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A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force [pdf] (armywarcollege.edu)
39 points by zolbrek on Oct 1, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 75 comments



There’s a good point to be made that Russia could probably beat the US in conflicts that are not existential. Simply because if Russia loses men at a rate of 50:1, the US could still find those losses unpalatable enough to concede whatever context the fight is over. Even if the US would obviously win eventually. Especially if Russia or whoever was running successful disinformation campaigns. But also… we are so close to another inflection point which is fully autonomous drones that can navigate by computer vision to pre determined or opportunistically chosen targets without dependence on things that make them vulnerable like GPS and remote control.

Drones are a big deal but these drones would have basically no counter

Frankly I’m confused why we don’t have these things for big static targets like a drone that independently navigates to a rail line, drops a mine and leaves for the train to blow up next time it shows up.


> Simply because if Russia loses men at a rate of 50:1, the US could still find those losses unpalatable enough to concede whatever context the fight is over.

I’m certainly tempted by this line of thinking. However, it’s important to bear in mind that the Japanese thought the exact same thing during WW2 when they initiated Pearl Harbor. It’s very difficult to predict how the public will react to war.


Perhaps. I think the context is different though. A series of stupid wars has greatly lowered Americans trust in the military.


Very true. But trust was even lower in the military in 1941. Isolationism was the political orthodoxy, and had been for decades. That changed overnight. And the sacrifices the US made during WW2 was astounding. For the duration of the war, the US literally stopped making civilian cars. The military grew ten fold in a matter in months. I question the resolve of the American people to put up with those kinds of hardships, sure, but given recent history I think we discount it at our peril.


They seem to do great on the shock and awe, not so much on the occupation part.


The populace in the 90s was pretty well primed with the remnants of anti-vietnam, anti-war messaging. 9/11 changed things very quick.


The cynical take about the West's slow titration of giving weapons to Ukraine is that it maximizes the amount of time that Russia throws its men into the meat grinder.

Once Russian loses most of its fighting age men, it can't engage in another one of those types of wars for another generation at least.


That might have been how it worked out if Ukraine successfully fought a war of attrition and Russia fought a war for territory, but it was the exact opposite.

To take Bakhmut as an example, Ukraine kept feeding men into cauldrons long after they should have cut their losses because they had orders to make a stand and fight to the last for every inch of territory. This is where the phrase "meat grinder" originated - it described Russia's plan for capitalizing upon those orders.

Ukraine ended up suffering vastly worse casualties than Russia did as a result - their troops spent most of their time surrounded on 3 sides by a force with overwhelming artillery superiority. The Ukrainian soldiers fed into these cauldrons often died within hours from an artillery strike, usually without even seeing a Russian soldier. Russia tried to keep this process going for as long as possible.

Hence meat grinder.

This pattern of Ukraine prioritizing territorial gains over lives and falling into traps sprung by Russia as a result has been repeated elsewhere across the front line too, and is symptomatic of the failure of the counteroffensive.


That is… the opposite of what has happened. Russia is the one the spent 9 months throwing Russian troops into the Bakhmut meat grinder which had no strategic merit.

Russia is the one that has seen massive attrition on its artillery and is constantly complaining about Ukrainian counterbattery capabilities are far superior.

Ukraine has been very clear that these areas were held to fix and attrite Russian forces. And it worked. The Russian offense culminated with basically nothing achieved and is now on the ropes with Ukraine getting awfully close to gaining fire control on the last train lines leading west in Tokmak.

Russia is the one that is notoriously throwing its men at senseless counterattacks rather than trying to maintain its own defensive lines


Russia has had overwhelming artillery superiority for well over a year. Even the most pro Ukrainian news outlets haven't denied this. Hell, Biden even came out and said that the US had run out of 155mm shells to give Ukraine. This is after a year of fire rates that were 1/3 of what the Russians managed. Again public information.

The offensive was initially supposed to reach Mariupol or Melitopol which would have been a legitimate success. It's ended with a promise to maybe get to Tokmak which will make zero difference strategically. It's failed - completely.


Russia had overwhelming artillery support but it’s completely turned around. Western AND Russian sources say this, with the latter taking the form of complaints about how shitty everything is.

Melitopol being liberated would almost end the war giving fire control over all of crimea’s logistics and making the entire point of the war that siege.

Tokmak will not end the war, but it is THE rail line supplying the west.


If Ukraine had ceded Bakhmut, they'd have to retake it at some point. Taking ground is harder than holding it, especially against a prepared defense. Which we're seeing in the ongoing counteroffensive.

I don't see you proposing an alternative to what the Ukrainians have chosen to do that doesn't leave them with a lot more territory to retake, or ceding a bunch of territory to Russia on a basically permanent basis.

And let's not forget that they're doing their damnedest to attrit Russian materiel all the while they've been fighting to hold or retake territory. Every weapon system they've been given to strike behind Russian lines and destroy materiel, they've used for that purpose. That both reduces Russia's availability materiel, and screws with their logistics by pushing back their various assets and supply depots.


If the goal was to keep territory they'd have been better off taking Russia's pre-war deal - minsk 2, cede Crimea, pledge to stay out of NATO.

Even after that though, I think they should have prioritized lives over territory. Luring Russia deeper into their territory so that their supply lines could be cut and trying to fight maneuver warfare would have worked better than trying to win a WW1 style war of attrition against an enemy 5x the power and equivalent sophistication that is fighting a war of attrition against you.

Russian logistics were only really seriously threatened by HIMARS and only then for a short period (theyve since deployed counter measures). Ukraine only really has the resources to hit propaganda targets behind enemy lines now - Russian logistics are not being threatened in any meaningful way any more.


> If the goal was to keep territory they'd have been better off taking Russia's pre-war deal - minsk 2, cede Crimea, pledge to stay out of NATO.

I’m curious about how this new deal would have actually stopped Russia from just invading again in the future to take more land.

Ukraine already had prior to 2014 multiple international agreements with Russia where they promised to respect Ukraines borders and sovereignty and that didn’t stop Russia violating them.

In fact this deal seems to be explicitly about allowing Russia to invade again by pledging them to stay out of defensive alliances that would finally stop and prevent Russian aggression.

> Ukraine only really has the resources to hit propaganda targets behind enemy lines now

Ukraine has destroyed one of the submarines that Russia was using to launch cruise missiles at them and has leveled the Black Sea headquarters effectively.

They are doing what Russia keeps claiming and failing to do (hitting decision making centres).


I would seriously challenge your "equivalent sophistication" statement. The human resources management of Russia's army is below WW2 Soviet's abysmal standard. The russian population is starting to notice.


According to some western sources, yes, but many of these same sources have also made false reports on everything from Russian ammo shortages, missile shortages to total economic collapse before rolling back on them so I wouldn't necessarily put too much faith in them.

I would calibrate the predictions you see from your sources with the predictions that they made 12 months ago. The results may surprise.

There are several technological areas where Russia is obviously ahead of the west - the two most notable being anti aircraft defences (S-400) and hypersonic missiles.


Russian sources complain about ammo shortage on a daily basis.

The Russian economy is struggling but not collapsing yet.

The hypersonic missiles have generally failed to beat western air defenses. The S 400s have been getting blown up with visual confirmation.


Ok we have very different sources... :+) Mine don't do predictions.


This is the complete opposite of what happened in Bakhmut.


It is worst than this for Russia: demographic decline was already well established before the war starred, the hole this is adding to the reproductive capacity of the russian population is going to be very hard to get out of, so the "another generation" is just not going to be there with the mass of WW2 or WUkrZ.


I think the most likely take here is bureaucratic incompetence though. It’s not like the current administration can even guarantee it will continue through 2025.


> There’s a good point to be made that Russia could probably beat the US in conflicts that are not existential.

Russia can't even beat its next door neighbor who is supplied with the US's castoff tech

The US would destroy the Russian forces from a distance, even in non-nuclear combat, it wouldn't even be close.


That’s my point though. It doesn’t need to be close. Russia doesn’t need to be winning for the US to decide it’s not worth it.

Ukraine is suffering attrition at a rate of 1:2-5 in most areas based on stats I have seen (and I feel like trending 5+ lately fwiw). The US would certainly find that to be outrageous if it were US troops dying at that rate for something like the war in Ukraine.

I do think the US could perform with much better stats. But how much better do they need to be? I think not clear.

Russia’s proven to be a lot weaker mind you so they’re not the best example to have indexed on. Much of their capabilities could be annihilated if we just got the fuck on with ATACM and the cluster variety.


It is puzzling, it almost seems like we would definitely have that capability by now…


Russia is far behind in technology though, and it shows. This war is a great tragedy for Ukraine, but a boon to the rest of the word because (apart from showing the murderous face of Putin and the weakness of the Russian army) it is actively depleting it and defers any potential conventional conflict with other neighbors of Russia by decades.


I agree. It could very well cause a reworking of the entire country if the economic burden gets too great.


>Simply because if Russia loses men at a rate of 50:1 the US could still find those losses unpalatable

The crux of the matter is there are few nations on earth where life has so little value as Russia. Their leadership has no trouble sending or convincing 10's of millions to go and die. It is my belief Americans and Europeans still don't understand this and if this war was to spill over from Ukraine into Europe it would be a disaster no different than WWII. Yes, USA/Europe/NATO would win but it would cost them millions of lives. Putin has already said if I run out of men I will send Women.

>Frankly I’m confused why we don’t have these things for big static targets like a drone that independently navigates to a rail line, drops a mine and leaves for the train to blow up next time it shows up.

I think the West believed that they could just use their air power to destroy these targets but failed to realize that they have never really fought an enemy that had a serious air defense. Iraq was using systems from the early 70's that were easily defeated.The USA doesn't even have a basic drone like the Iranian Shahed drone that could be produce in mass, they also have no answer to stopping them efficiently.

America can not win a conventional war with China, that is a guarantee. The Chinese could field millions of drones and a endless supply of men and with the support of Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc, would have no problems defeating the US/West. The second Americans couldn't buy a microwave, iPhone, or video card and millions of other things, they would lose their minds and surrender......


> America can not win a conventional war with China, that is a guarantee. The Chinese could field millions of drones and a endless supply of men and with the support of Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc, would have no problems defeating the US/West. The second Americans couldn't buy a microwave, iPhone, or video card and millions of other things, they would lose their minds and surrender.

I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or not but, academic discussion aside, Russia cannot even win the war with Ukraine, so it's hard to imagine how they would fare against a stronger enemy with powerful modern weapons.


Well the War in Ukraine isn't over and the USA/West doesn't seem to have the will or resolve to help Ukraine win and any help is purely defensive. As the world has seen, Russia has a disregard for life and a willingness to destroy the civilian population without any kind of conscience. They can simply use this same formula on Europe and perhaps that is why the Baltic's who have a large Russian population already, are afraid.

Lets not forget what happened with the USA/NATO in Afghanistan where a a stronger force with powerful modern weapons was defeated.

Hope I'm full of shit and wrong but I don't have a lot of faith in the USA/West and their resolve and capability when faced with a formidable foe.


I think it depends on what the public feels is at stake.


Russia is already winning in Ukraine.

That's exactly why Biden has been finding it so hard to keep sending weapons - the Republicans would be more or less happy to keep sending them if they were seeing positive results from the counteroffensive but nothing has been achieved.

If weapons deliveries wind down from hereon out then Kiev is toast.


You're wrong, that last thing that is happening is Russia is winning. Russia has already lost, just remember that conflicts like Afghanistan were one of the factors that that destroyed the USSR and Chechnya basically bankrupted them and caused their economy to collapse. The war in Ukraine will more than likely be the end of Russia and it's break up into different countries and nations. It might take up to a decade but it is coming......


I am wondering how did they come up with 3,600 casualties per day - that would be 1.3M per year.


That number might make sense if you include injuries significant enough to (at least temporarily) remove that person from the theater of war. Soldiers in hospital or discharged because of injuries are very nearly equivalent to dead soldiers when it comes to removing enough people in play who can pull a trigger pointed at your soldiers.


Correct -- a "casualty, as a term in military usage, is a person in military service, combatant or non-combatant, who becomes unavailable for duty due to any of several circumstances, including death, injury, illness, capture or desertion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualty_(person)


If the US ever tries to have conscription again, it will destroy the state as it exists.


I would have thought that in the 90s but the fervor around 9/11 made me think that such popular consideration is fickle in both directions. If we were fighting an actual, military threat to the country, conscription would have almost certainly happened.


I'm not actually sure another 9/11 would have the same unifying effect it did in 2001. Today the information ecosystem is so much more fractured, there's way more material and reputational reward for being a "counter-consensus" voice, and polarization has increased to the point where it has totally undermined even the potential of national unity -- hop on Twitter and you can easily find tons of partisans declaring that they'd rather live under Chinese communist or Russian anti-liberal "trad" rule today, if that were an option.

My guess would be that if something like 9/11 happened again today, you'd see [tribe controlling the White House] try to use it as a unifying event, and this would immediately catalyze a furious reaction and counter-narrative from [tribe not controlling the White House] denouncing it as cynical grift, especially if it was used to try and justify a draft.


I agree with you that the US does not have the political legitimacy for conscription right now, and its surprising that they did for WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. None of those conflicts were existential for the US, they were all power plays of some kind.


How in the world was WW2 a power play for the US?


To be concise, power shifted to the US. The colonial era ended or was slated to end. Former colonies were liberated and became client states of the US. The US retained an industrial base, Europe did not. The Bretton Woods agreement was signed. The Marshall plan was enacted. The Euro-Dollar system followed. As the sole remaining industrial power the US was able to dictate terms to the rest of the world.

The topic goes quite deep. I'm sure better minds have written books arguing the specifics.


That's a very different claim from what was said originally though. It's true that World War II resulted in the US being much more powerful, but the evidence that this was the intention all along in joining the war is very shaky. Both among national elites, and even moreso among the general public, opinion was pretty strongly isolationist and against getting involved in World War II until Pearl Harbor happened. There's not really any reason to believe that there was a master plan to make the US the global superpower by entering the war, it just kind of happened.


That's my understanding as well. We _may_ have entered the war if Pearl Harbor had never happened.

If the Japanese had not attacked, the United States certainly would've entered the war later, but I don't think you could ever refer to it as a "power play".


Entering later rather than sooner was a power play.

Ascribing intent is tricky here. Personifying the modern state is another iffy area. "Directed history" is another can of worms.


Again, I think this is wrong and you're suffering some hindsight bias. In retrospect it can look like the entry of the United States into WWII was always inevitable, but this is not how people saw things at the time. Up through 1941 the American public saw the war as a European affair that was not our problem: people were strongly against actual military involvement and even the Lend-Lease Act was quite controversial. It wasn't until Pearl Harbor that the entry of the US into the war was a sure thing.


It is too subjective to ascribe intent. It is worse than psychoanalysis because "the US" isn't a distinct individual. Instead there's a collection of individuals, all with different sets of sometimes overlapping incentives.

Inevitability isn't the question. Rather, "power play" in terms of post-hoc analysis is the only question we can probe. Suggesting otherwise is a leap beyond conjecture.

Without implying that this was the analysis at the time, we can safely say that the US was positioned to be the sole remaining industrial superpower post war, if the US entered the war at the time which it did. If it had entered earlier or not at all, this may not have been the case.

The original comment was concise. Perhaps it was appropriate for a simple assertion, but it did leave room for ambiguity.


You're totally right: the outcome of WW2 had a lot of effects that ultimately benefited the United States.

My reply was directed towards the idea that the US entered WW2 as a "power play", not that the outcome of the war resulted in more power for the US.

The primary reason the US entered WW2 was because of Pearl Harbor.


There is a reason that FDR fully intended to fight a pacific war years before pearl harbor ever happened. Japan doesn't just attack Hawaii because they were deranged.


The United States might not have entered the war at all had the Japanese not attacked. The American public was split up until Pearl Harbor.

Entering WW2 is the most righteous thing the US has ever done. I know that the US has done a lot of wrong, but I cannot imagine how much more suffering there would've been if the Axis had won.


WW2 wasn't existential?

If WW2 wasn't existential I don't know where the bar is.


There was zero threat to CONUS during WW2. If you understand that FDR was planning on fighting a pacific war long before pearl harbor it makes a lot more sense.


The USA is not just CONUS.

Also there was a Japanese plan to unlease the plague on San Diego - it was ended by WW2.

Not...quite sure how much of a threat "attacked Hawaii, allies under attack, plans to send plague to San Diego" all groups up to be, but yeah it was existential.


I'd wager conscription would only be relevant if the state was effectively dying anyway.


The US has no national security threats in its region. Conscription would only be about fighting a war with China, which would be a war of choice (like all US wars).


It wouldn’t be a war of choice.


It would be a war of choice in the sense that it's not an existential threat.

You can relatively easily conceive of scenarios where the US either needs to directly confront China, or lose its geo-strategic preeminence, but it much much harder to conceive of scenarios over the next 50 years in which direct confrontation with China is 'actually existential' (in the sense that if the US loss or did not partake in the confrontation, that the US would domestically cease to exist in a recognizable form).

Effectively, the US' challenge for recruitment (and honestly a lot of things) is to convince enough of its population that US hegemony/preeminence is "a good thing" and worth fighting and dying for.

Too bad the US pissed away a good chunk of that capital with GWOT.


This is absolutely true - in the current information environment.

Slowly boil the frog by removing internet freedom for 50 years, and close down independent media outlets, prevent growth of organic networks? Sure.

There's no guarantee that our freedoms continue unabated. Look at Jan 6th and how dangerously close we came to authoritarians seizing power. There was a false elector scheme!

Or a "backdoor" where as soon as the authoritarians grab power, they flip a switch and the only networks you have are ham radio enthusiasts. Not good.


Well sure. The state as it exists will cease to be, and there will be a new state that's a lot like the old one but with conscription. You can say the same about every change to the state. Are you positing that the replacement state will be better, or worse, or is this just an observation that changing something makes it different?


I was being charitable. It will be vastly worse for the US. And in the event of a war with China it could very plausibly be the end of the US as a unified state. There will certainly be plenty of political violence.


Why would they? There is no any reason to do that. It's the opposite of the situation in Russia where Putin is afraid to lose face so he is ready to send the next hundred thousands of cannon fodder.


lessons from Ukraine... "don't give back your nukes"


My understanding is that Ukraine never really had a choice.

The matter of Soviet nukes being stationed in Ukraine was so existential for Russia that a refusal to give up the nukes eventually would have led to a full-on invasion by Russia.

Ukraine had only been independent for a couple of years at that point, so they did not have the necessary military structures to defend themselves like they are doing this time around. The US would not have engaged in full-on war with Russia just to let Ukraine keep the nukes – at the time, nobody knew how Ukraine was going to develop, so the West preferred Ukraine giving up their nukes to avoid the scenario of a rogue post-Soviet country with nuclear weapons.

You have to remember, at the time, Ukraine was not yet seen in the West as this brave independent anti-Russia that it is perceived as today.

Finally, the Ukrainians could not have used those nuclear weapons in the hypothetical invasion. The nuclear command & control was headquartered in Russia, so the Ukrainians didn't have access to the launch codes. Even if they had somehow managed to circumvent that and actually used the nuclear weapons, that definitely would have united Russia and the West against Ukraine.


I don't think the launch codes are what matters. It it is the fissile material. Worst case, you can build new nukes with it. Not easy, but also not impossible. I have no idea if Ukraine had a choice or not, but at the time Russia was weak and Putin was not yet in power. It could have gone in a myriad of different ways.


You are taking the wrong lesson. Russia has countless times used the threat of nuclear escalation to its advantage. Many western governments (and zealots like Musk) are very hesitant in giving aid to the Ukrainian defense effort citing nuclear escalation.

Now imagine a world where Russia didn’t have nukes, that we successfully got rid of those horrible weapons in the 1980s to 1990s (which was very possible if the American government would have been willing), how far do you think Russia would go then without being shielded by this threat? At the very least western nations wouldn’t have their favorite excuse for why they don’t send their so many weapons and so many armies to actually defend a nation under an invasion.


> that we successfully got rid of those horrible weapons in the 1980s to 1990s (which was very possible if the American government would have been willing

This is just wishful thinking. All countries agreeing to give up their nukes is about as likely as all countries agreeing never to go to war again because it's a net negative; not going to happen.


My parent is also wishful thinking. There is no timeline where Ukraine keeps their nukes and the world is just OK with it. Ukraine would need to be far more authoritarian and non-EU oriented if it wanted to keep their nukes. It would basically need to be more like Belarus. And at that point there is no world where they want to break away from Russian influence and enter the EU influence.


If Ukraine had nukes, Putin's regime would have stayed put.


Yes that was the lesson you took from this, however I see a different more applicable lesson that nukes are actually more dangerous than we gave them credit for prior to the invasion.

Not only do they have the power to destroy the world many times over, but they also have a deterrence power which empowers nuclear powers to engage in wars of aggression without fearing the consequences.

In other words, there are two lessons here. The one you took from this, is that nations can use nukes to deter invasion, and that denuclearizing puts them at greater risks of being invaded. You denuclearizing as a mistake. My lesson is that the real mistake was to allow Russia to keep their nukes, and to keep nuclear armed nations. South Africa denuclearized just fine and hasn’t been invaded. If the world had denuclearized at the same time, Ukraine’s denuclearization would have yielded the same success.


I severely disagree: a full denuclearization means wars all over again.

Si vis pacem, para bellum


The theory that nuclear weapons is the reason for the relative peace of our era is an oft cited one but without much evidence. There are multiple alternatives which are equally—if not more—likely to explain it better. Things like human rights, democracy, decolonization, universal education, etc.

If this was a bet, I wager the proliferation of democracies and decolonization is a much better explanation for why there are fewer wars, than the binary of whether nuclear weapons exist or not.


As for many things, there are several parameters, worse, not independent parameters.

Remove the "Nukes" parameter, and all the other parameters get nullified, or could not even get realization the way it is happening in our nuke-ified world. We are talking a massive butterfly/domino effect.

WWIII would have happen without nukes, or we better start to believe the earth is flat.


We are arguing in alternative history, it is always going to be silly. Alternative history is fiction, so basically we are writing our own fiction and presenting it as our argument. In a way we both may as well believe the earth is flat.

Given the destructive nature of nukes, and the mathematical fact that unhindered proliferation will always lead to nuclear warfare, I think a safer world where we thank the things which has provably made our lives better in addition to preventing wars.

Aside from that, I’m curious. I understand that it can be hard for you to accept my theory that human rights and democracy have prevented wars (or rather you may believe that nukes brought us both), but how do you suppose decolonization is not a significant factor. Like in the decades after WW-2 when the world had nukes (including a couple of colonial powers), Europe saw some horrific wars in its colonies. Angola, Algeria, Vietnam, those were all colonial wars with so many unnecessary deaths and destruction. More often than not (mostly because of France) those involved a nuclear state as the aggressor. How does this actual history fit into your narrative?


Then, we are in strong disagreement. My beliefs are earth is round, and the cold war would not have been that cold without nukes...


So the peace of the 19th century saw a period of relative peace (i.e. without great power conflict) that lasted from the congress of Vienna until world war one. There were no nukes, but rather a period which saw the spread of democracy across Europe (but also European colonialism). This was a 99 year long period. The Cold War lasted for less then 50.

What makes you so certain that full scale warfare is so unavoidable if not for nukes?

Secondly, the cold war is over. What I alluded to was that the world would get rid of nukes in the period after the election of Gorbachev, but before the election of Bush. At this point the cold war is pretty much over (if not completely over; and it is certainly over now). And in this post-cold war era, Russia—a nuclear power—invades Ukraine. Why not get rid of nukes now?

And finally, I believe the Earth can be whichever shape an author wants it to be in fiction. Alternative history is fiction, so in your alternative timeline of no nukes causing WW3, the earth may as well be a donut.


Yep, strong disagrement. It is a dead end.

And we are witnessing probably the end of the internet public message board due to chatgpt AIs.




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