The bayraktars destroyed all Russian targets, including missile systems that were supposed to shoot them down. It is even believed that Bayraktars or similar drones have made a significant contribution to the sinking of the Russian missile cruiser Moscow.
It is too much to say that there is no need for supersonic planes. We probably need some for specialized tasks. But the idea that cheaper and simpler planes cannot be effective in modern high-intensity wars – even, as today, against the world’s most powerful adversary – is very clearly revealed as rubbish. The idea that the high-speed aircraft should be the standard platform for air strikes was fatally undermined by the war in Ukraine.
The assumption that future military aircraft should be piloted is now even more controversial than it used to be. High-end Sead / Dead or Moscow missions are better carried out unmanned by jet drones called cruise missiles. Such are the strike tasks for bread and butter.
The current RAF plan to have a small handful of drones and as many manned high-speed aircraft as possible needs to be rethought. The RAF will not do this alone. An air force without a significant number of combat air crews could not remain an independent service for long.
But what about the army?
Returning to conventional military wisdom, if neither side succeeds in gaining control of the skies, we return to the view of the land war of the 1980s that is still relevant in much of the British military.
According to this view, there is almost nothing to stop a large, heavily equipped tank army other than another such tank army.
Soldiers have believed for generations that heavy armored forces would overcome lightly equipped opposition as “strikers.” Heavy attackers may not be able to take over cities quickly, but they will quickly bypass them, bypass them and cut them off. Opposing lightly equipped defenders will be pierced and surrounded in their pockets by rapid, irresistible armored thrusts. The supply lines of the besieged defenders will be cut off and they can expect nothing but defeat.
This view of ground warfare is the reason why the British Army, tragically, continues to try to organize most of itself into a heavy armored force similar to that commanded by General Smith in 1991. Another British general, a recent army chief, your correspondent said it was because “you have to have a suitable army, Louis.”
The Russian army is what the British army wants to be
The battle with Ukraine has made it very clear that the view of land warfare “tank management” is simply not true.
Russia’s invasion force was almost exactly what the British army wanted it to be. They had many tanks and their tanks were much more modern than the superior Ukrainian ones, often a generation more advanced. They had modern armored combat vehicles for their infantry and very heavy self-propelled artillery.
The Russians have also dealt with one of the unfortunate realities of the heavy armored forces. A reliable rule is that even in good armies, less than half of each armored force will actually have a working kit and be fit for battle.
As early as 1991, the British Army theoretically had several armored divisions. Sending only one to the Gulf War had to be easy. In fact, however, General Smith tells us: “In the Persian Gulf… I had all the current tanks in the British Army… In addition, I got almost every tank engine in inventory. The rest of the army was deprived of its equipment. “
The modern Russian army has dealt with this issue in the same way, going to its brigades, which theoretically have several battalions, and taking all its best weapons, vehicles and soldiers to produce a unified battalion tactical group (BTG). Russia’s invading forces are made up mostly of these BTGs, rather Smith’s forces in 1991 had all the decent equipment and spare parts in the British Army at the time.
Ukrainian tanks are few and mostly old. The Ukrainian infantry has old armored vehicles or in many cases only trucks and vans. Ukrainian artillery was rare during the Russian invasion and was often unprotected towed guns rather than armored self-propelled guns.
The Ukrainian troops on the front line were strong, mostly hardened veterans from Donbass: but the Russian BTGs are also equipped with their best forces. BTGs are mainly composed of the new class of Russian professional soldiers “contractors”. Unwanted servicemen were left mostly in the units that were stripped to create the BTG.
Then the invasion was to be a military picnic for the Russians, even without victory in the sky. But it was not.
The elite, heavily armed and armored BTG failed to even encircle Kharkiv just across the border, much less Kyiv. They have withdrawn from both goals and are making only the slowest and most painful progress in the southeast. They suffer terrible sacrifices. Their powerful main battle tanks (MBTs) have been reduced to burned in huge numbers.
You don’t need a tank to defeat a tank
This is very strange, as Western soldiers – including many British Army officers – have been insisting for decades that the only thing worth sending against a modern OBT is an equally modern OBT. The only weapon that can reliably pierce the extremely strong armor of OBT, we have long been told, is a specialized heavy armor-piercing cannon firing with high-speed penetrators. The only way to get this cannon into battle is to put it in a tank.
Soldiers in armor will be reluctant to admit that there are also cumulative explosive warheads that can be placed on fairly small missiles and missiles: small enough for a soldier to carry and shoot from the shoulder, or be fired from drones, for example. But these things are not serious, tankers say. The Russians have long since started using “explosive jet armor”: an explosive plate mounted on the outside of the tank that explodes when struck by a shaped warhead, disrupting the warhead’s own focused explosion and making it harmless.
Here are the funny-looking blocks glued to all Russian tanks. These blocks are thought to mean that the tank remains invincible and unstoppable from anything on the battlefield other than another tank.
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