The Armed Forces of Ukraine have launched a up to 25K, or small NATO Corps sized, incursion into the Kursk Oblast that is moving between 7 & 10 km a day.
AFU Bde have between 4 to 9 battalions per brigade with 6 Bn as average, so ~18 Bn seem involved.
AFU's Strategic raid🧵 1/
US made and AFU crewed Stryker & Humvees are in Russia as a part of an AFU multi-domain - that is, air and ground - offensive.
A RuAF conscript regiment -- doing animal labor logistics - was thrown at the assault and shattered. Chechens ran.
Russia's reserves are airpower. 2/
What has been particularly interesting has been the further demonstration of the floating 10 km "FPV Motor Transport Kill Bubble" that extend around AFU Drone-ground teams that has picked off a pair of RuAF tank transporter convoys behind the border.
And the distances involved - 150 km - from Kursk to Vovchansk are operational-strategic in scope.
This makes me think we are looking at a Ukrainian strategic level raid aimed at placing Russia in a nested series of logistical dilemma's in order to give AFU the initiative.
8/
Where that 1st logistical dilemma that is making itself felt is the Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD), jammer & FPV based AFU air superiority over Kursk below 3,000 feet/914 meters.
We saw this at #Krynky in 2023 and we are seeing it again now in Kursk. 9/
It's the reach of the Ukrainian Baba Yaga with a more than 25 km radius of action while dropping heavy munitions, or FPV's while acting as a radio relay, that is going to be a horror show for the RuAF.
Three TM-62 mines dropped from one will cut a railway line.
And Russia can't risk scarce railway repair crews inside the Baba Yaga bubble for fear those crews will be targeted.
10/
In WW2 the 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force would sweep areas before British Commonwealth armored columns penetrating Nazi lines.
Typhoons were armed with 8 each RP-3 rockets and P-47's with 500lb bombs.
AFU is replaying these tactics using drones. 11/
Wherever Ukrainian ground forces are present, you have to draw a 25 km bubble ahead of them to account for their drone interdiction of major transport infrastructure and 10 km for killing Russian motor transport.
Russia's real logistical dilemma is they are on exterior versus interior lines of communications with an inferior sized ground force.
The Russians were too confident in the paralytic fear of the Biden NSC. The fools.
The NSC is now paralyzed between fear of Moscow & fear of political crucifixion on multiple fronts.
13/ (H/T @WarintheFuture)
The analytical loons on X buying into the "Russia Strong™️" narrative about RuAF having infantry superiority ignored the fact that RuAF counted on the Biden Administration keeping Ukraine out of Russia.
Reflexive Control infowar doctrine was used as a RuAF strategic economy of force measure to get local numerical superiority for offensives.
So RuAF didn't honor the threat of AFU's larger ground forces across from the Kursk Oblast.
14/
This only worked as long as Ukraine played by US rules. It looks like the Biden Admin refusal to allow ATACMS strikes on Russian airfields while VKS withdrew was the last straw.
The lack of Russian reserves means Kherson Oblast is the only source of formed military units, unless RuAF gives up the Vovchansk offensive.
GMLRS made this a problem in the summer of 2022. (Map⬇️)
ATACMS ranges on all rail lines in occupied Ukraine. It will take more than a week to get RuAF units from Kherson to Kursk by rail.
15/ (H/T @FreudGreyskull)
Russia has to gather a lot of scarce motor transport to move ground units out of Kherson.
Then put them, and especially their heavy equipment, on rail outside of GMLRS range and take the risk of ATACMS and partisan attacks in Southern Ukraine to get them to Kursk.
16/
The complete destruction of the Russian railway ferry fleet was, in retrospect, a strategic level AFU shaping operation for the current Kursk offensive
It is certain that Ukraine is waiting for a munitions train to approach the Kerch Straits bridge.
Being a WW2 Pacific historian specializing in electronic warfare, signals & logistics.
It makes you acutely aware that troops in transit are utterly useless for doing anything until they arrive, shake out and move from the port to battle.
Russia is doing that with trains. 18/
It isn't just moving the 100K troops RuAF needs to stabilized, & then start reducing the Kursk salient.
The ATACMS threat dispursed VKS jets needs munitions & fuel moved to support operations simultaneously, w/o forklifts & pallets.
Bombs on a train aren't on a flight line.
19/
The Russian Railway monopoly is suffering a perfect storm of Western railway cassette bearing wear out, maintenance work force burnout, and administrative chaos between oligarchs owning rolling stock.
I think the real objective of the AFU strategic raid into Kursk Oblast is to cause a systemic collapse of Russian railway system as a set up for a series of AFU offensives.
Western media & political commentary are dominated by "doomers" predicting short & long term outcomes on the 'inexhaustibility' of Russia's personnel & equipment pools, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia is struggling badly.
Reality:
Russia is in a crisis of loss. 🧵 1/
The following are the things I've been tracking for some time:
1. The Russians are losing an infantry division every week to 10 days in terms of soldiers at a rate of between with a 1,100 to 1,700 and associated equipment.
2. The Russian artillery is getting shorter ranged over time from losing the ability to make barrels and liners for 152mm guns. We are seeing literal WW2 122mm artillery pieces, presumably from North Korean stocks, in the Donbas.
3/
...procurement programs and the MLRS artillery rocket system in the late 1970's-to-early 1980's.
The post 1973 Arab Israeli War US Army understood the idea of "the logistical costs of a stowed kill." 2/
The US Army kept the 105mm on the M1 in production so long because the depleted uranium (DU) 105mm "Long Rod" APFSDS could kill a early T-72 and you could carry 55 rounds versus 40 rounds for a 120mm gun firing a tungsten APDS or early DU APFSDS round.
What killed Imperial Japanese soldiers in WW2 "without a mark" inside bunkers was carbon monoxide poisoning, not a lack of O2.
Once you get enough CO in the lungs on the O2 chemical bonds.
No further O2 can get into the bloodstream and you suffocate.
2/
I ran across that fact in a trip report of a US Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) medical doctor sent to Leyte to take blood samples from IJA corpses that died from flame weapons.
It didn't work out and the CWS used goats in bunkers hit with flamethrower weapons to get the CO poisoning medical data.
Any trench w/o overhead cover and any passage or firing slit that is big enough to shoot a crew served heavy weapon or vehicle out of is also big enough for a FPV drone spewing thermite to fly into.
2/
Every field fortification manual ever written by every military in the world is obsolete and will have to be re-written with an eye to placing curtains, nets or wire screens across firing slits and doors to keep out small drones.
The "missile" impacts have the classic artillery rocket impact ellipse with strikes being on the line of flight axis having more dispersal (long/short) that left or right of it.
One of the spaces @secretsqrl123 had with @RyanO_ChosenCoy present. He made clear Ukrainian FPV drones based on Hollywood camera multi-copters have a 50 km one way range.
The other issue is the disintermediation of drones from platforms. 1/
"Disintermediation" means any shipping container or flat space on a vessel/vehicle works as a launcher.
A ISO container with 126 drones can be stacked on a 24 X 24 top level of a Chinese MGX-24 container ship and lob 72,576 drones in a simultaneous wave 50 km or more.
2/
Another thing that works are simple racks in cargo aircraft, helicopters or boats.
The Russians are using simple racks in the Mi-8 to hold FPV drones in large numbers to engage Ukrainian boat drones or special forces craft with MANPADS or FPV's.