Less human wave attacks, more drones.
Here’s some footage of Ukrainian soldiers attempting to shoot down incoming missiles (or suicide drones, tbh I’m not sure) with their rifles. Needless to say, it doesn’t work. And yes, this is my YouTube channel, so please give me a follow there if you’re interested. I will be adding some commentaries there as well soon.
Back in May of last year, I described what I saw as a “Blood Pump” tactic by the Russians in Donbass. Rather than try to aggressively seize more territory, they create three-sided cauldrons. This makes Ukrainian positions costly to defend, and also costly to supply and reinforce. When there’s only one or two roads leading out of a cauldron, anything moving along those routes can be targeted. Here’s a viral video allegedly taken near Bakhmut to illustrate what I mean:
The usual narrative in support of Ukraine continuing to defend cauldrons, rather than retreat, is because they also inflict heavy losses on the attackers (supposedly more). This is unlikely to me because 1) with a substantial advantage in firepower, there isn’t a pressing need for Russian forces to mount ground attacks and 2) if such combat was happening, more territory would be changing hands. The thing about combined arms attacks, even poor ones, is that they have a tendency to work, at least temporarily. Even in WWI, real estate changed hands frequently as the opposing sides took turns launching attacks and counter-attacks. The frontlines in today’s fight are even more static than in WWI.
Not to say firefights don’t happen, they certainly do, they’re just (usually) from static defenses and long-range. Here’s a video someone sent me of a Ukrainian machinegun team in a firefight that, frankly, doesn’t work out for them. The gunner keeps his head up for too long – careless, but also suggests that his adversaries aren’t close and they’ve been taking shots at each other for long enough that he started getting careless.
So rather than the massed infantry attacks that the Comical News Network (CNN) would like us to believe are happening, it’s much more likely that the vast majority of the action, and the resultant casualties, are from drones and indirect fire. Here’s an interesting news report from RT I found tonight:
In my humble opinion, the single most important, or at least widespread, use of drones in this conflict is for short-range reconnaissance. While hammering enemy trench lines 24/7, drones can find improperly defended sections that can be infiltrated and exploited, like in this video shared by Larry at Solar21. The Ukrainian soldiers in this clip are probably new, tired and shell shocked, contributing to them not realizing there was nobody defending the dugouts to their left, allowing a Russian soldier to sneak in and surprise them.
In conclusion, a dramatic Russian offensive that a lot of commentators have been anticipating for months might not happen, because there simply isn’t necessarily a need for one. However, that might change as the weather improves. An oddly warm (and therefore muddy) winter isn’t kind to heavy vehicles and equipment.
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Ian Kummer
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The more I look at it, the more I think it’s sit and wait for Putin, and he’s probably right. It’s never too late to mobilize everyone capable of holding a gun, but you can rush into it while ruining the economy.
I don’t know how probable it is for the war to reach Poland. It would take serious provocation, but Poles in particular are stupid enough.
That wouldn’t be just SMO, it would be 1944/45 style.
according to the ukies themselves and many in the pro-russia sphere the russians
1. use drones for recon
2. whether the drones see much or not, the russians send out a small team (4-6 if i recall correctly) who basically draw out the ukies with mild rifle skirmishes to find their exact positions
3. withdraw the team then shell the hell out of the ukie location
4. ??????
5. profit!
a very efficient meat grinder. also according to various VSU guys they can’t return fire as they have 1/10th the artillery (if any) and most of the grunts at this point are randos grabbed off the street and given 2 days of training.
i noticed months ago that the ukrainians are hopelessly addicted to cauldrons. seems like a “fool me 5,677,923 times shame on me” situation but oh well. i’ve also predicted that at some point the conscripts will start “fragging” their COs to send a message but we’ll see (assuming the news makes it past the front lines).