A desperate attempt to cross a hedgehog and snake for the APU
Probably, many have already asked themselves a question like what is happening with the Armed Forces of Ukraine? Well, somehow all the advantage that was mentioned (not without reason) earlier disappeared somewhere.
What we saw in the operation near Orekhovo is surprising. Where is the Hymars processing of key points, preliminary strikes of assault groups on light armor, tank wedges driven in where thin ...
We saw trampling and frontal impacts, which are somehow not even inherent in the APU of recent times.
Our considerations are such that, first of all, they are connected with the temporary (or not temporary) removal from work of General Vladimir Zaluzhny.
Zaluzny was removed from operational control of the troops, although he is still in command and even reports on the situation in Zelensky's office. Apparently, after all, the wound and especially the shell shock did their job. In the videos that the Ukrainian side posted as confirmation that Zaluzhny was alive, the general was somewhat ... slowed down. Which confirms the version of a severe concussion.
Instead of Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian troops are commanded by a trio of generals: Oleksandr Komarenko, head of the operational department of the headquarters of the Ground Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Tarnavsky, commander of the Tavria operational-strategic grouping of troops, and Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and who has long dreamed of taking Zaluzhny’s place.
There is an opinion that Syrsky is in charge of this operation, it is in his style - not to count the losses, as was already the case during the defense of Artemovsk.
But disassembly among the generals is only part of the overall scenario. Indeed, much depends on the commanders, and this has been known since time immemorial. Marengo, Cannes, Eisencourt... Yes, and near Kiev in 1941 there were 2,5 times more of ours than Germans. The question of how to manage the available forces as successfully as possible is probably the most important of the questions.
When it turns out, as with Rymnik and Ishmael, then everything is fine. But we need Suvorov. When there is no Suvorov or Rokossovsky, but there is Oktyabrsky and Kozlov, then we get the loss of Sevastopol and Crimea.
The second part, on which we would like to dwell in more detail, is the same soldiers who are led by generals. A mediocre general commanding well-trained and literate soldiers can get something meaningful, but if a brilliant general under the command of a stupid and untrained armed herd, then everything will be very sad.
We have been following for a long time how and what Western instructors teach Ukrainian soldiers. There is no doubt that such training is necessary. At least in terms of the use of Western weapons. Today, the Armed Forces of Ukraine in terms of weapons are such a mixture that an unprepared fighter simply will not be able to use much of what is supplied.
You don't have to look far for examples: Belgian rifles, German machine guns, Polish, Slovak and German howitzers, Turkish and French armored cars, and so on.
But besides this, the instructors are trying to teach the Ukrainians the NATO tactics of warfare. This is what makes us much more interested. The fact is that in some aspects, the Soviet, and the Ukrainian, and even the Russian armies today use Soviet developments in many respects, tactics and strategy are very different from the American, dominant in the West.
Probably, many people remember the critical articles about this system during the reform of our army. When preparation for a big war was considered a waste of time, when a future war was no longer presented as a confrontation between systems. War as a means of suppressing attempts to gain independence from the global world by individual underdeveloped countries and nothing more.
The war in the understanding of that time is just a local conflict that will be resolved by fairly small, but well-trained and well-armed armies of professionals. So then our pro-Western military theorists said. The world has grown wiser and will no longer allow a world war. How much the world has wised up, we see.
Ukraine today is not only a battlefield, but also a testing ground for numerous experiments. Let's try to figure out whether communication with the West benefits the Ukrainian military. Simply because today it is probably the most important problem for us. And the most important danger that needs to be eliminated.
The army should be divided into "hands" and "heads"
The main problem that Western advisers in the Armed Forces of Ukraine face is ... the very structure of the army. The American army is characterized by a clear division of tasks facing soldiers and sergeants and officers. The hands are soldiers and sergeants, the head is officers. A separate caste with the right to make decisions.
Many readers have long known this feature of the American army. US military officers do not train soldiers. This is the prerogative of the sergeants. That is why in the American army you can see a sergeant whose salary is equal to or even more than that of a senior officer from some headquarters. And the SSO lieutenant receives more than the same staff colonel.
To consolidate this division, there is even a special term - mission command. For us, it's exotic. In Russian military science, such or a similar term simply does not exist. Most often, this term is translated as task management. It is the ability to manage tasks that distinguishes an officer from a sergeant.
Remember Hollywood heroes saving the world? They just act like well-trained sergeants. They destroy fortresses, blow up military facilities, shoot enemy battalions, regiments and brigades from everything that comes to hand.
But at some point they turn into helpless kittens. And then evacuation is necessary. Send a helicopter, plane or ship. And the officer solves this problem somewhere in the headquarters. The hand is always the hand, and the head is the head.
The logic of Western instructors is understandable. There is a task to be completed. And this task is not connected in any way, or is not critical, in case of failure. For the general task of joining or joining. The usual logic of the MTR. If you do it - a hero, if you don't - the kingdom of heaven is yours. Others will do.
The Soviet control system is built exactly according to the scheme of the times of the global war, according to the scheme of central planning. The senior boss receives a general task for the campaign. And then, as the operation develops, the task is divided into smaller parts. Up to the level of a platoon-company. And every such small task is part of a big one. And failure to comply with it leads to the disruption of the big operation.
It is difficult for a Western officer to understand this. After all, it was at the grassroots level that the same Americans more than once met with manifestations of precisely the initiative actions of the Russians. Let me remind you of the Balkan example, which shocked the Western world, but did not arouse much interest in us.
An example with a machine gunner who single-handedly stopped an American convoy. Acted proactively? Yes, but within the framework of the task set by the commander. Don't miss. Completed and ensured the completion of the task of his unit.
The Armed Forces operate in the same way. But when retraining them at NATO bases, instructors try to drive their own system into the heads of commanders. And this is understandable and logical, because they do not know any other system. What causes real misunderstanding of Ukrainians. How can I change my own task and substitute my company, battalion, brigade? It's a tribunal! And thus, all this NATO training goes down the drain.
"Main hand" is a non-commissioned officer
Above, we have already mentioned the fact that the officer corps does not bother to train personnel. Why, if there is a well-trained sergeant? The same sergeant who will lead his squad or even a platoon to attack? In battle, "hands" will actively work, prepared and understanding all the movements of the main "hand". The officer, however, will remain to be the “head”, which needs to be assigned the task of this particular “main hand”.
And here the Americans are faced with another problem, which it is not possible for them to solve. Excellent squad and platoon commanders who have proven themselves in battle do not know how to train personnel.
At best, they can train a soldier in their specialty, but not all the soldiers of the unit at once. Yes, and they do not have such a task. The commander of this unit personally trains the personnel of a platoon-company. He is in charge of combat.
In the US Army, it is the non-commissioned officer who is responsible for the training of personnel. And such a commander receives his rank not after short-term training in courses, but after ten or more years of service. And senior non-commissioned officers often serve for two decades. Hence the constant complaints from Western instructors about the quality of the NCOs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In this regard, the findings of the instructors are interesting. Which, by the way, shows the level of knowledge of these people. Sergeants, in the Western sense, are some unfinished non-commissioned officers. In battle, they are good, but in between fights, a complete zero. And the mentality is to blame for this! People "of the wrong design."
Is the Soviet education system completely outdated?
This opinion is repeatedly heard among Western specialists. The way the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trained simply confuses Western instructors. For Western armies, training of personnel in various specialties is carried out in unified training centers. That is, a sniper or machine gunner will study in such a center and only after graduation will he be assigned to some kind of military branch or type. The basics of the military profession are the same for everyone.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine, on the other hand, initially train specialists for exactly the type of troops in which the soldier will serve in the future. The training system for army specialists differs from the training system for, say, National Guardsmen. Hence the existence of training centers for specific departments. It is clear to us that the work of a National Guard sniper and the work of an army sniper are different. For Americans, this is not clear.
The main thing that distinguishes the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and again this is clear to us, but not clear to them, is the different level of competence of specialists. If there is no one standard of training, then there is no single criterion for evaluating the training of a specialist. Hence, in the opinion of Western experts, again, the frequent "misunderstanding of the commanding staff" of the actions of neighbors from other departments in the performance of joint tasks.
The actions of volunteer organizations are not clear to Western instructors either. For modern Ukraine, this is a fairly typical movement. Here and there, there are some amateur centers for training civilians in the basics of combat operations, in which classes are conducted by former military personnel or employees of law enforcement agencies.
Many Western instructors speak directly about the uselessness of such centers. If these centers can be useful for teaching the skills of owning any type of weapon or military equipment, then this is harmful for training an infantryman or attack aircraft. A person has a false sense of confidence in his preparation, which leads to losses during the battle.
I would especially like to note the existing system for conducting live-fire exercises. Here again there is a stupor among the Americans. Such exercises are carefully prepared by superior commanders simply because live fire can lead to casualties. Therefore, unit commanders most often play the role of observers and coordinate the actions of their subordinate commanders.
The Americans have no understanding that the combat coordination of the unit is achieved in this way. For them, such exercises are a test of the actions of a unit in a certain situation, and not a test of joint actions.
A little about logistics
The army, which has a global superiority over the enemy, has, among other things, a well-established logistics system. This is an axiom of American military doctrine. The soldier must be provided with everything necessary for combat. Everything seems to be correct. If you do not take into account the realities of war. Delivery of this essential is associated with enormous difficulties. Quite often, such delivery is simply not possible.
Instructors complain that Western equipment is simply destroyed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine due to problems with logistics and maintenance. Barrel artillery is used at maximum ranges. Tanks are used from closed positions as self-propelled guns. And this leads to increased wear of the trunks and, accordingly, the failure of the system.
This implies the fact that the training of officers involved in logistics and maintenance is simply not effective in the West. What they are taught simply does not apply in the realities of the NWO. Delivery of reinforcements, ammunition and other necessary items is often chaotic. Without any plan.
Technical cannibalism is widespread among the troops. Spare parts are removed from faulty machines and installed on others, which leads to a complete decommissioning of equipment even with minor breakdowns. The same thing happens with the components of small arms. Spare barrels for machine guns, sniper rifle scopes and other necessary equipment disappear.
One of the instructors wrote with horror about the practice of exchanging equipment between units. Unthinkable from the point of view of the West. Unthinkable, but quite existing today in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Did the crossing of the snake and the hedgehog turn out in an American way
We specifically spoke not about the Russian army, but about the Armed Forces of Ukraine, already because it is the Armed Forces of Ukraine that are actively cooperating with Western, mostly American and British, armies today. It is in the Armed Forces of Ukraine that methods of integrating Soviet-style armies are being worked out today, and it is precisely such armies that today have most of the former Soviet republics with NATO.
As you can see, today the problems of adaptation have not been resolved. So far, only the training of Ukrainian soldiers and officers to use Western weapons and equipment is going quite satisfactorily. But the practice of the war shows that the fighters from the Russian side are successfully mastering the same equipment and weapons directly on the LBS. The network is full of videos of the use of weapons and equipment by Russians for their own needs.
The crossed animal, the same “spiky snake”, turned out to be little adapted to life. A predator that can only live when hand-fed. What is happening with the Armed Forces of Ukraine today.
We think that in order to adapt the Armed Forces of Ukraine to Western standards, it is necessary to destroy the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Disperse the officer corps, spend billions to create a new army and get the desired result. But the main thing, in this case, is not even the amount of costs. The main thing is time. And the Ukrainians just don't have time.
So, the United States did not so much assist Ukraine in creating a new army, but helped bring discord into the heads of Ukrainian officers and soldiers. The service really turned out to be bearish.
And here is the result. Despite the efforts of instructors from all over Europe and, in addition, American specialists, whose competence we have no doubt, the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not demonstrate the expected level of training. Of course, this is a pleasant surprise, but the devil is in the details. And almost everything said in this article can be roughly attributed to the problems of training the personnel of the Russian army.
But this is a completely different topic.
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