Thread by @shashj

Excellent two-part conversation (subscriber-only) between Michael Kofman, Justin Bronk & Jack Watling on the Russia Contingency podcast. A lot of the discussion is essentially myth-busting about the war. A few highlights below. warontherocks.com/episode/therus…
warontherocks.com/episode/therus…

1/ Russian air/missile power was effective. That, plus electronic warfare, worked to "disable & suppress the Ukrainian air defence system very effectively in the first couple of days" says Bronk. Air force punched hole in defences to allow VDV to seize airfields, notes Watling.

The problem was when ground forces didn't advance fast enough, Russia struggled with "dynamic" targeting (e.g. new targets). Russia had, and still has, plenty of HUMINT on targets but "their ability to get that to their air force in a timely manner is non existent" says Watling.

2/ Western arms did not save Ukraine (at least not as conventionally thought). Watling: "The propaganda value of Western equipment...was extremely high at the beginning of the war. It didn't really have a substantial material effect on the course of the fighting...until April."

3/ Turkish drones did not save Ukraine. TB2s worked for three days because Russian air defences were told to assume anything in air was friendly. "By day 10 they were ... denied in most areas" says Watling. They also dropped fewer munitions than less sexy fixed-wing aircraft.

Bronk: "Ukraine recognised very quickly as part of an extremely effective information ops. strategy that [TB2] was some of the best footage they had." They "stored up a lot of that footage and kept drip feeding, releasing it, having got rid of...date and time & location stamps"

4/ Electronic warfare has been important. Kofman: "one of the things folks have gotten the most wrong about this war is the role of electronic warfare. It's been very significant...Russia has used it extensively as one of the biggest challenges for Ukraine to deal with".

But EW challenges, too. Watling tells story of two Russian pilots flying next to each other complaining their radars are scrambled. Turns out their EW pods are targeting each others' radar, so they have to shut them down. "Level of fratricide on the Russian side is very high."

Electronic warfare presents dilemmas. Watling: "If I am protecting myself from precision strike by denying navigational systems, great. But that also interrupts my ability to find targets with UAVs." Adds: West does not have many exercises areas where it can turn all its EW on.

5/ War did not shift from Javelin/NLAW phase in Feb-Apr to artillery phase in June. Artillery (and what enabled it) was always key. "What blunted the Russians north of Kyiv was two brigades of artillery firing all their barrels every day," says Watling.

6/ Ukraine was not minnow. Watling: Ukr entered war with 1,178 barrel artillery pieces, 1,680 MLRS, 60 divisions of air defences & 900 tanks—more air defence and artillery systems "than vast majority of European NATO combined". Plus ammo for six weeks, more than anyone but Finns.

7/ The BTG is dead. Watling: "it's not just that the company is actually the fighting unit of the Russian military at this point in terms of scale." Also "warlordization" of units. GRU setting up new Wagner-type forces, "proliferation of personality-based private armies".

8/ Ukrainian NCOs not backbone of army. Watling: "it's not yet a professional cadre; it's just older guys". Ukr mil has more than doubled since Feb. "The idea that there's some Ukrainian NCO Corps that's holding this whole thing together is just projection. It's a complete myth."

Watling: "The [Ukrainian] junior leadership is good, particularly at company level. What you're seeing is a lot of colonels being pushed in to support small scale operations ...and providing that personal leadership. But it's it's not built around the western approach at all."

Kofman: Ukraine is a "military that's succeeded first by deference to veterancy—those who have previously served—and second, a more horizontal democratic structure in discussing [courses of actions] and mission plans...Maybe there's NCOs, maybe they're not. It doesn't matter"

9/ Russian logistics vulnerable to HIMARS. But Western air & ground forces would face simialr issues. Kofman: "a lot of science fiction on our side, when I hear about distributed forces & logistics...the operational concepts have never made contact with an actual logistician."

Fin. Thank you to @WarOnTheRocks for hosting and publishing such good writing and audio on this & other military issues. Has there ever been a war in which so many experts have offered such detailed, publicly-available insight in real-time?
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