Category Russia

Measuring the Effects of Combat in Cities, Phase II – part 1

Our first urban warfare report that we did had a big impact. It clearly showed that the intensity of urban warfare was not what some of the “experts” out there were claiming. In particular, it called into question some of the claims being made by RAND. But, the report was based upon Aachen, Cherbourg, and a collection of mop-up operations along the Channel Coast. Although this was a good starting point because of the ease of research and availability of data, we did not feel that this was a fully representative collection of cases. We also did not feel that it was based upon enough cases, although we had already assembled more cases than most “experts” were using. We therefore convinced CAA (Center for Army Analysis) to fund a similar effort for the Eastern Front in World War II.

For this second phase, we again assembled a collection of Eastern Front urban warfare engagements in our DLEDB (Division-level Engagement Data Base) and compared it to Eastern Front non-urban engagements. We had, of course, a considerable collection of non-urban engagements already assembled from the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. We therefore needed a good urban engagement nearby. Kharkov is the nearest major city to where these non-urban engagements occurred and it was fought over three times in 1943. It was taken by the Red Army in February, it was retaken by the German Army in March, and it was taken again by the Red Army in August. Many of the units involved were the same units involved in the Battle of Kursk. This was a good close match. It has the additional advantage that both sides were at times on the offense.

Furthermore, Kharkov was a big city. At the time it was the fourth biggest city in the Soviet Union, being bigger than Stalingrad (as measured by pre-war population). A picture of its Red Square in March 1943, after the Germans retook it, is above.

We did have good German records for 1943 and we were able to get access to Soviet division-level records from February, March and August from the Soviet military archives in Podolsk. Therefore, we were able to assembled all the engagements based upon the unit records of both sides. No secondary sources were used, and those that were available were incomplete, usually one-sided, sometimes biased and often riddled with factual errors.

So, we ended up with 51 urban and conurban engagements from the fighting around Kharkov, along with 65 non-urban engagements from Kursk (we have more now).

The Phase II effort was completed on 30 June 2003. The conclusions of Phase II (pages 40-41) were similar to Phase I:

.Phase II Conclusions:

  1. Mission Accomplishment: This [Phase I] conclusion was further supported. The data does show a tendency for urban engagements not to generate penetrations.
  2. Casualty Rates: This [Phase I] conclusion was further supported. If urban combat influenced the casualty rate, it appears that it resulted in a reduction of the attacker casualty rate and a more favorable casualty exchange ratio compared to nonurban warfare. There still appears to be no basis to the claim that urban combat is significantly more intense with regards to casualties than is nonurban warfare.
  3. Advance Rates: There is no strong evidence of a reduction in the advance rates in urban terrain in the Eastern Front data. TDI still stands by its original conclusion that the average advance rate in urban combat should be one-half to one-third that of nonurban combat.
  4. Linear Density: Again, there is little evidence that the presence of urban terrain results in a higher linear density of troops, but unlike the ETO data, the data did not show a tendency to trend in that direction.
  5. Armor Losses: This conclusion was further supported (Phase I conclusion was: Overall, it appears that the loss of armor in urban terrain is the same as or less than that found in nonurban terrain, and in some cases is significantly lower.)
  6. Force Ratios: The conclusion was further supported (Phase I conclusion was: Urban combat did not significantly influence the Force Ratio required to achieve success or effectively conduct combat operations).
  7. Duration of Combat: Nothing could be determined from an analysis of the data regarding the Duration of Combat (Time) in urban versus nonurban terrain.

There is a part 2 to this effort that I will pick up in a later post.

Details Of U.S. Engagement With Russian Mercenaries In Syria Remain Murky

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, SYRIA (May 15, 2017)— U.S. Marines fortify a machine gun pit around their M777-A2 Howitzer in Syria, May 15, 2017. The unit has been conducting 24-hour all-weather fire support for Coalition’s local partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, as part of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. CJTF-OIR is the global coalition to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Matthew Callahan)

Last week, the New York Times published an article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff that provided a detailed account of the fighting between U.S-advised Kurdish and Syrian militia forces and Russian mercenaries and Syrian and Arab fighters near the city of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria on 7 February 2018. Gibbons-Neff stated the account was based on newly obtained documents and interviews with U.S. military personnel.

While Gibbons-Neff’s reporting fills in some details about the action, it differs in some respects to previous reporting, particularly a detailed account by Christoph Reuter, based on interviews from participants and witnesses in Syria, published previously in Spiegel Online.

  • According to Gibbons-Neff, the U.S. observed a buildup of combat forces supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Deir Ezzor, south of the Euphrates River, which separated them from U.S.-backed Kurdish and Free Syrian militia forces and U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and U.S. Marine Corps elements providing advice and assistance north of the river.
  • The pro-regime forces included “some Syrian government soldiers and militias, but American military and intelligence officials have said a majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries — and most likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company often used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives that officials do not want to be connected to the Russian government.”
  • After obtaining assurances from the Russian military chain-of-command in Syria that the forces were not theirs, Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered “for the force, then, to be annihilated.”
  • Gibbons-Neff’s account focuses on the fighting that took place on the night of 7-8 February in the vicinity of a U.S. combat outpost located near a Conoco gas plant north of the Euphrates. While the article mentions the presence of allied Kurdish and Syrian militia fighters, it implies that the target of the pro-regime force was the U.S. outpost. It does not specify exactly where the pro-regime forces concentrated or the direction they advanced.
  • This is in contrast to Reuter’s Spiegel Online account, which reported a more complex operation. This included an initial probe across a bridge northwest of the Conoco plant on the morning of 7 February by pro-regime forces that included no Russians, which was repelled by warning shots from American forces.
  • After dark that evening, this pro-regime force attempted to cross the Euphrates again across a bridge to the southeast of the Conoco plant at the same time another pro-regime force advanced along the north bank of the Euphrates toward the U.S./Kurdish/Syrian forces from the town of Tabiya, southeast of the Conoco plant. According to Reuter, U.S. forces engaged both of these pro-regime advances north of the Euphrates.
  • While the Spiegel Online article advanced the claim that Russian mercenary forces were not leading the pro-regime attacks and that the casualties they suffered were due to U.S. collateral fire, Gibbons-Neff’s account makes the case that the Russians comprised at least a substantial part of at least one of the forces advancing on the U.S./Kurdish/Syrian bases and encampments in Deir Ezzor.
  • Based on documents it obtained, the Times asserts that 200-300 “pro-regime” personnel were killed out of an overall force of 500. Gibbons-Neff did not attempt to parse out the Russian share of these, but did mention that accounts in Russian media have risen from four dead as initially reported, to later claims of “perhaps dozens” of killed and wounded. U.S. government sources continue to assert that most of the casualties were Russian.
  • It is this figure of 200-300 killed that I have both found problematic in the past. A total of 200-300 killed and wounded overall seems far more likely, with approximately 100 dead and 100-200 wounded out of the much larger overall force of Russian mercenaries, Syrian government troops, and tribal militia fighters involved in the fighting.

Motivation for the Operation Remains Unclear

While the details of the engagement remain ambiguous, the identity of those responsible for directing the attacks and the motivations for doing so are hazy as well. In late February, CNN and the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence had detected communications between Yevgeny Prigozhin—a Russian businessman with reported ties to President Vladimir Putin, the Ministry of Defense, and Russian mercenaries—and Russian and Syrian officials in the weeks leading up to the attack. One such intercept alleges that Prigozhin informed a Syrian official in January that he had secured permission from an unidentified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative in Syria in early February.

Prigozhin was one of 13 individuals and three companies indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller on 16 February 2018 for funding and guiding a Russian government effort to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

If the Deir Ezzor operation was indeed a clandestine operation sanctioned by the Russian government, the motivation remains mysterious. Gibbons-Neff’s account implies that the operation was a direct assault on a U.S. military position by a heavily-armed and equipped combat force, an action that all involved surely understood beforehand would provoke a U.S. military reaction. Even if the attack was instead aimed at taking the Conoco gas plant or forcing the Kurdish and Free Syrian forces out of Deir Ezzor, the attackers surely must have known the presence of U.S. military forces would elicit the same response.

Rueter’s account of a more complex operations suggests that the attack was a probe to test the U.S. response to armed action aimed at the U.S.’s Kurdish and Free Syrian proxy forces. If so, it was done very clumsily. The build-up of pro-regime forces telegraphed the effort in advance and the force itself seems to have been tailored for combat rather than reconnaissance. The fact that the U.S. government inquired with the Russian military leadership in Syria in advance about the provenance of the force build-up should have been a warning that any attempt at surprise had been compromised.

Whether the operation was simply intended to obtain a tactical advantage or to probe the resolution of U.S. involvement in Syria, the outcome bears all the hallmarks of a major miscalculation. Russian “hybrid warfare” tactics sustained a decisive reverse, while the effectiveness of U.S. military capabilities received a decided boost. Russian and U.S. forces and their proxies continue to spar using information operations, particularly electronic warfare, but they have not directly engaged each other since. The impact of this may be short-lived however, depending on whether or not U.S. President Donald J. Trump carries through with his intention announced in early April to withdraw U.S. forces from eastern Syria.

Pompeo: A couple hundred Russians were killed

We usually stay away from the news of the day, but hard to ignore this one as we were recently blogging about it:

Story: https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-military-killed-apos-couple-181324480.html

Video: https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2018/04/12/pompeo-%e2%80%9c-couple-hundred-russians-were-killed%e2%80%9d-syria-shootout/33770113/

In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mike Pompeo, currently the CIA Director and nominee to serve as Secretary of State stated that “a couple hundred Russians were killed” by U.S. forces in Syria.

Our discussion of this:

Russian Body Count: Update

More on Russian Body Counts

More Russian Body Counts

Russian Body Counts

Reinventing the Army

Interesting article: 2018 Forecast: Can the Army Reinvent Itself

A few highlights:

  1. They are standing up the Army Futures Command this summer.
    1. Goal is to develop new weapons and new ways to use them.
    2. It has not been announced where it will be located.
  2. They currently have eight “Cross Functional Teams” already set up, lead by general officers.
    1. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley has a “Big Six” modernization priorities. They are: 1) Long-range missiles, 2) new armored vehicles, 3) high speed replacements for current helicopters, 4) secure command networks, 5) anti-aircraft and missile defense, 6) soldier equipment.
      1. There is a link for each of these in this article: https://breakingdefense.com/2017/12/army-shifts-1b-in-st-plans-modernization-command-undersec-mccarthy/
    2. This effort will start making their mark “in earnest” with the 2020 budget.
      1. The 2018 and 2019 budgets have been approved. In the current  political environment, hard to say what the 2020 budget will look like [these are my thoughts, not part of the article].
    3. The U.S. Army has approved Active Protection Systems (APS) for their tanks to shoot down incoming missiles, like Russia and Israel are using.
      1. Goal is to get a brigade of M1 Abrams tanks outfitted with Israeli-made Trophy APS systems by 2020 [why do I get the sense from the wording that this date is not going to be met].
      2. They are testing APS for Bradleys and Strykers.
        1. Also testing anti-aircraft versions of these vehicles.
        2. Also testing upgunned Strykers.
      3. Army is building the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) light tank to accompany airborne troops.
        1. RPF has been issued, contract award in early 2019.
    4. The Army is the lead sponsor for the Future Verticle Lift (FVL) to replace existing helicopters. Flight testing has started.
    5. This is all part of the Multi-Domain Battle
      1. They are moving the thinkers behind the Multi-Domain Battle from the Training & Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to the Futures Command.
      2. Milley has identified Russia as the No. 1 threat. [We will note that several years ago some influential people were tagging China as the primary threat.]
      3. Still, Milley has stood up two advisor brigades [because we have wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Niger/Mali, Somalia, Yemen, etc. that don’t seem to be going away].

Russian Presidential Election

Traditionally, elections in Russia and the Soviet Union have a higher voter turnout than U.S. Presidential elections. While Putin handily won the presidential election on March 18, there were some efforts made to make sure the voter turnout was high enough.

For the record, Putin won the election with 76.66% of the vote. Pavel Grudinin of the Communist Party got 11.80% of the vote and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the LDPR was 5.66%. I assume Zhirinovsky still wants Alaska back. There was no serious opposition candidate.

Oddly enough, the percentage of vote that Putin got was higher than the opinion polls or the exit polls. The opinion polls tended to show 60-65% while the exit polls were between 74-76%. From my experience, Russian’s are not very open to pollsters.

Turnout was officially 67.47%. In 1996, which was a free and open election, and which I accidently ended up witnessing, the turnout was 69.7% in the first round. The turnout in the last U.S. presidential election was 55.7%. U.S. voter turnout has not been above 60% since 1968 and has not been above 66% since 1900.

There were some who questioned the integrity of the election, including chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and our very own Edward Snowden, now living in Moscow in exile (and would be arrested if he returned to the U.S.)

See: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03/18/putins-giant-russian-election-victory-sparks-backlash-claims-charade.html

See: http://www.dw.com/en/vladimir-putin-wins-russian-presidential-election-with-more-than-75-percent/a-43026436

Anyhow, Putin has been elected for a second six-year term. According to the constitution, he can still only serve two consecutive terms. He served two four-year terms, the Medvedev served a four-year term with Putin as his prime minister. They then changed to constitution so that the presidential terms were now six years in length, and Putin is now starting his second six-year terms. He is 65 now and will be 71 when that term ends. A lot of people assume that he will never really let go of power.

 

Also See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_2018

Novichok Dva

An article about Vil Mirzayanov: https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientist-leaked-russias-novichok-conspiracy-144025768.html

Highlights:

  1. He was the Soviet scientists who revealed Novichok.
  2. He is 83 and now lives in the United States.
  3. He has witnessed several scientists fail to regain their health after exposure:
    1. “The damage it inflicts is practically incurable.”
    2. “These people are gone — the man [Sergei Skripal] and his daughter. Even if they survive they will not recover.”
  4. He published his memoirs in 2002.
  5. Russia declared in 2017 that is had destroyed all of its chemical weapon stockpile.

 

P.S. This article came out later today: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-says-chemist-uncovered-existence-novichok-075342077.html

Summation: The Russians kept it and are still keeping it in secrecy.

Also: Half a gram is enough to kill a 110 pound person (1/2 gram = 0.018 ounces)

 

Novichok

Use of nerve agents gets my attention. The attack in Salisbury, England on 4 March not only put their targets in critical condition (Sergei Skripal and his daughter), but left one responding British police officer seriously ill, two others with minor injuries.

The nerve agent used is Novichok, which was invented in the Soviet Union, and as far as I know, is unique to Russia:

See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/novichok-russian-nerve-agent-used-attack-ex-spy-sergei-skripal-great-britain/

And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

 

P.S. I can see only three reasons to use this agent for an assassination:

  1. Because it is easy to smuggle in the agent or its component ingredients.
  2. To make sure everyone understands that it was done from Russia (although not necessarily by the Russian government).
  3. To terrorize defectors/opposition/business associates by using unusual and gruesome agents (i.e. like Polonium used on Litvinenko).

 

Russian Body Count: Update

Map of the reported incident between U.S., Syrian, and Russian forces near Deir Ezzor, Syria on 7 February 2018 [Spiegel Online]

An article by Christoph Reuter in Spiegel Online adds some new details to the story of the incident between U.S., Syrian, and Russian mercenary forces near the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor on 7 February 2018. Based on interviews with witnesses and participants, the article paints a different picture than the one created by previous media reports.

According to Spiegel Online, early on 7 February, a 250-strong force comprised of Syrian tribal militia, Afghan and Iraqi fighters, and troops from the Syrian Army 4th Division attempted to cross from the west bank of the Euphrates River to the east, south of a Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) base at Khusham. The Euphrates constitutes a “deconfliction” line established by the United States and Russia separating the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from those of the U.S.-supported SDF. The Syrian force was detected and U.S. combat forces fired warning shots, which persuaded the Syrians to withdraw.

After dark that evening, the Syrian force, reinforced to about 500 fighters, moved several kilometers north and attempted to cross the Euphrates a second time, this time successfully. As the force advanced through the village of Marrat, it was again spotted and engaged by U.S. air and artillery assets after an alleged 20-30 tank rounds impacted within 500 meters of the SDF headquarters in Khusham. The U.S. employed field artillery, drones, combat helicopters, and AC-130 gunships to devastating effect.

Speigel Online reported that U.S. forces also simultaneously engaged a force of approximately 400 pro-Assad Syrian tribal militia and Shi’a fighters advancing north from the village of Tabiya, south of Khusham. A small contingent of Russian mercenaries, stationed in Tabiya but not supporting the Syrian/Shi’a fighters, was hit by U.S. fire. This second Syrian force, which the U.S. had allowed to remain on the east side of the Euphrates as long as it remained peaceful and small, was allegedly attacked again on 9 February.

According to Spigel Online’s sources, “more than 200 of the attackers died, including around 80 Syrian soldiers with the 4th Division, around 100 Iraqis and Afghans and around 70 tribal fighters, mostly with the al-Baqir militia.” Around 10-20 Russian mercenaries were killed as well, although Russian state media has confirmed only nine deaths.

This account of the fighting and casualty distribution is in stark contrast to the story being reported by Western media, which has alleged tens or hundreds of Russians killed:

[A] completely different version of events has gained traction — disseminated at first by Russian nationalists like Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, and then by others associated with the Wagner unit. According to those accounts, many more Russians had been killed in the battle — 100, 200, 300 or as many as 600. An entire unit, it was said, had been wiped out and the Kremlin wanted to cover it up. Recordings of alleged fighters even popped up apparently confirming these horrendous losses.

It was a version that sounded so plausible that even Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg picked it up. The fact that the government in Moscow at first didn’t want to confirm any deaths and then spoke of five “Russian citizens” killed and later, nebulously, of “dozens of injured,” some of whom had died, only seemed to make the version of events seem more credible.

Spiegel Online implies that the motive behind the account being propagated by sources connected to the mercenaries stems from the “claim they are being used as cannon fodder, are being kept quiet and are poorly paid. For them to now accuse the Kremlin of trying to cover up the fact that Russians were killed — by the Americans, of all people — hits President Vladimir Putin’s government in a weak spot: its credibility.”

The Spiegel Online account and casualty tally — 250 Syrian/Shi’a killed out of approximately 900 engaged, with 10-20 Russian mercenaries killed by collateral fire — seems a good deal more plausible than the figures mentioned in the initial Western media reports.

We Will Bury You, Part Dva

As the Cold War appears to be on some people’s mind these days, I am reminded of this study: Reproductive Behaviour at the End of the World: The Effect of the Cuban Missile Crisis on U.S. Fertility

A few highlights:

  1. Portner (2008) and Evans, Hu & Zhao (2008) show that fertility decreases with hurricane and high-severity storm warnings, whereas Rodgers, John & Coleman (2005) and Trail & Borst (1971) find that fertility increased in Oklahoma County after Oklahoma City Bombing, in 1995 and in New York after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, respectively.
  2. We find that on average, the Cuban Missile Crisis did not have an effect on fertility. However, states closer to Cuba and with a greater presence of military installations experienced surges in births 8-10 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  3. The findings suggest that individuals are more likely to engage in reproductive activities when facing high mortality risks, but reduce fertility when facing a high probability of enduring the aftermath of a catastrophe.

Just for the record, my father was deployed to Florida for the Cuban Missile Crisis and was part of the units that would have landed in the initial wave. It was an volunteer only effort, as they were anticipating high casualties. None of the men in his unit choose not to volunteer.

I was born well before that time, and, I am the youngest of the family. I have no relatives in Florida.