Tag: war

5GW: The Extension of the Battlefield

As I previously wrote in The Fifth Generation of Modern War: Drones, Attrition, and the Collapse of the Logistics Sanctuary, the advent of drone warfare, combined with the digital elements that make it uniquely lethal, genuinely represents a new generation of modern war. It is clear that the Russians understand this much more clearly, and are able to describe it and articulate the issues much better than Western military historians and strategists, because they are actively engaged in it.

Simplicius quotes the retired General Yuri Baluyevsky, Russia’s Chief of General Staff from 2004-2008, from his recent article on the current revolution in military affairs, as well as a Russian source working in logistics on the Pokrovsk front, that explain and underline how this really is a new generation of war, the chief aspect of which is the massive extension of the battlespace well beyond the traditional battlefield.

The piece urges for Russia to adapt to this ‘new reality’ as soon as possible. The urgency stems from the stated thesis that drone tech capabilities will increase faster than the effective means of countering them:

It is unlikely that there will be an expert who denies the revolutionary changes in military affairs – the “unmanned revolution” or the “drone war revolution.” Perhaps, in a broader sense, it could be called the “digital war.” There is every reason to believe that this process will continue to expand and deepen, as the potential for increasing the “drone war” exceeds the ability to effectively counter this type of weapon.

The authors go on to elaborate that drones are getting progressively cheaper and smaller while increasing their range. In the near future, they note, the tactical rear will become a total “zone of extermination”—which it has essentially already become according to many frontline reports.

The tactical battlefield and the rear, tens of kilometers away from the line of contact, will essentially become a “zone of extermination.” Naturally, countering these threats will be a top priority. As a result, the armed struggle will primarily focus on gaining “drone supremacy” in the air. Consequently, the organization of military forces must align with the goals and objectives of achieving such supremacy in the air and space.

In light of the above, here is an interesting breakdown from a Russian channel on the Pokrovsk direction, describing just how the situation has evolved in terms of logistics and putting units in positions.

We continue our difficult work to supply our assault units in the Pokrovsk direction. This month, the main focus was on the assault units and their communication and survival on the battlefield.

First, we need to explain what the line of contact looks like in this direction, and in general, in general, now-on the entire front. First, military personnel assembled and ready to perform their combat tasks are brought to the assembly point 20-25 km from the front line. Then they wait for the command. They are loaded at the beginning of the next segment and dropped off at a point approximately 10-13 km from the LBS (line of contact), where they can stay for some time – from several hours to several days. This is a nearby evacuation point from which you can almost guarantee to escape and survive.

Then there is the next drop-off at a point 5-7 km from the LBS – it is not possible to drive any further. All drops-offs and movements across the terrain among minefields and open areas are carried out by guides.
Then, on foot, they reach the point from which the assault may begin. From there, they approach the positions. As a rule, only half of them reach the positions, while the rest are injured or killed by drone strikes.

A pair of stormtroopers who have reached the ruins of a house usually travel in pairs, hiding in the ruins and basements. They do not venture outside unnecessarily. From there, they must maintain communication with their commander to stay informed about what is happening outside, coordinate their actions with their neighbors, provide assistance, and engage in assaults. They may spend a week, a month, or two in the ruins.

If the weather is bad: fog, rain, snowfall, then losses are sharply reduced. FPV drones almost do not fly in the rain – droplets stick to the camera. The water curtain strongly jams the signal at 5.8 Ghz. However, the enemy artillery begins to work more actively.

The wiring of any armored group is usually noticed by the enemy 10-15 km before the LBS. By the time it reaches the initial positions for the attack, there are already dozens of enemy FPV drones in the sky and dozens more ready to launch. All of this then falls on the armored group and the paratroopers. Yes, it’s difficult for our troops, and there are casualties, but we are still able to drop paratroopers and advance. Our main losses are in the form of wounded soldiers.

As per the description above, the 25km-from-LoC zone has already become extremely dicey, where dispersion is necessary for survival. Then from 5-7km onward, it essentially becomes the ‘death zone’, to borrow mountaineering terminology.

Baluyevsky and his co-author state that the chief development of the modern battlefield is the total doing-away with the ‘fog of war’, initiating an era of complete battlefield transparency.

War has fundamentally changed and these changes don’t just change and expand the tactical battlefield, it indicates tremendous changes to the logistical art, the operational art, the strategic art, and even the geostrategic balance of power.

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Who Will Sanction the US?

It appears that the USA is about to invade a foreign nation. It should be interesting to compare and contrast the reaction of the UK and the European Union to a US invasion with their reaction to the Russian liberation of Russian people living in lands that were historically Russian.

The island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has declared a National Emergency and ordered its entire Military to the highest alert status. This is believed to be related to a possible U.S. military attack upon neighboring Venezuela – now ALLEGEDLY deemed to be “imminent.”

I’ve been paying attention and I’m not sure what President Trump or Clown World are hoping to accomplish with an invasion of Venezuela. Is it Venezuelan oil or is it to prevent China and Russia from establishing a foothold inside the US sphere of influence?

Protecting Democracy and Human Rights: 

The U.S. and many other countries no longer recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. They argue his 2018 re-election was fraudulent and instead recognize Juan Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly, as the legitimate interim president. The U.S. frames its actions as supporting the Venezuelan people’s fight for democracy against an authoritarian regime.

This is almost comical, given the amount of known election fraud in the United States.

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London Throws in the Towel

One of Clown World’s senior mouthpieces, The Times, indicates that London and Brussels have given up any hope of winning their proxy war in Ukraine.

It is bitter to say, but Kiev will not last until spring. Despite all the encouraging words from the EU, there is simply no money or desire to continue to defend Ukraine.

Like others in the West, I admire the steadfastness of Ukrainians in their long, often inventive struggle against the Russians. However, with the approach of winter, Vladimir Zelensky‘s chances of holding out are melting before our eyes. Money for weapons, medicine and heat for Ukraine is running out. The Western will to support the conflict is fading. The defense of Kiev as an independent capital is no longer considered a strategic priority.

A different picture may emerge when looking at the rhetoric of European officials — the same von der Leyen calls on Europe to “fight for its values and the right to self—determination” – or at the lively actions at the front and in diplomatic corps. American sanctions are hitting Rosneft and Lukoil, trying to undermine the economic basis of the Putin regime.

But none of the above changes the course of the conflict much.

It will probably be another six months before Clown World bows to the inevitable, another half-year of needless suffering and death in Ukraine and unnecessary economic damage to the Western economies, but the end is now in sight.

Putin and the Russian generals have been very patient, and very cautious, as befits the heirs of Kutuzov, but the time will come when the mass Zhukovian offensive will be launched and it will probably be much larger than any Western analyst expects.

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A US Military Withdrawal

The US pulls a brigade out of Romania:

The US is withdrawing some troops from Romania, on NATO’s eastern flank, as the Pentagon works to shift its focus away from Europe and toward homeland defense and Latin America, US and European officials said on Wednesday.

The US is sending home the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division back to Kentucky and will not be replacing the unit after its scheduled rotation out of Eastern Europe, according to US Army Europe and Africa. The redeployment comes as eastern flank NATO countries have faced a spike in threats from Russia in recent weeks, including multiple drone incursions in Polish airspace and repeated violations of Lithuanian airspace.

The Army said the reduction in troops is part of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “deliberate process to ensure a balanced U.S. military force posture. This is not an American withdrawal from Europe or a signal of lessened commitment to NATO and Article 5,” the Army press release said. “Rather this is a positive sign of increased European capability and responsibility. Our NATO allies are meeting President Trump’s call to take primary responsibility for the conventional defense of Europe. This force posture adjustment will not change the security environment in Europe.”

Translation: the US military is not going to help Ukraine defend Odessa.

The Army press release notwithstanding, European military capabilities have declined over the last two years, they have not increased in the slightest as their economies collapse and social unrest rises. While the US is unlikely to do what it obviously should, and withdraw entirely from the European zone in order to focus on its own sphere of influence, whoever is calling the shots clearly recognizes that fighting Russia in Europe is a war that it cannot hope to win.

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The Last Bluff

Big Serge explains the real reason why the USA cannot afford to provide any Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine:

The basic pattern here is well established. The United States has done what it can to backstop Ukrainian strike capabilities, but it has held them at a level where Ukraine’s damage output falls far short of decisive levels. So long as that is the case, Russia has clearly demonstrated that it will simply eat the punches and retaliate against Ukraine. Hence, when the United States helps Ukraine target Russian oil facilities, it is Ukraine that receives the reprisal, and it is Ukraine which has its natural gas production annihilated as the winter approaches. In a sense, neither side is really trying to deter the other at all. The United States has raised the cost of this war for Russia, but not enough to create any real pressure for Moscow to end the conflict; in response, Russia punishes Ukraine, which is something the United States does not really care about. The result is a sort of geostrategic Picture of Dorian Gray, where the United States vicariously inflicts cathartic damage on Russia, but Ukraine accrues all the soul damage.

In the case of Tomahawks, the risk-reward calculus is just not there. Tomahawks are a strategically invaluable asset that the United States cannot afford to hand out like candy. Even if the launch systems could be provided (highly doubtful), the missiles could not be made available in sufficient quantities to make a difference. The range of the missiles, however, significantly raises the probability of miscalculation or uncontrolled escalation. Ukraine shooting American missiles at energy infrastructure in Belgorod or Rostov is one thing; shooting them at the Kremlin is another thing entirely.

There is, however, another aspect of this which seems to be garnering little attention. The biggest risk of sending Tomahawks is not that the Ukrainians will blow up the Kremlin and start World War Three. The bigger risk is that the Tomahawks are used, and Russia simply moves on after eating the strikes. Tomahawks are arguably one of the last – if not the last – rung in the escalation ladder for the USA. We have rapidly run through the chain of systems that can be given to the AFU, and little remains except a few strike systems like the Tomahawk or the JASSM. Ukraine has generally received everything it has asked for. In the case of Tomahawks, however, the United States is running the most serious risk of all: what if the Russians simply shoot down some of the missiles and eat the rest of the strikes? It’s immaterial whether the Tomahawks damage Russian powerplants or oil refineries. If Tomahawks are delivered and consumed without seriously jarring Russian nerves, the last escalatory card will have been played. If Russia perceives that America has reached the limits of its ability to raise the costs of the war for Russia, it undercuts the entire premise of negotiations. More simply put, Tomahawks are most valuable as an asset to threaten with.

The USA has been relentlessly bluffing, and the Russians have been relentlessly calling those bluffs, since the launch of the Special Military Operation nearly four years ago. There can be little doubt that the Russians will do the same thing if the Tomahawks are deployed against them, and then the US military will be revealed as the paper tiger it is so far outside its zone of influence.

Which, of course, is the one thing the US military cannot afford to happen in light of its global pretensions and asymmetric war with China.

DISCUSS ON SG

Odessa is Next

Col McGregor observes the significance of the recent Russian crossing of the Dnieper River.

The Russians have crossed the Dnieper River. They already have special operations forces and agents on the ground outside of Odessa. They’re now putting together a bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper River. For all intents and purposes, it’s a bridge head that will be utilized to position forces to cross that river in strength. Now, why would the Russians cross the river, the South Dnieper with large forces? It would be to take Odessa.

Why would you take Odessa? Odessa, if it’s in Russian hands, would stop the flow of many, many arms, equipment, and support into Ukraine from the sea, from the Black Sea. Secondly, it would also landlock Ukraine. In other words, turn this future rump state we call Ukraine into a state with no outlet to the sea, which of course would be very harmful to the future of Ukraine. Now, everybody’s saying, “Oh, no, that will never happen.” No, absolutely. I think it’s going to happen…

So, these things take time, but I think at this point, President Putin has probably signaled to the general
staff, let’s plan on taking Odessa.

In the meantime, it’s being reported that the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, has informed President Putin of the encirclement of 31 Ukrainian battalions in the Donetsk region. That implies that between 7,500 and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be forced to surrender before the end of November and quite possibly much sooner.

It goes without saying that if the Kiev regime had any concerns for the fate of the Ukrainian people, it would have surrendered already. The fact that it hasn’t, and that it not likely to do so anytime soon, does not bode well for whatever is left of Ukraine in the post-war period. If Russia now feels the time is right to take Odessa, that suggests that the UFA has been weakened to the point that it will not be able to put up much in the way of resistance, given its importance to the Kiev regime.

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Cold War 2.0

The strategists of Clown World have belatedly realized that the neocons are not only lunatics, but rank amateurs when it comes to assessing military capabilities and are attempting to establish some sort of Cold War-style detente with China before the asymmetric warfare of the last 25 years goes hot. A 100-page report offers some principles and initiatives conceived to replace the outmoded idea that the US military can simply enforce the will of its masters with regards to the Middle Kingdom. (PDF)

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries

  • Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
  • Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
  • In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
  • Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.
  • Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.
  • There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.

Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry

  • Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
  • Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
  • Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.
  • Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.
  • Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.

I think it is at least 15 years too late for any sort of meaningful rapprochement between China and the Clown World West, because the Chinese now understand what we have also learned in the interim: there is an ancient and malevolent evil that is not limited by human reason or timeframes that is the motivating force behind Clown World. Any compromise with it will eventually result in submission and destruction.

I am not the only one who is skeptical. Simplicius, too, has serious doubts about the ability of the Western states to change their course, as well as the probability that the Chinese will be convinced to alter their own.

It’s clear that RAND is trying desperately to make US policymakers abandon their obsolete and blinkered world view centered on the idea that any challenger must by its nature represent the selfsame kind of hegemonic exceptionalism cultivated by the US itself for over a century. The US views the entire world as a threat in the same light that a thief mistrusts all those around him—it is past guilt sublimated into national suspicion and Machiavellian subversiveness.

The US, being the pernicious by-blow of the late British Empire, has inherited all the hawkish trappings of its former parent. RAND here attempts to ween the US political culture away from this perpetually adversarial and hostile approach to foreign diplomacy because, as it has become apparent, the people ‘behind the scenes’ have slowly recognized not that confrontation with China will lead to some kind of global war, but rather the much barer reality that the US simply isn’t what it once was, and does not have the sheer overwhelming capability to bully the world’s foremost ascendant power. Thus, this RAND call to action is not—as they would have us believe—some kind of de-escalatory peacenik measure, but rather a desperate attempt to stave off the US from a historically fatal humiliation and geopolitical defeat at the hands of China.

I tend to agree that this attempt at establishing a new detente is nothing more than the desperate flailings of a failing power to avoid its now-inevitable decline and fall.

DISCUSS ON SG

Carriers to the Caribbean

Well, at least one carrier, anyhow:

The Pentagon plans to send the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, marking a major escalation of the Trump administration’s military campaign to target drug smugglers and threaten governments in Latin America. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which is currently deployed in the Mediterranean, to the Caribbean, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday, bringing dozens more fighter and surveillance aircraft, along with other Navy warships that accompany a carrier.

The further away it is from Russia or China, the better. It would be good if the USA would withdraw all of its military forces from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and concentrate on its own sphere of influence while it still has one.

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Immigration is Importing Poverty

The big lie about immigration is that it is “good for the economy” and “necessary to maintain the social security structure”. Because in any advanced economy, immigrants reduce the productivity of labor and impose a tremendous financial burden on the economy that significantly outweigh any benefits they could ever collectively provide.

New data shows that foreigners account for a substantial share of people living in absolute poverty in Italy, even as the poverty rates of families with two Italian parents drops. One director of La Verita newspaper, Maurizio Belpietro, has run an opinion piece in his newspaper lamenting that Italy is “importing poverty.”

“We are importing poor people. Of the total immigrant population, 35.6 percent live in absolute poverty. This rate is five times higher than that of Italians,” writes Belpietro, who is an influential voice in Italian politics with 360,000 followers on X.

He further notes that although foreigners make up a small percentage of the population, they represent a huge share of the number of people living in poverty.

“Of the 2.2 million households living in poverty, i.e., do not have enough income to support a minimum standard of living, 1.5 million are Italian and 733,000 are foreigners. This means that, despite being less than a tenth of the population, poor non-EU citizens are one third of the total,” he wrote. The data, from the Italian government’s Istat, shows that for those families with one Italian and one foreign parent, the absolute poverty rate is only slightly lower, at 30.4 percent.

Claims that mass immigration would “save” European pension systems are increasingly running into reality.

Citing the article, Italian commentator Francesca Totolo wrote on X: “No, immigrants do not pay pensions to Italians. The absolute poverty rate among families of only foreigners is 35.2%, while among families of only Italians it is 6.2%. This means that it is and will be Italians who have to pay for assistance, subsidies, housing, and pensions to foreigners without resources.”

This finding has been replicated in many other countries, which shows that the left’s promise that foreigners would feed into the pension system falters when confronted with the data. Notably, there are substantial differences between EU and non-EU foreigners, with EU foreigners often boosting GDP and contributing to the tax base, in particular those from certain EU countries.

According to a landmark study from the Netherlands, the report found that migrants had cost the state €400 billion between 1995 and 2019. In Germany, the estimated cost of migrants is currently at €50 billion a year, including social benefits, housing, integration, education, and child allowances.

In 2021, French author and academic Jean-Paul Gourévitch said in an interview with Radio Sud that employment data show that it is a myth that immigration to France has economic benefits.

“I have studied this topic extensively and today everyone in France, from the left to the right agrees that immigration costs more than it brings in,” Gourévitch said. “There is a major difference between left and right (oriented) economists regarding the costs: the leftist economists say the deficit is six to ten billion [euros per year], while those on the right say it is 40 to 44 billion. My own scientific research shows that the deficit is 20 to 25 billion [euros],” he said.

There is absolutely no positive economic argument for permitting mass immigration except for the appeal to debt-funded GDP growth that could be much less expensively provided by simply having the government distribute more spending money directly to the native population to boost consumer spending.

Mass immigration is an economic disaster as well as a societal disaster. There are only three solutions: mass repatriations, mass violence and ethnic cleansings, and total societal collapse. And no amount of magic-wording, word-spelling, and name-calling is going to create a viable fourth option.

The mass importation of foreigners is almost unprecedented in history. And extreme policies such as we have suffered will inevitably result in extreme consequences.

Consider that Great Britain has been invaded by 10x more foreigners than have invaded Ukraine. How can anyone expect the consequences for Great Britain to be less significant over time than the consequences of defeat for Ukraine? A military invasion is often less significant over time, because in the case of a military invasion, most of the foreigners eventually return home.

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A Special Interview

This is a real treat! Big Serge interviews Dr. Sean McMeekin, the author of the excellent book STALIN’S WAR:

Big Serge: “One of the first things that stands out about your work is that you have found success writing about topics which are very familiar to people and have a large extant corpus of writing. World War One, the Russian Revolution, World War Two, and now a broad survey of Communism – these are all subjects with no shortage of literature, and yet you have consistently managed to write books that feel refreshing and new. In a sense, your books help “reset” how people understand these events, so for example Stalin’s War was very popular and was not perceived as just another World War Two book. Would you say that this is your explicit objective when you write, and more generally, how do you approach the challenge of writing about familiar subjects?”

Dr. McMeekin: “Yes, I think that is an important goal when I write. I have often been called a revisionist, and it is not usually meant as a compliment, but I don’t particularly mind the label. I have never understood the idea that a historian’s job is simply to reinforce or regurgitate, in slightly different form, our existing knowledge of major events. If there is nothing new to say, why write a book?

Of course, it is not easy to say something genuinely new about events such as the First World War, the Russian Revolution, or World War Two. The scholar in me would like to think that I have been able to do so owing to my discovery of new materials, especially in Russian and other archives less well-trodden by western historians until recently, and that is certainly part of it. But I think it is more important that I come to this material – and older material, too – with new questions, and often surprisingly obvious ones.

For example, in The Russian Origins of the First World War, I simply took up Fritz Fischer’s challenge, which for some reason had been forgotten after “Fischerites” (most of them less than careful readers of Fischer, apparently) took over the field. In the original 1961 edition of Griff nach der Weltmacht (Germany’s “Bid” or “Grab” for World Power, a title translated more blandly but descriptively into English as Germany’s Aims in the First World War), Fischer pointed out that he was able to subject German war aims to withering scrutiny because basically every German file (not destroyed in the wars) had been declassified and opened to historians owing to Germany’s abject defeat in 1945 – while pointing out that, if the secret French, British, and Russian files on 1914 were ever opened, a historian could do the same thing for one of the Entente Powers. I had already done a Fischer-esque history on German WWI strategy, especially Germany’s use of pan-Islam (The Berlin-Baghdad Express), inspired by a similar epigraph in an old edition of John Buchan’s wartime thriller Greenmantle – Buchan predicted that a historian would come along one day to tell the story “with ample documents,” joking that when this happened he would retire and “fall to reading Miss Austen in a hermitage.” So it was a logical progression to ask, if Fischer can do this for Germany’s war aims, why not Russia?

Both the interview and the book are highly recommended.

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