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When you're invading an enemy nation, the last thing you want to be doing is
build extensive defensive fortifications. If, like Russia, your army is forced to do this,
then your invasion isn't quite going to plan. But despite erecting the most extensive network
of trenches in Europe since World War I, Russia's strategy isn't likely to work.
But first, what exactly is Russia doing and how did it get here?
Rocked on its heels by the ferocity of the Ukrainian counter-attack at the end of summer,
Russian forces have found themselves in a perilous situation for any would-be
invader. If there is one single weapon that Ukraine's counteroffensive hinged on,
it was the HIMARS. If there were two, it would be the HIMARS and the High-speed
anti-radiation missile, or HARM. A very close third though would be the massive
amounts of ammunition, artillery, and shells provided by the west.
Before any offensive there is a phase called shaping operations. During this phase,
the attacker uses whatever resources it has available to 'shape' the conflict to come. In
World War I, this phase of an offensive would typically entail massive amounts of artillery,
with barrages lasting as much as two weeks all in an effort to significantly soften up enemy
defenses. In World War II, shaping operations began to take on a more modern definition,
involving the use of feints, intelligence deceptions, and covert action behind enemy lines.
The goal is typically to mess up enemy plans, make them more difficult to implement, divert enemy
forces away from your objective, and neutralize force multipliers- or things like terrain
features or weapon systems that significantly increase the lethality of troops on the ground.
HIMARS began shaping operations in mid-July, with a blistering barrage of strikes against
Russian lines of communication, command and control posts, and ammo dumps. The HIMARS
mini-offensive caught the Russians completely by surprise, who to date had yet to face any
sort of significant precision weapon threat in any conflict. Accustomed to fighting technologically
primitive wars in Chechnya and Syria, Russia had learned nothing from US operations during
Desert Storm or subsequent conflicts, and was completely unprepared for the effect of smart
weapons in combat. It’s possible however that Russia didn’t plan for these weapons to be in
Ukraine, it may have not believed that the US would provide them in the first place.
Either way, HIMARs was immediately effective on the battlefield, and disrupted Russia's offensive
and ability to resupply its front line units. It was during the peak of the HIMARS offensive
that Russia suffered its greatest losses amongst senior military officers, which had a cascading
effect on Russia's ability to coordinate its forces on the ground. Unlike the west, Russia
lacks a professional Non-commissioned Officer corps, and still operates in a Soviet-style,
top-down command structure that discourages individual initiative. With each officer killed,
it became harder for Russia to maneuver its forces and adapt quickly to threats-
something we would see in full effect during the September counter-offensive in the northeast.
But the destruction of Russian ammunition dumps had a more direct impact on operations. Until
HIMARS joined the battlefield, Russian artillery was doing what Russia does
best- leveraging an incredible amount of painful, if very indiscriminate,
destruction. However, Russia had foolishly stockpiled its ammunition in a small number
of very densely concentrated supply hubs for ease of distribution. This allowed Russia to
quickly and efficiently resupply its artillery, which was consuming shells at a voracious rate,
but it also left them incredibly vulnerable to long-range precision strikes. The artillery
disparity between Russia and Ukraine- at times as high as 20-1- dropped significantly
immediately after the strikes, allowing Ukraine to better position its forces for
their future offensives. With its ammo stocks now more widely dispersed into smaller hubs,
Russia also slowed the pace of its fire missions, relieving significant pressure across the front.
The use of HARM missiles by the Ukrainian air force allowed it to take out a significant
number of air defense units- or rather their all-important radars. This opened
up gaps along the front where Ukrainian drones were able to operate again. However,
HARM missiles also allowed Ukraine to destroy Russian counter-battery radars, which posed
a big threat to Ukraine's own artillery. By tracking the flight path of incoming rounds
via radar, Russia was able to deliver accurate counter-battery fire that destroyed any artillery
too slow to shoot-and-scoot. The elimination of these radars allowed Ukraine the opportunity to
move less mobile pieces of artillery closer to the front and deliver more punishing fire missions.
Thoroughly disrupted, Ukraine's ground offensive caught the Russians completely by surprise,
and resulted in massive territorial losses and the decimation of some of Russia's best fighting
forces- such as the vaunted 1st Guards Tank Army, a unit designed to beat the best that NATO could
field. On the heels of overwhelming Ukrainian momentum, greater fighting spirit, and a numbers
disparity that began to favor Ukraine as thousands of its conscripts began to join the fighting after
months of training, Russia was forced on the defensive. And that's where we find Russia today,
launching only limited offensives with barely- if any- gains to show for them.
In response to the expected renewed counter-offensive,
Russia has constructed a dense network of defenses, and they're unlikely to work.
The Wagner private military company made headlines when it was revealed they had
constructed a dense network of anti-tank obstacles . These go by a variety of names,
including Dragon's Teeth and Tiger's Teeth, but serve the same purpose they have for years:
slow down an armored offensive. During World War II they were very effective in slowing,
but not stopping, US armored forces entering Germany.
These obstacles are typically buried partly in the ground to make them difficult to move,
and are built in very dense concentrations. The goal is to funnel forces through gaps in
the defensive line where artillery fire can be concentrated, similar to the use of barbed wire
to channel infantry assaults. In the Second World War they were a significant challenge,
but the problem is modern vehicles have evolved greatly since then.
There are already videos of Ukrainian vehicles simply driving over them,
a very bumpy but manageable ride. If this wasn't bad enough though, when Germany deployed
them against the US they were part of a defense network that ran several hundred miles long with
significant defensive depth. Even as undermanned and equipped as the Siegfried Line was when the
US pushed into Germany, it still managed to significantly slow the pace of the offensive,
but not stop it. Russia's modern defenses are much less dense than this, and are facing modern forces
that can blast paths with high explosives or simply drive directly over these rudimentary
defenses. Making matters worse is the fact that these obstacles are meant to be dug a meter
into the ground to make them difficult to move- photo evidence shows that Wagner did not do this.
Without significant defensive depth, Russia's slowing of any offensive isn't going to buy
enough time to bring overwhelming fire support to bear and destroy an assault force. Further,
Russian fire support has to now contend with long-range precision artillery on Ukraine's side,
as Ukraine is certain to concentrate its HIMARS and Excalibur precision
artillery shells in the locations of these breakthrough assaults.
Russian defensive doctrine does dictate the creation of defense-in-depth,
with multiple networks of trenches, typically 3, with 10 kilometers of depth. This is why as
the Ukrainian counteroffensive began, nobody in the west was celebrating it as a success until a
breakthrough achieved this magic number. While this isn't a strategically unsound doctrine,
Russia's biggest vulnerability is its inability to respond to rapid changes
in a combat environment or to bring precision fire down on targets. This is
why the United States' Brigade Combat Teams are smaller than their Russian equivalents,
the Battalion Tactical Group, as the US favors high mobility and the ability to attack on
multiple fronts simultaneously to overwhelm Russian-style top-down command structures.
Ukraine, operating with similar American doctrine, is simply a much more nimble and
adaptable force. The presence of western precision munitions as well as the ever-eroding morale and
capabilities of Russia's largely conscript forces is a strong indicator that Russia's
defensive strategy is simply going to fail. This is why Russia’s new defensive strategy
is to try to call for a cease-fire. As the war progresses both sides are forced to bring more
and more conscripts into the fight. However, Ukrainian conscripts have the benefit of
months of NATO-standard training, often in NATO countries themselves. Russian conscripts instead
are being increasingly rushed through a few weeks of training at best and thrown into the fight. The
longer the war goes on, the greater the death toll on both sides- but increasingly skewed towards
Russia as its lower and lower quality troops are destroyed by more veteran Ukrainian troops and
the ever more capable western equipment slowly being made available to Ukraine. This is why
Russia desperately needs a cease-fire, giving it the breathing room it badly needs to train
conscripted troops and build better defenses. And this is why Ukraine should never agree
to any cease-fire as long as Russian troops occupy any part of its territory.
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