The Defense Ministry of Ukraine has announced the start of a program to train Ukrainian soldiers to fight under city conditions, said Lieut. Col. Vladislav Ponomarev, deputy head of combat training at the chief training directorate of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), as cited by ArmyInform.
According to Ponomarev, this training will commence next year at the base of a new training complex, the construction of which has begun in the Lviv region. An entire “miniature city” will be built at the training ground, with all the necessary infrastructure: a shopping center, hotel, a car service station, bank, mine etc., so that troops can practice combat under city conditions.
The General Staff of the AFU intends to train 8-12 tactical battalion groups from AFU brigades at the testing ground, in addition to two that have already been trained this year. Each brigade will be given two weeks to practice city warfare.
“The training of each division will require two weeks, and every brigade which arrives to regain combat effectiveness will learn to fight in cities,” said Ponomarev.
The financing of the “Action in Urbanized Terrain” training center has already been approved by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and government.
(C)UAWIRE 2019
That sounds great. I guess if Minsk will fail (and it will), Ukraine has to retake Donbas town by town, city by city. Fighting in populated areas is very difficult because of the civilian population and sniper fire. The Javelins could be handy to target tanks in a city, but i read that Ukraine so far only has 4 Javelins, the rest is Javelin ammo – falsely categorized as Javelins as well. (Correct me if i’m wrong)
It would not be advisable to start any such offensive without having a state of the art air defence architecture; there is a lot of land to protect and if putler started losing ground, he would likely resort to air power. Same story with the Kerch bridge: it should be destroyed, but there would need to be preparation for massive retaliation. As previously stated, we know now that Ukraine is effectively alone in its existential struggle. Therefore it has no choice if it wants to survive: it must somehow strive to become a great military power. That objective should be prioritised over everything else.
Agreed, any planning to retake Donbas HAS to assume direct Federation intervention to one extent of the other.
To do other wise would be criminal or treason.
To minimize this risk, Ukraine must execute the operation swiftly and violently. so the objectives can be taken before Russian meddling can be effective.
That means having a credible deterrence so they think hard about their losses.
Right now a well developed multi layer air defense is the best deterrence for an all out invasion. The Russians will be reluctant to commit expensive air assets if there is a serious risk of expensive and embarrassing loses.
With that deterrence the next most important thing in maintaining the momentum of the attack is a fast, responsive artillery system. Being able to quickly lay suppressive fire on an enemy position will be essential to keeping up the pressure on the enemy. A unit can not wait for 30 minutes to get smoke and HE on a target and still keep pushing forward.
The third most important thing is for the Military is to adopt a decentralized command and control philosophy. The operation will need to be well planned out so forward advancing units have all the resources readily available to overcome the predictable obstacles ie; engineers, scouts, artillery etc. However the forward unit commanders also need to have the flexibility to deal with the unforeseen problems that inevitably arise.
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Contrary to popular myth the German Blitzkrieg worked not because of tanks and dive bombers(They certainly helped) It worked because lower level commanders like Romel and Manstine and Guderian didn’t need to ask permission to advance. When they saw opportunities they took them. Given the circumstances of today’s warfare, this is far more effective than the highly centralized Soviet model. This will however be hard for the Ukraine military to get used to,
Lastly the Ukraine military must continue to develop it’s budding NCO Corp. Urban battles are ordered by Generals. Planned by Majors and Captains and executed by Sergeants. Most of these battles are decide by a lonely Sargent grabbing his squad and taking one house and then tenaciously pushing on to the next and the next. You don’t get that from scared conscripts who just want to hold until they get discharged. It takes well trained professionals with a strong sense of duty.
Except for the SAMs all of these things Ukraine develop on their own will tough realistic training. Not set piece dog and pony shows for the Brass and the press.
Ok lecture over.
Sir, thank you Major, sir!
The last shipment of Javelins included 10 launchers and 150 missiles. I am not sure how many were in previous shipments.
The biggest kick in the balls is a little known fact that a condition of the sale is that they cannot be used in the conflict in Donbas
If you can fkn believe that !!!!
“A $47 million U.S. military-aid package approved last year and confirmed in March specified 210 Javelin antitank missiles and 37 Javelin launchers, two of them spares, for Kyiv.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/javelin-missile-delivery-ukraine-us-confirmed/29200588.html
Thanks, Red. So Ukraine has about 40 launchers, not 4. That’s quite good but too few to deal with a large scale russian assault. BTW, me and Suzanna will leave for Sydney tomorrow to spend x-mas with Larisa. This means until Jan 31 i won’t be posting articles. Will have to see if i have time to drop by for some comments then. 😉🎅
Sweet trip and sweet vacation. I’m jealous! Have a good time. I will try to pick up the slack on the articles. Just finally bought my new car yesterday so now that that’s finished I will have some time.
I’m surprised that they are starting city combat training just now. This has been a part of US military training programs for decades. Urban warfare is an important and difficult part of an all-around military training program.
Surprisingly no.
when I was a bright eyed young LT (lieutenant) the army’s doctrine on urban warfare was pretty much; “Urban warfare is time consuming and expensive in resources so…don’t do it.”
However after DS and the battle of Mogadishu that started changing. There was even a Mounted Urban warfare center at Ft Knox.
I think it has been moved to the NTC and Ft Erwin now.
The Knox center was amazingly cool with built in gas explosions collapsing buildings. A guy I met and Knox said it was scary as shit.
Interestingly as the invasion of Iraq was cranking up people said the “US cant fight in cities.”
Surprise!
Been a par of UK Army for god knows how many years. So many in fact the names for it have changed several times as have the training grounds.
A Part of UK Army training.
Excellent1
You are seeing the Western influence (Mostly the US) on the Ukraine military in action. the battle space of Ukraine has changed since the great Patriotic War. There won’t be the grand sweeping maneuvers of those days.
A hunter killer team with oddern ATGMs hold in a village can harass the shit out of a passing colium of vehicles. Encirclements of cities will still happen but as the battles in Mosul. Raqqa and Aleppo have demonstrated small numbers of determined fighters can be tough to dig out block by block and house to house.
The good news is that this training will benefit Ukraine if Putin decides on out right invasion.
I am glad the Ukraine military is showing for foresight and correcting this glaring weakness in their training.
Conversely, all the branches of the vatniki armed forces receive special extended training in toilet theft.