Scenario Builders: How will the Ukraine War affect future scenarios?

[FrancoisX5]

It is getting a bit too far now.

[thewood1]

It is getting a bit too far now.

I could have predicted that after the first post.

[Rob322]

Aim-54 Phoenix is the poster child for this, we use them like crazy but there just weren't that many of them.

Back in the 1980's, I was part of a gaming group when I was a teen and we got hooked on Harpoon. Once our group decided to play the new "Battle of Atlantic" 1987 style. It was glorious and we had little idea what logistics were (I was 16 so ...). I calculated that my CVBG fired nearly 600 Phoenix's without ever rearming! Somewhere, we knew that this was unrealistic but with very little data available to us civilians on how much ordinance could be found in carrier magazines so we just let her rip!

[BDukes]

Take a look at this in regards to the salvo question.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1500858639850127362

What is interesting is the timing between missiles. Lots of reasons that could be.

Mike

[Tcao]

That's almost nine years to fine tune any invasion plan. To prepare operations plans. Everything. To have all that time largely uninhibited and still make all those mistakes points to a serious problem with Russian military forces.

From what information we have now, it looks like the current full scale invasion plan was composed in less than 3 months. I won't surprise if the Russian military later admit that they were surprised to see this crazy plan but were too timid to speak against it.

the Russian military reform is to adapt to a relative low intense, high tech conflict. I think after 10+ years reform and conflicts, Russian military has totally changed to a different machine that lost their capability/structure & equipment/knowledge on how to do a full scale invasion/deep battle.
Now the big boss tell his General staffs to compose a full scale invasion plan in 3 month because the boss believes UKR will put down their weapons in 48 hours ? Good luck with that.

If nothing else, the conflict certainly reinforces the lesson to stay the heck out of the low-level air defence environment.

When any bush could hold an angry guy with a MANPADS, taking your aircraft in with unguided short-range weapons can be very costly.

Maybe it's UKR Buk's threat force the Su-30 and Su-34 keep at low attitude. Maybe the BUK shot them down. I have read some speculation somewhere else: UKR Air defense systems keep silent for couple days, then the whole front go active on the 5th.

[wyskass]

Many good points made.
Certainly a better discussion than responses to youtube comments. It's either, we cannot ever go to war and USA is the bad guy.. or So by that logic Russia is right in attacking because it's in their interest ?

Anyway, just wanted to add a few points.
As eluded to, I think it's a mistake to judge Russian progress based on past US conflicts. USA has a different doctrine, different capabilities and was fighting a very different enemy.
So I'm not completely buying that they are bogged down, and should have rushed Kiev already. I think the thaw was a bit of an oversight or just bad luck with weather, preventing any off road travel. Also who's to say they wanted to storm Kiev. They seem to be stopped just short of defensive reach, and are setting up forward bases, while maneuvering to the west. It's a classic siege tactic potentially.
This brings up the next point of logistics and budget. The US can expend massive firepower and seems to have a much larger logistical service. This costs lots of money to execute.
The Russian propaganda of their peer status and technological modernity seemed to have been just that. Again related to budget, it seems their best equipment is concentrated in a small number of units and overall they are actually poorly equipped. That's not to say that they may be saving showing their hand to early.. but to what benefit.
Rather than fast and heavy, they seem to be more of a snake constricting. Cutoff ports from south, and attempt to cutoff Kiev from the West. They wouldn't need to fight too much just doing that.

As to scenarios..
Unpredictability and ambiguity of intentions of the enemy. Vary pace and tactics to be more asymmetrical. Include surprises. Maybe less head on fire with fire. Build in failed expectations, and tricky timing..
A higher variance in motivations. Defenders fight harder maybe.

I'm no expert but like learning from scenarios.

PS. As a Polish American, hate seeing Poland deteriorate into authoritarian rule and pull away from Europe due to internal political expediency and bad leadership. Alone between two enemies didn't seem to work very well some 80 years ago, and going at it alone in that geographic location with Putins aspirations is a terrible idea. Maybe this will change things.

Also all the best to Ukraine and self determined fate vs dictator rule.

[Tcao]

Under current circumstances, it looks like going after Kiev is a bad idea, no matter the original plan is a storm or a siege. Siege looks like a much more worse option at this moment. Supply an army that is 200km away from its main supply depot (in this case, railhead at Yelsk, Belarus) is not an easy task, especially for Russian army who has relatively small trucking fleet.

In a Blitzkrieg, yes, go after Kiev and hopefully it will destroy the UKR side's fighting sprit.

In a more tradition Soviet military's thinking, they should go after Kharkov. Secure Kharkov in the first week, then extend the rail supply net work to Kharkov and setup supply depot there . Look at the railway map of Ukraine, so many options become available if Kharkov is firmly in Russian's hand.

ukraine rail.gif (153.3 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

[nanni]

Just a couple of thoughts. IMHO,
1. When all is said and done, the disappointing performance of the Russian armed forces is due to their generally inferior level of training. By this I mean from war college level of training down to boot camp level.
2. However all this ends, once the guns go silent the Russian military will need 3 years at least to get back into a reasonable, pre-war shape.

[wyskass]

Just a couple of thoughts. IMHO,
1. When all is said and done, the disappointing performance of the Russian armed forces is due to their generally inferior level of training. By this I mean from war college level of training down to boot camp level.
2. However all this ends, once the guns go silent the Russian military will need 3 years at least to get back into a reasonable, pre-war shape.

Another point not mentioned is Soviet style authoritarian leadership militaries don't foster much lower level decision making. I large USA advantage is empowering mid level officers to adjust to local situation and take action to achieve objecting as appropriate. This puts trust in people, at all levels, and allows faster pace of advance fighting and dealing with surprises. A big part of US thinking is to take advantage of chaos and unpredictability by using it against opponents. You give goals as you move down the chain of command and freedom to execute as decided by those at each level of responsibility. It's micromanagement avoidance.
The thinking in Soviet and Chinese organizations is very top down and all details are planned by leaders and bosses. Independent thought is not valued.
This is a cultural thing reflected in many areas. While you gain efficiency and control you lose flexibility. In war especially adapting to real time changes without central control is a big advantage that isn't very quantifiable. Troop and equipment counts are great but using them to full advantage is key.
It's not the size of your gun but how you use it.

[tiag]

......
Independent thought is not valued.
This is a cultural thing reflected in many areas.
......

This a deep analysis, finally in this thread. THANK YOU! I agree with you completely. The russian soldiers should be allowed to think freely, otherwise we will loose this war.

[tiag]

Just a couple of thoughts. IMHO,
1. When all is said and done, the disappointing performance of the Russian armed forces is due to their generally inferior level of training. By this I mean from war college level of training down to boot camp level.
2. However all this ends, once the guns go silent the Russian military will need 3 years at least to get back into a reasonable, pre-war shape.

I dont agree with you completely. In my model, involving all possible variables from post neoliberal economy together with all pre socialist german thought, I came to a time frame of 2.17 years. Can you please share with us if your model is taking into account such DOF (degrees-of-freedom)?

[tiag]

Many good points made.
Certainly a better discussion than responses to youtube comments. It's either, we cannot ever go to war and USA is the bad guy.. or

This is of course not true..I agree with you...completey nonsense. USA is not the bad guy. You are also forgetting UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. A couple of others too, but I digress. Sorry.

Anyway, just wanted to add a few points.
As eluded to, I think it's a mistake to judge Russian progress based on past US conflicts. USA has a different doctrine, different capabilities and was fighting a very different enemy.

Agree. Ukranias are not arabs, muslims or africans. They have blue eyes and are europeans.

So I'm not completely buying that they are bogged down, and should have rushed Kiev already. I think the thaw was a bit of an oversight or just bad luck with weather, preventing any off road travel. Also who's to say they wanted to storm Kiev. They seem to be stopped just short of defensive reach, and are setting up forward bases, while maneuvering to the west. It's a classic siege tactic potentially.
This brings up the next point of logistics and budget. The US can expend massive firepower and seems to have a much larger logistical service. This costs lots of money to execute.

Yeah, money! Not a problem at all for USA when it comes to wars. You are right here and I agree with you too.

The Russian propaganda of their peer status and technological modernity seemed to have been just that. Again related to budget, it seems their best equipment is concentrated in a small number of units and overall they are actually poorly equipped. That's not to say that they may be saving showing their hand to early.. but to what benefit.
Rather than fast and heavy, they seem to be more of a snake constricting. Cutoff ports from south, and attempt to cutoff Kiev from the West. They wouldn't need to fight too much just doing that.

Lazy bastards these russians. Fight as USA!!!!!! We want to see Kiew destroyed as fast as USA and UK destroyed Baghdad!!!! Where is the shock and awe that CNN, Fox and Hollywood promised me? I am deeply bored by this war...I will go back to CMO and fire my salvo of Iskanders and Grad....

I'm no expert but like learning from scenarios.

Dont be ridicolous....of course you are an expert, you nailed with your analysis.
I would like to thank you again for your professional opinion on this forum.

[thewood1]

Tweet from the UK MoD.

Speculating on lower than expected recent use of PGMs in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/15 ... 3C6rLvG5uA

Russia might be running out, as was mentioned above. Also, Russian tank and vehicle transport ships were spotted around Japan fully loaded. Speculation is they are heading for the Ukraine.

[BDukes]

Tweet from the UK MoD.

Speculating on lower than expected recent use of PGMs in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/15 ... 3C6rLvG5uA

Russia might be running out, as was mentioned above. Also, Russian tank and vehicle transport ships were spotted around Japan fully loaded. Speculation is they are heading for the Ukraine.

PGM use seems to have picked up since the early days.

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia- ... ine-2022-3

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60728208

Who really knows but glad the bees are getting to the bear.

Mike

[Rob322]

The game doesn't really model morale. It has a proficiency modifier but there are limits to that. Meanwhile Ukrainians are fighting for their country and may be more motivated to fight harder than their Russian opponents. The Russians too may have severely underestimated the will of their opponent. Maybe they expected the Ukrainian's to stay in their barracks or come out and cheer. How could they be so wrong? Did their intelligence gathering suck? Or did they see what they wanted to see and ignored or downplayed data that didn't fit the narrative? Maybe we all overestimated the Russians, wanting to see them as the mythical "ten-foot tall" behemoths the way we saw the Soviets back in the cold war. Or, maybe everyone underestimated the fighting skills of the Ukrainian's as well, assuming that they stood no chance.

Anyhow, there are lots of human factors to all wars that are difficult for games to model. Stress, confusion, poor information, inability to see the future, bad leadership, training issues, morale issues and good old fear all play a part. Games struggle with those (board and computer) and when they try to incorporate rules to deal with them often find them the subject of contention, particularly when modeling a hypothetical conflict such as World War III. For instance, in GDW's Third World War series, the designers downgraded the Dutch F-16's compared to everyone else on the theory that they didn't train as hard. Was that real (or real enough to justify a 25% reduction)? World War III was never fought so we'll never know if the Dutch F-16 pilots would've been that much worse than say the Danes or Belgians. Lots of intangibles in war and it can be tricky to create rules to replicate the numerous historical blunders that did occur, much less come up with rules for the assumed incompetence's in the next one.

[SeaQueen]

Good question!

I think in some ways it's too early to tell. Certainly with the Russians I'm going to use more unguided munitions. Rockets and dumb bombs seem to be among their favorites. I think I'm also going to use more helicopters. HIND helicopters are cool. I think I'm also going to play around with mines and mine sweeping more.

In a certain sense it doesn't really matter what the Russians are doing now, because one can assume they have some kind of lessons-learned process or post-mortem and will go back to the drawing board after this to re-think what they're doing in the hope of doing better. If you're going to create future scenarios, they could have TONS of PGMs and do things any which way you choose. It's like the stock market, past performance does not predict future results.

Other than that, I think the most important thing is to just watch and wait. There's so little good opened source data out there right now about HOW the Russians are fighting, on land, in the air and on the ocean.

[thewood1]

Looking at the footage and reports initially coming out of Ukraine, MANPADs look like they are playing a bigger role than expected.

[SeaQueen]

Looking at the footage and reports initially coming out of Ukraine, MANPADs look like they are playing a bigger role than expected.

I wonder how much of that is driven by the weather? If it's overcast, you can't deliver dumb bombs and rockets visually unless you get low enough to see your target. The other option is to do a radar drop from above the clouds which is probably going to be "meh" in terms of accuracy. If you're going to be fighting in Europe where the weather is often bad, it helps a lot to have inertially-guided munitions.

[SeaQueen]

Confirmation that game environments are generally too perfect. CMO does much of the tech right but kill chain too efficient.

At least in the case of the Russian and Ukrainian SAMs, the way people typically represent the IADS in their scenarios is probably not the best. The tendency is to avoid using LUA to add mobility and smarter decision making about when they choose to emit. That has the effect of raising the number of shots they fire (since they're effectively always in a firing mode) because it neglects the potential that they might be in various other modes (e.g. moving to another firing position, or setting up) and unable to fire. It also tends to make them more vulnerable because it makes them easily located using appropriate ELINT sensors, including satellites, U-2, or RJs. There's also a tendency to neglect the air surveillance and C3 portions of the IADS. The ASV portion exists to provide a picture when the SAMs aren't emitting (those only want to emit when they're almost ready to shoot). The C3 portions of the IADS make it possible to sometimes "clip the kill chain" or at least delay it if the appropriate C3 node is located and destroyed. Eliminating the various C3 nodes forces portions of the IADS to react in ways that might not be to their advantage, for example, relying on their own acquisition or battle management radars for a picture instead of the air surveillance nodes. That reduces their reaction time, so now longer OODA forces might not be able to shoot so much. Unfortunately, due to the way CMO represents communications networks, even if you use LUA, though, it doesn't matter. They're still going to get the track if there's other sensors. There needs to be a more explicit way of defining communications networks.

[thewood1]

As a test, I have built parts of the IADS kill chain using the comms/out of comms feature. Its still not perfect, but can represent the breakdown in comms when comms hubs and centers are killed. I even played around with jamming thresholds having a direct impact on comms by using out-of-comms and switching sides. You can get it to work, but its a lot of work for the scenario builder and adds a significant level of complexity. It also makes playing the scenario more like work and far away from fun. I have built all kinds of IADS-like tests that range from sophisticated technology networks with multiple layers of radars and comm centers where each layer is an allied side that goes in and out of comms through changing sides based on specific networked units operating down to simple isolated SAM sites that depend on a guy with a cell phone on a hill watching for incoming strikes (a la the Serbian SAM site that shot down the F-117).

I've done some using only a small smattering of lua and others with a very lua focus. You can obviously do a lot more using lua, but its much more complex to debug and idiot proof it. I did most of this a few years ago when the comms feature as added. But, frankly, I got bored with the effort to build it out compared to what I got out of playing it. But I suspect most of the SAM activity in Ukraine is a lot of spotters with cell phones directing small SAM units.