Thread by @BrynnTannehill

The Institute for the Study of war (@TheStudyofWar), has verified the authenticity of a statement from a DNR commander that up to 60% of Russian losses come from friendly fire.

While the number is unverifiable, the quote is real. Let's talk about the ramifications. 1/n

This isn't the first time we've been hearing of this problem, just how wide spread it is. It was already an issue back in July when Russia still had a semblance of a professional army. Now it's worse being full of prisoners and mobiks. 2/n

bykvu.com/eng/bukvy/we-a…

There were infamous incidents in the first Gulf War which were recorded. You can hear the LTC say despondently, "I'll bet I killed friendly people," after mistaking army scouts for Iraqi mechanized infantry. 3/n

Gulf I was littered with such incidents, catalogued here. Blue-on-blue engagements between ground units was actually the most common type. 4/n

gulflink.health.mil/du_ii/du_ii_ta…

The same sorts of air-to-ground friendly fire incidents continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the US aircraft engaging UK and Canadian allies on the ground. You can hear in this incident on how they tried to verify ID, but procedures failed. 5/n

The US began to first introduce a ground based blue force tracking system back in 2002. By 2005-2006, the need for widespread adoption of a unified US/Allied system of CID BFT was urgent. 6/n jcs.mil/Portals/36/Doc…

By 2012, BFT v2.0 was in widespread use as way to coordinate on the battlefield and reduce friendly fire incidents. 7/n

The US in the process of upgrading to BFT 3 (3rd generation). BFT 2 is on over 120,000 vehicles already. BFT 3 seeks to move to a Nodular Open System Architecture (MOSA), while reducing vulns to EW and counter detection 8/n army.mil/article/231121…

In general, despite dependence on GPS and a sometimes clunky / user intensive interface, BFT has generally been considered a success story. It was costly, but it came together very rapidly by US military standards. 9/n

So why do I bring up US capabilities? Because Russia doesn't have something like this in wide spread use for ground forces. Or, if they do, the troops and commanders don't use it. 10/n

I can't find the link anymore, but there was reliable reporting that some Russian troops at the start of the war were issued fancy force tracking tablets and such at the start of the war. However, they never received training on these systems, and went unused or abandoned. 11/n

Ukraine has leveraged help from the US to cobble together it's own tablet based BFT that is being used for both artillery and air defense to coordinate fires. As a result, UAF artillery has gotten much more accurate and deadly. 12/n forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…

Russia has a big problem here, and I don't really see how they can fix it in the short or medium term. The capabilities of extant Russian BFT systems are limited, only on top end armor, and designed for a top down command structure. 13/n nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russ…

The sanctions will make it harder for Russia to field something quickly that's cobbled together like Ukraine's. They don't have the extant know-how to guide development. And many potential development engineers are either mobilized or fled. 14/n

It took a massive effort by the DoD to get an initial BFT going in the 2000s that took years and wasn't really resource constrained. The US also wasn't trying to implement a BFT with troops they didn't bother to train at all. 15/n

Then there's the leadership aspect. Russian troops complain that they don't even know the names of their commanders. Or can't find them. Or that their leadership "f***s off" the instant things sideways. 16/n

Russian officers are frequently seen by their troops as absent, abusive, ignorant of battlefield conditions, indifferent to the deaths of their troops, or incompetent. 17/n aol.com/news/another-i…

Finally, there's the rampant corruption. If Russia did (somehow) manage to get a program rolling, graft and corruption inside Russia would make money and hardware disappear quickly. 18/n rusi.org/explore-our-re…

Mobilized Russian troops had to buy most of their own equipment on the internet at a huge mark up, which (ironically) had often been stolen from the Russian military supply system in the first place. 19/n businessinsider.com/families-russi…

The other problem is that Russian soldiers steal anything that isn't nailed down, send it back to their families, who can then sell it at a mark up. A Russian CO advised another to not give thermal imagers to troops, and keep it for themselves. 20/n yahoo.com/news/russian-o…

This isn't news for those who watch the conflict closely, and have seen innumerable images of washing machines being stolen by Russian troops. Thus, the life expectancy of a BFT tablet in the hands of Russian troops could only be measured by an atomic clock in picoseconds. 21/n

But... you cannot implement a BFT system without putting it in the hands of average troops. And this late in the game, it would have to be implemented using COTS technology (like DJI drones). Which would immediately be stolen. 22/n

Thus, I can't see a way for Russia to implement some form of BFT. The friendly fire incidents aren't going to improve much because the troops aren't getting training, and the ones with training and experience are being whittled down. 23/n

I mean sure, if Russia starts running out of artillery and mortar rounds it will go down, but that creates a whole new set of problems for them... So they'll keep blazing away like rhesus monkeys with a M1928. 24/n

Addendum: FWIW, I think the true number is much less than 60%, but is still significant. This also might represent the reality in one area where Russians DGAF about killing allies due to poor coordination. But, if the real number was 5-20%, it wouldn't surprise me. 25/n