In September, the Ukrainians pulled off one of the best military deception campaigns in
modern history.
While the world focused on the ongoing Kherson offensive that started in mid-August, the
Ukrainian military was quietly preparing for its real offensive in the east.
In the late evening of September 6th, the Ukrainian army launched its Kharkiv offensive.
That offensive resulted in the liberation of approximately 12,000 square kilometers
of territory by mid-October.
To put that in perspective, that's about the size of the US state of Connecticut.
But how did the Ukrainians deliver the worst battlefield defeat on the Russian military
since World War Two?
The short answer to that question is Thunder Runs.
To understand what a Thunder Run is, you must go back to the US experience in Vietnam.
During that conflict, the NVA and VC troops realized that they were outgunned in terms
of armored vehicles.
While lacking in armored support, these Communist soldiers did have something in abundance:
mines.
The main highways and roads from major population centers were notoriously known for their heavy
presence of mines.
Because of the frequent mine threat, US troops had to constantly delay their convoys while
they stopped and carefully scanned the ground with metal detectors.
This would result in huge traffic jams as convoys would have to stop for hours at a
time.
Because of this, Communist troops frequently attacked American convoys while they idled
on the road waiting for the engineers to give them the go-ahead that it was safe to proceed.
American commanders quickly realized that the old way of doing business was costing
them the tactical and, eventually, strategic initiative.
If US convoys could not reliably get to where they were going, far-flung outposts would
have a much more difficult time resupplying, reinforcing, and communicating with larger
formations.
To solve this problem, American commanders devised an ingenious idea: simply run the
mines over.
Because the M48 Patton tank could easily withstand the anti-personnel mines that lined most of
Vietnam's roadways, the tactic was simple.
M48 tanks would lead the way in front of convoys and run over all the mines.
If a tank lost a track or sustained light damage, another tank could take its place
and keep going.
By employing this simple yet brutally effective tactic, the American military ensured it could
effectively navigate Vietnam's highways safely and efficiently.
Fast forward almost forty years later, and America is now embroiled in the war on terror.
As part of that war, the United States, under President Bush's guidance, invaded Iraq under
the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein was harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction.
While we won't get into the political debate over the legitimacy of the US invasion, it’s
clear that it was a work of military genius on the Americans' part, thanks in no small
part to the contribution of General William Wallace.
Having taken command over V Corps shortly before the 9/11 attacks, General Wallace was
a Vietnam veteran and prude student of history.
When the US study of Mounted Warfare in Vietnam was published in 2002, he quickly digested
it and dusted off the Thunder Run as a viable tactic in the modern era with some twists.
With its emphasis on speed and violence of action, it was the perfect strategy that could
be applied to taking over a country.
Before the invasion of Iraq kicked off, President Bush had been worried about the huge casualties
that would ensue if a large-scale battle for Baghdad happened.
Frightened by the Russian experience in Chechnya trying to take Grozny and the US experience
in Vietnam, Bush wanted to avoid a costly city battle at all costs.
Thankfully for him, General Wallace approached Central Command with such a great idea that
it was eventually briefed to the President, who signed off on it personally.
The plan was relatively simple.
It started off by creating an inner and outer cordon around Baghdad to isolate the city.
The city was then divided into 55 sectors.
Once established, V Corps would create an armored convoy consisting of tanks and armored
fighting vehicles.
This convoy would then charge ahead at full speed into the city to attack predesignated
targets within these sectors as well as collect real-time intelligence on Iraqi positions
and defense preparations.
During the Thunder Run, the convoy would only stop to evacuate crews from any destroyed
vehicles.
Despite seeming like a crazy suicide mission, the Thunder Run had some serious benefits.
The most important benefit was creating disorder in the enemy's rear areas.
Because the US bombing campaign had already degraded Iraqi command and control, the fact
that there was an American armored column inside the city center would create confusion
and panic among the Iraqis because there was no way to tell how far into the city the Americans
advanced.
The second benefit was that it acted like reconnaissance in force.
Even with the state-of-the-art surveillance, drones, and aircraft the US operated, human
intelligence was still lacking.
By getting American troops up close to the city, they could accurately report on enemy
strength, weapons locations, morale, and other information vital to the war effort.
The third benefit was that US commanders meant the operation to be a psychological operation
against the Iraqi people and government.
Before and during the Thunder Runs, General Wallace had television broadcasts playing
what the Saddam regime was saying about the war.
By penetrating deep into Baghdad, he could prove the regime was dead wrong about the
war and hopefully break the will of the Iraqis to avoid a costly house-to-house battle.
Crazy enough, the plan worked even better than expected.
After the first Thunder Run penetrated almost to the Presidential Palace, the second one
went in and occupied it.
The Iraqi soldiers were absolutely stunned, and organized resistance soon crumbled.
In fact, the Thunder Run tactic was directly credited with shortening the conventional
war by at least several weeks and ultimately saving hundreds, if not thousands, of Allied
soldiers' lives.
Fast forward almost another twenty years to the war in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government
is faced with a similar situation.
Since the beginning of the invasion, the city of Kharkiv has been surrounded on three sides.
Though the defenders of Kharkiv have been holding on, the government desired to break
the siege and continue pushing eastwards to eventually retake the occupied territories
of Luhansk and Donetsk.
However, the Ukrainian government faced a big problem: a lack of troops.
Because of the ongoing Kherson offensive, the Ukrainian government diverted large numbers
of its most effective troops to the Kherson region.
They needed a plan to make the most out of the limited number of experienced troops they
had left.
Though the plan was always to make its main strike in the east, the Ukrainian government
needed the Russians to believe the Kherson region was their main target.
To accomplish this, they moved large numbers of combat-hardened troops to the area to crack
defenses there.
But while preparations were being made for the Kherson offensive, the government was
secretly planning the Kharkiv offensive.
During the summer, the Ukrainians moved some of their best troops into the region, including
the bulk of their special forces and battle-hardened units like the 92nd Mechanized Brigade.
Knowing they lacked the raw numbers to overcome Russian defenses in the area, the Ukrainian
High Command hoped to use speed, audacity, and aggression to counter the numerical superiority.
Even though the Russians had moved the bulk of their forces away from the Kharkiv region
and left mostly decimated units and national guard units in their place, the Russian side
still enjoyed a pretty steep numerical advantage.
Looking at the playbook from the US invasion of Iraq, the Ukrainian government decided
to replicate the Thunder Run tactic but on a much bigger scale.
The basic plan was this.
The attack would come from three different directions, with one being launched from the
east, one in the north, and one in the south.
The northerly and southerly advances were to advance in that general direction, while
the easterly advance would have the most difficult task.
The eastern advance would have to break the back of Russian defensive positions and generate
enough panic to create a general route.
Once the Ukrainians had created a general route, conventional units would follow up
behind and hold the liberated territory.
As for the columns themselves, they were instructed not to stop and to keep advancing as far as
they could go.
To accomplish this, the columns were outfitted with tanks, armored vehicles, and civilian
four-by-fours that were meant to act as the reconnaissance element of the convoys.
Over the course of several months, Ukrainian forces quietly accumulated all the equipment
and personnel needed for the offensive.
With a little over ten thousand troops and several hundred vehicles, the attackers would
have to rely on speed and surprise to win the day, and that is exactly what they did.
Late in the evening of September 6, the eastern column made up of special forces troops and
the 92nd Mechanized Brigade left their starting point in the village of Pryshyb.
After navigating the country roads, they quickly fell on their first target: the village of
Virbivka, about nine kilometers away.
After a short but fierce fight, the Russians fled, and the column did not stop until they
got to their next target of Balakliya, five kilometers away.
This is an important area since it is a crossroads for several major regional highways and has
a rail hub.
Controlling this ensured Russian troops could not move freely to reinforce crumbling positions.
After taking Balakliya, the convoy rumbled towards the villages of Volokhiv Yar and Semenivka.
Both of these villages were located along the T2110 highway.
The convoy continued advancing through the night and linked up with National Guard units
in the village of Shevchenkove.
In just 36 hours of fighting, the column had gone an impressive 53 kilometers, and it wasn’t
stopping any time soon.
Once they had wrested control of the village, the convoy moved along the P07 highway.
They continued on to liberate several more villages along the highway, including the
town of Hrushivka.
Here, it was evident that the Russian forces were in a full retreat, having abandoned tons
of military equipment and supplies in the village to escape the area with their lives.
The convoy continued on to its primary objective of Kupyansk.
The city had served as a significant logistical and command and control center for the Kharkiv
region.
After linking up with conventional troops, Ukrainian forces liberated the town by the
evening of September 10.
In just four days, the eastern column had advanced an impressive 90 kilometers and liberated
five villages and two cities by itself.
The operation was an astounding success.
As the Institute for the Study of War documented, by September 10, the entire Russian army in
the region was in a complete rout.
The poorly equipped, led, and motivated troops fled for their lives without knowing where
the Ukrainians would strike next.
The defeat was so bad its aftermath is what directly caused Putin to conduct his partial
mobilization, resulting in 300,000 men being conscripted into the Russian military.
But despite seeming like a no-brainer on paper, the operation was still very high risk.
For example, despite sending in some of the best troops Ukraine could muster, these troops
were still highly isolated along the highways and villages.
If the Russians had decided to put up a big enough fight, the convoys could have gotten
bogged down and ultimately wiped out if Russian commanders had gotten reinforcements into
the area on time.
Additionally, the convoys enjoyed little air and artillery support.
Though the Ukrainian Air Force still remains viable, it cannot commit its forces to a coordinated
ground support role for an offensive operation.
The rapid advance also meant that the convoys would quickly outrun the range of most friendly
artillery systems by the end of the third or fourth day.
Essentially, the Ukrainians hoped and actually achieved complete operational and tactical
surprise.
Russian commanders had been focused on the ongoing Kherson offensive and left the area
around Kharkiv depleted of experienced troops and most heavy equipment.
Russian forces behind the immediate frontlines around Kharkiv were just trying to get their
feet wet or recover in an area of the front that was less active.
Instead, the gamble paid off, and the Ukrainian Thunder Runs absolutely stunned the Russian
defenders.
It appears that the Ukrainians employed the tried-and-true US tactic to a tee and made
it better by scaling it up to a much larger battlefield application.
But despite being so successful, it’s yet to be seen if Ukraine will replicate this
winning strategy elsewhere in the country.
As of right now, anything can happen.