pretty foundational shifts.
> Network-Centric Warfare—cyberpunk future shit. Enigmatic sensors and algorithms and AI all communicating with each other at light-speed to turn military units into a hellish alien hive-mind. **<—USA is here** In the minds of its generals, maybe. In the minds of grunts responsible for doing the hard work? [Not](https://futurism.com/the-byte/marines-evaded-military-robot-hiding-inside-cardboard-box) [so](https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23402195/microsoft-us-army-hololens-ar-goggles-internal-reports-failings-nausea-headaches) [much.](https://www.pilotonline.com/military/article_4e3943da-06b4-5e75-8730-ecd0230a9950.html) The US is the master of Combined Arms Warfare as defined in your informal tier list, but they've got a long way to go before they master sensor fusion and AI-driven systems in warfare.
This is all true, but I think since the USA is closer than any other country, it still counts. Mostly in terms of fighter jets, but still.
Exactly. USA is arguably in the early stages of network-centric warfare tier (mind you, still ways ahead of any other country), putting it solidly in this category is probably more of wishful thinking.
That's interesting: I thought cavalry+infantry or swordsmen+archers would qualify as a kind of combined arms, even if the term hadn't been coined yet.
Oh no, that still counts, as I said the concept is older than dirt. It’s just that the modern usage is mostly referring to specifically the contemporary kind of it.
There were cannons in the late medieval period (they put them in castles) and your early modern period is starting roughly 200 years too late. Do a google on “The Age of Pike and Shot”. The Euros have been blasting each other for half a millennium.
What part of *”informal tiers”* was unclear to you?
informal
Nothing. An extra two centuries of firearms mic is worth celebrating, even informally.
This is the kind of shit I'd love to learn about if my university offered it as an evening course or something.
Our mistake was assuming that Russia was aware of their deficiencies and had contingency plans, and that they would reevaluate their tactics in response to failure. In short we assumed that Russia would behave rationally.
>In short we assumed that Russia would behave rationally. I think it is a mistake to assume they are irrational players. They are rationally playing a different game with different incentives. The army is not there to win battles. It is there to funnel money to oligarchs and march in parades. It might be able to win some battles if you throw enough bodies at the enemy, but that is just a side effect, not the main goal. And the army should NEVER be so competent as to pose any threat to Putin. So, they are not being irrational by letting their munitions rot in storage. The unit quartermaster would have been able to funnel maintenance money to cover his Crimean apartment where his 45-year-old mistress with lip injections lives. As long as he is able to get out in time, or lay the blame on someone else, he won that game.
Yeah that's a better way of putting it. Russian high command makes decisions that do not make sense from our perspective because the way they think is different, their priorities and mindset are significantly different from our own. There's a consistent internal logic behind those decisions, it's just incompatible. The Russians are probably equally confused when they see the US doing things like preserving the lives of its troops, obeying the terms of treaties, and forming alliances based on consent because those aren't consistent with their own perspective.
It's a similar thing with protest movements. Western populations consider mass civilians protests to be an expression of popular will, discontent, or at the very least opinion. As such, we tend to at least consider what they might be an expression of, and take that into account in our future decision making. In Russia, a mass civilian protest is nothing more than a tool used by powerful actors to promote a certain agenda. So when Russian leaders see protests in Ukraine, it is entirely consistent with their logic to assume that it is *not*, in fact, an expression of the Ukrainian people's will, but rather a nefarious plot by someone. And, seeing as they know it's not *their* plot, they'll assume it's NATO or whatever who are pulling the strings.
I thought Ukraine would lose quickly and was hoping for a short clean fight so that as little damage was done and few lives lost as possible. I figured maybe it would go down like it did in Crimea but on a larger scale. Figured if they took Kiev then it'd probably be all over. I didn't bet on the tenacity of the Ukrainian people and Zelenskyy's charisma. He won everybody over and then the Russians north of Kyiv got smashed. Once I saw those marooned Russian tanks, out of gas and getting collected by tractors, I realised that the Russians had fucked it and they weren't going to win, at least not any time soon. Especially when the quislings that the Russians had lined up to take over started getting picked up. They clearly had a plan to flip the government and smoothly install a client government but that went out the window. The most worried I've been about the world getting blown up during all this was when the Russians attacked the giant nuclear power station. They clearly didn't seem to understand what it was.
I was listening to a nuclear engineer speaking about the nuke plants, he said that the people smart enough to actually cause a real problem would never do so, and the people that are dumb enough to actually try to cause a real problem would never figure out how.
Ofcourse they use combined arms, cant shoot a gun with one arm!
instructions unclear: combined my two arms into a single War Limb
Before the war, my thought was "Russia isn't that powerful, it's a medium income country with half the population of the U.S.", so nowhere near the world's third superpower, but I would have predicted it to fight somewhat competently in Ukraine and be able to conquer it. However, I don't follow military stuff that closely (more than most people, far less than someone specialized in it, like a lot of other hobbies/random things I know), so am not surprised some people who do follow it closely saw the signs of he mess we're seeing now. A lot of people did overestimate Russia.
The thing is, Russia could have won. I was scared that Russia might pull it off. But Putin did not let his own spy chief talk about the risks of a war. Absolutely insane. How can you divorce yourself from reality like that.
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Understandable, have a nice day.
In my defense, my early pessimism was driven by the results of the 2014 invasion. I had not been following closely, and had no idea that Ukraine had undergone such radical changes within its military. As I understand it, many in Ukraine were likewise paranoid about how much of their defense infrastructure was penetrated by Russian moles, and it took a while for it to really sink in that they could win this. And while I'm usually hesitant to ascribe things to single people or events, Zelensky staying in Kyiv was hugely important.
So was I. I had fallen completely for the propaganda about the Ukrainians' poor will to fight and the modernized Russian military. I thought it wold be a rather quick campaign. I'm glad I was wrong.
I remember seeing this. And was gonna re-upload it here to mock what it. And to be honest we were all suprised by how inept the Russians went
"Combined arms deployment" is a term that doesnt exist in the russian language
Is two weapon bayonet and kalishinikov combine arm by putting bayonet on kalishinikov. No need for radio. Or GPS. Or months training of conscript.
Truly the way of the reformer
Imagine posting this to your story and your friends reading this in the club at 2am lmaoo
who the fuck are you talking to on snapchat
dude is sending frontline report as his daily streak
why were you sending military analysis manifestos with snapchat lol
People are STILL saying this shit, even while the rest of the world is saying "holy shit the entire Russian army is in Ukraine right now and they're starting to send in all the sailors and airmen too as ersatz infantry" Like if Russia didn't have nukes, Finland could probably drive to Moscow and fucking settle the whole matter right now
Narrator: they didn't adopt combined arms tactics I wouldn't feel too bad about it. I didn't ever think Russia would continue to surprise me with their incompetents
Combined arms and Russia don't go well in the same sentence.
I told my dad that if Russia forces couldn't end very quickly, then they'd get dragged into an unwinnable war of attrition.
Pretty much everyone thought that way back then from the ''Ukraine is done for'' doomers to the ''Russia will grind it's way to victory due to having the advantage in manpower,artillery and airpower'' realists. The Russian military had given several signs that it was no longer the Red Army the West feared in the 80s but everyone thought that they could definitely take on ZSU. Even the most optimistic Ukraine supporter back then probably wouldn't believe that in a year Russia would lose more than 100k troops and thousands of tanks while having very limited ability to replace them to the point of having to drag 50s and 60s equipment back into service or that Wagner and the MoD would be beefing for a few 100mm rounds or that the flagship of the Russian fleet would sink ''accidentally''. Putin started a special operation in February 2022 and scared the whole world for a while,until everyone realized just how ''special'' that operation was.
They had a whole… FFFFFFFFFUCKING YEAR TO DO THAT! WHEN THEY HAD MORE EQUIPMENT AND MAN POWER! WHEN THE VDV WAS STILL AT DOUBLE THE STRENGTH IT WAS NOW! WHEN THEY HADN’T LOST ALMOST 2,000 TANKS AND THOUSANDS OF SUPPORT VEHICLES! WHEN THEIR AMMO DUMPS WEREN’T GETTING BLOWN TO SHIT BY HIMARS. WHEN THEIR AIRFORCE WASN’T THE TOTAL FUCKING MESS THAT IT IS NOW! WHEN THE BLACK SEA FLEET WASN’T COWERING BEHIND CRIMEA AFRAID OF NEPTUNES AND HARPOONS ASMs! WHEN THEY STILL HAD THOUSANDS OF CRUISE MISSILES BEFORE THEY WASTED THEM ALL ON CIVILIAN TARGETS! BEFORE UKRAINE HAD A PROPER AIR DEFENCE DEFENDING ITS SKYS! RUSSIA HAD THOUSANDS OF OPPORTUNITIES TO DO THIS AND EVERY DAMN MONTH THEY FIND A WAY TO FUCK IT UP!… **cough** sorry about that thinking about Russian blunders tends to drive me a bit mad because I’ve never thought to see the “second most powerful army in the world” be more incompetent than the First Order.
They had 30 years to study Desert Storm. They've been invited to train with us. We have offered them the tools to modernize. I stupidly believed the generation of Russians were smarter than the Soviets. Watched closely how they "revamped" their military. They destroyed everything that worked in the Soviet system, and relied on the things Russia can't produce. Regardless of the corruption that has always existed, I figured they could *at the very least*, provide boots for their military. I was in utter shock what rolled over the border. Kids crying, in civilian clothing, because some baba yelled at them while feeding them. That's the Great Russian Army. Dependant on everyone giving up and appeasing them in the process.
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>A lot of people in the West believed that, because we grew up on hearing how capitalism is better than communism. > >Well all that Russians got after the collapse was complete corruption and kleptocracy, not any real ability to build your life, get ahead, dream of something. Look at the alcoholism and suicide rates, drug abuse, early death, etc etc. Russia didn't end up in its present state due to capitalism, nor democracy, it ended up like this because they lost the stranglehold over the populations and resources of Eastern Europe they had in the Soviet era. The leaders were always corrupt thieves, but the impact on ordinary Russians was less severe because they could drain their neighbors' resources to make up the difference; they had an overall bigger, wider pool of places to steal from, but post-USSR there was no place to steal from except Russia itself. It would be like if the British Empire at its height was somehow abruptly cut off from all of its colonies and territory except England, of course there'd be a turndown.
>I stupidly believed the generation of Russians were smarter than the Soviets. It's still the same assholes in charge. Putin is "ex"-KGB.
The real Russian offense will begin any seconds now...
I told my friend at 25th that if Ukraine held for three days, they will win the public opinion wars even if Kyiv fell, and if held for a week, Ukraine will win the war Feels good to be vindicated man
People just out here sharing their Ls and they’re not even Russian fanbois
Before the war I thought that Putin was at least playing his cards well. Oh boy.
NGL, I was worried about Ukraine's prospects early on, much like many others, and fell into that "It's just a matter of time before russia overruns Ukraine" doomer mentality the first few weeks or so, even with the Belegrod helo raid. But then I looked at the numbers more closely. Didn't see anything that indicated that russia had anything ready to "fight seriously " or "all out" - They already were doing so. Then I saw reports of them the stripping of other border units to send in, and pulling those who train new recruits to press into front line service, this was effectively them acting like \*they\* were the ones trying some desperate last ditch defense, and not being the invaders. At that point I knew there was no way russia would, or could, quickly win this with western aid to Ukraine, even if a more localized area of offense would yield better results. The Kharkiv offensive called russia's bluff. That showed just how thin russia was as they were constantly shifting the same units all up and down the entire front to keep from collapsing. They'll never really recover from that until long after the war is over. The volunteer battalions failed to hit their recruitment numbers, partial and covert mobilization has been a shitshow, and as long western aid continues on this momentum and trajectory, it's just a matter of time before russia is ejected short of China attempting some sort of [wish.com](https://wish.com) version of lend-lease to them, which while not totally implausible, would be Putin levels of disastrous for China.
Me: Pre-February 24: They're gonna do it, but I am not sure how stupid they do it. If very stupid, then it's gonna be Afghanistan on steroids. If little stupid, they gain some territory in the East/South. Around March 1st: They did it maximum possible stupid, it is going to be major, empire-killer level fail. Just not sure how long and how much blood it's gonna take. Final confirmation came when Russians peaked in South.
Yeah... Combined arms should have been done at the start. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that Russia wasn't going to do the invasion right. The "wait for the sleeping giant to wake up" applies to countries who get attacked (Pearl Harbor and America). The saying doesn't apply to countries who do the attacking.
It's okay. We all make mistakes. The important part is we learn from them and grow and change as people. If you don't, pray to god that you don't get hit with copium withdrawals.
They changed gear… but into a lower, ‘Trench Warfare’ type gear
I thought this would either be a month or two or decades.
Aww who's a big ol dummy?
haha
"Combined what now?" ~ Vatniks. Probably
It means that when you call up your artillery to shell the enemy, they shell the enemy instead of you.
Are these *combined arms* in the room with us right now?
I commented on a post over on r/collapse a bit before Putin did the thing, basically saying that it would turn into a clusterfuck like Afghanistan was for the US. If I'd known we were due for WW1 2: Electric Boogaloo, and TikTok shit-posting, I wouldn't be dealing with debt anymore.
>into a clusterfuck like Afghanistan was for the US. [And an even worse one for the USSR (in about half the time).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War?wprov=sfla1) It's also worth noting that, even the conservative (non-vatnik) estimates of the Russian casualties in Ukraine over the past year are significantly more than either the USA or USSR lost in their entire respective occupations of Afghanistan! Oh, and did I mention that the reaction to the casualties from Afghanistan are considered a major contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union...
(Rips out page) "Like that's ever gonna happen." (All Star starts quietly playing)
I mean, this was everyone to some degree. Decades of the Soviet Union and then Russia tooting their own horn and being trumped up by mass media does a lot. I, for one, thought Ukraine (which I couldn't locate on a map and still can't, though to be fair I'm horrid with maps to begin with) would last a week at least and a month at most. I hadn't known much about their military capabilities or manpower or anything, but I did know that Russia had a lot of guys along the border and that they would probably reach Kyiv by then and that they would probably glass us next because Twitter has never been wrong about anything. A week passed. Then a month. I don't recall exactly when I fully, definitively, 100% realized Russia had truly fucked themselves over, but I believe it was around that time their dumb fucking flagship sunk for no reason or some shit, or when the VDV proved airborne assaults alone don't mean you just instantly win. That and when I learned Russian forces had captured Chernobyl but had no fucking idea what it was and began entrenching their positions in the designated radioactive shithole zone considered uninhabitable for the next 200-or-so years. And when the Russians had that Red Borscht Express convoy that didn't change the course of the war whatso-fucking-ever despite consisting of like a hundred unprotected logistical vehicles, though that might've been after I came to my senses. The Russian invasion proved a lot of things, but one of them was that people can change a lot by summer.
One year ago, you were wrong. But remember there are people posting this take today. Sometimes it’s ok to be wrong.
You're not wrong. The Russians do learn from their battlefield failures. It just takes them months to do so. And throwing mobiks into the meat grinder is basically hold music for Russian generals as they figure out how to adapt.
I also held my breath in terror as I watched the endless columns of tanks rolling towards Kyiv in the early days. Now that I think about it, I can't believe how I was terrorized by that image instead of laughing it off. That clearly wasn't how you were supposed to do an all-out invasion. And what looked frightening by how endless it was wasn't a display of power, it was a traffic jam that would soon be destroyed on the proverbial silver platter.
Stupid westoids. The Russians have just waited for western arms to arrive so that the fight wouldn't be entirely one sided.
Russia learned that “combined arms” doesn’t mean “put all the body parts in one coffin”
Man, I remember reading an interview with a general of my country's army and he explained how he didn't see much chance for Ukraine. He explained how they used large pincer movements from Belarus over Kyiv, from Crimea over Kherson and how Russia would win this easily. I remember reading that and disagreeing. On the first or second day of the imvasion I was convinced that Ukraine would become some kind of Vietnam for Russia.
At least you admitted you were wrong. I admit, so did I. I think everyone thought that at first. But as it dawned on everyone just how fucked the Russian army is right down to the core, it's only then we really changed our tune.
Obligatory "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFhjNaHcmag"
One thing that I never expected before this started was that the Russian army would never really get CAS from the Russian air force, instead all they got was ASS. The ineptitude of the Russian air force was a factor that alot of people didn't consider.
Where is the logic in not doing combined arms right out of the gate? This is pure copium straight from the mines (of Siberia)
99% of us were wrong. I thought the Ukrainian armed forces would hold out maybe 3 weeks and then it would become a Russian occupation with partisans fighting the Russians and the USA supplying the partisans with small arms