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Russia’s army is learning and improving on the battlefield
- stunt 3y agoHow is this a surprise? Nothing can improve an army like war. Just compare the US military before and after the Afghanistan war. Each individual piece of equipment and every tactic went through several evolution. This is why other countries send troops every time the US goes to war. They send them to practice and learn. Certainly, the United States did not need the help of Ukraine, Latvia, and Moldova in the Iraq war. They went there to learn. The Middle East has been the largest playground for the world's armies.
- helge9210 3y agoArmy is a reflection of the society. For the army to improve radically, the society itself has to learn and improve. If it didn't happen for the last 200 years, why would it happen now?
- perceptronas 3y agoIt did happen multiple times. Usually Russians get better after 1 year of war. It seems the same thing is happening again.
- Someone 3y agoBecause being shot at and seeing comrades get hit is a strong incentive? Also, do you have an argument as to that “it didn't happen for the last 200 years” claim?
- helge9210 3y agoThey still don't have running water and indoor sanitary facilities in most of the rural areas.
- cpursley 3y agoOutside of datcha villages (summer/weekend garden houses where people generally don't live full time), this is just total BS. Have you ever visited Russia?
- thc-27182 3y agoLooks like 1-in-5 don't have a flush toilet. https://hromadske.ua/en/posts/russia-is-struggling-with-a-shitty-problem-literally https://hromadske.ua/en/posts/russia-is-struggling-with-a-sh... https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-st...
- konart 3y agoFlush toilet requires your private house to be connected to a centralized communications OR to your personal water pumps. #1 is not an option if you leave far away from a town. #2 is not an option unless you can pay for it and its maintance. I understand that this sound like a problem or some savagery but in reality this is not much different from the fact that most countries do not have centralized hot water or heating. My summer house also does not have a flush toilet despite the fact that I can easily afford one. What's the problem?
- thc-27182 3y ago"Located less than 200 kilometers south of Moscow, the industrial city of Tula is home to around 549,992 people. And about a fifth of them have no access to centralized sewage systems." From the first link in my previous comment. Just bringing data to whether or not Russia is well equipped with flush toilets (or really more the point public sanitation). From a public health standpoint, human waste reaching rivers tend not to be good. "Untreated human sewage teems with salmonella, hepatitis, dysentery, cryptosporidium, and many other infectious diseases." https://www.americanrivers.org/threats-solutions/clean-water/sewage-pollution/ https://www.americanrivers.org/threats-solutions/clean-water...
- konart 3y agoYou might want to read at least some books on Russian history and results of the Crimean War specifically. Or chose a number different from 200.
- helge9210 3y agoCrimean War was lost. Russian-Japanese War was lost the same way. WWI way lost by Germany, but Russians lost even to Germans. WWII was won as part of the Allies by sacrificing Ukraine and using the extensive support from the US. Looks like a pattern to me.
- cpursley 3y agoYuri Gagarin and Russia's 99.6% literacy rate disagree. Like it or not, Russians (and Ukrainians for that matter) consistently read and math gooder than Americans.
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- Russia17 3y ago[flagged]
- t_tsonev 3y agoYou don't need to be a math genius to buy stuff from China.
- helge9210 3y agoUSSR did run to the finish losing medals to put the first human to space. USA did the same to put humans on the Moon. You can safely ignore these data points as anomalies. Can Russia consistently innovate in any technological field?
- cpursley 3y agoDid you read the article? Russia has objectively (for now, that gap will close) outclassed the west at EW, missile defense & offense. They are also a leader in nuclear technology. Are those not high tech industries?
- thc-27182 3y agoDoesn't really sound all that outclassed. Ukraine has been shooting down a fair bit of Russian attacks and if I'm not mistaken Ukraine has some better ranged munitions now. Hardly seems like being outclassed when Russia has spent the last year redeveloping it's logistics. Additionally this is Russia's best vs the Wests hand-me-downs.
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- gdy 3y agoThe USSR won the WW2 in case you haven't learn that in school.
- AzzieElbab 3y agoThat “Russia” was called USSR, was supported by the West, and included Ukraine among others. This time Russia’s only ally is Iran.
- gdy 3y agoUnfortunately, the independent Ukraine has been busy destroying monuments to the Ukrainians that fought againsts Nazis and naming dozens of streets after Nazi collaborants.
- gdy 3y ago"This time Russia’s only ally is Iran." This time Russia has nukes and the means to deliver them to any address on this planet.
- AzzieElbab 3y agoSo? What targets are they supposed to nuke?
- gdy 3y agoNone at the moment, hopefully. At this moment a single nuke would kill more people than died so far in the war.
- ceejayoz 3y agoSchool would probably also have noted that 80% of the USSR's copper, 1/3 of its explosives, fuel, trucks, etc. came from the US and UK via Lend-Lease. At a fairly critical time in the war. Zhukov: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own." School might also have noted the complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis; things like the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
- ruskifarmtrl 3y ago[flagged]
- igravious 3y agohttps://archive.ph/v5jmX https://archive.ph/v5jmX
- aliljet 3y agoI'm a little baffled by this, 'Russia has deployed big ew systems for every 10km stretch of the front. They are largely aimed at drones. And they work: Ukraine is losing a staggering 10,000 drones per month, says the report, amounting to over 300 losses daily. ew is responsible for around half of those losses, a Ukrainian official tells The Economist.' What Electronic Warfare is going to pull 5,000 drones a month out of the sky?
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoJam GPS, jam transmitters, drones "get lost", fall down.
- aliljet 3y agoYep. You're right. It's really just nav blocking that's killing the drones. I wonder if there's a way to have these drones operate without a need for GPS. Instead, use cameras to read terrain and map that against the known terrain...
- kayodelycaon 3y agoTomahawk cruise missiles originally used terrain following. (1983) Now they have GPS capability but I think terrain following is still an option.
- ozarker 3y agoIt’s insane to me they had stuff like terrain following working in the early 80’s
- tyingq 3y agoA fairly in-depth explanation of one part of the system from a 1994 paper: https://secwww.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/Content/techdigest/pdf/V15-N03/15-03-Irani.pdf https://secwww.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/Content/techdigest/pdf/...
- kjhughes 3y agoThe Economist article is based on this original paper, which includes a well-written, extensive executive summary: Meatgrinder: Russian Tactics in the Second Year of Its Invasion of Ukraine by Dr Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, 19 May 2023 - HTML wrapper with executive summary: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/meatgrinder-russian-tactics-second-year-its-invasion-ukraine https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-r... - Full PDF paper: https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf
- andrewclunn 3y agoI have a bet going with a co-worker regarding the state of this conflict by the end of the year. He gets his information from what would generally be considered "reputable mainstream sources" and I from the "darkweb underbelly" of the internet. It'll be an interesting test to see if I have been able to discern between the truth and misinfo, and whether the institutions behind his sources do a better job at vetting information, or are just propaganda mouthpieces. He thinks Russia is about to lose handedly, I believe large swaths of Eastern Ukraine will effectively be part of Russia going forward. We put some money down. Time to see which epistemological approach wins out.
- digdugdirk 3y agoBy the end of 2023? What did you agree on for the definitions of "lose handily", "large swaths of Eastern Ukraine", and "effectively part of Russia"? From a long term perspective, Russia has already lost handily - the cratering of the male fighting-age population (either from casualties or from fleeing the country) will be nearly impossible to recover from.
- mnky9800n 3y agoThey also ejected much of the intelligentsia from the country who had the means to leave.
- timbit42 3y ago> the cratering of the male fighting-age population (either from casualties or from fleeing the country) will be nearly impossible to recover from. This is happening to Ukraine as well. Ukrainians are not having children right now.
- PuffinBlue 3y ago> Russian EW is also apparently achieving real time interception and decryption of Ukrainian Motorola 256-bit encrypted tactical communications systems, which are widely employed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Interesting. I wonder if this is via cryptanalysis or something like breaching key storage/espionage.
- tyingq 3y agoI believe it's symmetric AES256, and you load the keys into the radios with a wired/dedicated keyloader device. The Russians must have some hack into wherever the keys are being stored centrally before they get into the keyloader. Or, more mundanely, they don't rotate the keys often, and the Russians just have some number of stolen radios. You can find videos of both sides picking up radios with drones too.
- PuffinBlue 3y ago> Furthermore, these measures have reduced the probability of kill of a variety of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) at ranges beyond 1,400 m. That’s a significant drop in Javelin range.
- roenxi 3y agoThis situation was dangerous and remains dangerous. There are a couple of significant risks here: 1) Western policy risks building up a big Asian military alliance. It should be obvious to China that what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them. India will be nervous too unless they are hopelessly naive. China and the US were friends once too, back in ... the 2010s... 2) We're escalating towards WWIII. This is like watching athletes limbering up. 3) In the modern era it is astonishingly rare for the US military to get involved and leave a country better off than when they entered. The US does not have the resources to head in and rebuild Ukraine - that privilege now belongs to China, world manufacturing superpower. We're going to see massive distabilisation in Eastern Europe for a generation. The Poles are wise to be rapidly militarising.
- oneTbrain23 3y agoMost likely USA will be destroyed. Most American nukes are in their 50s-60s. USA also has a doctrine to cut loses as can be seen in Vietnam and Afghanistan. A quick sucessions of tactical nukes on American carrier fleets and pre-emptive strikes on 30 of American top cities will render American surrender. Even if they decide to launch, their ballistic nukes are interceptable, their satelites are now trailed by many Russian and Chinese satelite killers. As for F35, let just dig in that Israel F35 has been shotdown in Syria and likely another one F35 accident in Pacific in the last 24mths. Russia alone has about 20K nukes and deliverables with near 100% accuracy while USA THAAD and Patriots have been widely known as duds (Saud had to change their policies to make peace with Yemen and Syria because of poor American weaponry). By the way, USA imports Russian uranium. Considering John Titor's timeline America nuked and fractured in his timeline plus some East Asian prophecies about the fall of USA, I do believe WW3 would be a short one. The whole text of original Titor are in Library of Congress. Read that version. It did mentioned about Bill Gates and segway. Poles are widely known as military weak. Their only good one was their winged Hussars in medieval time. Already closed to 20K of theirs in Ukrainian as "mercs and volunteers" slaughtered. I dont think they willing to go WW3. They are too close to Russia, just purely on logistics, not enough Americans soldiers and artillery shells able to sustain Russian assault backed by Chinese factories. It is better they go for MYOB strategy. Doing Ukrainian or 80s Saddam-USA friendly Iraq policies are fatal. With Russians and Chinese establishing their influence in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and now Ukraine I just dont see how EU can do much. Already they have to content with x6 fuel price without Russia and Chinese now able to half thrir fuel cost thanks to Russians gas pipes....that is 12x advantage just on energy alone. If you look at IQ and labor cost, EU sre serious outnumbered. We not even counting massive industrial espionage to bring EU IPs into Russia and China.
- fabian2k 3y agoFrom the original report (https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/meatgrinder-russian-tactics-second-year-its-invasion-ukraine https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-r...): > An overview of Russian adaptation reveals a force that is able to improve and evolve its employment of key systems. There is evidence of a centralised process for identifying shortcomings in employment and the development of mitigations. Nevertheless, much of this adaptation is reactive and is aimed at making up for serious deficiencies in Russian units. The result is a structure that becomes better over time at managing the problems it immediately faces, but also one that struggles to anticipate new threats. The conclusion therefore is that the Russian Armed Forces pose a significant challenge for the Ukrainian military on the defence. Nevertheless, if Ukraine can disrupt Russian defences and impose a dynamic situation on them, Russian units are likely to rapidly lose their coordination. Changes in the air combat environment, for example, have led rapidly to incidents of Russian fratricide. Both sides are adapting, we'll see how this develops once the Ukrainian offensive starts.
- chewz 3y ago[flagged]
- fabian2k 3y agoIgnoring all the other stuff, you think that a country that loses a military engagement with a much larger neighbour doesn't have any right to exist?
- chewz 3y agoUkraine is losing citizens, that do not seem to be comitted to Ukraine as a state. World community (or West) can keep an empty shell within 1990 borders but that would be very peculiar "state"..
- fabian2k 3y agoSo when civilians flee an unprovoked invasion, it justifies that invasion in your opinion as the country isn't a real country anymore because a significant part of the population fled the war? That's just insane.
- jimbob45 3y agoI have to believe that experience is gained largely equally on both sides in any conflict. The more interesting question would be whether or not there has ever been a case in history where experience was gained asymmetrically in a conflict.
- Kye 3y agoI read an analyst early on who said much of Ukraine's surprising resistance came from rotating experienced fighters from the front to build up guerilla capacity throughout the country as Russia tried to complete the takeover it started in 2014. So while the "farmer steals tank" stories were funny, it was likely part of a well-trained, well-organized, and well-equipped resistance. Russia's 2022 escalation improved that preparation as theory met reality and they adapted. Ukraine had 8 years to dig in for a long fight. Russia had 8 years to let its armor rot more.
- chewz 3y agoThis isn't new for Russian Army. You win wars with staying power and quick adaptation. The funiest millitary book I have ever read was Decision in the Ukraine written form the Western (German) perspective... It is basically accusing Russian army of not fighting "fair" - digging with defense in depth, using well places artillery and minefields to blunt the offensive of elite German SS Panzer corps. Russia Against Napoleon is also well worth reading to realize to what lengths Russia can go to win the war... This small Russian, hungry army in rags in Lower Silesia in 1813 who still had the spirit to carry the war to Paris by 1814... https://www.amazon.com/Decision-Ukraine-Operations-Stackpole-Military/dp/0811711625 https://www.amazon.com/Decision-Ukraine-Operations-Stackpole... https://www.amazon.com/Russia-Against-Napoleon-Story-Campaigns-ebook/dp/B003NX75IQ https://www.amazon.com/Russia-Against-Napoleon-Story-Campaig...
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoIndeed. In the vast historiography of WW2's Eastern Front, the winning qualities of the Red Army have changed nearly as fast as the roster of writers enunciating them. German generals, American spooks, British professionals, then the post-Fall ex-Soviet source equipped historians, all with their own different verdict on what fueled that dramatic reverse[1]. With one single exception: the fact that Russians learned very, very rapidly. Being not one generation separated from Russian émigrés myself, that resonates with my outsider's view of the national character: charismatic, paranoid, chimeral, but deeply brilliant. It's unfortunate that these qualities somehow never gave rise to secular skepticism, but perhaps such a large land mass doesn't have much room for that kind of civitas. [1] Or not so dramatic at all. With better numbers, historians of the 21st Century have become increasingly certain that the reverse was not so dramatic, and that German victory in the East might well have been impossible. It never feels like that at the time, of course; go ask any unfortunate American veteran how in control of events they felt on the streets of Fallujah.
- chewz 3y agoMy favorite example is reactive armour of 1945. When Russian tanks entered German towns in 1945 they had been greeted with Panzerfaust... So the Russian tankist started welding spring beds to their armour making Panzerfaust useless in city warfare.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]