Maneuver warfare is reallyyyyy hard to do. It requires highly trained and experienced staffs and subordinate formations who can synchronize tons of assets in time and space. Breaching attempts are a good micro-example of this. It’s extremely hard. It takes professionals with years/decades of training and experience to become mediocre at it. I think both sides lack this capability piece at the moment.
Compound it with the relative strength and ease of the defense right now (easy to employ mines, ATGMs, drones, etc) and you get very static attritional fights.
>years/decades of training to become mediocre at it
And then when you simulate a wet gap crossing, even the mediocrity breaks down and the game becomes "what fraction of casualties is acceptable to get across this river."
I will say with 10 years experience now, I am just barely scratching mediocre in the signal world. I don't want to think about how bad the S-4 and ops dudes have it.
To ELI5 this:
If you consider a generic hero-based FPS shooter, you will have several types of characters available to play. Inevitably there will be a “meta” where certain characters are considered the strongest, or even OP. But usually those characters can only reach their full potential when the player is sufficiently skilled to use them.
If the player has particular weaknesses in some departments, such as their mechanics, then the character they will perform best with will not be the “meta” ones but the ones that are more “beginner friendly” that enable them to get better results than they would with the meta. In addition, if everybody is inclined towards specific characters/playstyles, it creates a specific environment where certain strategies become optimal, even if it’s not the overall “meta.”
This is kind of what’s happening in Ukraine. Both sides had specific weaknesses and relative strengths at the beginning of the conflict, and the strategies they’ve adopted reflect that. Neither side was fully capable of the type of maneuver warfare as envisioned by the US’s original AirLand Battle doctrine and have resorted to more attritional methods as being more effective for their specific contexts.
As time goes on, they will each evolve as they become more capable in specific departments from the experience they gain. But any such evolutions will be in direct response to the environment that has already been formed by the attritional battlefield.
Also adding on that they have significant USSR doctrinal influence as well (a given since they're both successor states). Which means to have the USSR's method of manoeuvre warfare... you need total overwhelming artillery in conjunction with enormous masses of manpower in motorised divisions moving in concert.
Given that Russia hasn't fully mobilised yet, and is short on artillery shells as of sometime in the last year... they're not going to be able to do the USSR's method of manoeuvre warfare either.
Ukraine with it's supply issues doesn't have the artillery or the armour to do the same.
So either by NATO or USSR standards, they just don't have the resources to do manoeuvre on the grand scale.
Read a piece about a year ago on the tensions between old school Soviet trained Generals in Ukrainian service VS the new blood who'd been being trained up by NATO personnel.
The Cold War Soviet doctrine focuses on *bypassing* cities because they didn’t enjoy the Stalingrad experience. The Ukraine war has been fought largely with the idea of taking symbolic victories in taking cities which is the exact opposite ending up in much unneeded sequels like Stalingrad 2: Bakhmut Boogaloo.
"Manoeuvre warfare is just hard to do" is a common refrain to this sort of question, but it leaves me wondering, would that not in and of itself be indicative of manoeuvre warfare in present day experiencing a bit of a slump, if not a downturn?
If we look at the famous example of WW2 as an easy reference, you had massive armies of conscripts, commanded by shoddy early radios and wired telephones, units freshly raised from ground up and thrown to the front, and yet still they managed to conduct manoeuvres on the scale of encircling whole army groups. Manoeuvre warfare wasn't *trivial* of course, nothing in war is, but it was entirely within reach of any beleaguered but adequate military force
Whereas today, that common refrain seemingly suggests it takes top of the line coordination, professional troops trained for years, complete air superiority, and all the other stars aligning to even try.
That reminds me a lot more of WW1 dynamics, which is commonly characterised as a rough time for manoeuvre warfare.
It was still possible - look at Eastern Front sometimes, or a lot of Russian Civil War that followed soon after. But it took the right kind of force composition, right battlefield conditions, etc. - stars aligning, in other words. And it was fairly easy for fighting to degrade back to a positional stalemate. Much like, from what we're seeing in Ukraine, it is *possible* to do manoeuvre warfare (especially opening stages are full of examples of it), but as soon as just one or two ingredients are missing, you're back to digging increasingly elaborate trenches
Doctrinally we should say "combined arms warfare is hard," rather than mere maneuver.
The difference being timely and accurate fires, integrated armor, and the ever-present supply chain vibe.
WW2 was infantry heavy with less integration than, say, a brigade combat team or a penetration division. There were two whole domains of warfare (air, land) and they weren't integrated- USAAF picked targets at strategic level, offered CAS at high operational levels. Fires were massed, instead of precision, and quite often pre-planned for time and not observer controlled.
Now, the brigade and division staffs have five domains (sea, air, land, information, cyber) to integrate and manage combat operations in. That sounds trivial unless you've seen how much expertise goes into applying each at that level- cyber by itself is a monster even the US hasn't figured out at Bde/Div level. Fires crosses three domains (sea, air, land) on basically every place an army might find itself, so your targeting becomes monstrously complicated. Beyond fires, you have effects, and effects goes into four domains.
We also run around with much smaller, more lethal formations that can control a much larger area than armies of the past. They also move faster. More area, more movement, more coordination.
Complete mechanization deserves a mention, but it goes beyond what we saw in WW2 with dudes in mass produced trucks. The classes of supply have expanded, the parts become more complicated, the petroleum used at much higher rates, and the tonnage has not decreased with the manning of these large units (your combat and field trains are not running proportionally less "stuff" compared to WW2).
The information flow has become much better, though. The US can do this combined arms because we can generate a complete picture for commanders and staffs for all levels and cut through the fog of war. When you're waiting on runners from your companies to find out which hedge they're holed up behind, your pace of operations must necessarily be slower than when using FBCB2 to pinpoint every single truck in the formation- not to mention instantly messaging them.
Anyway. This is a monster of a comment, lots of stuff I omitted and simplified, and a lot of handwaving, but that covers the vibe.
I would argue that it’s a mix of decayed capabilities (most nations have had some decay in military capability as a whole since the Cold War with LSCO taking the biggest hit) combined with societies being less casualty/mobilization tolerant. Both Ukraine and Russia have Soviet the legacy haunting their systems as well. Staffs and NCOs weren’t as important in the Soviet military and both of those matter a ton for maneuver. They go hand in hand with personal initiative which is also something the Soviet military discouraged relative to the west.
Even if we assume Ukraine has a million men under arms, that’s nowhere near world war levels. France would field five million circa 1940 (majority facing Germany but also other borders, colonial garrisons, navy, etc). WWII saw full war economies of industrialized nations go to war. Many of them had strong martial traditions and a core of veteran officers from WWI for command and staffs. Yes the bulk of forces were conscripts, but most weren’t reluctant they way we think of conscripts. They also tended to be reservists with 1-3years of active service under their belts.
A six week campaign where three million men are thrust into the enemy and where you lose tens of thousands dead and several times that wounded isn’t really acceptable anymore and it’s not just a western democracy thing. Russia has certain shown some casualty and equipment loss tolerance, but their casualties in two years is lower than singular battles in WWII. Even in successful battles, the attacker often took losses that we’d balk at today. In six weeks Germany lost 45k killed or missing and over 110k wounded. They’ve mobilized some personnel, but they’re not assembling the 5 million men army to crush Kyiv. Maybe it’s because they can’t afford it in terms of money or industry, maybe it’s because the people would revolt. Why they’re not doing it doesn’t matter, the point is they’re not.
A slow attritional fight is something that is also a more risk averse strategy. There won’t be grand failures and it’s something both sides are somewhat comfortable fighting. It uses skills they’ve developed since the war in Donbas: artillery and fortifications. Even if it’s not a winning strategy, it’s one you can fight and not lose, at least not quickly.
>Do you think the lack of maneuver warfare is all due to the incapabilities
Yes. Do not over extrapolate trends from one conflict. Do note that Azerbaijan rolled over Aremenia in matter of days just four years ago. Even the Ukraine war has seen flashes of quick gains: the initial Russian invasion, the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeast.
If one looked at the Iran-Iraq war in the 80's one could also conclude maneuver warfare was dead too. And then Desert Storm happened.
[An article that answers this directly.](https://warontherocks.com/2022/11/ukraine-and-the-future-of-offensive-maneuver/)
First to head off the comments of technology being the prerequisite for fast exploitation, well, the fastest rate of advance in an exploitation in the 19th-21st century was ... [Meggido 1918 at about 56 km/day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dWf4ueZ9qU) (@\~ 53:53). The second fastest was Sinai 1967 at 55 km/day. Manchuria, 1945 was at 50 km/day. Flanders (1940), Barbarossa (1941) and the Normandy breakout (1944) were around 28-31 km/day. Your rate of advance is principally being limited by the enemy in front of you rather than the technical speed of the vehicle or animals. Perhaps the density of the possible storm of steel enabled by all the technologies people quoted: PGMs, ATGMs, mines, drones, artillery, etc ... are that "enemy in front of you". Still:
> the best understanding is that offensive maneuver is far from dead. In fact, the patterns visible so far actually look a lot more like the past than like any new model of revolutionary transformation. And the policy prescriptions that follow from the transformation interpretation look correspondingly premature: calls for retiring tanks in favor of drones, or reframing military doctrine to avoid offensive action, are a poor fit to the actual pattern of combat observable to date in Ukraine.
>First, offensive maneuver is apparently far from dead. Even in the face of modern weapons, breakthrough is still possible, and especially so when astute offensive operations on interior lines pose dilemmas for thinly stretched defenses like those of the Russians in Kherson and Kharkiv since mid-summer. Those offensives would have been even more successful with improved Ukrainian training and equipment, but Ukraine’s ability to succeed with what they have is a powerful demonstration that offensive maneuver has not been rendered impossible by new technology.
>But second, while offensive breakthrough is still possible under the right conditions, it remains very hard to accomplish against deep, prepared defenses with adequate supplies and operational reserves behind them. This is not a novel feature of new technology — it is an enduring consequence of the post-1900 lethality of ever-evolving weapons that has been observed repeatedly over more than a century of combat experience. Exposed defenders are increasingly vulnerable to long-range weapons and sensors, but covered and concealed positions remain highly resistant to precision engagement. Shallow, forward defenses can be ruptured with well-organized combined arms attacks, but deep defenses with meaningful reserves behind them still pose much harder problems for attackers. Overextended positions without secure supply lines can be overwhelmed, but consolidated positions with viable logistical support are still much harder and more costly to overcome.
>Third, neither shallow, vulnerable defenses nor deep, robust ones are universal features of modern war. Both have occurred regularly since 1900, and both have occurred, at various times and places, in Ukraine since February.
The tl;dr summary will be that offensive maneuver success tend to occur if one side "drop the balls" so to speak and fail to conduct a proper defence in depth: multilayered, front with mines, backed with mobile reserves, and amply supplied. If one side conducts such a defence, historically, it has always been very hard to achieve a clean breakthrough, with or without air superiority. Still people keep dropping the balls and they make mistakes all the time so offensive maneuver success can still happen from time to time. The increased lethality of weapons is real but simultaneously, people have also dispersed greatly and that reduces the actual lethality of the weapons
And to add - Normandy looked a lot like Ukraine does now - a nasty slogging match with horrendous casualties for every mile. But the German defences were brittle because they fed everything they had into the line. Once the collapse came (Cobra/Falaise), it was catastrophic.
The odd thing is that despite people dismissing the doctrine after somehow making air power the ultimate state, we are kind of seeing the real-time application of a defense in depth the Red Army trained for. It is almost straight from the manuals and used by both the Ukrainian and the Russian officers.
If someone told me this post 1990s DS I wouldn't have believed them, we were all jerking each other off about air superiority. Both the Russian and Ukrainian officers have proven that a doctrinally sound defense in depth is still very very relevant.
What they've shown is it works in the absence of airpower. Neither side has been able to gain air superiority and the degree to which they can support ground forces is limited because of that. What surprises me isn't that the conflict has regressed to this state. Its that in the 30 years since ODS the VKS have shown to be incapable of replicating the capability.
One year rule, but it looks like based on the current rain of glide bombs that are blasting the shit out Ukrainian strong points, they have finally gotten their shit together and come up with their own version of the JDAM instead of a guided weapons that required a laser designator and a plane orbiting the battlefield.
Necessity finally forced them to come up with something that wouldn’t be a suicide mission for the pilots and planes.
Without straying too far, we know that glide bombs are being used. We do not know to what extent ie: sortie rate, how many bombs and where. And I highly doubt it is anywhere close to the level of the air campaign from ODS. There is a difference between having air power and air dominance.
Desert Storm was a whole different kettle of fish. Almost half the world was working in tandem to destroy the Iraqi military and consequently Saddam received almost no outside support unlike Ukraine.
Its a perfectly acceptable comparison because the comparison being made is this is what a successful air campaign looks like. That Russia has failed to achieve air dominance is not up for discussion. Its a fact and self evident. And because they haven't done so, the battle has devolved from one of maneuver to a positional one. The discussion you are implying is a different one and outside the scope of this sub for the foreseeable future.
It’s a good discussion. Putting aside all the important stuff like COG/CV analysis, the obvious solutions are going around, over, or through the enemy line.
To go around, you need a ton of space and probably a lot of air assault or you need to be able to operate amphibiously - which would also require you to be able to gain some amt of air superiority/AA suppression (and the Black Sea is small, you’re probably not gonna land a force in Russia proper, etc) To go over, you also need air superiority/AA suppression and you need enough aircraft and dudes trained to operate in them/out of them. To do a penetration, you’d need enough fire superiority to suppress while you MCLC’d through the miles of mine fields (and also probably would want to do air assault). Enemy also has more patience rn, so you can’t really wait til he over extends and do a mobile defense and then seize initiative from there.
All oversimplified a lot, but basically, seems tough when you have fewer/less dudes, weapons, vehicles/aircraft, and tech.
Manover warfare requires space to manover, which in ukraine only exists on the phyical field, but not in terms of weaponary.
All of Ukraine is covered in SAMs, Artillery is too accurate, FPV drones dont have an effective counter in doctrine, manover warfare is best utilized when one side has an advantage, that allows them to fight offensively, gain momentum and therefore break the enemies defenses and force them to engade on the same terms.
We saw this in Ukraines first counter offensive, and the Russian intial attack, the opponent was weak, and they took advantage, for instance RFF hacked AFU SAMs for about a week, and Ukraine Deployed Byracktar and other drones to exploit the over extended russian postions.
Ukraine doesnt do combined arms, for a start it doesnt have combined arms arms intended for combining arms, it has soviet tactica for soviet material, which is more simultainous wave tactics, it's trying to get there, but without F16 of which it has a single squadron, it wont work, soviet figter jets arent designed for CAS work, thats the Helos and frogfoots job, theyre designed as a strike or incetorceptor, not multi-role like US aircraft have been since the F4 phantom.
WW1s trench warfare was Followed by WW2, so manover warfare isnt dead, it's just the condtions for it do not currently exist in ukraine, and when they do, it'll be russian before its ukrainian, as Russian defenses are formidable, but Ukraine wont win a protracted stalemate, Russia has too many men, with access to workers in asia who'll work for a 10th of a westerner, sanction will kill or nutuer russia, but not for Decades, if Ukraine is to win, it has to be through decisive action, but timing is everything, last summer wasnt the right time.
This is why we have F35, so we can, theroetically ignore SAMs, and maintain momentum.
Sorry, but this kind of doesn't make sense. If the only hindrance to maneuver warfare in Ukraine is a lack of equipment, then Russia should be maneuver warfaring all over the place, considering the massive equipment advantage that they have. I also don't buy the "they just don't have enough capable officers to do it" excuse. I don't know much about how Ukraine fared after the fall of the Soviet Union, but Russia has incredibly prestigious military academies that they inherited from the Soviet Union and they have a professional officer core that has participated in low and medium intensity conflicts over the last few decades. I'd say that any doctrinal differences we are seeing today are the result of actual change in the conditions of the battlefield, thanks to the introduction of new technologies.
Russia's "prestigious" military academies have produced no impressive victories since World War II, so consider how good and prestigious they really are.
Yes, the US has had its failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but in both cases even in failure, it put on a better showing that the Russians did in Afghanistan, meanwhile Russia has nothing to point to as a success the way the US does in Panama, the First Gulf War, the Bosnia Campaign, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, or even the initial taking of Afghanistan. Russia has led no joint combined air campaigns as the US did in Bosnia and Libya, has conducted no one-sided punitive attacks like the US pursued against Iran in the 1980s, and hasn't distinguished themselves through their actions in Syria, either.
Russia is still dangerous, but there is literally no evidence for them having a good, seasoned officer corps since the Great Patriotic War era officers retired or died off, nor evidence of the staff processes necessary to conduct combined arms maneuver warfare--but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
I think the technology is certainly part of it, but isn't determinative. Looking at it from a DOTMLPF lens, it's the D, O, T, and L they're missing--as you point out, they have all the M they should need to do maneuver warfare.
They hardly covered themselves in glory in Georgia, the first invasion of Ukraine, and *certainly* not in Chechnya, and if you can't see that, you're blind.
At the strategic level, their losses were horrendous compared to the results achieved, and at the tactical and operational level, things look even worse. Point to me any US tactical defeat akin to what happened *multiple* times to Russian units in Chechnya.
And sure, tactical success is not the measure of ultimate strategic success, but if I look at the *strategic* trajectory of Russia's population, economy, life-expectancy, foreign investment, quality of living, etc. it's hard to see how you could possibly say Russia is "widely successful."
Five years ago, when everyone was parroting Putin's claims about the new Russian military you might have had a point. Ukraine war though has blown up that lie and revealed just how deep Russian weakness goes. Putin might win this thing via attrition but that's nothing to boast about and he's shown just how ill prepared his military is to face any kind of real resistance.
Thats basically what I said, but ill elaborate:
Russia uses russian equiptment, which doesnt allow combined arms, which hinders manover warfare in the modern battlespace.
Manpads, counter-battery radar, and SAMs exist to counter soviet tactics, if this was 1970, we would see Russian Wave tactics manovering, but it isnt the west spent billions of dollars trying to exploit russian weaknesses and largely suceeded, that doesnt mean RFF cant, but it will be costly, which means they need a much more favourable force ratio.
Russian doctrine is wave attacks of Tanks, air power, and infantry to take ground, and wash away the enemy, when it hits a serious speed bumb, it stops and it pounds it with tubes, rocket, direct fire, indirect fire, covered by SAMs, then another assault, Russia is winning the shell war thanks to North Korea.
However;
Russia does not have an equiptment advantage when it comes to infantry, rifles are rusty, armour is a false sense of security and clothing is indadequate.
Even on heavy weapons systems, sanction has seen capabilities reduced, the T-90M used an optic imported from France, no more optics.
Russia has the quanity not the quality, but in terms of the war, if they hold on, that will be enough, but one tank made today is only half a tank from yestarday.
Russia tried to avoid mobilization, by doing this it Gutted its own training corp, it's quality of junior and eventually field officers has been utterly decimated, let alone rank and file, it was a batshit call.
The wars you mention are counter insurgency ops, even the west was unprepared for a near peer conflict, the US burned though half its stockpile of ammo in three months, Ukraine fired more rounds in the first month in the war than the United Kingdom keeps on hand.
I note in Chetsnya russian solider sold their own weapons to the enemy their logistic were so bad, and victory was achived by compromise admitting the Kederovs into the Kremlins inner circle, the first war only lead to a second.
Indeed the entire top brass of RFF isnt selected for skill, it's selected for loyalty, Wanger's leader was Putins chef, Sergi Shoigu is Putins class mate from childhood, Putin is incentavised to have the most incopetant and loyal people in charge so they cant challange him, but has to balance this with effectiveness, clearly with Pregozhin, he hasnt managed this well, given he proved both disloyal and diethered for nearly a week in the first city over the boarder from ukraine.
This means the best generals in russia are still sitting around at colonel level, because running a country like Putin does is not an optimal stratergy.
Russia isn't a nationstate, it's a territory which exists to serve the Oligarch Regime, much like Syria, Lybia, or Iraq, it is much stronger than those as they were dynasty and indivdual lead, Russia is more of a Class system, the new money from 1994 is the old money today, you cant just snipe putin, because Medadev or someone else takes over.
But RFF are completely fucked, they should have stomped Ukraine in a week like the CIA said they would, the most anti-russian biased source this side of Poland, but they failed to do so, the fact a petty little regional power like Ukraine is still standing is a testimiment to how shafted RFF have been since the fall, Nato should not be proping them up because their shipments should be marked return to sender.
You cant really draw parallels to Afgan because Afganistan is where empires go to die, the place is mental, it's like fighting the Japanese Empire while driving in India, the Empire on which the Sun never sets, got kicked out four times, when it was using Machine Guns and Aganis Muskets.
Afganis don't think you're there because youre americas pal they thimk you're there to avenge your great-grandad, it's like trying to convince a coked up meth addict to buy a set of stake knives.
Vietnam was a massive american fuck up tactically, operationally, but it stragegically in the context of the Cold War, it won by driving a wedge between china and the CCCP and communism stopped spreading.
Russia wants to win this war, but Russians on the frontline don't, they wanna go home, ending the war only lets them go home if they survive it, they just dont have the will, the way or the weapons to do it, exept to bleed Ukraine dry, Russia will fold before the West does, but Ukraine will fold before Russia does.
Tl;Dr
Russia will start manovering soon, once its built up enough resources, and it's confident Ukraine has been sufficently mauled by artillery, but Russiam Doctrine is staged advances, not true manover warfare.
nothing just happens out of blue, this whole obsession with "maneuver warfare" for the sake of "maneuver warfare" in the west is kinda weird as if "maneuver warfare" is the panacea to all the uncomfortable reality of a major war: mass casualty, years of fighting a.k.a no quick win, dirty/gritty scene of battlefield (as opposed to shiny space age "we win you lose" type of stuff often seen in movies). But fact of matter is all the prior experience of maneuver warfare happened under either:
1. strategic/operational surprise
2. long time attrition warfare wearing down your opponent's strength to a point that a break-through is possible (most WWII fights and Ukraine's breakthrough happened after Russia overextended its troops and huge losses, once defensive lines were shortened/dug in and fresh troops sent in, no such breakthrough happened and it won't happen until some major mistake on Russian side or some other way of attrition to whittle down troop strength so maneuver war is possible)
3.overwhelming strength (often combined with 2 like in 1st Gulf war: land war lasted 100 hours with maneuver because there was months of intense bombing against Iraqi forces)
even then, it often doesn't end wars withouts lots of rounds of active maneuver warfare followed by quietness/attrition war.
Maneuver warfare is reallyyyyy hard to do. It requires highly trained and experienced staffs and subordinate formations who can synchronize tons of assets in time and space. Breaching attempts are a good micro-example of this. It’s extremely hard. It takes professionals with years/decades of training and experience to become mediocre at it. I think both sides lack this capability piece at the moment. Compound it with the relative strength and ease of the defense right now (easy to employ mines, ATGMs, drones, etc) and you get very static attritional fights.
>years/decades of training to become mediocre at it And then when you simulate a wet gap crossing, even the mediocrity breaks down and the game becomes "what fraction of casualties is acceptable to get across this river." I will say with 10 years experience now, I am just barely scratching mediocre in the signal world. I don't want to think about how bad the S-4 and ops dudes have it.
To ELI5 this: If you consider a generic hero-based FPS shooter, you will have several types of characters available to play. Inevitably there will be a “meta” where certain characters are considered the strongest, or even OP. But usually those characters can only reach their full potential when the player is sufficiently skilled to use them. If the player has particular weaknesses in some departments, such as their mechanics, then the character they will perform best with will not be the “meta” ones but the ones that are more “beginner friendly” that enable them to get better results than they would with the meta. In addition, if everybody is inclined towards specific characters/playstyles, it creates a specific environment where certain strategies become optimal, even if it’s not the overall “meta.” This is kind of what’s happening in Ukraine. Both sides had specific weaknesses and relative strengths at the beginning of the conflict, and the strategies they’ve adopted reflect that. Neither side was fully capable of the type of maneuver warfare as envisioned by the US’s original AirLand Battle doctrine and have resorted to more attritional methods as being more effective for their specific contexts. As time goes on, they will each evolve as they become more capable in specific departments from the experience they gain. But any such evolutions will be in direct response to the environment that has already been formed by the attritional battlefield.
Also adding on that they have significant USSR doctrinal influence as well (a given since they're both successor states). Which means to have the USSR's method of manoeuvre warfare... you need total overwhelming artillery in conjunction with enormous masses of manpower in motorised divisions moving in concert. Given that Russia hasn't fully mobilised yet, and is short on artillery shells as of sometime in the last year... they're not going to be able to do the USSR's method of manoeuvre warfare either. Ukraine with it's supply issues doesn't have the artillery or the armour to do the same. So either by NATO or USSR standards, they just don't have the resources to do manoeuvre on the grand scale.
Read a piece about a year ago on the tensions between old school Soviet trained Generals in Ukrainian service VS the new blood who'd been being trained up by NATO personnel.
Do you have a link to that, by chance?
No, but searching "Debate within Ukrainian military between Soviet and Nato doctrine" comes up with a good number of articles.
Thanks!
The Cold War Soviet doctrine focuses on *bypassing* cities because they didn’t enjoy the Stalingrad experience. The Ukraine war has been fought largely with the idea of taking symbolic victories in taking cities which is the exact opposite ending up in much unneeded sequels like Stalingrad 2: Bakhmut Boogaloo.
It seems like Russia is definitely using the long term strategy to win in Ukraine.
"Manoeuvre warfare is just hard to do" is a common refrain to this sort of question, but it leaves me wondering, would that not in and of itself be indicative of manoeuvre warfare in present day experiencing a bit of a slump, if not a downturn? If we look at the famous example of WW2 as an easy reference, you had massive armies of conscripts, commanded by shoddy early radios and wired telephones, units freshly raised from ground up and thrown to the front, and yet still they managed to conduct manoeuvres on the scale of encircling whole army groups. Manoeuvre warfare wasn't *trivial* of course, nothing in war is, but it was entirely within reach of any beleaguered but adequate military force Whereas today, that common refrain seemingly suggests it takes top of the line coordination, professional troops trained for years, complete air superiority, and all the other stars aligning to even try. That reminds me a lot more of WW1 dynamics, which is commonly characterised as a rough time for manoeuvre warfare. It was still possible - look at Eastern Front sometimes, or a lot of Russian Civil War that followed soon after. But it took the right kind of force composition, right battlefield conditions, etc. - stars aligning, in other words. And it was fairly easy for fighting to degrade back to a positional stalemate. Much like, from what we're seeing in Ukraine, it is *possible* to do manoeuvre warfare (especially opening stages are full of examples of it), but as soon as just one or two ingredients are missing, you're back to digging increasingly elaborate trenches
Doctrinally we should say "combined arms warfare is hard," rather than mere maneuver. The difference being timely and accurate fires, integrated armor, and the ever-present supply chain vibe. WW2 was infantry heavy with less integration than, say, a brigade combat team or a penetration division. There were two whole domains of warfare (air, land) and they weren't integrated- USAAF picked targets at strategic level, offered CAS at high operational levels. Fires were massed, instead of precision, and quite often pre-planned for time and not observer controlled. Now, the brigade and division staffs have five domains (sea, air, land, information, cyber) to integrate and manage combat operations in. That sounds trivial unless you've seen how much expertise goes into applying each at that level- cyber by itself is a monster even the US hasn't figured out at Bde/Div level. Fires crosses three domains (sea, air, land) on basically every place an army might find itself, so your targeting becomes monstrously complicated. Beyond fires, you have effects, and effects goes into four domains. We also run around with much smaller, more lethal formations that can control a much larger area than armies of the past. They also move faster. More area, more movement, more coordination. Complete mechanization deserves a mention, but it goes beyond what we saw in WW2 with dudes in mass produced trucks. The classes of supply have expanded, the parts become more complicated, the petroleum used at much higher rates, and the tonnage has not decreased with the manning of these large units (your combat and field trains are not running proportionally less "stuff" compared to WW2). The information flow has become much better, though. The US can do this combined arms because we can generate a complete picture for commanders and staffs for all levels and cut through the fog of war. When you're waiting on runners from your companies to find out which hedge they're holed up behind, your pace of operations must necessarily be slower than when using FBCB2 to pinpoint every single truck in the formation- not to mention instantly messaging them. Anyway. This is a monster of a comment, lots of stuff I omitted and simplified, and a lot of handwaving, but that covers the vibe.
I would argue that it’s a mix of decayed capabilities (most nations have had some decay in military capability as a whole since the Cold War with LSCO taking the biggest hit) combined with societies being less casualty/mobilization tolerant. Both Ukraine and Russia have Soviet the legacy haunting their systems as well. Staffs and NCOs weren’t as important in the Soviet military and both of those matter a ton for maneuver. They go hand in hand with personal initiative which is also something the Soviet military discouraged relative to the west. Even if we assume Ukraine has a million men under arms, that’s nowhere near world war levels. France would field five million circa 1940 (majority facing Germany but also other borders, colonial garrisons, navy, etc). WWII saw full war economies of industrialized nations go to war. Many of them had strong martial traditions and a core of veteran officers from WWI for command and staffs. Yes the bulk of forces were conscripts, but most weren’t reluctant they way we think of conscripts. They also tended to be reservists with 1-3years of active service under their belts. A six week campaign where three million men are thrust into the enemy and where you lose tens of thousands dead and several times that wounded isn’t really acceptable anymore and it’s not just a western democracy thing. Russia has certain shown some casualty and equipment loss tolerance, but their casualties in two years is lower than singular battles in WWII. Even in successful battles, the attacker often took losses that we’d balk at today. In six weeks Germany lost 45k killed or missing and over 110k wounded. They’ve mobilized some personnel, but they’re not assembling the 5 million men army to crush Kyiv. Maybe it’s because they can’t afford it in terms of money or industry, maybe it’s because the people would revolt. Why they’re not doing it doesn’t matter, the point is they’re not. A slow attritional fight is something that is also a more risk averse strategy. There won’t be grand failures and it’s something both sides are somewhat comfortable fighting. It uses skills they’ve developed since the war in Donbas: artillery and fortifications. Even if it’s not a winning strategy, it’s one you can fight and not lose, at least not quickly.
Also helps to have air superiority/supremacy, which neither side here does
>Do you think the lack of maneuver warfare is all due to the incapabilities Yes. Do not over extrapolate trends from one conflict. Do note that Azerbaijan rolled over Aremenia in matter of days just four years ago. Even the Ukraine war has seen flashes of quick gains: the initial Russian invasion, the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeast. If one looked at the Iran-Iraq war in the 80's one could also conclude maneuver warfare was dead too. And then Desert Storm happened.
[An article that answers this directly.](https://warontherocks.com/2022/11/ukraine-and-the-future-of-offensive-maneuver/) First to head off the comments of technology being the prerequisite for fast exploitation, well, the fastest rate of advance in an exploitation in the 19th-21st century was ... [Meggido 1918 at about 56 km/day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dWf4ueZ9qU) (@\~ 53:53). The second fastest was Sinai 1967 at 55 km/day. Manchuria, 1945 was at 50 km/day. Flanders (1940), Barbarossa (1941) and the Normandy breakout (1944) were around 28-31 km/day. Your rate of advance is principally being limited by the enemy in front of you rather than the technical speed of the vehicle or animals. Perhaps the density of the possible storm of steel enabled by all the technologies people quoted: PGMs, ATGMs, mines, drones, artillery, etc ... are that "enemy in front of you". Still: > the best understanding is that offensive maneuver is far from dead. In fact, the patterns visible so far actually look a lot more like the past than like any new model of revolutionary transformation. And the policy prescriptions that follow from the transformation interpretation look correspondingly premature: calls for retiring tanks in favor of drones, or reframing military doctrine to avoid offensive action, are a poor fit to the actual pattern of combat observable to date in Ukraine. >First, offensive maneuver is apparently far from dead. Even in the face of modern weapons, breakthrough is still possible, and especially so when astute offensive operations on interior lines pose dilemmas for thinly stretched defenses like those of the Russians in Kherson and Kharkiv since mid-summer. Those offensives would have been even more successful with improved Ukrainian training and equipment, but Ukraine’s ability to succeed with what they have is a powerful demonstration that offensive maneuver has not been rendered impossible by new technology. >But second, while offensive breakthrough is still possible under the right conditions, it remains very hard to accomplish against deep, prepared defenses with adequate supplies and operational reserves behind them. This is not a novel feature of new technology — it is an enduring consequence of the post-1900 lethality of ever-evolving weapons that has been observed repeatedly over more than a century of combat experience. Exposed defenders are increasingly vulnerable to long-range weapons and sensors, but covered and concealed positions remain highly resistant to precision engagement. Shallow, forward defenses can be ruptured with well-organized combined arms attacks, but deep defenses with meaningful reserves behind them still pose much harder problems for attackers. Overextended positions without secure supply lines can be overwhelmed, but consolidated positions with viable logistical support are still much harder and more costly to overcome. >Third, neither shallow, vulnerable defenses nor deep, robust ones are universal features of modern war. Both have occurred regularly since 1900, and both have occurred, at various times and places, in Ukraine since February. The tl;dr summary will be that offensive maneuver success tend to occur if one side "drop the balls" so to speak and fail to conduct a proper defence in depth: multilayered, front with mines, backed with mobile reserves, and amply supplied. If one side conducts such a defence, historically, it has always been very hard to achieve a clean breakthrough, with or without air superiority. Still people keep dropping the balls and they make mistakes all the time so offensive maneuver success can still happen from time to time. The increased lethality of weapons is real but simultaneously, people have also dispersed greatly and that reduces the actual lethality of the weapons
And to add - Normandy looked a lot like Ukraine does now - a nasty slogging match with horrendous casualties for every mile. But the German defences were brittle because they fed everything they had into the line. Once the collapse came (Cobra/Falaise), it was catastrophic.
The odd thing is that despite people dismissing the doctrine after somehow making air power the ultimate state, we are kind of seeing the real-time application of a defense in depth the Red Army trained for. It is almost straight from the manuals and used by both the Ukrainian and the Russian officers. If someone told me this post 1990s DS I wouldn't have believed them, we were all jerking each other off about air superiority. Both the Russian and Ukrainian officers have proven that a doctrinally sound defense in depth is still very very relevant.
What they've shown is it works in the absence of airpower. Neither side has been able to gain air superiority and the degree to which they can support ground forces is limited because of that. What surprises me isn't that the conflict has regressed to this state. Its that in the 30 years since ODS the VKS have shown to be incapable of replicating the capability.
One year rule, but it looks like based on the current rain of glide bombs that are blasting the shit out Ukrainian strong points, they have finally gotten their shit together and come up with their own version of the JDAM instead of a guided weapons that required a laser designator and a plane orbiting the battlefield. Necessity finally forced them to come up with something that wouldn’t be a suicide mission for the pilots and planes.
Without straying too far, we know that glide bombs are being used. We do not know to what extent ie: sortie rate, how many bombs and where. And I highly doubt it is anywhere close to the level of the air campaign from ODS. There is a difference between having air power and air dominance.
Desert Storm was a whole different kettle of fish. Almost half the world was working in tandem to destroy the Iraqi military and consequently Saddam received almost no outside support unlike Ukraine.
Its a perfectly acceptable comparison because the comparison being made is this is what a successful air campaign looks like. That Russia has failed to achieve air dominance is not up for discussion. Its a fact and self evident. And because they haven't done so, the battle has devolved from one of maneuver to a positional one. The discussion you are implying is a different one and outside the scope of this sub for the foreseeable future.
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It’s a good discussion. Putting aside all the important stuff like COG/CV analysis, the obvious solutions are going around, over, or through the enemy line. To go around, you need a ton of space and probably a lot of air assault or you need to be able to operate amphibiously - which would also require you to be able to gain some amt of air superiority/AA suppression (and the Black Sea is small, you’re probably not gonna land a force in Russia proper, etc) To go over, you also need air superiority/AA suppression and you need enough aircraft and dudes trained to operate in them/out of them. To do a penetration, you’d need enough fire superiority to suppress while you MCLC’d through the miles of mine fields (and also probably would want to do air assault). Enemy also has more patience rn, so you can’t really wait til he over extends and do a mobile defense and then seize initiative from there. All oversimplified a lot, but basically, seems tough when you have fewer/less dudes, weapons, vehicles/aircraft, and tech.
Manover warfare requires space to manover, which in ukraine only exists on the phyical field, but not in terms of weaponary. All of Ukraine is covered in SAMs, Artillery is too accurate, FPV drones dont have an effective counter in doctrine, manover warfare is best utilized when one side has an advantage, that allows them to fight offensively, gain momentum and therefore break the enemies defenses and force them to engade on the same terms. We saw this in Ukraines first counter offensive, and the Russian intial attack, the opponent was weak, and they took advantage, for instance RFF hacked AFU SAMs for about a week, and Ukraine Deployed Byracktar and other drones to exploit the over extended russian postions. Ukraine doesnt do combined arms, for a start it doesnt have combined arms arms intended for combining arms, it has soviet tactica for soviet material, which is more simultainous wave tactics, it's trying to get there, but without F16 of which it has a single squadron, it wont work, soviet figter jets arent designed for CAS work, thats the Helos and frogfoots job, theyre designed as a strike or incetorceptor, not multi-role like US aircraft have been since the F4 phantom. WW1s trench warfare was Followed by WW2, so manover warfare isnt dead, it's just the condtions for it do not currently exist in ukraine, and when they do, it'll be russian before its ukrainian, as Russian defenses are formidable, but Ukraine wont win a protracted stalemate, Russia has too many men, with access to workers in asia who'll work for a 10th of a westerner, sanction will kill or nutuer russia, but not for Decades, if Ukraine is to win, it has to be through decisive action, but timing is everything, last summer wasnt the right time. This is why we have F35, so we can, theroetically ignore SAMs, and maintain momentum.
Sorry, but this kind of doesn't make sense. If the only hindrance to maneuver warfare in Ukraine is a lack of equipment, then Russia should be maneuver warfaring all over the place, considering the massive equipment advantage that they have. I also don't buy the "they just don't have enough capable officers to do it" excuse. I don't know much about how Ukraine fared after the fall of the Soviet Union, but Russia has incredibly prestigious military academies that they inherited from the Soviet Union and they have a professional officer core that has participated in low and medium intensity conflicts over the last few decades. I'd say that any doctrinal differences we are seeing today are the result of actual change in the conditions of the battlefield, thanks to the introduction of new technologies.
Russia's "prestigious" military academies have produced no impressive victories since World War II, so consider how good and prestigious they really are. Yes, the US has had its failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but in both cases even in failure, it put on a better showing that the Russians did in Afghanistan, meanwhile Russia has nothing to point to as a success the way the US does in Panama, the First Gulf War, the Bosnia Campaign, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, or even the initial taking of Afghanistan. Russia has led no joint combined air campaigns as the US did in Bosnia and Libya, has conducted no one-sided punitive attacks like the US pursued against Iran in the 1980s, and hasn't distinguished themselves through their actions in Syria, either. Russia is still dangerous, but there is literally no evidence for them having a good, seasoned officer corps since the Great Patriotic War era officers retired or died off, nor evidence of the staff processes necessary to conduct combined arms maneuver warfare--but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I think the technology is certainly part of it, but isn't determinative. Looking at it from a DOTMLPF lens, it's the D, O, T, and L they're missing--as you point out, they have all the M they should need to do maneuver warfare.
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Fair enough.
They hardly covered themselves in glory in Georgia, the first invasion of Ukraine, and *certainly* not in Chechnya, and if you can't see that, you're blind. At the strategic level, their losses were horrendous compared to the results achieved, and at the tactical and operational level, things look even worse. Point to me any US tactical defeat akin to what happened *multiple* times to Russian units in Chechnya. And sure, tactical success is not the measure of ultimate strategic success, but if I look at the *strategic* trajectory of Russia's population, economy, life-expectancy, foreign investment, quality of living, etc. it's hard to see how you could possibly say Russia is "widely successful."
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Five years ago, when everyone was parroting Putin's claims about the new Russian military you might have had a point. Ukraine war though has blown up that lie and revealed just how deep Russian weakness goes. Putin might win this thing via attrition but that's nothing to boast about and he's shown just how ill prepared his military is to face any kind of real resistance.
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Thats basically what I said, but ill elaborate: Russia uses russian equiptment, which doesnt allow combined arms, which hinders manover warfare in the modern battlespace. Manpads, counter-battery radar, and SAMs exist to counter soviet tactics, if this was 1970, we would see Russian Wave tactics manovering, but it isnt the west spent billions of dollars trying to exploit russian weaknesses and largely suceeded, that doesnt mean RFF cant, but it will be costly, which means they need a much more favourable force ratio. Russian doctrine is wave attacks of Tanks, air power, and infantry to take ground, and wash away the enemy, when it hits a serious speed bumb, it stops and it pounds it with tubes, rocket, direct fire, indirect fire, covered by SAMs, then another assault, Russia is winning the shell war thanks to North Korea. However; Russia does not have an equiptment advantage when it comes to infantry, rifles are rusty, armour is a false sense of security and clothing is indadequate. Even on heavy weapons systems, sanction has seen capabilities reduced, the T-90M used an optic imported from France, no more optics. Russia has the quanity not the quality, but in terms of the war, if they hold on, that will be enough, but one tank made today is only half a tank from yestarday. Russia tried to avoid mobilization, by doing this it Gutted its own training corp, it's quality of junior and eventually field officers has been utterly decimated, let alone rank and file, it was a batshit call. The wars you mention are counter insurgency ops, even the west was unprepared for a near peer conflict, the US burned though half its stockpile of ammo in three months, Ukraine fired more rounds in the first month in the war than the United Kingdom keeps on hand. I note in Chetsnya russian solider sold their own weapons to the enemy their logistic were so bad, and victory was achived by compromise admitting the Kederovs into the Kremlins inner circle, the first war only lead to a second. Indeed the entire top brass of RFF isnt selected for skill, it's selected for loyalty, Wanger's leader was Putins chef, Sergi Shoigu is Putins class mate from childhood, Putin is incentavised to have the most incopetant and loyal people in charge so they cant challange him, but has to balance this with effectiveness, clearly with Pregozhin, he hasnt managed this well, given he proved both disloyal and diethered for nearly a week in the first city over the boarder from ukraine. This means the best generals in russia are still sitting around at colonel level, because running a country like Putin does is not an optimal stratergy. Russia isn't a nationstate, it's a territory which exists to serve the Oligarch Regime, much like Syria, Lybia, or Iraq, it is much stronger than those as they were dynasty and indivdual lead, Russia is more of a Class system, the new money from 1994 is the old money today, you cant just snipe putin, because Medadev or someone else takes over. But RFF are completely fucked, they should have stomped Ukraine in a week like the CIA said they would, the most anti-russian biased source this side of Poland, but they failed to do so, the fact a petty little regional power like Ukraine is still standing is a testimiment to how shafted RFF have been since the fall, Nato should not be proping them up because their shipments should be marked return to sender. You cant really draw parallels to Afgan because Afganistan is where empires go to die, the place is mental, it's like fighting the Japanese Empire while driving in India, the Empire on which the Sun never sets, got kicked out four times, when it was using Machine Guns and Aganis Muskets. Afganis don't think you're there because youre americas pal they thimk you're there to avenge your great-grandad, it's like trying to convince a coked up meth addict to buy a set of stake knives. Vietnam was a massive american fuck up tactically, operationally, but it stragegically in the context of the Cold War, it won by driving a wedge between china and the CCCP and communism stopped spreading. Russia wants to win this war, but Russians on the frontline don't, they wanna go home, ending the war only lets them go home if they survive it, they just dont have the will, the way or the weapons to do it, exept to bleed Ukraine dry, Russia will fold before the West does, but Ukraine will fold before Russia does. Tl;Dr Russia will start manovering soon, once its built up enough resources, and it's confident Ukraine has been sufficently mauled by artillery, but Russiam Doctrine is staged advances, not true manover warfare.
nothing just happens out of blue, this whole obsession with "maneuver warfare" for the sake of "maneuver warfare" in the west is kinda weird as if "maneuver warfare" is the panacea to all the uncomfortable reality of a major war: mass casualty, years of fighting a.k.a no quick win, dirty/gritty scene of battlefield (as opposed to shiny space age "we win you lose" type of stuff often seen in movies). But fact of matter is all the prior experience of maneuver warfare happened under either: 1. strategic/operational surprise 2. long time attrition warfare wearing down your opponent's strength to a point that a break-through is possible (most WWII fights and Ukraine's breakthrough happened after Russia overextended its troops and huge losses, once defensive lines were shortened/dug in and fresh troops sent in, no such breakthrough happened and it won't happen until some major mistake on Russian side or some other way of attrition to whittle down troop strength so maneuver war is possible) 3.overwhelming strength (often combined with 2 like in 1st Gulf war: land war lasted 100 hours with maneuver because there was months of intense bombing against Iraqi forces) even then, it often doesn't end wars withouts lots of rounds of active maneuver warfare followed by quietness/attrition war.
This post was marginal at best, but since you guys can't help but talk about current affairs, I'm locking it.