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- Pridružio: 26 Jan 2022
- Poruke: 39
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Неке процене тада потенцијалне руске инвазије у Украјини (његове брзине, укупних жртава, циљева) изнете новембра прошле године у тада неутралном медију; када још није форсирана ни прича о "Седам дана до Ривне", ни "траљави руси нису кадри заузети ништа". Можда може да допринесе дискусији. Благи спојлер је да аутор предвиђа 60 дана за простор источно од Дњепра.
+ Текст"With complete air control in hand the ground manoeuvre war could begin. This would see Russian forces fighting with the benefit of a recent substantial re-equipment programme, full logistic support and on-call air-ground strike facilities. In contrast, Ukrainian forces would be fighting largely blind (having no airborne reconnaissance assets other than small drones), with older and poorer equipment, and with a logistic tail under constant violent attack by Russian ground attack aircraft, medium-range rockets and cruise missiles.
There is a good reason for delaying deployment until the last minute: Ukraine’s reconnaissance assets may be minimal but those of the US are not, and Washington will be supplying Kyiv with a constant flow of intelligence on Russian troop movements and dispositions. Russia will be unable to obtain complete surprise, but making dispositions quickly and at the last minute will give a small element of tactical surprise, which will reduce Russian battle casualties by a useful number. It must be borne in mind that Moscow has 500 km of Ukrainian border to choose from for an assault, which would be on an army front of rather less than 150 km. The line of approach is not obvious.
To cross or not to cross?
Russia’s big choice will be whether to cross the Dnieper river early or late. This river, never less than 500m wide and for the most part dammed into lakes, divides Ukraine in two.
At its northern end Kyiv lies largely on its west bank, close to the Russian border. An early forcing of the river at or near Kyiv looks neat, but would result in an urban war in and around Kyiv. Here Russia’s advantages (armour, air strike, artillery, manoeuvre power) would be unusable, while its disadvantages (troop numbers, a wish to avoid civilian casualties, relative motivational mentality) would help Ukraine. An attack on Kyiv might well begin to feel like a re-run of the battle of Stalingrad. Rather, what Moscow would need from an invasion of Ukraine would be a swift unequivocal victory.
That makes the more likely plan a sweep south-east, anchoring the right wing of the Russian assault on the river and the left wing on Russian territory. Air superiority would ensure that Ukrainian forces were unable to cross the Dnieper to threaten Russia’s right flank. The advance south-east would have a battlefront of some 250 km for its whole extent from Russia to Crimea.
Half-way the attacking force would have to wing to the right, hinging on Zaporozhye. Russian military doctrine allocates 8 km of front to a brigade (of about 5,000 men). A 250-km front would therefore need 30 brigades – 10 more than are poised at Yelnya. The assault would therefore either need reinforcement before it starts, or have to accept a thinner-than-usual deployment.
That means the 92,000 men currently deployed are only about a third of the number actually needed to invade Ukraine. A lot more soldiers need to be brought to vicinity of the border or in places where they can be rapidly moved into position.
Turn right at Zaporozhye
At about halfway to Crimea the Russian left flank would reach the Luhansk and Donetsk republics. After the swing right (south-west) towards Crimea and the Black Sea the Russian left flank would rest on the northern shore of the Sea of Azov, completely controlled by the Russian Navy.
At each point in the advance the strike forces would be only a few hundred kilometres from Russian air bases, from which they can be easily supplied. Logistics flows would track the front from Russian territory with supply lines of only 250 km at their longest.
After the turn south-west halfway supplies would be supplemented by a flow across the Sea of Azov delivered by Russia’s small Black Sea amphibious forces, until the advance joined up with Russian forces in Crimea.
A bonus attaching to this route would be the early capture of Ukraine’s two largest oil refineries at Kremenchuk (on the Dnieper) and at Lisichansk (in the Donbas).
In total, an advance along this axis would cover approximately 1,000 km in total, and take in approximately 250,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory.
The ground battle phase would resemble, and likely repeat, the experience of Iraqi forces in 2003. Here 170,000 first-rank Coalition ground troops faced three times that number of Iraqi forces. The latter had no air support, no logistics support and no tactical intelligence beyond what they could see from their own lines. Iraqi forces were comprehensively defeated within a month.
Ukraine’s logistics problems would include a Russian naval blockade of supplies of oil in the Black Sea (national consumption is normally 230,000 barrels per day), and suspension of coal and gas supplies from Russian fields. So while Ukrainian forces were being punished at the battlefront, the economy, civilian life and the logistics tail would be collapsing behind them and across the Dnieper.
Ukrainian resistance collapsing about halfway
Russian forces would certainly face organised and armed Ukrainian units at first, and take casualties in that fight. Working from prepared positions and from cover, defenders would be able to inflict considerable damage on Russian forces moving in the open.
Russian losses would be larger because of the relatively low ratio of men to space on a wide front, compared to the more numerous but less well-equipped defence.
Damage would include Russian losses to the small number of US Javelin anti-tank guided missiles so far supplied to Ukraine (about 300 missiles in total, minus the one fired in the Donbas yesterday for the first time). Over a short space of time resistance east of the Dnieper would fade through human attrition, through lack of fuel and ammunition supplies to Ukrainian units, and due to intense air attack on defensive forces whenever they tried to move (both in daylight and darkness). With morale and supplies both running out Ukrainian resistance would collapse east of the Dnieper after about a month.
60 days to Crimea
At this point the main obstacle facing the Russian advance would be the friction inherent in moving masses of men and material across a landscape in which transportation infrastructure has been damaged or degraded.
We have an excellent case study in strategic friction in Iraq-2003, where resistance collapsed in a similar way for similar reasons. In spite of that collapse, Coalition forces still took thirty days to complete a strategic advance of some 500 km across flat open country. We should expect Russian forces to move at a similar rate in the flat, open territory of eastern Ukraine. If that is a correct analysis then Russian forces would expect to reach Crimea after two months, in which the first month sees intense conflict and the second less intense.
With eastern Ukraine under its control Moscow would require a pause to plan the second phase of the invasion (if there is one; Moscow might be satisfied with the east bank and stop there). During this pause Ukraine would be assembling and equipping reserve formations and those parts of its front-line formations which managed to escape across the Dnieper. Ukrainian attempts to conduct a defensive artillery battle over the Dnieper would be interdicted by sustained attacks from the Russian Air Force, which would continually harass and obstruct movement in Ukraine’s rear areas. It is likely that in the course of its defence Ukrainian forces would destroy most or all of the bridges across the Dnieper.
Crossing the Dnieper
Russian forces are equipped and well practised at river crossings without bridges. The Dnieper is mostly wider than 500 metres, and much of it has been dammed into lakes. There are four zones where its width falls to 500 metres, making a crossing by pontoon bridges possible, if tricky (the standard length of a large Russian pontoon bridge is 268m, but they can probably be joined together, and the army has numerous pontoon ferry units for where a bridge is impractical). These are near Kherson (in the south where the river splits into a number of narrow estuarial channels); the 50-km stretch between Dnipro and Zaporozhye; the 40-km stretch between Cherkassy and Kaniv, and the short stretch of undammed river that runs through Kyiv. Moscow is likely to prefer to capture a Dnieper bridge.
The most likely candidate is the Antonovsky Bridge at Kherson, 90 km north-west of the border with Crimea. Therefore while the main invasion force was working its way south a smaller force might enter Ukraine from Crimea, supported by a brigade-sized amphibious landing west of Kherson and a division-sized airborne assault to capture and hold the Antonovsky Bridge.
In war, time is mortality
Normally time is money. In warfare time is mortality. A Russian invasion of Ukraine would kill three categories of people: Ukrainian civilians, Ukrainian troops and Russian troops.
But in what numbers? Again, experience in the Middle East is probably the best reference point. In Iraq-2003 the Coalition’s 30-day land campaign incurred a Coalition mortality rate of 0.1%, but against a highly demoralised and completely outmatched opponent.
A more evenly matched conflict is the war in Donetsk and Luhansk. Here mortality has reached about 10% of engaged forces on each side spread over about 100 months – again 0.1% of engaged forces per combat month, but this time in a low-intensity conflict across static and well-entrenched lines.
The average is also misleading, because the time period contains long periods of relative inaction and ceasefires interspersed with more intense violence.
A useful estimate is that Russian forces would incur mortality at a rate of 0.5% of engaged forces per month of active fighting east of the Dnieper, and 1% per month west of the Dnieper.
If we factor together the time line and the size of Russia’s engaged forces what emerges is an estimate that the Russian body count to reach Crimea would be something around 1,000 dead.
In modern ground warfare the ratio of injured to dead is high – around 10:1. This is not a reflection on weapons and tactics but the result of body armour, greatly improved front-line medical techniques and resources and rapid casualty evacuation during the “golden hour” which combine to save the lives of seriously injured men who would have died of their wounds in earlier wars. The ratio implies, however, that the Russian invasion force would see 10% of its force receiving wounds east of the Dnieper.
Losers lose more
Recent conflicts invariably show that the losing side experiences higher mortality and casualty rates than the winning side (that is one reason the losers lose).
For a visceral example of this it is instructive to look at the fate of a single battalion (~400 men) of the 79th Airmobile Brigade of the Ukrainian army in the early hours of 11 July, 2014. Spotted by Russian drones near Zelenopillya, the battalion was then struck by a salvo of forty 122mm Grad rockets. The battalion was disintegrated in the space of a single minute. Neither side has revealed the number of men killed, but an eyewitness from the battalion reported mortality of around 10% and serious injuries at around 25% from that one barrage.
In this invasion the defenders would initially benefit from being dug-in at protective positions, but would suffer from high-intensity air, rocket and artillery attack as the war developed into a fast and chaotic manoeuvre battle.
When defensive lines break defending formations are forced into the open, always unbalanced and unco-ordinated, and travelling on exposed roads, as they try to withdraw in good order under fire to the next defensive location, which has probably been badly prepared in a hurry.
In this exposed state Ukrainian forces would suffer mortality and injury rates five to ten times higher than their attackers. Mortality would be increased by Russian use of intense heavy artillery as part of its military doctrine, and by the presence of large numbers of Russian main battle tanks and complete air superiority.
The Ukrainian ratio of death to injury would also rise – it’s hard to organise casevac and rapid medical aid when a formation is retreating in disarray under intense fire. Ukrainian death rates would finally suffer from Ukraine’s dire shortage of transport helicopters.
Ukrainian mortality in the eastern phase is therefore likely to run at 7% of engaged forces per month (say 10,000 dead per month), with injury rates of 40,000 per month. After two months Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are likely to have almost ceased to exist as organised units.
Civilians lose too
Alongside the many thousands of dead Ukrainian soldiers, an invasion would kill many more thousands of civilians in the form of collateral damage, since there would be little time for Ukraine to move its civilian populations wholesale to the rear. Russia would thus be seen not only to be conducting a highly illegal invasion of a sovereign state but also carrying out a near genocide. Ironically, east of the Dnieper most of the civilian dead would be ethnic Russians.
Half, or all?
At the end of this first phase of the invasion, with Eastern Ukraine in its hands and the more capable parts of Ukraine’s army rendered ineffective, Russia would need to pause for rest, re-equipment, reinforcement, reconnaissance, re-supply and re-planning. If the Antonovsky bridge is in Russian hands Moscow would have a choice. Stop there, catalysing an effective division of Ukraine along the Dnieper, or cross the river and advance.
A possible next objective would be take control of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, partly to secure use of a black sea port as a logistic base west of the Dnieper, partly to increase Russia’s control of the Black Sea against Nato, and partly to reduce Ukraine’s ability to recover economically after the war. Another possible objective would be to continue the invasion until Russian troops face Nato across Ukraine’s western border.
We should expect Moscow to have a clear internal view of what victory looks like. Is victory the fall of Kyiv and the departure of senior Ukrainian Ministers on their private jets to Switzerland? Probably not. Kyiv is by no means the centre of gravity of Ukrainian nationalism, because Ukraine is not an ethnically uniform nation."
Цео текст bne.eu/long-read-russia-looks-poised-to-in.....ke-227987/
Могу га превести и окачии сутра целог ако нешто вреди и доприноси дискусији, али ово је неко месо тескта
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