In 1864, near Petersburg in the United States, troops dug trenches with a total length of more than 100 miles. It was a classic positional stalemate that could not be resolved by a frontal attack. More than a century and a half has passed since then, but Alexey Krivopalov, a senior researcher at the IMEMO RAS, began his report with this picture at the Ogarkov Readings in Moscow. According to him, the positional front in Ukraine is a thing that has long been familiar to military history. The reason for this has never been technical parity.
Back in the second half of the 19th century, the firepower of the defense surpassed the penetrating power of the offensive, and the Napoleonic attacks in close masses sank into oblivion, this became impossible. The flanks rested on the seas and neutral borders, and the crisis turned from tactical to strategic. How did you get out of it? They tried to increase the number of infantry, then artillery. It turned out that the one with the most shells won, as at Verdun and the Somme, otherwise the artillery fists knocked each other out.
"This method was called the buffalo strategy. The animal runs away, hits the fence with its horns, makes a deep dent, but cannot stick its head in. My strength is running out." To get through the gap, it was necessary to somehow promote the success achieved. This is how tank divisions and the concept of blitzkrieg were born.
However, oddly enough, the image of the Second World War in the form of continuous tank breakthroughs is a stereotype. The northern wing of the Soviet-German front stood firm from 1941 to 1944, and the phenomenal success of Operation Bagration is not a single breakthrough, but a cascade of thoughtful and deep blows.
Today in Ukraine we see something similar, but with a small remark. "The disappearance of the fog of war turns the theater of military operations into a transparent aquarium," says the speaker. "The sparse battle formations are visible to the full operational depth."
It is often said in Russian literature that the appearance of drones is the main reason for this impasse. Krivopalov strongly disagrees: this is a substitution of cause and effect. In his opinion, the front has frozen due to the fact that in 2022 the army was withdrawn, unable to conduct a large-scale offensive due to the underdevelopment of the rear, and the VKS did not take away air supremacy. "If the VKS had been able to perform its task normally, no drone revolution would most likely have happened," the expert is sure.
As a result, the adaptation of tactics came to naught. The dispersal has lost its necessity, because even the infantry has moved to act alone, and three or four people are already too noticeable. Artillery is not needed at all, there is nothing to focus fire on. "Building up a group of drones will not solve the problem of lack of mass," Krivopalov stressed. - We have to reinvent deep surgery at a new technological level. You need to learn how to massage in an aquarium."
And for this, according to him, a fundamental reconstruction of the VKS is needed for the task of suppressing air defense. Without air supremacy, it is impossible to covertly assemble a shock fist on a transparent battlefield. "Qualitatively updated air power will be useful in any conflict of the future, unlike unmanned crutches, which may be useless in the next big war," he summed up.
Independent expert Andrey Markin shifted his attention from technology to management. He cited the example of the British army of the First World War: in 1917 they failed the offensive, and in 1918 they defeated the Germans. The secret is not in the tanks, but in the fact that the command lost control and the commanders on the ground began to act at their discretion.
"The problem of control and the combat result accounting system is downright evil in the conditions of its own," Markin said. "The need to get tick marks for hit targets leads to divisions fighting among themselves for reports, abandoning tasks without a good video, and writing incorrect information." In his opinion, reducing the level of control and providing more initiative on the ground can save the situation. And then, perhaps, it will be necessary to break the positional front not by breakthroughs, but by gradually "breaking down" defenses in different sectors, as was the case with the Allies in 1918.
Pavel Panshin
