The Winter War of 2022 Seeks the Holy Grail of Battle-Hardened Soldiers

Is Russia gearing up for a summer offensive? Or is what we see what they've got? I keep hearing that the Russian ground forces are now combat experienced. But I see an exhausted ground force.

The war goes on.

Russia's ground war has faltered:

Russian forces are performing poorly on the battlefield and failing to make operationally significant advances in their ongoing spring-summer 2026 campaign, as Ukrainian forces continue to counterattack and comprehensively strike Russian mid–range targets and deep in the Russian rear.

 Russian war supporters wonder why Russia hits symbolic targets in their air war:

Russian milbloggers heavily criticized the May 24 strikes as expensive but not militarily useful and that the Oreshnik strike against Bila Tserkva did not have a clear militarily significant target. Milbloggers further criticized the strikes as expensive and as not contributing to the Russian war effort, while Russian forces are under-resourced and unable to advance on the frontline. 

The appearance of success with missile strikes may now rely on aerial attacks in the absence of a ground war that provides that. You can only pretend to have taken a town from the Ukrainians so many times before people start to notice.

Recall that there were those who claimed the U.S. Army was "broken" by its campaign in Iraq after it suffered perhaps a thousand KIA per year there. I thought that was ridiculous:

Our Army is stressed. And we need to take actions to counter and eventually relieve that stress. So far, we seem to be doing that successfully. Don't confuse this, as Korb seems to do, with the other problem of being unbalanced--so focused on counter-insurgency that we are slighting conventional warfighting skills. But once Iraq deployments slow after victory, the problems of both stress and balance will be resolved. And we will retain the combat experienced troops for a generation.

Yet Russia with deaths in over four years of combat (nearly 500,000 according to Britain's GCHQ director) a couple orders of magnitude greater than America's 4,500 deaths in Iraq over about 6-1/2 years of combat missions is combat-hardened with hard-won experience against Ukraine? What survivors will make Russian ground forces better in the next war?

Call me skeptical about seeing bloodied and battered Russian ground force elements and thinking "none shall pass" that awesome array of experienced combat power!

Still, Russia's ground forces have power in the positional war of attrition they are optimized to fight now. Fighting that sort of war against Russia would not be ideal. As long as their troops are willing to die in large numbers, of course. Are we just seeing a pause in Russia's advance? Or has Russia lost the ability to attack. If the latter, can Ukraine exploit it before Russian ground forces can recover? 

Ukraine has a six-month window in which to seize the battlefield initiative from Russia and strengthen its hand for peace talks, a senior commander told Reuters, predicting a “turning point” was imminent after more than four years of war. 

Can Russian ground forces recover? Will a much-discussed Russian mobilization make or break the troops in the field?

NOTE: ISW updates continue here. 

NOTE: Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump on Substack. You may read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.

Weekend Data Dump

The Weekend Data Dump is a compilation of short entries about the previous week’s defense and national security news that I found interesting. I couldn’t possibly comment on everything in my news flow or delve into everything that interests me. So most news that interests me doesn’t make the cut for a post. The rest go in the data dump. Enjoy!

HOP ON OVER AND READ IT! On the bright side, you can comment on Substack!

In case you missed it on Substack: The NATO Force Model Shrinks

In case you missed it on Substack: Operation Epic Criticism

In case you missed it on Substack: Baby UGV Steps in North Africa

In case you missed it on Substack: To the Shores of Taiwan

Help me out by subscribing on Substack and by liking and sharing posts. I occasionally post short data dump-type items (or not-so-short) on my Substack "Notes" section.

The Air Force Taunts the Army

The Air Force deigned to provide special forces with dedicated ground support aircraft. The Army can continue to pound sand.

Well that’s nice for special forces: 

The Air Force now has 18 new light attack aircraft that are designed to support special operations forces on the ground, and it expects to receive “a handful more” by October, said Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, of Air Force Special Operations Command, or AFSOC.

The single-engine turboprop OA-1K Skyraider II is “essentially a Swiss Army Knife of airborne capability,” that can fly armed reconnaissance, close air support, and precision strike missions, said Wilson, AFSOC’s armed overwatch requirements branch chief.

But this plane is a flashy distraction from the refusal to have a dedicated close air support plane for the Army's maneuver forces.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo from the article. 

The Thucydides Trap Definitions Section

China's Xi raised the Thucydides Trap during the recent Peking summit as a cautionary tale that should instill American caution. How convenient.

Victor Hanson writes that the Thucydides Trap does not actually describe the situation between Athens and Sparta as a cause of the war. Yet the political scientist who popularized the model relied on other competing rivals to bolster the ancient scenario that he used to name the problem. 

The theory is often talked about in power transition terms. A dominant power may strike a rising power before it can be ascendant. Or a rising power impatient for its anticipated dominance may strike first to accelerate the trend. 

There are problems with the data set, too. An obvious one is the U.S.-Japan rivalry that led to war in 1941. Japan's GDP was about 1/8 America's. Where was the threat or promise of a power shift?

And while there is certainly validity to the general observation about competing powers, the data gives it more credibility as a virtual machine that spits out predictable results with the competition inputs. That is merely the color of scientific rigor.

I think the great distance between America and China prevents each from really going for the throat of each other's homeland. America can't successfully invade vast China and China can't even try to invade vast America. This distance reduces the tipping point urgency to act now.

I suspect Xi was trying to appear near when he knows it is far from overtaking America.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Image from https://www.hellenic-art.com/hellenipedia/greek-hoplite-phalanx/.

Marines in Australia

Has the Marine presence in northern Australia reached its endpoint? Or is it just the beginning?

Capabilities in Australia: 

Marine Rotational Force-Darwin 26 was recently certified as a Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force, marking the first MRF-D unit to earn the certification since the rotational force was established in 2011.

The Marine presence has come a long way.  

Will it go even farther?

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Image from the article.

Air Base Defense 101 Must Be Reviewed

Air supremacy is no longer America's God-given right. Our Cold War--let alone our World War II--anti-aircraft capabilities have eroded just in time for missiles and cheap drones to take aim at our air bases. A sense of urgency is in order given our reliance on air power.

Most of the American aircraft lost from Iranian action were drones and weren’t knocked down while on the ground and so completely irrelevant to the author’s point, but yes:

The days of exposed aircraft sitting safely on runways to prosecute operations unimpeded are over. But not nearly enough U.S. military bases at home or abroad are hardened or sheltered to protect our most capable equipment.

I am fully onboard the need for ground-based air defense and more basic air base protection measures.

And grant me that I recognized the base defense problem that small drones would pose. And that was before they were armed with explosives and got longer range. 

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo from the last war when we failed to have a sense of urgency about air base defense.

The Eastern Question Reverses Direction

I used to think we have an Erdogan problem. Wait him out and Turkey could return to reliable ally status. I fear he is the symptom of an Islamist problem. And even if that wasn't the case when he was elected, his duration has made this an Islamist problem. And a new Eastern Question.

I believe our government once believed Erdogan would be a great example for Islam by being a "tame" Islamist government still able to align with the West. That is not working out:

Turkey’s accelerating development of ballistic, cruise, and potentially hypersonic missiles should force Washington and Brussels to reconsider whether Ankara is evolving into a stabilizing NATO partner—or a revisionist power armed with increasingly sophisticated strike capabilities.

We thought Turkey could be a good example for Iran, which we also once bizarrely believed could be tamed rather than defeated. Perhaps there was hope that Pakistan, which remains an army barely in control of a country--because of the Islamist-infected population--could be cured, too.

Instead, I fear that either Pakistan and Iran will be potential models for Turkey when its Islamists no longer pretend to be tame as they pursue a return to Ottoman glories. Although they'd be smart to model Iran which always gave hope to Westerners that mythical "moderates" could gain power if only we granted Iran enough concessions.

The Eastern Question may be reversing. 

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Map from Britannica.

The Winter War of 2025 Sees Continuity During Change

Observers, including myself, see changes in the Winter War of 2022 that seem to indicate a change in fortunes. But few, including myself, are willing to say the tide has turned. Are we at a turning point like the one that took place in the Iran-Iraq War when Iran lost the ability to pound Iraq? Yet nobody could believe that was happening after that feature of the war had lasted so long?

 

The war goes on. We can see and track the frontline and map the targets of bombing raids. But can we see what is behind that image of clarity about a "transparent" battlefield. War itself is cloaked in fog. Hence "the fog of war." But I see faint outlines through the fog. Are they real or my imagination? 

As I wrote back in March about my impression about the war:

I've often said I try not to let my hopes guide my analysis. It is difficult. But there is an opposite problem. When the situation has been mostly the same for years, it is easy to assume current trends will continue.  ...

Maybe. But things seem ... different ... now.  

This year, Russia continues to attack but they aren't doing the Hulk smash! routine like it used to. Indeed, Ukraine has glimmers of success:

Ukrainian forces appear to be regaining the tactical initiative in different sectors of the frontline in Ukraine. 

But just tactical initiative. No big deal in the strategic picture, right? It isn't really that different.

I recall that the Iran-Iraq War settled into a pattern of Iraq sitting on the defensive and Iran sending masses of men (and boys) to their deaths to overwhelm the Iraqi defenders. Nobody could see a way out from that basic fact even as each side sought salvation by attacking the other side's oil revenue (the Tanker War) and civilians (various Wars of the Cities). And when things seemed ... different ... after Iran in January 1987 launched yet another "final offensive" called Karbala V that attempted to take Basra in southern Iraq, nobody explained what was happening as the end of the pattern:

Perhaps 20,000 Iranians died in the battle. Iraq's casualties were about half of Iran's. Iraq's performance is notable in that Iraq withstood and won the kind of brutal bloodletting that supposedly only Iran could endure. Observers at the time saw only that Iran had launched yet another in a seemingly endless series of big offensives. They speculated about how many more of these attacks Iraq could endure. Actually, Iran broke at Karbala Five. It would be many months before observers began to wonder what was wrong with Iran when no further attacks were begun, yet it was true that the "Islamic Revolution bled to death in Karbala V."

People kept waiting for Iran to use its anger at failing to revive yet more Islamist-fueled offensives. But Iran could not. It would not be fully revealed until Iraq launched a big offensive to push the Iranians out of their major accomplishment of taking the Fao Peninsula in 1986:

While Iran continued to insist that ultimately it would be infantry who would decide the war, Iran had already let the usual season pass without launching a major offensive. This failure began to raise questions about what Iran was doing. One answer came in April 1988 when, after fewer than two days of fighting, Iraq recaptured the Fao peninsula with Operation Ramadan. Iraqi regular troops and Republican Guard forces backed by 2,000 tanks and 600 heavy guns plowed south and struck from the Gulf with a supporting amphibious assault. The Iranians were overwhelmed and showed no spirit of resistance. While it is true that the Iraqis outnumbered the Iranians by 8 to 1 odds, the contrast is amazing between April 1988 and February 1986, when Iranians fought hammer and tong for every square inch of worthless swamp on that peninsula. The day that Iranian infantry could not exact a heavy price for the terrain on which they stood was the day that Iran lost the war. April 18, 1988 was that day.

Has Russia truly faltered? Are we refusing to believe the evidence of our lying eyes?

Consider that Russia and China signed "a joint declaration on the Establishment of a Multipolar World and a New Type of International Relations." I have to ask, is this simply a rote repeat of an old theme? Or a sign that Russia has internally admitted it cannot restore Russia's greatness on the battlefield and so must partner with China? Is this a sign that Russia will end their invasion of Ukraine?

And I wonder if this round of flinging nuclear poo and beating their atomic chest is to project military strength before ending the invasion: 

Russia is using unannounced strategic nuclear exercises to posture strength against Ukraine’s allies and distract from mounting battlefield weaknesses.

Could Russia be trying to shape public perceptions to make it seem as if ending the invasion of Ukraine without conquering Ukraine is irrelevant to Russia's national security because of Russia's nuclear might?  

If these are big picture signs supporting the faltering Russian offensive capability theory, can Ukraine do what Iraq did to attack and expose the eclipse of Russia's offensive capability?

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq’s army settled in to a defensive struggle from fortified lines against Iran. Its army evolved to survive in that environment. Iraq found it needed a mobile army to go on offense. So it built that army.

Ukraine has in fact been attacking and slowly gaining ground at both ends of the southern front for the last several months. Analysts have noted that for the first time in a long time Ukraine has gained more ground than Russia has. And Russia is losing so many troops that it can't replace battlefield losses. Are we in a post-Karbala V period of this war?

Will we see an April 1988 event that finally exposes the Russian threat as hollowed out? 

For years I've considered a Ukrainian offensive to Crimea to be the most logical front to seriously harm Russia. Ukrainian military actions could be shaping the battlefield for such an effort.

Was this a test of capabilities away from the southern front?

Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a mechanized counterattack in the Borova direction, possibly penetrating up to five kilometers into the Russian defenses. 

Or maybe this is still 1985 and Russia has a lot more offensive life left in them that Putin--overriding some recognition that all is not well--wants to use:

Russian President Vladimir Putin still wants to resolve the war on his terms, including fully seizing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by the end of 2026. 

Maybe I am hoping fluctuations in the pattern are a turning point when in fact they are mere fluctuations in a continuing pattern of Ukraine hanging on as Russia throws body blows on the ground.

How much longer does this "lull" in Russian offensive gains have to go on to suggest things really are different? 

How are Ukraine and Russia judging their offensive and defensive options? 

I can't know. All I can say is that I know things do change--sometimes radically--after we get used to predicting tomorrow will be the same as yesterday. I hope somebody on our side can see deeper into Russia's conditions to tell if things are really ... different. And I hope that Ukraine has been building forces to exploit that turning point if it is taking place.

Perhaps the Russians see the turning point more clearly than we can despite our assessment that the Kremlin is blind to battlefield realities. 

NOTE: ISW updates continue here. 

NOTE: Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump on Substack. You may read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.