Thread by @snekotron

Just a morass of poorly thought out ideas that I think will serve as a jumping off point for some comments about doctrine and what has changed since Soviet times. /1

Broadly speaking, Cold War doctrine fell roughly into 2 camps - attrition and maneuver. For the early part of the Cold War NATO was very heavily attritional, moving more towards maneuver with the AirLand battle and the like in the later phase. USSR always emphasized maneuver. /2

A lot of this was borne from the experience of WW2. While the Western front saw the US and allies push out slowly in N. France, the east saw grand offensives with large encirclements and annihilation battles. USSR had to cover a lot of distance and had to push offensives deep. /3

As such, artillery's role wasn't for constant creeping bombardment to cover a methodical advance. It was to blow gaps into enemy lines so that large maneuver formations such as tank armies can pour in to weak havoc. This was especially important in nuclear battlefields. /4

Since getting your troops behind enemy lines, moving quickly, was critical to limit the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. Artillery preparations were to do damage in the shortest amount of time possible, hence the emphasis on rocket artillery. /5

Long bombardments have the effect of forcing defenders to hide in entrenchments where they are harder to kill and also chew up terrain and infrastructure, making it difficult for the attackers to maneuver and conduct deep operations. /6

Thus the "inflexibility" of Soviet artillery was more an emphasis on centrally-directed fires, to blow holes into front lines the first hour by concentrating all fire support on key breakthrough sectors. This is how the "big one" is fought. /7

That said, it's also not true to say that Soviet maneuver units didn't have artillery support, because it was a heavily mechanized army with self-propelled artillery in every regiment that is meant to keep up with the advance. Remember, maneuver doctrine. /8

Precision artillery rounds like Krasnopol and Smelchak also had their introduction during the Soviet period, well before counterparts in the West, showing perhaps how important artillery was overall to the Soviet military. /9

With the end of the Cold War, across the world, you saw the reduction of personnel in militaries. Divisions became brigades, and the brigadiazation of various militaries was presented as a measure for cost saving and flexibility. /10

It is easier to deploy a brigade of 3-4k men than a division of 15k, so in order to make these units "complete" and self-supporting, what had been divisional fire support assets were pushed down into the smaller formations. There are variations, but this is generally speaking /11

Smaller flexible units were more suited for the new era of counterinsurgency. In Russia, since the motor rifle and tank regiments already contained their own organic self-propelled artillery, brigadization just meant a straight shrink of the old divisions. /12

Nowadays, "Battalion Tactical Group" has become a kind of buzz word (BTG), which people often use without understanding how it is distinct from just a regular battalion. The concept is roughly equivalent to task forces in the US military /13

Which are ad hoc formations created by brigade commanders tailored to solve a specific mission. In the case of the Russian BTG, this is sometimes called a reinforced battalion, as it is a maneuver battalion reinforced by brigade fire assets and other support. /14

So far this has been just descriptive, but here I'll offer a little more of my own opinion. These downsized post-Cold War formations are not meant to fight in the style of the Cold War. They are fundamentally incapable of it. /15

By pushing arty into smaller tactical units and leaving fire support discretion to the tactical commanders, it is harder to coordinate the concentrated fire required in a large scale conflict. In fact the US army has reinstated artillery HQs as a half nod to this problem. /16

"We lost the DIVARTY headquarters, and the division cmdr lost that comdr who synchronized operational Fires for the division."

"The problem came when the division cmdr looked for a place to mass Fires or synchronize joint Fires with maneuver forces." /17
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The idealized application of artillery during the Cold War was large-scale and operational fire-to-maneuver. Speed was king, especially on a nuclear battlefield. However, there's a giant fucking difference between a tank corps and a brigade or even a battalion. /18

What has become the case in the Ukraine conflict, and this has implications for all downsized militaries, is that battalions and brigades don't have the resiliency to absorb multiple meeting engagements and continue the advance. In order to protect them, arty must be thorough /19

Without the mass to maneuver, all these units can really do is claw forward using their firepower advantage to the fullest. Mind you I think this is a perfectly valid solution to this problem, because there is no nuclear threat pressing the need for speed. /20

However, the result is a conflict that in many ways more resembles WWI with its trench warfare and methodical grinding. Without maneuver all one has is attrition. It may be efficient attrition, but it is attrition nevertheless. /21

So whenever you see talk about how there aren't any rapid advances and how it's a tragedy that so many men are ordered to sit in trenches and slowly die as each square inch of said trenches are worked over with artillery, understand it probably can't be any other way. /22 END