This is absolutely the best essay I come across yet on military ground tactics in Ukraine. Maybe it’s a bit long for our attention deficit era but that doesn’t make it any less of a master class. Truly worthy of wide dissemination.
Sec. Rock, this is a masterful explication of the ground war! It is so annoying when the press conflates the loss of a few hundred meters of devastated farmland with Ukrainian “collapse”, instead of defense in depth. The Germans in the latter years of WWII were good at this too when they weren’t interfered with by higher command. Between you and “eyes only” by Wes O’Donnell, I find the best realistic analysis of the conflict.
I agree with this sentiment, a 'few hundred metres of devastated farmland' is not a Ukraine collapse. And I agree that Wes O'Donnell and the Secretary do great work.
Indeed. They could learn a lot by studying German General Gotthard Heinrici; he was a master of defensive warfare & led the defense of Army Group Vistula as the Red Army was moving toward Berlin, March 1945. He had an uncanny ability to know when the crushing Soviet artillery barrage would start & would pull back his frontline units just in time so that the Soviet initial punch hit an empty position. Then - as the Soviet armor & infantry were moving up- his troops would reassemble in the front line & chew the hell out of the Soviets.
Mate, excellent work as usual! A great and detailed overview of mobile defence in depth tactics. A few points that stand out to me:
Excavators: As usual, combat engineering is critical on the battlefield, most especially for digging defensive positions. Having personally dug trenches both by hand and using a digger, the advantage of the latter cannot be overstated!
WW1: Excellent comparison to the First World War. By chance, last week I picked up an old collection of Field Notes from the British Army of the Great War. The similarities to today are remarkable - in many passages, if you replaced the term 'aircraft' with 'drone' you'd swear it was from a 2025 Ukrainian manual. Regardless of changing technology, many of the same principles apply!
Doctrine: Luckily, defence in depth is doctrinally how Western militaries would generally prefer to fight, right down to the use of dummy positions, deception, mobile reserves, etc. However, frankly we've barely trained to do it properly in years. As you note from the Ukrainian experience, to do these defensive tactics well requires well-trained, experienced soldiers and commanders willing to employ mission command. I'm not sure we are there yet.
There is no good evidence to support the claim that Russian volunteers are poorly trained. For instance, colonel Danny Davis of Danial Davis Deep Dive has interviewed a British man who volunteered for Russia and received plenty of training (you can find the interview on YouTube). Underestimating your enemy is a good way to lose a war.
On Russian casualties lots of people have given lots of figures but most of them are rubbish. What we do know for certain is that during the first world war most casualties were caused by artillery. This war is quite similar to WW1 with heavily fortified fairly static front lines. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the side with more artillery will inflict more casualties on the other. While drones to some extent have replaced artillery they are simply not as effective. To quote from the article "If given a choice between artillery, mortars, or drones, he would always choose artillery—its destructive power, range, and reliability made it the backbone of the battalion’s defensive strategy." Everyone seems to agree the Russians have been firing lots more shells than the Ukranians. The Russians have achieved complete air superiority over the front lines dropping more than a thousand heavy bombs a week. To sum up firepower on both sides there is rough parity in small arms, ATGMs and FPV drones. The Russians have significant overmatch in artillery and complete supremacy in heavy bombs. Given that relative firepower there is no possible way the Ukranians can be killing more Russians than the Russians are killing Ukranians.
We should not forget who won WW1. It was not the Germans! It is not widely known that according to letters to his wife after the battle of the Marne, the head of the German High Command Von Moltke begged the Kaiser to make peace at any cost. The Kaiser with his armies fighting deep in France rejected this idea. What Moltke realised and the Kaiser did not is in a long war it all comes down to who can produce more weapons and ammunition and who has more men. Germany was clearly going to lose on both counts. The last three years have shown conclusively that the western MIC simply cannot produce enough shells or air defence systems to match the Russians. Zelensky and his western backers have made the same mistake the Kaiser did - they fail to see how their great armies can be defeated. I don't want to downplay the bravery or innovation of Ukranian officers and soldiers, but the end result is inevitable defeat of Ukraine just as the end result of WW1 was inevitable defeat of Germany. The longer the Ukrainians put of making peace the worse the outcome will be.
There is a boatload of evidence that the majority of Russian volunteers are poorly trained. POW interviews, OSINT, and their tactics have shown this. One anecdote from an international volunteer (from Britain?) is hardly compelling evidence. I buy some of their elite units in Kursk are adequately training new recruits but for your average infantryman in Chasiv Yar, you’re being told to walk down the street until you get blasted.
The truth seems to me like it's somewhere in the middle. "Poorly trained" is not a particularly meaningful term; soldiers are trained for roles, and if they're able to perform their role adequately, then they are adequately trained. One could argue than many of the western-trained Ukrainian brigades were "poorly trained" despite receiving (relatively) large amounts of training.
I think there was a lot of mythology around storm-Z units and "meat assaults" or "human wave tactics", which ranged from somewhat accurate to completely bogus. There are plenty examples of standard motor rifle regiments using infiltration / light infantry tactics that genuinely seem more akin to the german stroßtruppen tactics. There are certainly expendables used to draw fire, but there have been trench clearing commando raids and actual reconnaissance groups that prioritize mobility and dispersion. That's a role that requires a fair amount of training and experience.
Syrsky's number for Russian KIA is far fetched for a bunch of reasons... most obituary trackers put the number for 2024 closer to 40k (which is still a shit ton). The Russians do understand that they are fighting a war of attrition and that manpower is a precious resource, and their tactics and operations have generally reflected that.
Anyways, I'm nitpicking; really good piece, I enjoyed it a ton! Thank you for your work.
Genuinely, why should I trust you, some rando whose evidence is an anecdote from one British guy?
Also, we should also remember who also did not win WW1, the Russians who did not adopt defense in depth tactics. They in fact lost so catastrophically that they had a revolution.
I am not asking you to trust me. I might be sitting in a basement somewhere being paid to pump out lies. (Actually I'm a farmer in Australia doing this in my spare time). I actually think you should trust yourself. Read/watch lots of different sources of information, ask yourself does it make sense and is the information reliable then make up your own mind. But always be prepared to change your mind if new evidence becomes available.
Remember the great Ukranian Summer Counteroffensive that was meant to break through to the Sea of Azov? It was based on NATO trained soldiers and massive amounts of western weapons, Leopard tanks, Bradley IFVs, Ceaser howitzers etc. It was planned and extensively wargamed with help from the west particularly the US and Britian. There is no doubt the Ukrainians and their western backers were very confident of a major breakthrough. In hindsight I suggest the key problem was the wargames all assumed the Russians were poorly trained and poorly motivated. In reality it was a textbook case of a highly competent well-trained army (the Russians) using defence in depth to defeat an extremely powerful armoured assault. As I said before underestimating your enemy is a good way to lose a war.
And therefor Europe should consider the following:
Maybe I don't know enough about the consequences, but freedom and democracy must be constantly protected and defended. Otherwise it will die.
Europe's soldiers must risk their lives in Ukraine at this time. It is terrible but necessary if freedom and democracy are to be maintained.
Putin and his predecessors in the Soviet Union have and only had respect for power.
We are 500 million inhabitants with an OK economy in Europe. Russia has 190 million with a seriously bad economy.
Imagine if Europe already at this time deployed an appropriate number of well-equipped soldiers. At the beginning, they would just be present and only retaliate if they were attacked. What would Putin do then. Would he risk killing European soldiers. And if so, how many. Or would he realize that Europe is stronger than Russia.
If you want to compare the military strengths different countries/alliances, you have to ask yourself under what circumstances.
As an example, look at the Vietnam war. The US and various hangers on (including Australia) were fighting the Vietcong. The Vietcong were fighting where they were strong - in their own homeland - whereas the Americans were fighting where they were weak, on the other side of the world and they lost. In Afghanistan the Taliban defeated NATO and assorted hangers on because again the Taliban were fighting where they were strong, and NATO was fighting where it was weak. However, even though the Taliban defeated NATO in Afghanistan there is no chance at all they could invade any NATO country.
If NATO (with or without the US) sent some expeditionary force into the Donbass there is no question it would be defeated by the Russians because that is where Russia is strong. On the other hand, if Russia sent some expeditionary force into Berlin or Paris or London or even Warsaw it would be completely defeated because that is where Russia is weak.
There are two contradictory narratives about Russia at the moment.
The first is the Russian army consists of untrained conscripts who advance by running through machinegun bullets until one of them finally wallops the machine gunner on the head with a shovel.
The second narrative is the Russians have thousands of unstoppable tanks that are going to thunder across the plains of Europe through Berlin, Paris, across the channel, through London and across England to Lands End. After that the lights will go out and Putin will personally ban Freedom, Democracy and Warm Beer.
Come on folks, do try to think about this rationally. NATO cannot defeat Russia in Ukraine and the best thing for everyone is a negotiated peace. On the other hand, there is no way Russia could possibly invade the rest of Europe and it is time to stop worrying about it.
The conclusion that dare not speak it's name is if the Europeans want a decision in their favour in Ukraine, they'll need to actually screw up the courage to accept the era of being lotus eaters defended by the, United States is over and commit their troops to a large scale war with Russia. If they think fighting a war with Russia to defend Ukraine isn't actually something they are prepared to do then peace at any price is the only solution. Then we can all all acknowledge that Putin's assessment of the European democracies as weak and incapable of the lasting the distance against him is correct, at least in relation to Eastern European countries.
This piece makes a classic mistake of examining German defensive innovation in the Great War in isolation from its actual effectiveness or in relation to Entente military innovations. By 1917 the British were able to inflict huge casualties on the Germans and seize limited objectives at favorable exchange rates almost at will, as long as assault preparations were painstakingly thorough and objectives remained limited. In particular, the German policy of immediate counter attack was predictable and often resulted in very heavy losses. Even in Haig's execrable opus magnus of lethal over optimism that was Passchendaele the Allies were able to achieve an almost favourable attrition rate. By 1918 the Allied approach of integrated brute industrial warfare expressed by a decisive superiority in artillery and munitions, an air superiority that even the famed "flying circuses" could hardly dent, and applications of industrial strength in new weapons like tanks proved unstoppable. To my mind, over examination of tactical innovation obscures a fundamental axiom of war being expressed by the Russian army right now - quantity has a quality all of its own. Wars are ultimately won by achieving a decisive victory in the attrition battle, and a favourable outcome of the attritional battle is dependent on simply having more guns, more men, more ammunition and wearing your opponent down to a point where you possess both an quantitive and then qualitive advantage.
Russian doctrine of defense in depth has existed since Kursk (1943, not 2024), with minor modification since. Ukraine isn't re-inventing any wheels here, I don't think..
The ultimate question is how many such brigades and independent battalions are there to manage manoeuver warfare strengtening the defence - as their forces are pinned down I do not see recently theatre reserves to manage such pushback - maybe at Toretsk but at a time when the city's defence was already compromised - so committing resources without stabilizing the defence within the city is probably not the Best investment of efforts - the Corp setup is a must for Ukraine - however I am afraid it is coming late - Russia has firmly the initiative and albeit they are not inventive they can adopt just as good also on multiple levels...
This is absolutely the best essay I come across yet on military ground tactics in Ukraine. Maybe it’s a bit long for our attention deficit era but that doesn’t make it any less of a master class. Truly worthy of wide dissemination.
Thank you!
Here here! Excellent reading.
I agree!
Sec. Rock, this is a masterful explication of the ground war! It is so annoying when the press conflates the loss of a few hundred meters of devastated farmland with Ukrainian “collapse”, instead of defense in depth. The Germans in the latter years of WWII were good at this too when they weren’t interfered with by higher command. Between you and “eyes only” by Wes O’Donnell, I find the best realistic analysis of the conflict.
I agree with this sentiment, a 'few hundred metres of devastated farmland' is not a Ukraine collapse. And I agree that Wes O'Donnell and the Secretary do great work.
Appreciate it!
Indeed. They could learn a lot by studying German General Gotthard Heinrici; he was a master of defensive warfare & led the defense of Army Group Vistula as the Red Army was moving toward Berlin, March 1945. He had an uncanny ability to know when the crushing Soviet artillery barrage would start & would pull back his frontline units just in time so that the Soviet initial punch hit an empty position. Then - as the Soviet armor & infantry were moving up- his troops would reassemble in the front line & chew the hell out of the Soviets.
Mate, excellent work as usual! A great and detailed overview of mobile defence in depth tactics. A few points that stand out to me:
Excavators: As usual, combat engineering is critical on the battlefield, most especially for digging defensive positions. Having personally dug trenches both by hand and using a digger, the advantage of the latter cannot be overstated!
WW1: Excellent comparison to the First World War. By chance, last week I picked up an old collection of Field Notes from the British Army of the Great War. The similarities to today are remarkable - in many passages, if you replaced the term 'aircraft' with 'drone' you'd swear it was from a 2025 Ukrainian manual. Regardless of changing technology, many of the same principles apply!
Doctrine: Luckily, defence in depth is doctrinally how Western militaries would generally prefer to fight, right down to the use of dummy positions, deception, mobile reserves, etc. However, frankly we've barely trained to do it properly in years. As you note from the Ukrainian experience, to do these defensive tactics well requires well-trained, experienced soldiers and commanders willing to employ mission command. I'm not sure we are there yet.
Really a masterpiece that is sufficiant paedagogical language.
Absolutely brilliant. Exceptional detail, encouraging and very informative. Thank you very much 👍
Thank you for this excellent essay! Every minute was worth reading it.
Excellent article. Thanks for posting.
Great insights, very interesting.👍
Thanks for writing this fantastic article, really good analysis and easy to read!
This was awesome. Widely shared.
Very good read. I love the presentation and historical background given and the present day application.
Thanks!
Masterpiece SecDef. Keep it up (& may UAF prevail).
There is no good evidence to support the claim that Russian volunteers are poorly trained. For instance, colonel Danny Davis of Danial Davis Deep Dive has interviewed a British man who volunteered for Russia and received plenty of training (you can find the interview on YouTube). Underestimating your enemy is a good way to lose a war.
On Russian casualties lots of people have given lots of figures but most of them are rubbish. What we do know for certain is that during the first world war most casualties were caused by artillery. This war is quite similar to WW1 with heavily fortified fairly static front lines. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the side with more artillery will inflict more casualties on the other. While drones to some extent have replaced artillery they are simply not as effective. To quote from the article "If given a choice between artillery, mortars, or drones, he would always choose artillery—its destructive power, range, and reliability made it the backbone of the battalion’s defensive strategy." Everyone seems to agree the Russians have been firing lots more shells than the Ukranians. The Russians have achieved complete air superiority over the front lines dropping more than a thousand heavy bombs a week. To sum up firepower on both sides there is rough parity in small arms, ATGMs and FPV drones. The Russians have significant overmatch in artillery and complete supremacy in heavy bombs. Given that relative firepower there is no possible way the Ukranians can be killing more Russians than the Russians are killing Ukranians.
We should not forget who won WW1. It was not the Germans! It is not widely known that according to letters to his wife after the battle of the Marne, the head of the German High Command Von Moltke begged the Kaiser to make peace at any cost. The Kaiser with his armies fighting deep in France rejected this idea. What Moltke realised and the Kaiser did not is in a long war it all comes down to who can produce more weapons and ammunition and who has more men. Germany was clearly going to lose on both counts. The last three years have shown conclusively that the western MIC simply cannot produce enough shells or air defence systems to match the Russians. Zelensky and his western backers have made the same mistake the Kaiser did - they fail to see how their great armies can be defeated. I don't want to downplay the bravery or innovation of Ukranian officers and soldiers, but the end result is inevitable defeat of Ukraine just as the end result of WW1 was inevitable defeat of Germany. The longer the Ukrainians put of making peace the worse the outcome will be.
There is a boatload of evidence that the majority of Russian volunteers are poorly trained. POW interviews, OSINT, and their tactics have shown this. One anecdote from an international volunteer (from Britain?) is hardly compelling evidence. I buy some of their elite units in Kursk are adequately training new recruits but for your average infantryman in Chasiv Yar, you’re being told to walk down the street until you get blasted.
The truth seems to me like it's somewhere in the middle. "Poorly trained" is not a particularly meaningful term; soldiers are trained for roles, and if they're able to perform their role adequately, then they are adequately trained. One could argue than many of the western-trained Ukrainian brigades were "poorly trained" despite receiving (relatively) large amounts of training.
I think there was a lot of mythology around storm-Z units and "meat assaults" or "human wave tactics", which ranged from somewhat accurate to completely bogus. There are plenty examples of standard motor rifle regiments using infiltration / light infantry tactics that genuinely seem more akin to the german stroßtruppen tactics. There are certainly expendables used to draw fire, but there have been trench clearing commando raids and actual reconnaissance groups that prioritize mobility and dispersion. That's a role that requires a fair amount of training and experience.
Syrsky's number for Russian KIA is far fetched for a bunch of reasons... most obituary trackers put the number for 2024 closer to 40k (which is still a shit ton). The Russians do understand that they are fighting a war of attrition and that manpower is a precious resource, and their tactics and operations have generally reflected that.
Anyways, I'm nitpicking; really good piece, I enjoyed it a ton! Thank you for your work.
Genuinely, why should I trust you, some rando whose evidence is an anecdote from one British guy?
Also, we should also remember who also did not win WW1, the Russians who did not adopt defense in depth tactics. They in fact lost so catastrophically that they had a revolution.
I am not asking you to trust me. I might be sitting in a basement somewhere being paid to pump out lies. (Actually I'm a farmer in Australia doing this in my spare time). I actually think you should trust yourself. Read/watch lots of different sources of information, ask yourself does it make sense and is the information reliable then make up your own mind. But always be prepared to change your mind if new evidence becomes available.
Remember the great Ukranian Summer Counteroffensive that was meant to break through to the Sea of Azov? It was based on NATO trained soldiers and massive amounts of western weapons, Leopard tanks, Bradley IFVs, Ceaser howitzers etc. It was planned and extensively wargamed with help from the west particularly the US and Britian. There is no doubt the Ukrainians and their western backers were very confident of a major breakthrough. In hindsight I suggest the key problem was the wargames all assumed the Russians were poorly trained and poorly motivated. In reality it was a textbook case of a highly competent well-trained army (the Russians) using defence in depth to defeat an extremely powerful armoured assault. As I said before underestimating your enemy is a good way to lose a war.
Excellent, then if you’re not asking me to trust you I can disregard you. Thank you for clarifying so succinctly.
Well said
And therefor Europe should consider the following:
Maybe I don't know enough about the consequences, but freedom and democracy must be constantly protected and defended. Otherwise it will die.
Europe's soldiers must risk their lives in Ukraine at this time. It is terrible but necessary if freedom and democracy are to be maintained.
Putin and his predecessors in the Soviet Union have and only had respect for power.
We are 500 million inhabitants with an OK economy in Europe. Russia has 190 million with a seriously bad economy.
Imagine if Europe already at this time deployed an appropriate number of well-equipped soldiers. At the beginning, they would just be present and only retaliate if they were attacked. What would Putin do then. Would he risk killing European soldiers. And if so, how many. Or would he realize that Europe is stronger than Russia.
If you want to compare the military strengths different countries/alliances, you have to ask yourself under what circumstances.
As an example, look at the Vietnam war. The US and various hangers on (including Australia) were fighting the Vietcong. The Vietcong were fighting where they were strong - in their own homeland - whereas the Americans were fighting where they were weak, on the other side of the world and they lost. In Afghanistan the Taliban defeated NATO and assorted hangers on because again the Taliban were fighting where they were strong, and NATO was fighting where it was weak. However, even though the Taliban defeated NATO in Afghanistan there is no chance at all they could invade any NATO country.
If NATO (with or without the US) sent some expeditionary force into the Donbass there is no question it would be defeated by the Russians because that is where Russia is strong. On the other hand, if Russia sent some expeditionary force into Berlin or Paris or London or even Warsaw it would be completely defeated because that is where Russia is weak.
There are two contradictory narratives about Russia at the moment.
The first is the Russian army consists of untrained conscripts who advance by running through machinegun bullets until one of them finally wallops the machine gunner on the head with a shovel.
The second narrative is the Russians have thousands of unstoppable tanks that are going to thunder across the plains of Europe through Berlin, Paris, across the channel, through London and across England to Lands End. After that the lights will go out and Putin will personally ban Freedom, Democracy and Warm Beer.
Come on folks, do try to think about this rationally. NATO cannot defeat Russia in Ukraine and the best thing for everyone is a negotiated peace. On the other hand, there is no way Russia could possibly invade the rest of Europe and it is time to stop worrying about it.
The conclusion that dare not speak it's name is if the Europeans want a decision in their favour in Ukraine, they'll need to actually screw up the courage to accept the era of being lotus eaters defended by the, United States is over and commit their troops to a large scale war with Russia. If they think fighting a war with Russia to defend Ukraine isn't actually something they are prepared to do then peace at any price is the only solution. Then we can all all acknowledge that Putin's assessment of the European democracies as weak and incapable of the lasting the distance against him is correct, at least in relation to Eastern European countries.
This piece makes a classic mistake of examining German defensive innovation in the Great War in isolation from its actual effectiveness or in relation to Entente military innovations. By 1917 the British were able to inflict huge casualties on the Germans and seize limited objectives at favorable exchange rates almost at will, as long as assault preparations were painstakingly thorough and objectives remained limited. In particular, the German policy of immediate counter attack was predictable and often resulted in very heavy losses. Even in Haig's execrable opus magnus of lethal over optimism that was Passchendaele the Allies were able to achieve an almost favourable attrition rate. By 1918 the Allied approach of integrated brute industrial warfare expressed by a decisive superiority in artillery and munitions, an air superiority that even the famed "flying circuses" could hardly dent, and applications of industrial strength in new weapons like tanks proved unstoppable. To my mind, over examination of tactical innovation obscures a fundamental axiom of war being expressed by the Russian army right now - quantity has a quality all of its own. Wars are ultimately won by achieving a decisive victory in the attrition battle, and a favourable outcome of the attritional battle is dependent on simply having more guns, more men, more ammunition and wearing your opponent down to a point where you possess both an quantitive and then qualitive advantage.
https://wavellroom.com/2023/05/22/the-russian-army-rethinks-defence-doctrine/
Russian doctrine of defense in depth has existed since Kursk (1943, not 2024), with minor modification since. Ukraine isn't re-inventing any wheels here, I don't think..
The ultimate question is how many such brigades and independent battalions are there to manage manoeuver warfare strengtening the defence - as their forces are pinned down I do not see recently theatre reserves to manage such pushback - maybe at Toretsk but at a time when the city's defence was already compromised - so committing resources without stabilizing the defence within the city is probably not the Best investment of efforts - the Corp setup is a must for Ukraine - however I am afraid it is coming late - Russia has firmly the initiative and albeit they are not inventive they can adopt just as good also on multiple levels...