The Bazaar of War
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Warfare, past and present. Read 'Saladin the Strategist': More writing:
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The paperback version of 'Saladin the Strategist' is out!
I've published part of the epilogue, on the question of strategy in the Middle Ages:
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Thread on the future of armored warfare
Pictures of destroyed Russian tanks have convinced a lot of people that Javelins/NLAWs have rendered armor obsolete, in the same way that drones did in Nagorno-Karabakh. None of this is true.
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The most decisive battle of the past 500 years was fought OTD in 1759, on a windswept Canadian plain by fewer than ten thousand men. It decided the fate of the Americas and shaped world events for centuries to come.
Thread on the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
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Hannibal’s famous victory at Cannae in 216 BC is one of the most misunderstood battles of all time. It is often cited as a tremendous victory won by a perfectly-executed double envelopment.
The truth is very different—and far more interesting.
Thread
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Russia's advance has been extraordinarily rapid. For comparison's sake, here are same-scale maps of 48 hours into the US invasion of Iraq and
@JulianRoepcke
's estimate after 36 hours in Ukraine.
Anyone saying Russia is bogged down is nuts.
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CASTLE DOCTRINE
Advances in weaponry have the paradoxical effect of shifting the advantage to the defense: crossbows & castles, cannons & star forts, artillery & trenches.
We’re now seeing the same with UAVs & guided artillery. What does this mean for the near future? Thread.
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Among the most promising military applications of AI is staff work. Tons of routine products—intel summaries, orders, etc.—can be generated much faster by machine. Does this mean staffs will reverse the historic trend and begin to shrink?
No: they’re about to explode in size.🧵
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In the first place, we have to be careful about what we’re actually seeing. Most Ukrainian kills seem to be with artillery, not ATGMs. That’s also probably why we’re seeing so little actual combat footage.
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Updated scaled side-by-side of the 4th day of Iraq & Ukraine (map by
@miladvisor
).
It was an interesting day, here's a thread with some observations.
Updated comparison between same-scale maps of 72 hours into the Iraq War and ~60 hours into the Russian invasion of Ukraine (per
@TheStudyofWar
).
Once again, the acquired Russian territory (minus Crimea & eastern bits) is comparable to what the coalition had occupied by then.
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The evolution of warfare and military technology is much, much less preordained than we tend to think.
To illustrate, let’s imagine World War II in an alternate timeline. But this time, it’s fought between the Franco-German Coprosperity Sphere and the Austro-Italian Empire.
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Cannae is wrongly said to be one of those battles that perfectly embodies a specific tactic—in its case a double envelopment. In fact, Hannibal’s tactics were singularly unlike anything before or after.
With one notable exception: the Battle of Agincourt.
Hannibal’s famous victory at Cannae in 216 BC is one of the most misunderstood battles of all time. It is often cited as a tremendous victory won by a perfectly-executed double envelopment.
The truth is very different—and far more interesting.
Thread
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But even so, there are two important points to consider about armored warfare:
1) It has always been thus. The most effective anti-armor measures in WWII were not other tanks, but infantry weapons and dedicated anti-tank guns.
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(Also, the majority of Russian armor losses have been due to abandonment and capture, not destruction. That points to very different problems: )
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What did ancient Greek warfare look like?
There are two major schools of thought:
-Something like a giant shoving match (traditional view)
-A fight between the front few ranks until one side lost its nerve (revisionist view)
One side is very clearly correct.
Thread.
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But whatever specific vulnerabilities we’re seeing on the modern battlefield, it’s important to remember that armor is only one element in the rock-paper-scissors game of combined arms warfare. New technology changes the balance of the game, but only rarely upsets it completely.
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When basic counter-ambush tactics are executed even halfway decently, it is very difficult to successfully inflict meaningful losses against large concentrations of armor.
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I still don't think anyone appreciates the significance of Russian operations at Hostomel airport.
It's ~75 km from the river crossing at Chernobyl to the airport. Compare that to the doctrinal template of Soviet deep operations, which calls for airborne operations 80 km deep...
Russia's advance has been extraordinarily rapid. For comparison's sake, here are same-scale maps of 48 hours into the US invasion of Iraq and
@JulianRoepcke
's estimate after 36 hours in Ukraine.
Anyone saying Russia is bogged down is nuts.
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The notion of tanks’ near-invincibility is really only a product of the 1970s and 80s, when the threat of massive Soviet tank columns spurred new efforts to develop effective infantry systems.
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The Crusades are fascinating in the way they pitted two very different military systems against each other: Western heavy cavalry v. Turkish horse archers—each probably the best in the world at the time. This drove a lot of innovation at the tactical and also operational level.🧵
When European knights encountered the more mobile Turkish cavalry of the East, they had to quickly adapt - and not just tactically. New Dispatch for paid subscribers, first third is free.
The Fighting March: Operational Mobility During the Crusades
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2) Better defenses. Because military technology is also evolutionary, it is pretty much inevitable that this conflict will spur research into new passive and active systems.
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2) Tactics are evolutionary. Contra inflated language about “Revolutions in Military Affairs”, the tactics of every war are more similar to the previous war than not. Even Blitzkrieg was just the successful execution of what WWI generals were trying to do.
Elements of the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division assemble to exploit the infantry's breakthrough at the Battle of Bazentin Ridge, a British attack launched on 14 July 1916, part of the larger Battle of the Somme.
One of the rare uses of cavalry in the open field during World War I.
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There will always be a need for the combination of firepower, mobility, and protection, which means armor isn’t going away anytime soon (to include APCs and IFVs). Even urban warfare does not diminish that, it just changes the scheme of employment.
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But observers of the present conflict can take plenty of lessons to improve protection to their armor:
1) Better tactics. More use of UAVs/infantry for reconnaissance, with loitering munitions in overwatch to provide an instant fires response.
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So too with modern ATGMs: they are more lethal, more mobile, more concealable. But these are differences of degree, not fundamental changes.
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These are many of the same factors that make the appearance of loitering munitions on the battlefield an important evolution, but not a complete game-changer:
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In the early hours one July morning, a long column of men, horses, and carts makes an abrupt change of course. They march swiftly through the predawn darkness to make a surprise attack, one which after eleven long years of war will decide the fate of Europe—the Battle of Denain!
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On a cost basis, the balance will probably always favor the attacker. But these things are decided on the margins: will future defensive systems make enough of a difference that better tactics can tilt the balance? That’s the real question.
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Interesting detail about daily troop rotations by the Russian forces in areas with the heaviest fighting. One of the key lessons learned from first battle of Grozny (1995) was that sustained high-intensity fighting destroys units; 2nd Grozny (1998-2000) saw weekly rotations.
Russian commanders are rotating forces on the frontline.
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A few stories from the past week have shown just how much drones are transforming warfare. It’s not their increased lethality or even their improved targeting for ground-based systems, but one of the biggest command-and-control revolutions of the past century. Thread.
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@miladvisor
In the first place, the Russians have been VERY shy about using fires in civilian areas. They have not taken out the grid, communications, or other civilian infrastructure—which suggests a pressing political imperative.
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It is possible to imagine an eventual bifurcation in the role of the main battle tank: perhaps a heavily-armored siege gun for urban warfare on the one hand and an autocannon-mounted vehicle that can provide some kind of SHORAD capability on the other.
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For the full picture, here's the full 26 days of the Iraq invasion.
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Hannibal didn't win by encircling the Romans. He didn’t even win by attacking their flanks. He won by turning their army into a disordered, concentrated mass. By the time the Libyans entered the fray, the battle was already won.
Far more brilliant than a mere double envelopment.
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This is a good gullibility tests for war commentators.
Zelensky is a wartime leader trying to win external support. He has every incentive to lie about this kind of thing and has done so repeatedly on verifiable points of fact. Don't trust anyone who uses this in their analysis.
A great small detail from Zelensky's new interview: Ukrainians found ceremonial dress uniforms in the first wave of captured Russian tanks, i.e., the Russians were planning a victory parade in Kyiv in the first 3-4 days of the war
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@miladvisor
@oryxspioenkop
@SamoBurja
The Russians have now surrounded Kharkov, Kherson, and Mariupol, and partly surrounded Kiev. This phase of the operation is bound to be much more deliberate.
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This should start at Montenotte, end at Leipzig, and skip everything that doesn't involve planning for campaigns or fighting them (and it should last 12 hours).
He came from nothing. He conquered everything. From acclaimed director Ridley Scott,
@NapoleonMovie
is exclusively in movie theaters this Thanksgiving. Watch the official trailer now.
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The northern front of the War of the Spanish Succession is fascinating in this regard: three of the greatest generals of the age fought there, yet advances on both sides were painstakingly slow.
People often overrate historic conquerors because they forget that these conquests were only possible because they lived in a specific period of history.
If someone like Alexander the Great lived in early modern Europe, he would not be able to conquer much.
Even if his military…
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On this date in 1924, fighting broke out between warlord factions in the countryside west of Shanghai. Fighting soon spread to the north, engulfing China in a bloody two-month war that saw World War I-style fighting on multiple fronts between armies hundreds of thousands strong.
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Who knows how much if this was staged, but incredible footage nonetheless. The tactics on display are a good indicator of how European armies were ordinarily able to amass ridiculous kill ratios in colonial wars.
Viet Minh assault on a French outpost, First Indochina War
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The breakthrough around Chernobyl was crucial, the Russians' only available mobility corridor on the right bank of the Dnieper. The crossing at Chernobyl is one of the few through the Pripyat Marshes, an otherwise impassable obstacle.
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A recent video of a Russian drone team guiding an assault shows what this looks like. The drone operator alerts the men on the ground to enemy firing positions, available cover, and an approaching vehicle. He even micromanages their entry into a building.
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Which adds a final touch of irony: just thirty miles from Cannae is Asculum, where 63 years earlier Pyrrhus of Epirus won another great victory over the Romans, losing fewer men than Hannibal.
This was the battle that gives us the term “pyrrhic victory”.
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@miladvisor
@oryxspioenkop
To understand this, first remember that Russian doctrine, going back to the origins of Soviet operational art, dictated attacks in several waves. The first echelon made the penetration, the second held the shoulders and exploited if it could, following echelons pushed through.
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In every age, attacking forces must expose themselves to the defenders' fire in order to close with the enemy. Longer-ranged, more accurate, and more lethal weapons make it easier to kill soldiers in the open, shifting the incentive to stay put behind protection.
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The Northern Front: Trench Warfare in the 18th Century
The War of the Spanish Succession saw fighting along fortified lines over 100 km long, with striking tactical and operational similarities to WW1's Western Front.
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OTD in 1813 the armies of the Sixth Coalition converged on Napoleon at Leipzig, the decisive showdown of the Napoleonic Wars.
With a nearly 2-to-1 overall advantage, Allied victory was almost assured—the real challenge had been cornering him there. Thread.
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Early 216, southeastern Italy: Hannibal has been rampaging around Italy for the past year and a half during the opening stages of the Second Punic War, inflicting a number of serious defeats on Roman armies.
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This is a good selection: whatever their respective tactical and operational abilities, they were all failures as strategists.
Who was the most overrated military commander in history?
Let us know your suggestions!
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That attack came the following year. The Royal Navy landed an expedition just north of Quebec City, while a force of regulars and colonial militias stormed Ft. Niagara, cutting off the route from the St. Lawrence to the rest of New France.
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That is exactly what the outnumbered Thebans did at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, when they famously defeated the hitherto invincible Spartans by heavily reinforcing their left and pushing it ahead to smash the Spartan right.
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Hannibal has already stacked the deck in his favor. His back is to the sirocco out of the southwest, the hot summer wind that blows dust from the Sahara across the Mediterranean—and into the Romans’ eyes. Towards late morning, the sun would also start to blind them.
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What became known as the Seven Years' War was formally declared by France and Britain in 1756, although fighting had broken out in the North American colonies two years earlier. British colonials began by pushing over the Appalachians to seize French forts, but were repulsed.
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Who are these historians? This is pretty much the opposite of the truth.
Some military historians believe that one reason Hitler’s army fell apart in 1944-1945 Europe was that, unlike the Allied officers and soldiers trained in democracies, the troops schooled under the Nazis could not, when necessary, think for themselves on the battlefield.
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Airpower theorist John Warden used the metaphor of “castles” to describe airfields defended by air defenses, allowing aircraft to make sorties from protection like knights charging across a drawbridge. This can easily be extended to include ground forces.
Thread on John Warden
I'm a big admirer of Warden. He's one of the only postwar military theorists worth a damn and his work at CHECKMATE laid the foundations for air campaign in the PGM era.
But it's worth looking at why he wasn't chosen to plan the Desert Storm air campaign.
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Modern writers miss this because Livy calls the formation a “wedge”, a word commonly used to describe an echeloned formation with a reinforced center. Such terminology was not standardized, however, and he was almost certainly just referring to the shape.
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This way the smaller army can overpower the enemy flanks, but the enemy center cannot advance to help out without getting crowded together and losing formation.
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He then does something that most modern accounts miss: he orders the companies echeloned on either the side to wheel outward, forming a smooth flank—not the usual staggered echelon.
This is a detail that will prove crucial to his entire battle plan.
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@miladvisor
@oryxspioenkop
@SamoBurja
This is why I don't believe the line that Putin was counting on Kiev falling within 48 hours—why not send your very BEST formations in first if your entire plan depends on it?
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Large-scale maneuver is often treated as an inevitable evolution past the deadlock of the trenches. But consider the principal theaters of WWII:
-The plains of Poland
-The plains of northern France
-The plains of Russia/Ukraine
-The deserts of North Africa
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With the arrival of spring, Hannibal moves out of winter quarters and heads south. He is trailed by a MASSIVE Roman army—an unprecedented eight legions plus a roughly equal number of allies, numbering as much as 80,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry.
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Same story with staff work. The more valuable data/products/whatever that each staff member can generate, the greater the demand.
The typewriter, for instance, did not reduce the number of clerks (secretaries); it greatly increased the volume of correspondence.
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It was not until 1758 that the British saw any success, when they seized Louisbourg, a major fortress guarding the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and captured the upper Ohio valley. The ground was set for a pincer attack on the St. Lawrence, the heart of French Canada.
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The reasons are fairly obvious: modern armies are more complicated, requiring more logistical coordination, fire control, etc.
BUT. There’s a subtler effect at play too: Jevon’s paradox. Simply stated, the more efficiently a resource can be used, the greater the demand.
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As the outer maniples converge from the wings, they start to run into the center units. They knock each other around and the men in the rear struggle just to stay upright. Without the support of these men behind them, the front ranks can’t maintain the forward pressure.
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These problems are well known in the ancient world. Onasander’s Strategikos advises how to deal with a larger enemy arrayed in a concave formation: rather than march into the center, where the smaller force will get encircled, he recommends attacking the protruding flanks.
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Hannibal responds by marching south and seizing the citadel of Cannae, which the Romans had been using to stockpile food from the surrounding area. This means the Romans can’t starve him out, but have to come and fight on his terms.
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He places the Spanish and Celtic infantry in the center, with the heavily-armed Libyans on the flanks. He then pushes the centermost companies out in front, with the adjacent companies falling off to either side.
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In the combined arms era, the defense also allows maximum employment of mutually-supporting fires. SAM radars are vulnerable to anti-radiation missiles/drones, requiring local AD for protection, which are in turn vulnerable to ground-based fires, requiring air coverage…
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That can mean crossbows behind castle walls, cannons and massed musketry behind ramparts, machine guns and artillery behind trenchlines—or the dug-in positions we saw in the Donbas for the past eight years.
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Of the two, Quebec was more important. It controlled naval access to the entire territory, standing at a narrow point of the St. Lawrence surrounded by shoals, above where the river gradually starts to widen into the Gulf.
The conquest of Canada required Quebec.
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The Roman Senate gave their army strict orders to chase down the Carthaginians and defeat them quickly to avenge their earlier humiliations. Such a large force had to move quickly in any case just to keep so many men fed.
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The purpose of deploying skirmishers before a battle, other than to soften the enemy line, is to screen a friendly force, preventing the enemy from observing their formation. This, plus the dust from the sirocco, makes it very hard for the Romans to tell what was going on.
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Final map comparison: 24 days into the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine.
By 13 April, the Coalition had already achieved its two biggest strategic objectives: capturing Baghdad and removing Saddam. Only the area around Tikrit remained to be secured...
Updated side-by-side scaled comparison of the 9th day of Iraq & Ukraine (R map by
@TheStudyofWar
).
By this point, the Army's V Corps had made it ~600 km along the Euphrates and were attacking Karbala; 1st Marine Division had crossed the river at Nasiriyah and progressed >200 km.
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The Russians apparently now agree.
Not taking out all of the Ukrainian energy and communications infrastructure in the first hours of the campaign will be seen as a major miscalculation.
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It’s the story of Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. He thought he could reduce the demand for slavery by creating a labor-saving device for processing cotton. But by increasing the cotton each slave produced, he made them much, much more valuable.
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Rommel’s Western Desert campaign is a great example of premature culmination, famously reaching the end of its logistical tether before achieving its objectives.
But culmination is a broad concept, including far more than just logistics—in his case, intelligence assets.
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Against this, Hannibal has only half the infantry—Libyans brought over from Africa, some from Spain, and still more recruited from among the Celts of northern Italy. His cavalry is more numerous and better than the Romans’, however, about 10,000 in all.
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The Carthaginian center is surrounded by this point, but Hannibal is prepared, having placing himself at the center to lead a planned retreat. As the crescent collapses under the inexorable pressure, he ensures the entire formation reverts to a line.
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@miladvisor
First of all, in terms of progress the two are comparable. The Russians have been going over much more difficult terrain & crossed several rivers (the US did not yet have a foothold over the Euphrates), but they have suffered much higher casualties and equipment loss.
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The Battle of Malplaquet, fought on 11 September 1709, was the bloodiest battle of its day and one of the bloodiest in Europe before the French Revolution.
Ironic, because it was fought by the three greatest maneuverists of the age: Prince Eugene, Marlborough, & Marshal Villars.
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All the Romans can see is the Punic center bulging out towards them. They can’t tell how many ranks deep it is, and probably figure that the center is heavily reinforced to smash through their own line.
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Only the total mobilization of industry and society in WWI allowed powers on the Western Front to construct dense trench systems over 100s of miles.
Likewise, modern weapons allow a more-or-less continuous front in Ukraine despite low troop densities. However...
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NUCLEAR WAR seems today like the ultimate nightmare of the Cold War, a doomsday scenario that would simply end the world as we know it. It’s hard to imagine that war planners envisioned battlefield nukes as an integral part of standard campaign plans.
Thread.
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@miladvisor
A consensus has emerged in some corners that it's simply incompetence, that the plan was ridiculous, execution poor, and everything's falling apart.
I agree there IS a lot of tactical incompetence on display, but I think there's a lot more to the picture
Russian units are not fighting as BTGs. They’re not doing combined arms warfare. They’re driving down roads in small detachments, pushing recon and VDV units forward. Tanks without infantry. It’s not going well for them because this isn’t how they organize and fight (more later).
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Until 1759, New France claimed most of North American territory. Although not as accessible as by sea as the Thirteen Colonies, it spanned the waterways that cut through the continent, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
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After a series of initial maneuvers around the river Aufidus, by the evening of 1 August both armies end up with the bulk of their forces encamped on the north bank of the river.
Early the next morning, they both cross the river and form up on the opposite shore.
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…which militates in favor of a minimum density of forces. Any assets not integrated into the combined-arms phalanx can be picked off one by one.
But this in turn presents an economy of force problem.
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Both Wolfe and Montcalm were shot during the pursuit: Wolfe died on the battlefield, Montcalm the following day. The French military governor fled west with the majority of the army, while Quebec surrendered after a short siege.
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This starts to disorder the densely-packed formations, but also does something more important: it molds the entire Roman line into a concave crescent of their own.
Not something that would happen if facing a normal echeloned front.
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@miladvisor
Operationally, there were two big developments today: the envelopment of Mariupol and the push south of some forces past Kharkov, threatening to encircle the Ukrainian army units. Militarily, both would be disastrous for Ukraine and give Putin a lot of political options.
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In truth, this is probably complete chaos. The Celtic and Iberian infantry are taking heavy casualties from the strong Roman push, and it takes all of Hannibal’s abilities to prevent the planned withdrawal from turning into a rout.
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This last point is a real problem for Hannibal, as his infantry is outnumbered over 3:2. If the opposing enemy wraps around right flank, he is finished.
So he adopts an unusual solution.
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I just published "The Levels of Warfare, Part 3: Operational Art"
Was the "operational" really a new level of warfare? And did the Soviets invent it?
The answer is no. And it's Clausewitz' fault. Thread.
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@miladvisor
@oryxspioenkop
@SamoBurja
WHAT TO LOOK FOR ON FEB 28
The big question is what will happen in the cities. Urban combat is unavoidably bloody and destructive. At the same time, Putin has been decidedly averse in employing fires. This leaves several possibilities:
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What’s striking is how LITTLE 20th-century warfare resembled World War II. Only the two invasions of Iraq came close, and the first was preceded by an intense air campaign that permanently destroyed much of Iraq's ground forces.
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It’s a simple geometry problem: an arc between two points covers a longer distance than a straight line. But even when staggered, the echelon's front stays the same.
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One purpose of airborne troops in the operational depth is to exploit any fleeting opportunities. But the main reason is to disrupt the rear of forward echelons and render their position untenable.
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Those outer maniples also have to speed up and swing around to maintain alignment with their neighbors—in such a situation, the entire formation aligns to the center. As they run to catch up, they turn in at even sharper angles.
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@miladvisor
@oryxspioenkop
@SamoBurja
The forces around all four cities can now be well supplied and large concentrations of Ukrainian field forces appear at risk of envelopment. I am therefore very skeptical of claims that after 96 hours the advantage shifts to the defender.
Update Ukraine
This update is pure strategic military point of view. Decisions would still need to go through a political risk/reward calculation from the parties involved. Please keep that in mind.
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@miladvisor
@oryxspioenkop
@SamoBurja
This all depends on a lot of unkowns: Putin's precise political goals, assumptions, & timetable.
If he thinks a reasonable compromise can be reached, he has time; if he thinks he needs a military fait accompli, he will have to move fast before urban defenses can be set up.
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