How Can You Be Combat Ineffective, Culminating, and Capable?

It is a great question, and a great discussion is ongoing between Malcontents. Three assessments yesterday appear to conflict with each other.

• We assess that Russia’s large-scale winter offensive has culminated, but Russian forces have available combat potential to launch a new wave of offensives.
• We maintain that the Russian Federation Armed Forces are combat ineffective and are only capable of effective attacks on a small area of the front, such as Bakhmut.
• We maintain that Russia has committed almost all available ground forces to Ukraine and cannot maintain the current level of personnel and equipment losses.

We assess that Russia’s large-scale winter offensive has culminated, but Russian forces have available combat potential to launch a new wave of offensives.

Russia launched its large-scale winter offensive, as we assessed would happen, between January 6 and January 24. It is hard to put a line in the sand and say it started on this date. You can say it started with the huge push on Soledar, which started on January 6, or you could say it started with the push on Vuhledar, which started on January 24. There are a number of other hot spots between those dates. We declared it had started on January 27 due to our degree of uncertainty on, "is this really it." When we saw the losses at Vuhledar, Vodyane, and Kreminna on January 27, we were convinced.

The number of attacks theaterwide declined all last week as part of a trend that started 15 days ago. The number of artillery strikes also decreased, and Russia's March 9, 2023, missile and drone attack was a failure, even if 28% of precision weapons reached their targets.

In mid-December, we declared the Russian attack on Bakhmut and Soledar had culminated. It restarted on December 27, and it is the only area in the last three months where Russia has had success measured more than by houses, trees, and ditches captured.

Culmination doesn't mean finished forever. Russia has culminated multiple times, as has Ukraine (Kharkiv counteroffensive, Ukrainian commanders wisely stopped as they started to outrun their GLOCs). 

However, the battle plan laid out by General Gerasimov, which could be described as an attack on everywhere with everything and see what happens, has failed and is over. Just as in mid-December, PMC Wagner's battle plan of let's keep attacking Ukrainian forces where they are strongest over and over again and hope for a different result also failed. In late December, they changed tactics, troop composition, equipment used, and when and where they attacked. The battle plan was completely different. The previous attack culminated, and a new one started.  

Russia will execute a new battle plan, and they still have reserve units of mobiks to throw into attacks. Those units have combat potential, even if that potential is reduced from January 6, 2023.

We maintain that the Russian Federation Armed Forces are combat ineffective and are only capable of effective attacks on a small area of the front, such as Bakhmut.

I know this has been controversial. Combat ineffective does not mean incapable of fighting.

Let me repeat an analogy we used to explain combat ineffective.

Let's say you work for a company with 100 employees. You're busy; it is the busy season. Everyone is working 8+ hours, and many working more than that. You show up for work to find out there is an all-employee meeting in the parking lot.

The company needs to do layoffs, so they've hired consultants to help figure out where to make cuts. But these consultants have a novel idea. They have paintball guns. They will start firing at the company staff until paintballs hit 30 people in the torso or head, and those people are laid off. Any piece of company equipment, whether that be a computer, a desk, a delivery truck, or a critical piece of manufacturing equipment hit by a paintball will be removed from the facility as part of cost-cutting measures. And - it begins now!

An hour later, it's over. Now the company has 70 employees and 65% of the equipment it previously had. They pull together a second meeting. You are now expected to do everything you were working on before without missing a single deadline. And go!

Can the company still support customers, fulfill orders, and operate? Probably. Effectively? Not at all. Combat ineffective is the same thing. A unit has lost 30% to 49% of its combat strength. Combat destroyed is a unit that has lost 50% or more of its combat strength. Remember, combat strength goes beyond personnel. A mechanized infantry company with 100 troops who lost 30 dismounts is still combat effective if they have all their infantry fighting vehicles and staff. However, a mechanized infantry company that lost 8 of 12 IFVs but only 24 personnel (IFV commander, driver, gunner X8) is combat destroyed, even if they have all their dismounts. They have lost most of their force multipliers. It is definitely a complex equation.

A combat-ineffective military can still defend quite effectively and can still make limited attacks, and if all combat potential is concentrated in an area (Severodonetsk May 2022 or Bakhmut January 2023), progress can be made. However, can a combat ineffective turn an operational success like capturing Pisky into a tactical victory, such as advancing west to cut off Avdiivka GLOCs? No.

Can a combat-destroyed unit still defend effectively? Absolutely - Azovstal is a great example of this. 

Russian forces have been combat ineffective since July 2022, and the mobiks rushed to Ukraine, which admittedly became more than speed bumps in December 2022, have been successful in one task, stabilizing defensive lines and helping capture strategic trees, dachas, and artillery craters - outside of Bakhmut.

Russia will continue to mass troops - somewhere - while gains will be small if they are made. Operational success won't be turned into tactical or strategic victories. 

We maintain that Russia has committed almost all available ground forces to Ukraine and cannot maintain the current level of personnel and equipment losses.

This is why the first point, there is still available combat potential, and the second point, but it won't amount to much, exist together. Russian losses are unsustainable. The armored vehicle losses in Vuhledar and Avdiivka should have ended with Russian Generals dismissed, not promoted. The fury expressed by Russian commanders and milbloggers was well-placed.

Russian troops are advancing with unarmed soldiers (Vuhledar, February 19), relying on shovels for hand-to-hand combat and using weapons from the 1940s and 1950s. 

Most people in the military are not grunts with guns. From April 2022 to September 2022, we wrote repeatedly how Russia lacked grunts with guns. Grunts with guns take territory and hold territory. But they need armor, air support, and artillery to be successful. Russia has plenty of grunts but lacks armor and artillery (relative to prior use) and can't provide close air support.

Russian losses have been so high from October 2022 to February 2023 that they are having to take soldiers who were never trained to be grunts with guns and move them to infantry units. Life advise for anyone planning to join any military. You may pick a specialty that makes you a carpet-walking REMF, but in the fine print, everyone is a grunt with a gun. Russian tank and artillery units are finding that out the hard way. Putin, please help us! Nyet, you go talk to Donetsk People's Republic; not my problem.

So while almost every member of the Russian army is involved directly or indirectly in the war in Ukraine, there are plenty of REMFs who have never picked up a gun. Now they are tapping those members, which is never a good sign.

I hope this clears things up.