What To Expect From The Coming Russian Offensive
It’s been quite a while, but today I took a bit of a mental health day. However, before I headed out this morning two things happened—related things. First I saw this tweet:
Then, commenter Wayne sent me a link to a VERY long article—actually part of series of VERY long articles—about what to expect from the coming Russian offensive. I found the article to be quite impressive, and it ties in to the tweet above. But first …
Yes, we’ve been hearing continually about the coming Russian offensive. It was supposed to happen as soon as the ground froze, but it seems to keep getting pushed back. Now people like Doug Macgregor are saying it could happen in a matter of days:
For anyone who may have read people who detract from Macgregor’s expertise, the author that Wayne recommended to me—Simplicius the Thinker—has this to say:
… there are some people who understandably see Colonel Macgregor as just some random talking head, and don’t know that he was the de facto commander of the famous Battle of 73 Easting, which is considered the “6th largest tank battle in American history” and one, if not the, largest tank battles post-WW2 in the second half of the 20th century.
Macgregor has also been praised, as “one of the army’s leading thinkers on innovation” and for his near flawless combat and simulation record. As per wiki:
At a November 1993 exercise at the Army's National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, Lt. Col. Macgregor's unit vastly outperformed its peers against the "Opposition Force (OPFOR)". The series of five battles usually end in four losses and a draw for the visiting units; his unit won three, lost one, and drew one.[3] Macgregor's unit dispersed widely, took unconventional risks, and anticipated enemy movements.[3]
The point being, that what he says, the tactics he employs, recommends, or favors, should be noted, carefully considered and respected.
Scott Ritter is saying similar things—and like the the Macgregor video above, this video is highly recommended:
Increasingly, we’re seeing signals from the collective West that they see what’s coming. There was a moment of euphoria when the pathetic “leaders” of the West were talking about sending modern MBTs and F-16s to Ukraine, but all that has been getting scaled back every day.
The idea behind what Macgregor and Ritter are saying is this. The Russians have been closely engaging Ukrainian forces, fixing them in place, so that their personnel and equipment can be destroyed. We’ve seen this happening repeatedly. The result is that the line of fighting has been gradually extended while Russia trains its mobilized troops and gives them experience. That gradual extension of the active conflict is stretching Ukraine/NATO resources to the limit. By the time the offensive REALLY gets rolling, Ukraine/NATO forces will be too stretched to effectively address what’s headed in their direction.
However, it’s all much more complicated than that, and that’s where the article that Wayne sent me comes in:
All Seeing Eye: Can Russia Break Through The West's ISR Overmatch?
We explore how Russia can deal with NATO/Five Eyes' vast space-recon capabilitiess during the coming offensives.
I really like the image at the top:
That Ukraine has been able to field two armies is thanks to US support. This is a totally new type of war. Here’s the reality:
In Ukraine, we’ve seen from both sides the absolute risk and folly in sending a sizable armored columns to assault, particularly over open ground. The preponderance of highly accurate modern guided munitions and ubiquitous fire-correcting drones, as well as x-ray-like full-spectrum battlefield-perception abilities in every conceivable band—from radar to IR to signal emissions detection (phone, wifi, starlink, radio, radar, etc)—turns the modern theater of war into something resembling a real-time-strategy video game, in the tradition of C&C: Red Alert.
There are many talking heads out there who don’t understand this, and as a result don’t understand what’s behind the extremely deliberate Russian strategy:
The totality of the NATO and ‘Five Eyes’ infrastructure is being utilized 24/7 as a sort of vast rear-end cloud-service and mega-processing/computational-cycle capacity for Ukraine’s frontline forces. Hundreds of satellites, including dozens of imaging ones with 5cm/pixel resolution, skim every inch and quarter of Russian territory, searching for actionable hidden targets. The data is then processed and collated by thousands of fulltime NATO/Five Eyes analysts working in distribution centers all over the world, then fed directly to the Ukrainian crews by way of Starlink and other datalinks, which Ukraine can then sub-distribute via their innovative ‘Nettle’ integrated system to feed those targets to a variety of sector artillery and other systems.
We’ve got a glimpse of this months ago when documents were leaked which demonstrated the exact work-flow by which this NATO/Five Eyes superstructure identifies and transmits the positions of every imaginable Russian unit, down to the barest granularity. It showed papers typed up by the army of analysts poring over the satellite cluster footage, which have endless lists of high-value Russian targets, catalogued, categorized, etc., with their exact coordinates and associated reference photos.
And of course this is not to even mention the fleet of AWACs that collect radar data around the clock from the Polish and Romanian airspace, RQ-4 Global Hawks, with their SAR radars that photograph Crimea daily from the Black Sea, the OTH shortwave radars likely doing early warning detection on Russia’s airforce flights from thousands of kilometers away, and more.
That’s what Russia has been dealing with. This is what has made large scale armored offensives suicidal. This is why Russia has relied on the superior striking power of its artillery and close in small unit work.
Simplicius the Thinker goes through all the possibilities for Russia going forward—because Russia IS going to go forward. That’s where that tweet comes into play. Now that Russia is on the cusp of launching their big offensive, will they take out those US satellites? And will the US respond in kind—blinding both sides to the possibilities of a nuke launch? Nothing’s simple, but here’s one way to look at the choices facing the US, and the kind of corner the Neocons have painted the US into:
The intrepid readers will say, the U.S. claims they would ‘respond’ if Russia took out their satellite(s). But, there’s one very interesting angle to this scenario that few have foreseen.
Sure, the U.S. can retaliate and take out Russia’s satellites after Russia takes out all the U.S. ones. But guess who that leaves as the sole dominant space-hegemon and satellite power in the world?
That’s right. This guy—who will become not only the happiest, but the most dominant player in space with a sudden massive and historical strategic advantage over the American adversary. Russia and the U.S. would both be sent back to the stone age, satellite-wise, but China would now enjoy virtual, de facto space hegemony. Do you think U.S. cares to risk such an unthinkable option? Not very likely.
Gotta luv that photo. That’s one happy looking guy.
OK, back to how we got to this point, and the reasons behind Russia’s methodical approach. Simplicius has been discussing all the possibilities—pros and cons, at great length—for Russia going forward. Then he writes this with regard to claims that the Russian command structure slows down reaction times:
The fact is, you do not kill your near-peer opponent at unprecedented 10:1 ratios, giving them hundreds of thousands of casualties, if your decision strike chains are that unserviceable.
The truth is, the West’s militaries are not artillery forces. Ukraine has been praised as combining the best of the West’s capabilities, including their most modern, advanced, and capable systems (PhZ2000’s, Krabs, Archers, Danas, Caesars, M109’s, M777’s, Zuzana’s, etc.) and smart-munitions, with the superior Soviet artillery doctrines to create an alchemized force of unprecedented combat potential. And by ‘unprecedented’, I mean literally better than the American military. Don’t take my word for it, read this famous twitter thread from ex-DoD expert Trent Telenko who exults in the AFU’s unrivaled and revolutionary networking/integration synthesis which makes their artillery force far superior even to that of the U.S. army.
In other words, if we’re to believe the US DoD, Russia has gone up against a force “far superior even to that of the U.S. army”, and has achieved a 10: kill ratio. Or look at it this way:
So, what’s the point? That this unrivaled capability in the hands of a Ukrainian force that not only has the single greatest, most modern artillery howitzers, the most accurate, and best-ranged munitions, but also the most powerful combined force of all NATO/Five-Eyes’ ISR and satellite recon—THIS historical force of nature, is getting its clock cleaned by Russian artillery forces. Sure, the AFU masterfully get in their punches too here and there. But as a totality, Russian artillery forces, utilizing Russia’s own revolutionary Reconnaissance-Fire-Complex capabilities are roundly wiping the floor with the Ukrainians in the artillery war. …
In short, Russian RCS/RFC has proved its mettle by devastating the AFU army so badly, they literally ordered a whole second army.
According to Simplicius, what we’re about to see is that Russia will benefit form the Economy of Scale:
That is, there’s a certain benefit gained from scaling up one’s forces, where certain redundancies and parallelizations of systems begin to work in tandem in such a way as to become ‘more than the sum of their parts’, conferring additional benefits.
Practically speaking, what this translates into is a sort of exponential increase in Russia’s offensive capabilites as well as its defensive depth—it’s ability to protect its depth of logistical support. This has already made the difference for Russia in allowing for the long range destruction of massive Ukrainian defense works. But that capability is about to get a big boost, at the moment that Ukraine will be fatally weakened.
This is what the US/NATO sees coming. And they don’t know how to stop it, short of unilateral surrender. Russia is willing to negotiate, but now it’s from a position of very real strength. Criminally, Russia would have agreed to a negotiated settlement back in April, 2022, but the Neocons insisted that Ukraine had to go to war with Russia. Here we are.
Ultimately, we can expect to see Russia utilize both the broad-front tactic to stretch and stress the West’s capabilities, and in select theaters, where the front remains more fixed, Russia will continue utilizing its own Recon-Fire-Complex and RSC from long range to throttle and nullify the West’s ISR capabilities.
I can’t recommend this article highly enough. There’s so much more depth to it—I’ve only scratched the surface.
This is the face of modern war--and the Russians have advanced capabilities the Neocons never dreamed they had:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/mystery-russian-systems-are-taking
I am constantly amazed at just how ignorant the neocons appear to be. Have they ever heard of Clausewitz, tactics or anything else that related to warfare? Strategic thinking is not just some catch phrase, it’s a real world concept. The way this whole Ukraine thing has developed gives every indication that these clowns just got out of bed one morning and said, “What’s on the agenda for today? Oh, look, it says start a half-assed proxy war with Russia. Do you think we should work through cost benefit analysis or a little risk assessment? Naw, man, piece of cake! We’ll have the Russian’s on their knees in a couple of months.”
Then reality stepped in and rained all the hell over their dumb ass plans and we find out that they don’t even know the first law of holes, so here we are on the thin end of the wedge staring WWlll in the face.
They have elevated stupidity to an art form and yet expect us to believe that they are the smartest people in the room.
Maybe Putin should think about what Rush used to say and tie half his brain behind his back just to make it fair.
This whole thing would be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifyingly real.
And as my father used to say, “Macgregor has forgotten more about war and battle than his critics will ever know.”