Franz-Stefan Gady and Michael Kofman on what Ukraine must do to break
through Russian defences
COMBINED-ARMS WARFARE is a deadly ballet choreographed to overwhelm the defender by integrating different combat arms, such as infantry and
artillery, and services, such as ground and air forces. Its origins lie in
the last two years of the first world war. After years of stalemate, the
German Imperial Army adopted innovative tactics to break through the
layered Allied defences of the western front and thus out of the
attritional deadlock.
This novel approach was not enough to win the war, but it changed the
course of warfare. Before 1917 most operations were sequential. Days of artillery fire on a trench gave advance warning of an attack. When the
fire paused and infantry went over the top, soldiers would be mown down.
The same attack in combined-arms fashion would involve brief artillery
fire on the enemy position, combat engineers clearing obstacles such as
mines and barbed wire, and soldiers advancing under covering fire
immediately afterwards.
…
The offensive quickly resorted to extensive use of artillery and small-
scale assaults by infantry units, fighting from tree line to tree line. Progress is slow because much of the battlefield is densely mined, with anti-tank guided missiles, attack drones and aircraft posing further
problems. In the south Ukraine has been drawn into an artillery-dominated
war of attrition. The situation around Bakhmut, farther north, is better, largely because the Russian forces there are not as entrenched and the geography of the battlefield is more favourable to Ukraine. Still, there,
too, progress has been slow and costly.
…
The new brigades have been unsuccessful not only because they had little
time to develop this cohesion, but also because they have not been trained
the way they need to fight. Ukrainian soldiers’ ability to master Western tech quickly led to misplaced optimism that the time it takes to develop cohesive fighting units could be short-circuited. Putting these units in
the vanguard of a difficult assault, instead of more experienced
formations, now looks like a mistake that reflected the prioritisation of Western kit over time in the field.
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/07/28/franz-stefan-gady-and-michael-kofman-on-what-ukraine-must-do-to-break-through-russian-defences
Онзи дали схваща проблемите, които стоят пред украинците да изпълнят
мечтата му?!
И да помогнем на онзи в разкриването на авторите на статията:
Franz-Stefan Gady is the founder and CEO of Gady Consulting and a
consulting senior fellow with the Institute for International Strategic Studies. Michael Kofman is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.
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