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The Russians are using a crazy strategy known as “attacking the enemy with a stronger force than your enemy”.
The West: “damn commies using human wave attacks”
The Wikipedia page for Human Wave Attacks is like reading Conservapedia, btw.
Unlike Normandy which used human non-waves.our enlightened mass troop offense
their barbaric human wave assaults
Throwback to that Article about russians using technology such as “landmines” and “also having an air force” which perturbed Ukraines Nato handlers.
But Poland wanting to put landmines on the border is alright though
2022: Russians are orcs, they will do human wave attacks and lose
2026: Noooo
1941:
RussiansSoviets are orcs, they will do human wave attacks and lose1945: Noooo
Something something first as tragedy second as farce.
Isn’t that like warfare 101?
Warfare 101: Get a bunch of frat boys to run your enemy off the road
German seething about those damn Russians using a “WW2 tactic” when describing basic warfare
not beating the bitter nazi allegations
The classic Russian WWII tactic, killing Nazis. 🤣
Those dastardly Russians killing our beloved brothers in arms! How dare they!
I hate when generals use tactics that western armies have been using for 2000+ years!!!
They’re apparently leaving a corridor for their enemies to retreat through too, which is explicitly called out in the Art of War alongside other gems like “don’t just assume you’re going to win because you think you’re so cool, you have to actually do stuff to make sure you win,” and “yes yes I know you think your soldiers are literal cattle, but you need them to like you or they won’t be reliable under pressure,” and “pack a lunch, dipshit.”
So that’s a good 3000 years and across the entire continent.
I love that the Art of War is mostly saying, “Hey, rich boy fuck face, I know that you think war is great and all, but you really want to make sure you can win, and if you do win, make sure you provide enough leeway to your opposition to make sure that you won’t have to fight them again in five years. Or at least make sure you kill enough of them that they can never oppose.you, but not so many that you piss off another family.”
Most of what I remember is them going on and on about different types of grounds
Which is extremely important. Never make camp in a swamp, unless you are swamp people.
If they know you’re swamp people, the first place they’re going to look is in the swamp.
Then just go to the other swamp
but this is my swamp!
Maybe even switch it up and go to a bog
Angry Brit noises
The “don’t piss your soldiers off, they won’t hesitate to chop your head off” bit is something a lot of fantasy writers miss in the name of “villain vibes”.
It’s infuriating tbh.
the original evil overlord list is pushing 40 and i’m not aware of any mainstream fiction that obeys its precepts
my fav part is how all of NATO still hasn’t figured out a counter after 4 whole years
Armchair general here…
Ukraine is at a material disadvantage, so in order to survive and have a shot at winning, they need to entrench themselves.
So the Russians branch around them and start fighting, and then the Ukrainians retreat due to the flank.
If Ukraine had sufficient force, they could try to stop the branching, but that would require a posture not totally dependent on being entrenched.
There is no counter without the material circumstances to allow it.
There’s another, arguably bigger, problem which is that Ukraine is a proxy and optics are really important to them. So, instead of pulling troops out of positions that can’t be defended, they just leave them there to the last because they’re afraid western support will drop if they’re seen to be losing.
good bot
There’s not really a counter to being outnumbered and sieged except to get more resources and soldiers
I mean the reason they end up sieged a lot of the time is because they try to hold on to every inch of the ground in fear that retreating will sour their western sponsors.
Yeah but if they just retreated all the time then they would lose their strategic objectives, which is to hold onto as much “Ukrainian” territory as possible and make taking it costly for Russia. Yeah they could have half as many losses if they just retreated when things got bad, but then they’d also already be in trenches outside of Kiev.
I mean they’re going to lose them one way or the other. And it’s actually far more costly for Ukraine than Russia this way because what happens is that Russians create cauldrons and then Ukrainians send troops there to be picked off without fail. This dynamic played out in single city and town that Russia has taken. It’s the Ukrainians who end up leaving their dug in positions and trying to reinforce the forces that got surrounded.
Oh I am aware, but the role of Ukraine is not to win. It’s to drag out their defeat so long that it weakens, damages and incapacitates Russia as much as possible. If not for the Ukrainian coup and Russia having to focus on Ukraine, Syria would not have fallen to Al-Jolani as Russia would have had much more forces in the region to stabilize it. The USA doesn’t expect Ukraine to win, they expect them to fight to the last Ukrainian to inflict some amount of damage, especially on Russian oil and gas production. Can’t do that if you’re always retreating and running away to preserve troops.
Bleeding Russia out was indeed the plan as was laid out in numerous policy papers. However, I’d argue that the plan didn’t really work out. Russia has now decoupled from the west and successfully reoriented trade towards the Global South. Russian domestic industry is seeing a revival out of necessity created by the war, and Russian army is now over 1.5 million strong and seasoned by 4 years of war. On the other hand, we have Europe which is now collapsing economically, deindustrialized and cut off from energy. And we have NATO which has largely run through its existing stockpiles, and is unable to produce weapons anywhere near the rate they’re being consumed at. So, the relative balance of power has shifted significantly towards Russia, and once Russia wins in Ukraine there will be a political crisis in Europe the likes of which we have not seen.
There’s also not much evidence that there is any structural damage to Russian oil and gas production. In fact, I haven’t seen any strikes on Russian energy infrastructure in weeks. Ukraine has shifted towards attacking Wildberries warehouses at this point. I also imagine that the whole drone campaign took a long time to set up, and it’s not a stunt the west can repeat easily given that the US can’t even make magnets at this point.
While Syria was a win for the empire, it’s difficult to say whether Russia would’ve been able to stop it. The rate of collapse suggests that Assad really let things slide, and he consistently refused help from Iran which could’ve helped stabilize the situation. I think problems there ran pretty deep. However, it’s not really clear that toppling Syria mattered that much in the end. It’s certainly not doing much to help the US against Iran right now.
These days, western armies only know terror bombing (which has never worked)
I’m still in awe about the attachment western airforces have to the Douhet Doctrine.
Flanking and surrounding your enemy is literally the oldest trick in the book, shit flanking maneuvers are literally older than the concept of writing.
“Og and Thog had spears and were looking right at me, but I had Pvt Grog go around so he can attack from the side”
-from the cave-painting memoirs of Colonel Crog (retd)
I learned flanking playing Medieval 1 & 2 total war as a fucking dumb secluded 10 year old.
Cannae might be one of the most well discussed battles in history BECAUSE of the use of flanking (and because of how huge of a Roman L it was). My history books in high school described the (American) Union strategy of blockading as flanking.
If you’re 20+ and call flank, surround, and/or engulfing “WWII tactics”, you shouldn’t be making military analysis posts. Absolutely embarassing post.
First known example of using flanking tactic was literally in the first battle in history recorded with some details, that is the battle of Megiddo in 1457 BC where Egyptians defeated the Caanaanite coalition by streching their forces and attacking flanks.
Rumor has it Russia discovered an ancient cheating manual called The Art of War
5th century BCE gameshark
Ah, so China Is helping Russia. Quick, $10bn to Israel!
So, a part of me immediately went “who is this idiot” and it turns out that after 11 years of writing for the foreign policy section of BILD, the shittiest and most reactionary news outlet of the way too many shitty and reactionary news outlets of the Axel Springer publishing house, Julian Röpcke recently switched to a new career track.
Instead of being a jingoistic mouthpiece for the most unwavering bastion of right wing zionism and imperial lackeydom in Germany, he is now working for, you’re not gonna believe this, a German-Ukrainian drone manufacturer.
So i need to put on my contrarian cap here, i don’t think this guy is actually this bad at tactics, not when he has mastered tactical grifting to such a degree. He is doing what he has done for a decade, intentionally disseminating the dumbest shit imaginable to the dumbest reactionaries you can imagine.
Complaining as if this is an RTS game or something
Flanking is seen as a totally valid positioning tactic in RTS. More like they want this to be like Lord of the Rings where two sides charge into each other in pitched battle (never really happened that much historically - usually it was much more harassing, holding chokepoints, kiting back, sieging and surrounding armies or pinning them against natural formations like rivers or oceans)
The funniest shit is that the Lord of Rings books actually have very well-researched and well-written battles. The films changed that, because all of the maneuvering don’t look as good on screen.
Edit: and also it resulted in Denethor turning from ruthless and very competent commander into a complete idiot.
because all of the maneuvering don’t look as good on screen.
I maintain that it could look awesome on screen but no Hollywood director is brave enough to be the first person to do it (and also it would be hella expensive) so we’re stuck with people running at each other and breaking off into one-on-one duels for eternity.
If someone does a good realistic medieval battle, I’ll proclaim him the most innovative director ever.
Sorry all youre getting is Nolan slop
I read Atlas of Middle Earth and they actually go into the details of that war and i was like “wait a second, that’s actually plausible logistics, tactics and strategy” but for some reason everyone only remember the quote that Sauron don’t care how many of his troops die.
Two things strike me particularly: how little troops Gondor fielded in what was the existential conflict for them, pointing out that Gondor was actually sparsely inhabited shithole and that Numenoreans and their descendants were worst administrators ever. And second how Hobbit’s Battle of Five Armies was a colossal blunder for Sauron’s forces which most likely indirectly cost him the War of the Ring later.
I remember reading an article by a military historian, where he showed, that even the troop numbers, distances and timetables are consistent with historical strategies, tactics and logistics.
how little troops Gondor fielded in what was the existential conflict for them, pointing out that Gondor was actually sparsely inhabited shithole
And also Gondor had to deploy 2/3 of its forces in the south, where the most populated areas were, and Aragorn brought some of them on the ships, captured from pirates.
And second how Hobbit’s Battle of Five Armies was a colossal blunder for Sauron’s forces which most likely indirectly cost him the War of the Ring later.
TBH, if Sauron guarded Orodruin, he would have won. He had amassed a decisive material advantage by that point, and the only thing he didn’t have was time to apply it.
And also Gondor had to deploy 2/3 of its forces in the south, where the most populated areas were, and Aragorn brought some of them on the ships, captured from pirates.
That would fit. Harad send iirc 10000 men to Sauron’s army but all them were riding under one banner so they were probably from just one polity there and the rest of Harad might want to get some sweet revenge on Gondor for centuries of colonialism if they seemed to be weak.
TBH, if Sauron guarded Orodruin, he would have won. He had amassed a decisive material advantage by that point, and the only thing he didn’t have was time to apply it.
Yes, but he DID guard the Orodruin, that massive army did not stationed in Black Gate for nothing, he just did expected military invasion instead of two hobbits, and to be fair hobbits did seem to have some natural protection from his magic which was mentioned by Gandalf iirc. Also the Black Gate army was literally everything he had left at the point, and those probably weren’t his best soldiers, those went with Witch King army. Other thing was that Western armies had absolutely no coordination or war plan at all, except Fellowship mission everything was improvised on spot.
Don’t forget tricking them into marching into fields of dry grass and then lighting them up
the aegon method
Even in LotR that attack happened because they expected cavalry to arrive at any moment and tear into the flanks of the orcs.
Devs, nerf now!
For a lot of these people, it kind of is
flanking op, devs plz nerf
I have become convinced that no Westerner knows how to actually fight a war anymore
Just fully replaced the notion of logistics and tactics with cavalry charges and shouting “Wolverines!”
No western military has had to fight a war against anything resembling a peer-to-peer force since Vietnam or Korea, and by now everyone with experience in that sort of fighting is dead or retired. It’s all been air strikes and “counter insurgency” for the past 50 years. Walking around Iraq or Afghanistan until you get blown up by an IED doesn’t do much to teach you about drone combat or missile interception/avoidance, and leisurely bombing weddings doesn’t prepare you to actually avoid being shot down.
And on the contrary, the enemies of imperialism have had near constant experience adapting to American weapons and tactics
Walking around Iraq or Afghanistan until you get blown up by an IED doesn’t do much to teach you about drone combat or missile interception/avoidance
The only kid I knew who signed up for the army died this exact way, two weeks after he got deployed to Afghanistan
They wanted us to hold a moment of silence for him, but everyone hated him so it didn’t quite work
Lol owned, sucks to suck
He sucked and he blew
Up, that is
They wanted us to hold a moment of silence for him, but everyone hated him so it didn’t quite work.
Gotta love self solving problems.
Yeah, he was one of those ROTC (Think Boy Scouts, but for kids who want to go to Army) guys who really wanted to kill brown people
So much so it made everyone in our magnet high school weirded out
After all, we were all supposed to be gifted kids who’d end up in the Ivys
A guy I went to high-school with… I actually like him a little, but barely know him and most of my friends hate him… just joined the military this year.
My condolences?
80% of westerners have their entire education of how conflicts (well, everything, really, lol) work from Hollywood movies where some cracker can just John Wick his way through Fallujah. They think Call of Duty is real
Thank goodness I read books
There is a significant cohort of Americans convinced that we “won” the Vietnam war because the Vietnamese had more casualties
Keep in mind, the U.S. would routinely slaughter entire villages, counting all the old people and children they would kill as ‘casualties’. The actual Vietnamese soldier to American soldier casualty ratio was not nearly as lopsided, and quite often entire platoons of soldiers would be sent somewhere, only to be ambushed and killed outside of a few who would escape.
This is one of the reasons many Vietnam vets were so fucked up mentally coming back, was because they knew we were losing the war, that we weren’t actually killing that many Vietcong, but they would come back to the U.S. to a media what would claim that they were winning, and that they were taking extremely few casualties.
It was one of the reasons the whole MIA/POW narrative started, was to obscure the number of American casualties coming out of the war.
We decisively lost Vietnam, and the idea that we “pulled our punches” is revisionist horseshit. We killed so many civilians, corraled so many villages, and it didn’t make a single bit of difference to us winning the war.
Reminds me of German reports of counter-partisan operations “killed 1000 partisans, captured 10 rifles”.
It’s almost, almost as though they were taking military advice from former Nazi commanders… Sorry, I mean, NATO generals.
We killed so many civilians, corraled so many villages, and it didn’t make a single bit of difference to us winning the war.
Terror bombing is absolutely fantastic at pissing the enemy off (for pretty self evident reasons), so in a way it did make a different to us winning the war.
As in: It further secured the loss of the US losing.
These are the same people who are sure Iran is losing while the USA crumbles around them
And an even larger cohort who are convinced that we could have won the Vietnam war if only the anti-war <slurs> had let amerikkka kill Vietnamese civilians for another five, ten years.
Both are required to win a battle. The key to victory is balance.
True, true
Only cowards use winning strategies in war. Russia should be more like the US with Iran and only use losing strategies
As always with these types, they scream about “honor in warfare” whenever they are forced to admit they are losing, but will gleefully justify even the most disgusting and amoral actions in war when it gives their side an advantage.
The only war acceptable to them is when the untermensch marc towards towards them slowly en masse and are easy targets for every kind of Geneva convention-defying weaponry you can name. They want every war to be like a British colonial war, except instead of massacring unarmed villagers with Gatling guns, they use drone strikes, bombing runs and depleted uranium rounds.
“Im going to punch the air in front of me and if you walk into my punches, then that’s on you!”
“Okay, I will walk around you and kick you from the side”
“No, that’s not allowed, thats cheating.”
Wait, I thought Ukraine was totally pwning le Russian orcs with cool drones that Russia has no counter for???
