Thread by @TrentTelenko

Very wide front, shallow penetration.🤨🤔

It looks like Ukraine is "playing the attrition card" in trying to spread out the Russian reserves over a wide area within drone directed artillery range.

Youtube channels are reporting heavy AFU use of 155mm

Drone/Attrition War🧵
1/

https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1667537865016737792

...delivered scatterable mines to pin RuAF mobile counter-attack forces in place inside Ukraine's artillery fan, to get them worked over by drone directed shelling.

This points out the fact drone directed artillery is now a very lethal tank killer.

2/

@noclador talks to this thought in this excellent thread, particularly how the lack of gun based air defense, to prevent small DJI class artillery observation drones from doing their thing, caused AFU vehicle casualties.⬇️

3/

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1667266063501873153

The only disagreement I have with @noclador is I think RuAF used Zemledeliye MLRS scatterable mines on that Ukrainian breach.

Russian artillery accuracy and drone wrangling skill aren't that good, compared to Ukraine, but it is good enough for a mine laying MLRS to
4/

...cover an area target forwarded by a Russian Lancet operator.

Ukraine has a number of offensive constraints RuAF does not have as a non-nuclear power.

AFU cannot concentrate a dense, echeloned, corps sized offensive force for fear of a RuAF tactical nuclear strike.
5/

@secretsqrl123 has a 🧵about that.

My only observation to add to @secretsqrl123 thoughts is late Cold War nuke doctrine wasn't to throw a tacnuke.

You threw about 40 to pith out the logistics, headquarters and fire support of a 2-to-3 division corps*

6/

https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123/status/1667352041277063175

* The WMD declassifications of the 2nd Clinton Administration made for extremely interesting reading for the right kind of military history nerd.

Ukraine's wide but shallow offensive reflects its unique strategic position compared to Western powers.

The Western militaries
7/

...attack to try and achieve war termination as soon as possible, to avoid an impatient public voting inside a bloody war.

The Ukrainian people know its current war will last as long as Russia exists.😭

This gives Ukraine strategic patience unmatched by Western democracies.

8/

The combination of RuAF tacnukes and that existential conflict based strategic patience is resulting in a different and attrition based AFU offensive that is a mirror image of it's Bakhmut defensive.

Ukraine is only attacking hard enough to draw out Russian mobile reserves
9/

...and artillery in order to kill both in large numbers such that the Russian fortified line will break somewhere.

RuAF committed committed their last credible strategic reserves (i.e. the two VDV Bdes) in Bakhmut, where they are pinned with the AFU advancing on both flanks.
10/

This explains neatly why Russia blew the Kakovka dam. The Dnipro front was the only place RuAF could generate any ground reserves from.

Ground reserves that AFU's shallow/wide Zaporizhzhia/Bakhmut offensives are killing.

Since Kherson has a climate like SoCal.
11/

In about a week and a half, AFU will have a dried out, much shallower, Dnipro river line to cross.

David Axe of Forbes has had a couple of recent articles on the arctic/soft ground/amphibious vehicles the West has transferred to AFU.

forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…
12/

AFU is playing a very strategically patient & opportunistic offensive strategy that is about only committing enough Ukrainians to make the Russians come out in the open to be killed at stand off ranges.

Since it outnumbers Russia inside Ukraine. It can push everywhere

13/

...while looking for a break it can put a brigade sized operational maneuver group* (OMG) into the Russian operational rear.

* The acronym _OMG_ had a lot of end of the world, late Cold War nuclear exchange implications that, thankfully,

14/

...most people today have no idea ever existed.

This is why you hear Russians on Telegram channels complaining vociferously that they have no counter-battery & that AFU ground forces with Western vehicles are now attacking at night, where their thermal sites give Ukraine

15/

...an advantage and most Russian Lancet & DJI drones lack the night vision to operate in.

AFUs wide front "Recon in force" offensive is slowly chewing through Russian fortified lines with Western equipment delivered stand-off fire favorable exchange rates until it breaks.

16/

And, IMO, some time in the next 10 days RuAF will break.

Whether it's in the Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Donetsk or the dried out and the now Russian Dnipro river fortification less Kherson fronts doesn't matter.

AFU has the interior lines, tech & the numerical reserve
17/

...advantages to do this.

And the Ukraine supported Russian insurgent Belgorod offensive demonstrated the Putin Regime lacked the military reserves to stop it.

I'm still got my chips on 22 June 2023 for the AFU breakthrough.

18/18 End