How this war propable [WWIII] started Materials for scenerios

[wulfir]

IIRC the good field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery said something like this:


There are two rules of warfare:


1) Never march on Moscow.

2) Never send you land forces to fight in mainland Asia.


I have formulated these rules myself.


However - Russian military capability seems to have been much overestimated, and this after about a decade of building the armed forces up.

I wonder how crappy they would have been in the 1980s...
Built many (conventional) scenarios set in 1985 but having some serious doubts about their logistical abilities now..., seems like it's no rail road, no Russian advance...

[Aeraaa]

Originally Posted by wulfir

IIRC the good field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery said something like this:


There are two rules of warfare:


1) Never march on Moscow.

2) Never send you land forces to fight in mainland Asia.


I have formulated these rules myself.


However - Russian military capability seems to have been much overestimated, and this after about a decade of building the armed forces up.

I wonder how crappy they would have been in the 1980s...
Built many (conventional) scenarios set in 1985 but having some serious doubts about their logistical abilities now..., seems like it's no rail road, no Russian advance...

I actually believe that in 1985 they were orders of magnitude stronger. Not just in numbers and relative quality of equipment, but also in allies and in strategic resources.

[wulfir]

Originally Posted by Aeraaa

I actually believe that in 1985 they were orders of magnitude stronger. Not just in numbers and relative quality of equipment, but also in allies and in strategic resources.

I used to think so too, but I'm more doubting now - they might have had more troops to throw forward but were they of much better quality than what we see now? Were they better at logistics back then? Would they have been all that much more competent, less problems with corruption etc...

From a historic viewpoint allies have always been important for Russian warfare, they usually don't do very well when not fighting as part of a coalition...

[wulfir]

Stumbled over this article from a Finnish blogger who argues that mech forces are still highly important in Ukraine but that (leg) infantry with ATGMs have (on purpose more or less) been given lots of publicity...

Originally Posted by article

Unlike the early war Ukrainian information campaigns portrayed, the armored and mechanized formations, equipped largely with BMP-2 IFV:s and T-64 derivative tanks played a huge role in stopping the Russian invasion. But by highlighting the light infantry operations and western supplied Javelin and NLAW anti-tank guided missiles, Ukraine convinced the western citizens that their support was having an overwhelming impact. The support was crucial, but wouldn’t have been enough without the professional and ready elements of the Ukrainian army. The western weapons were most impactfull in the battle of Kyiv, where hastily formed territorial troops equipped with light anti-tank weapons were forced to step up.

The success of the Ukrainian mechanized forces also highlights the complete failure of the Russian BTGs invading Ukraine. The Russian forces had neglected training, forgot logistics and broke just about every instruction that was written in their own doctrine.

http://blog.vantagepointnorth.net/20...art-1.html?m=1

[Aeraaa]

I'm not surprised actually. People forget/dont know that the best antidote to ATGM light infantry is a healthy dose of 150+mm HE which is found in abundance in Ukrainian battlefields. Mechanized forces are also vulnerable but in a much lower level.

It also reminds me that what gets publicity is different from battlefield realities. Like in 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Everybody was talking about the drones and about how much of a game changer they were and how Azeris basically won the war using mainly them. Well guess what, it turned out that the bulk of the fighting was still done by old schoold combat arms like infantry/armor/artillery with a specific SF maneuver through harsh terrain securing Shusha at the end of war.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by wulfir

Built many (conventional) scenarios set in 1985 but having some serious doubts about their logistical abilities now..., seems like it's no rail road, no Russian advance...

Keep in mind the SOVIET military was designed around formation replacement. Send a formation to the front, use it until it's combat ineffective, then send up a fresh formation to replace it.
So the logistics necessary for prolonged support of formations engaged in sustained operations wasn't a consideration.

The "modern", and much smaller, Russian military may have decided that sustained operations is the way to go BUT they neglected to augment their Soviet era logistic support systems.

"The amateurs discuss tactics: the professionals discuss logistics." - Napoleon Bonaparte.