Categoría: THE VULNERABILITIES OF THE ENEMY

Action Interfaces as Zones of Tactical Development against the Enemy. Second Part.

A “weapons system” seeks to attack the enemy preferably in a certain way, taking advantage of its lethal or neutralizing potential. Against it, an enemy will always find an increasingly effective defense: armor, fire, obstacles, mobility; dispersion, concealment with or without cover, etc.

Combined weapons systems seek to produce a synergy, a multiplication of the individual capabilities of the weapons, a compensation for weaknesses or drawbacks and a weakening of enemy capabilities, together with a greater exposure or accentuation of its tactical vulnerabilities.

This synergy should produce effects on enemy combat capabilities and on its speed of action or capacity for movement: It must neutralize enemy defense. It must create in the enemy a vulnerable overexposure, when receiving the effective, complementary and coordinated action of the inter-arms systems. It must produce an operational indecision in the enemy, which harms its speed and capacity to react.

The inter-arms system is a technological and tactical way of increasing the favorable active interfaces on the enemy. It is an element of the operational strategy, carried out on the interesting points of the enemy deployment, to create a tactical vulnerability and to be able to produce the decision or the exploitation with the minimum wear of the available combat capacity of its own.

In the supplementary systems, the enemy defends itself in the same way from all the attacking elementary systems. A kind of saturation or maximum effect of the form of attack undertaken is sought. An example is the indirect fire of artillery and mortars.

In the complementary systems, one of the systems attacks the enemy and when the latter reacts defensively, seeking to dislocate the attacker, it becomes especially vulnerable to the action of the other or several of the other weapon systems used. The enemy thus suffers an extension of his vulnerability, over a longer time or space of action, achieving the three desired effects.

A complementary system is that formed by the obstacle and the fire. To overcome the obstacle, the enemy must concentrate and/or stop his advance and this reduces his impetus or quantity of movement and makes him especially vulnerable to repulse fire, which must not destroy the obstacle. Another complementary system is the fire and tactical maneuver developed by the small units or advance spears of an attack.

Another complementary combined arms system would be the convergent maneuver, taking advantage of positions and terrain and the available combat capacity, echelon it laterally to create more favorable interfaces. Faced with each convergent attack sector, the enemy has to react in a different way. With this, he creates vulnerabilities not well estimated by the enemy, in favor of the rest of the sectors that intervene. On the other hand, the combat capacity deployed towards a rejection will not always be in the best orientation to employ it in another more or less expected direction. If this is combined with neutralizing support fire, the entire enemy system is severely disrupted and dispersed, in its defense plan, in its fire plan and in its conduct.

The inter-arms system seeks to paralyze the enemy’s action or severely disrupt it, by affecting the quality of the combat capacity, generating in it a contradictory and more ineffective mode of action. It also acts in the same way in the successive cycles of action, divided into observation, situation, decision and action. And it does so through the direct deprivation suffered by the enemy of acting coherently and consistently in them, due to the incapacitation of its available combat capacity.

The analysis of the search for the decision in World War I will give us a practical example of the application of the search for the appropriate action interfaces, using inter-arms systems that are different in their composition, although with identical effects and results. Since the tactical solutions achieved on both sides lacked the complement of the sufficient operational movement capacity (the other of the operating systems with which it forms a complementary interactive pair), the operational strategic solution could not be achieved.

The origin of the German assault forces (Stormtroopers) , at the end of 1916, was in the awareness of the need and the possibility of fragmenting the pseudo-compact enemy front, into smaller sectors of advance, practically into advance spears, in which to act through an inter-arms or combined arms system. Favorable action interfaces would thus be created, in which to be able to act with freedom of action, at the level of reinforced assault platoons, which would advance by covered jumps to the enemy positions, behind a relatively short barrage of fire.

Supports in tactical subordination would include Russians shortened 76.2 mm guns, who were very well suited for heavy direct fire support and who lacked the backlash of other cut-off pieces, heavy grenade launchers, light mortars, machine guns and flamethrower squads and engineer platoons (pioneers). These last three supports would be those that would accompany the infantry to the direct assault of the trenches or enemy defense strong points. These were thus isolated from the support of their artillery or other nearby positions, which were neutralized by the German heavy artillery or by other assault sections.

On the other hand, on the Allied side, it was the English who used the first tanks (tanks was their code name in their development), heavy and clumsy, at the level this time of the great front of wide sectors, to provide continuous direct fire support to their infantry and enable them to successfully fight deep into the German tactical zone and even break through it. They were also used to clear trenches along their lines, protected by their armor and using mainly their machine guns.

However, neither side had a single “medium” that could maintain, depending on the use and circumstances, an adequate tactical speed and operational speed without interruption between them. In short, it could successively achieve tactical and operational objectives. The logistic support system was also not developed enough to be able to quickly send a significant flow of supplies and people along narrow, unconsolidated lines of advance.

In effect, there was a tactical speed (very few km per hour) that could be maintained both by infantry (of course, also German) and by tanks designed to support it, and a higher operational speed, maintained by the railway and trucks and other vehicles in the deep operational zone of each belligerent side.

This meant that, once a local tactical breakthrough was achieved, exploitation within the enemy operational zone could not be achieved. Faced with this, any of the contenders would bring their operational or strategic reserves closer in time and convert them into units deployed with full combat readiness. Thus, they created a new tactical zone very close to the breakthrough, blocking it.

To achieve the operational decision, a “means” was needed that was capable of acting with a certain autonomy at both levels of war activity: the tactical or immediate and the operational or deep and transcendent.

In modern warfare, with a considerable deployment of close and long-range, direct and indirect firepower, despite the progressive emptiness of the immediate battlefield (almost thirteen times greater in this world war than a century earlier, in Napoleon’s campaigns), this «means» could only be a well-armed vehicle, sufficiently protected and powered by an internal combustion engine.

But acting according to the tactics of relatively narrow sectors and combined arms systems, developed by the Germans for their assault forces and subsequently used by all their infantry in the general campaign of the spring of 1918, from March 21 to July 18, the date on which the Allies began their general offensive. And counting on reasonable logistics, which would compensate for wear and tear, maintenance and the capacity for operational movement.

In 1917 and 1918, neither of the two sides, neither the Cordial Entente or the Allies nor the European Central Empires, possessed either the two concepts or the specific elements of their application. In fact, a polished and developed synthesis (integrating the nascent war aviation into the German infantry inter-arms system) of the ideas and means of both would be necessary.

However, the Western Allies had the classic means in relative abundance. And they used them according to the knowledge of the time to achieve a strategic decision in the Western European theater. Generalissimo Foch used a strategy of hammering, of stubborn reiteration of efforts. Seeking that the «tactical reaction» provoked in the Germans would affect the strategic capacity of systematic renewal of their defensive front. And, in the end, this German strategic combat capacity collapsed.

And thus the Allies achieved the strategic decision of the war.

THE END

Weapons and Their Defense in the History. Third Part.

However, the Mongols flung upon it, Almost completely surrounding the camp and showering it with bombs and incendiary arrows, which burned the wagon trains and tents and frightened the beasts. They sowed chaos among their enemies and already shattered the Hungarians’ self-confidence.

Curiously (or not?), the Mongols still hadn’t completed or covered with any detachments the siege of the Hungarian wagon camp through the gorge leading into the heath. The Hungarian cavalry still with sufficient moral courage, formed a wedge to resist the charge; it was the last firm stand of the Hungarian army. However, most of them retreated through the «gap» in the siege, fleeing in small groups toward what they believed would be their salvation. And, truly falling into a deadly trap, which extended along the entire route of their flight to Pest.

The Mongol light cavalry, taking no risks, softened up the knight’s desperate wedge-shaped deployment from a distance with their bows and arrows, and then, seizing their opportunity, the heavy cavalry charged to crush them.

Numerous Mongol light detachments, in turn, set out in pursuit of the fugitives. One group pressed them directly from the rear, increasing their commotion, chaos, and fear. Meanwhile, other detachments carried out the «overwhelming pursuit,» catching up with them from the sides and spearing them or shooting arrows them from their mounts.

The remains of the Hungarians, their horses, equipment, and baggage were scattered along the road back to Pest for 50 kilometers. More than 70,000 Hungarian cavalry and auxiliaries perished on the battlefield, in the temporary encampment, and in the flight to the southwest.

After the Battle of the Sakh, Hungarian resistance collapsed.

The Mongols then attacked Pest and burned it. But they did not dare to cross to the west side of the Danube, exploiting their success, despite the moral and numerical superiority they enjoyed at the time. Batu and Subodai rested their army and consolidated their positions east of the great river. More than half a year passed, the main event being a half-hearted declaration of a crusade against them by the Pope, which achieved little in practice.

In December 1241, the Danube froze in this large region. The Mongols took advantage of the situation to sack Buda, reconnoissance in force in Austria, and sent a detachment south toward Zagreb in pursuit of King Béla. On the 25th, they assaulted Gran, the Hungarian capital and seat of its archbishopric, taking with them everything valuable and antique they could.

A portentous end for Europe.

Central andWestern Europe were ripe for a Mongol invasion. The Europeans lacked an army capable of confronting this threat, which was already breathing down their necks. The strategic plan Subodai explained to the Khan and his generals seemed to be faithfully carried out down to its final stages. But this was now merely an illusion, an impossibility. An «appearance,» as Sun Tzu would say.

OGEDEI GREAT KHAN

On December 11, 1241, they had received at Batu and Subodai‘s headquarters an escorted messenger from Karakorum, the Mongol capital. He brought news that Ogedai, the Great Khan, had died and that his widow was acting as regent until a new Mongol emperor was elected and ascended the throne. The Mongol princes present in the camps were eager to assert their rights to the succession and decided to return to their capital, taking the imperial tumans with them. Batu knew that without these elite troops, he could not hold Hungary, but he believed that with the Turkmen recruits, who were already experienced and had seen combat, he could retain most of his territories.

Thus, the Mongols evacuated Hungary, unhindered, harassed, or pursued by their enemies. Although they left behind the land that had been theirs devastated. This was a symbol of their idiosyncrasy and plundering nature, a land bandit and absolute predator. And they lacked the slightest capacity to create, maintain, develop, extend, and bequeath to their successors a civilization worthy of the name. And they could leave them only the accumulated results of their atrocities, bonds, tributes, plunder, and loot, and the military lessons to obtain them.

Sarai, capital of the subsidiary Empire of the Golden Horde.

Batu returned to his original base camp, in Sarai, near the Volga and barely 100 km north of Astrakhan. And there he established a subsidiary Mongol empire, which became known as the Golden Horde.

The Mongols would have no other opportunity to invade Europe. After this aberrant nightmare suffered by the Europeans, they invented all kinds of stories and myths, in which they recounted how they had defeated the «Tatar» invaders (as the Mongols were generally known in Europe) and forced them to return to their lands.

This unthinkable, sudden, and portentous result, occurring in the last possible moments… Was it a work of the Fate and Karma of Europe and its privileged Civilization? Or was it the result of Divine Intervention through the intercession of the Virgin Mary?

Of course, it was, humanly speaking, an excessive and incredible coincidence. But faith can never provide «evidence» either, because it would cease to be evidence and become verifiable reality. The effective Divine Intervention, in favor of Europe and its civilization, which without Christianity acting from its core would never resemble what it was and what it is, is likely, because It is never thunderous or overwhelming.

OGEDEI, LORD OF ASIA AND SUCCESOR OF GENGHIS KAN

God did not visit Elijah in a lightning storm or a hurricane, but in a gentle, soft breeze. And, for esotericists and syncretists, the explanation could be «a cosmic action of astral and Akashic forces, in favor of Light, Peace, and Human Civilization toward higher levels of Universal Consciousness.»

There is also a common «rational» explanation for what happened, but it cannot pinpoint the moment for this opportune withdrawal. The Mongols and associated Central Asian tribes were creating a Eurasian empire in the first half of the 13th century. But their material capabilities and ideological and religious resources were not adequate for such an important objective.

As we have seen, they had nothing satisfactory or lasting to offer the peoples of the occupied countries. The Mongols were kept in these foreign lands by the threat of known terror. As with other tyrants who sought to become «global,» their necessary collaborators were ethnically or ideologically similar. But the Mongol ethnic group and its ilk were demographically insignificant, for allowing them to monitor and defend themselves alone. All of this, in the decades since the invasion of Eastern Europe, had strained their military capabilities to the breaking point.

Thus, sooner rather than later, the Mongols would have had to undertake this general retrograde march to secure and consolidate their lands in Eastern Eurasia. They would have distanced themselves from contact with dynamic, ideological, and expansive civilizations, such as Europe, with which their relations of neighborliness and early exchanges of merchants, explorers, and adventurers would have been resolved through military confrontation.

(to be continued)

Weapons and Their Defense in the History. Second Part.

The Mongols Armies.

The Mongol Army’s cavalry was divided into light and heavy cavalry.

Their most distinctive weapon, used by all cavalry, was the S-shaped composite bow, which, properly drawn, could launch an arrow over 300 meters away. Its length made it useful for shooting from a mount.

The Mongols were herders, and their occupation gave them a lot of free time. This allowed them to amuse themselves by shooting the composite bow, thereby achieving great skill in its shooting and use and, very importantly, maintaining it over time.

Light cavalry was intended to harass the enemy in formation, send patrols ahead of their main body to gather intelligence, and pursue and finish off the defeated enemy as they fled.

Heavy cavalry struck the enemy in the clash; care was taken to ensure that the enemy was tired, dispersed, or in the minority.

The Mongols did not have a sufficient siege formation. They defeated the entrenched enemy with lures and tricks. And, by offering them a much-desired advantage, they trapped them.

Development.

In 1241, some 100,000 Mongols crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border to attack Hungary. A detachment of 20,000 men, two Mongol tumans or divisions, under the command of Princes Baidar and Kadan, will be tasked with ensuring that the Hungarians receive no reinforcements from Poland, Germany, or Bohemia.

To this end, they defeat the concentrations of forces from those countries at Chmielnik, about 18 km from Krakow. They lure the enemy into pursuit without prior combat, into an ambush, appearing to the enemy as a raiding party retreating to its base.

And, at Liegnitz, about 60 km west of Breslau, they employ a mangudai to deceive them. It consisted that a Mongol army «corps,» inferior to the enemy, seriously engaging in the fight with them. Its size was large enough to make the Mongol effort considered significant. This would mentally lure the enemy away from any other thoughts or possibilities. After a fierce battle, the sheer weight of the enemy forced the Mongol corps to retreat.

Batu crosses the Sakh with 40,000 men via the Stone Bridge

What had been a tactical retreat, never truly disorderly, was mistaken by its enemies as an exploitable defeat. Its complete and permanent ignorance of the Mongol enemy left it unaware of anything. And its desire for victory, heightened by the genuine effort exerted in the initial engagement, prevented it from seeing beyond its reach.

The relentless, full-throttle pursuit eventually dispersed the tight, solid formations of the European nobles. At one point during the pursuit, always far from the waiting enemy forces, the bulk of the Mongol heavy cavalry emerged, hidden, fresh, and launched into the clash. It ultimately broke up the disjointed cavalry groups into which the European pursuers had dispersed.

After a genuine hunt, the European forces remaining in the initial positions of the battle either dispersed as well or were in turn attacked by the entire Mongol force.

By then, in less than a month of operations, 20,000 Mongols (at the outset) had advanced some 650 km into enemy territory and won two decisive battles.

Poland was battered and shaken, and the Germans west of the Oder River were retreating and preparing to defend their kingdoms. The Bohemians, still intact, were some 400 km from the first Hungarian defensive positions on the Danube; therefore, their army was operationally ineffective in achieving the resolution against the Mongol attack on Hungary.

To ascertain the Germans’ «intent,» the Mongols staged a demonstration westward into Germany. King Wenceslas pursued them. At a certain point, the two tumans (-) split into small, elusive detachments. And, forming a cloud almost invisible to the enemy, they slipped past both sides of the Bohemian army and retreated eastward.

Recreation General Subodai Bahadur

In their retreat to join the main Mongol army (80,000 men), commanded by Subudai Bahadur, the Khan’s deputy, the Mongols crossed Moravia, ravaging its villages, warehouses, and fields. They thus created a vast desert wasteland, which would further protect Subudai‘s right flank by rendering those Moravian lands incapable of sustaining a passing army for any length of time.

The remnants of Princes Baidar and Kadan‘s forces managed to join Subudai‘s forces and continue to participate in his campaign.

General Subudai had devised and presented the invasion and attack plan to the Khan and his generals, and had been placed in command of the forces to carry it out.

Subudai concentrated his army in three marching groups. Each would enter Hungary by a different route, through the passes and valleys of the Carpathian Mountains. This deployment provided the Mongols with protection from enemy surprises and gave them an initial deployment, preparatory to the maneuvers of their three mobile corps. The Hungarians, for their part, did not dare attack any of them, for fear of the other corps advancing on their operational rear or capturing some of their cities.

On April 3, Subudai formed his three mobile attack columns opposite Pest, on the east bank of the Danube. There stood King Béla of Hungary with his army of 100,000 men. Across the river, linked by bridges, lay Buda.

Having also deployed a tuman to Transylvania to ensure that the Christians did not receive reinforcements from Romania, the Mongols now numbered about 70,000 (plus) men. And the more time Subudai took in his calculations, decisions, and preparations, the more time other European rulers would have to make up their minds and come to support king Béla.

The Mongol general applied one of his combat stratagems on a strategic scale: his army retreated east. Using «reasoning,» the Hungarian commanders assumed that the Mongols did not dare to fight against their more powerful army. And, spurred on by their inaction in the face of the unhindered advance of the three Mongol columns, they demanded the King Bela to begin their pursuit. The Hungarians did not appreciate that Subudai was luring them away, from the protection of the Danube and the support of detachments and corps of the Hungarian army.

King Béla IV of Hungary.

King Béla, commanding the vast majority of his army, led the pursuit against the Mongols. The Mongol retreat was deliberately slow. It took them six days to reach the Sakho River, about 160 km northeast of Buda and Pest.

West of the river and on the plain opposite Mohi, the main town in the area, Prince Batu and Sabudai decided to confront their «pursuers.» On April 9, the Mongols crossed a wide gorge, advanced through a heath, crossed a Stone Bridge, and continued some 16 km to the thickets west of the Tokay hills and vineyards. There, they had numerous places to camouflage and hide.

Prince Batu, founder of the Golden Horde

The Hungarian army, pursuing them head-on, encamped in the heath, arranging their wagons in a circle, where they set up their tents, equipment, and horses. To the right of the temporary camp were the swamps along the banks of the Tisza River, to their front lay the Sakho Heath, and to their left were forests and small hills.

At dawn on Wednesday, April 10, 1241, Batu and around 40,000 men advanced toward the stone bridge from its eastern side. The Hungarians defended it vigorously, until they were forced to retreat due to the «fire bombs» launched by the Mongol catapults, as they were on a very narrow front.

We are now seeing, quite clearly, how the opposing rivals are assuming the roles of winner and loser. And that this situation continues until the very end. These are some of the «signs» that announce and precede the final results of the war dialectic.

The Mongols crossed to the western side of the Sakh, but for more than two hours, they were terribly pressed by the Hungarian charges, and only the fire of their archers allowed them to briefly reestablish their defensive line. Little by little, the Hungarian army deployed to eliminate the Mongol bridgehead over the Sakh.

Suddenly, General Subodai, who had also crossed to the western side via a makeshift bridge built downstream of the Sakh, while the Hungarians were distracted by the threat of the Mongol bridgehead, appeared with around 30,000 Mongols in the Hungarian rearguard.

Beaten and stunned, but with the courage and experience to avoid panic, the Hungarians retreated in good order to their nearby camp.

(To be Continued)

Russia and its Super Hypersonic Ballistic Missiles

Introduction.

Russia, the predatory Empire, which sells raw materials, oil, natural gas, electricity, rare minerals, and buys and copies technologies of all kinds and more sophisticated goods and maintains an incomplete Armed Forces. In 2024, they totaled some 900 thousand active troops.

The structure of these has an immediate officialdom, Junior Officials and Officers, in charge of carrying out the orders of the battalion commander. The orders of the battalion commanders are received from their brigade commanders (general brigadier), where the operational action of the forces is specified: making the tactical actions of the subordinate forces have a transcendence, an already operational importance, in the «higher plans».

The non-commissioned officers, corporals and sergeants, rise from the troops, from among the most active, experts and, perhaps, loyal. There are no non-commissioned officer academies in Russia, which would prepare them for their duties in the ranks. And these “classes” (the non-commissioned officers) are the ones that accompany, inspire and directly command the soldiers in all kinds of military operations.

The troops see them “as one of their own, not necessarily always the best.” And they consider this promotion to be their merit, distinguishing them from the troops. The officers, in turn, maintain their training status, command and prerogatives.

It is difficult to find here the weft and the plot for the forces of an army to always function in harmony, efficiency, training and professionalism.

We exclude the Rocket and Space Forces, Special Forces, Engineers and part of the Artillery and Armored Forces. They are an elite that boasts of it. And, on which Russia and its ruling class depend for its survival.

Valery Gerasimov is the Chief of the General Staff. And, in view of the successes that Russian soldiers were achieving in their combats and other operations in Ukraine, Putin also appointed him Chief of the Special Military Operation Forces in Ukraine. And, practically, Valery disappeared from the sight of the public and journalists.

A Chief must have his Advanced Command Posts so close to the active enemy, that it facilitates the leadership of the Chief.

During the Polish-Soviet War, from February 1919 to March 1921, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Chief of the Red Army in the Field, had his command post in Kyiv, 500 km from the Front. And, Jozef Pilsidski, the Polish Supreme Commander, continually visited his divisions on the Warsaw front, half surrounded by the Reds. The Reds acted like an Asian horde, living off the territory they trampled, for their vital human needs. Suddenly, Pilsudski counterattacked and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army retreated to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

There are four stages in the trajectory of offensive missiles in which an anti-missile system could act.

They could be destroyed in flight in the atmosphere (even over enemy territory), shortly after their launch. The smoke trail that the engine throws out and the burning flames that accompany it can be detected immediately by satellites and reconnaisance aircraft.

Some attacking missiles could be altered in their trajectory by the strong and punctual action of an electromagnetic field, which acts on their control and guidance device. And it can do so throughout the post-launch stage.

Once fragmented or not, active warheads with multiple ogives, when the targets are already close, can be acted upon, by following final ballistic trajectories. These are easily calculated by the defense against aircraft (DCA).

In the final phase of flight, both missiles and their active multiple warheads can be intercepted by friendly missiles and aircraft, during descent or approach to their target.

An interested perceptive reader can already glimpse the crux.

One of the most important effective factors of the defense system is the Time of Arrival at the Enemy Target.

Current combat systems work up to speeds of Match 3, perhaps 4, more than 3700 km/h.

The Oreshnik (Hazel) 9M729 attack missile, launched from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome in the Astrakhan region, reached the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, on the Dnieper River.

The Russians (Putin) wanted to show clearly what they have.

We must keep in mind that propaganda tends to deceive the enemy as best as possible. One way is by magnifying real, possible and uncertain successes.

The Hazel weighs about 50 tons and its approximate theoretical speed is Match 11, more than 13,500 km/hour. It is not an intercontinental missile, because its characteristics make it difficult to make a parabolic journey as short as the one in fact (Kapustin Yar-Dnipro).

Short-range missiles, up to 500 km, are considered part of reactive or rocket artillery and their attack operations zones are in the enemy tactical zone and in its operational rear. Here the enemy units reform and recompose, rest, supply themselves, advance to occupy combat positions or retreat towards their operational rear in that sector of the front. And, here there are almost no Units in Combat Readiness, for the defense of those areas.

Apparently, the Hazel is capable of carrying 6 submissiles, each of which would carry up to 6 attack warheads, with or without nuclear charge. The Hazel would fly at an impossible speed for the defense against aircraft (DCA) to work with. Because, simply, the data from radars, detection aircraft, would arrive already outmatched, no aircraft or missile of its own could reach and destroy it. It would be like the fox seeing and reaching the Road Runner.

In the Beginning it was the long range. The great enemies were the United States versus China and Russia. Both groups of enemies being geographically far away. The Europeans were stammering in the military nuclear field.

But everything evolves. France, Great Britain and Germany, the latter with its American military bases, were and could be, at first, effective aviation bases with nuclear capabilities.

Russia realized this and began to prepare its medium-range nuclear warhead missiles, capable of destroying nuclear vectors in Western Europe and attacking factories and logistics hubs and cities on the subcontinent.

This was achieved by vectors with a range of 500 km to 5,500 km. A new field of military air operations was born, unthinkable a few decades ago.

It soon became necessary for everyone to control and regulate medium-range vectors. On December 8, 1987, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, which stopped the proliferation of these weapons.

But on 02/01/2019, under Trump, the United States suspended the Treaty, accusing Russia of continuing to test-launch this type of medium-range missile. The next day, Russia also abandoned the Treaty.

And a new battlefield was left open, messy and unfinished.

The Soviet Union is “no longer that”. The Russian Federation is a corrupt and backward country, to which a market economy has been applied. Its military industry is quite suited to its interests.

The Hazel supposedly has a range of 6000 km, which puts it squarely in the category of an intermediate or medium-range missile. And its capabilities crown it as the “Queen of the Party”.

How much does it cost? How many Hazels can they manufacture in a given period of time? Will they dare to use it with atomic nuclear warheads? Do they all work equally well? Is there reproducibility in the manufacturing series? These are fission bombs with a capacity of “tens of thousands of kilotons” of destruction.

Quite sufficient, quite sufficient.

THE WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN. An apocalyptic war? First Part.

Introduction.

We have before us, face to face, the two most dangerous and extraordinary rivals that exist on Earth. They are the Jews or Israelites and the Shiite Islamists.

What gives them similarity? Both have a strong religiosity, resistant to anything, which is part of their identity and the essence of their life.

The Jews or Israelites.

The Jews are a small people, who have survived the vicissitudes of History in a truly unique and special way: persecutions, pogroms, genocides, collective exiles, attempts at religious assimilation, collective guilt received, deportations.

According to their ideology, they are the people Chosen by God to guard and carry through History the Plan of Yaweh for Humanity. They hold, treasure the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. This is where their merit, stamp and superiority are consecrated.

The Israelites have deviated from this many times, but Yahweh‘s anger has always been appeased. Among other things, because God needs them to complete his plan for men. Yahweh has been sending his warners, messengers or prophets to correct them, and he has punished them collectively with exiles, famines, nomadism, a sign that it was the people who had turned away from Him.

For the sons of Israel, God is not a Father. This is implausible. God is a “Great and Powerful Creator Lord”, with all the characteristics in superlative. He leads them along his paths, rewards and punishes them. He made them at his image and likeness; but that does not mean that God has eyes, ears, legs and hands. And, He is Loving with all his creatures.

Only Christians see and feel in God a Father, in Jesus a Brother Redeemer and in the Spirit, the Guide and Consoler of their earthly life, gently and serenely.

This belonging gives the Israelites a reassuring security. They are not proselytizers, they do not seek to spread their religion to others, even to their foreign cohabitants. The others do not belong to the people of God and have nothing to do with Salvation. This is the marrow, the central essence and the core of everything.

This gives the Israelites an unprecedented, solid and secure courage in the face of a terrifying Nuclear War. Which Israel, from the start, does not seek, nor desire. They advance in the battles, without worrying about the greater number of enemies, because Jahweh Fights at their Side.

If God wants it will happen and they will be taken by the angels to Jahweh, at the culmination of History.

The Shiite Muslims.

There is a great ideological and practical difference between Sunnism and Shiism.

The latter feels persecuted, because of the dynastic orthodoxies (it defends the rights of the Prophet’s family to lead Islam) and ideological orthodoxies (it admits fewer sources of revelation, limiting the Hadiths, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet, by their origin – who communicated them- and line of transmission), which the Shiites proclaim and defend.

A’isha, the third and most cultured of the Prophet’s wives, would have been a caliph if she were a man, and Ali, cousin, son-in-law, husband of Fatima, the favorite daughter of Mohammed, are the two main and reputable creators of Hadith for Sunnis and Shiites. They begin like this: I saw…; I heard…; I knew… and the successive transmitters are also added. This chain guarantees the traceability of the hadith.

Omar, the second caliph after Abu Bakr, worked to purify and organize the Hadiths and the texts of the Khoran.

The schism of Islam was consolidated on October 10, 680, when the troops of Yazid, the second Umayyad caliph, defeated and killed Hussein Ben Ali, grandson of Mohammed, in the battle of Kerbala, in Iraq. The total number of casualties on both sides in the decisive battle of Kerbala was seventy.

The supporters of Hussein “son of Ali” (that is, Ben Ali, pronounced in English as Bin Ali. And then we call him as we hear his name, Bin Ali), were called in Arabic shi’at Ali, in short, Shi’is.

Everyone knows, from the displays on the news, the rituals of self-flagellation that devout men practice on certain Iraqi Shiite holidays.

A powerful reason for this sense of sorrow and suffering may be the great demographic inferiority of the Shiites. 90% of Muslims are Sunnis, who occupy the Holy Places of Islam and are spread throughout the world. Of the remaining 10%, the vast majority is Shiite, more than 86%, and the rest corresponds to small fractions, such as the Alawites of Syria, the Turkish dervishes. All of the latter are “heresy within the heresy” for Sunni Muslims.

In effect, the Shiites are like an island (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, which are bordering and with a majority only in Iran and Iraq) surrounded on all sides by the ocean of the Sunnis.

(To be continued)

ACTION INTERFACES as Zones of TACTICAL DEVELOPMENT against the Enemy. Part One.

Introduction.

The action interface is a spatial concept that defines the zone and space where we develop violent action against the enemy and his means, following tactical criteria adapted to the nature of our objectives. The effective action factor in the action interfaces is the combined arms or inter-arms system.

In a penetrating attack, for example, the surface of the interfaces is quantitatively limited and these are selected in the enemy’s depth, according to their critical points and those that hinder the advance of our forces, for example, observatories and anti-tank firing points. In defense, we quantitatively increase the potential interfaces in our depth and in a somewhat laminar way.

The interface is what makes tactical action and the destruction of the enemy possible, applying a pure, chosen, selective and favorable attrition. The absence of interfaces, on the contrary, gives a certain security to any force. With the presence of the enemy, even close by, being a threat.

The interface is not only linear or frontal and with the depth of the range of heavy infantry weapons and tanks. But is extended superficially and spatially by the action of indirect artillery, surface destruction means (reactive artillery) and combat and bombing aircraft. The smaller the interface in an area of ​​operations, the more the operational maneuver criterion will work and in a larger interface. We will seek from advantageous positions and with effective and synergistic means (combined or inter-arms) to annihilate (incapacitate) the enemy.

The speed of exchange (actions and effects) in the interface is qualitatively variable and is conditioned by the transitability of the terrain and by the nature of our intention. In the attack we seek the fluidity of tactical actions. In defense, we wish to add a thickening to them, which will help us break the enemy in front of the front limit of the defense position and in the various ambushes and prepared fire pockets, both main and alternative as well as supplementary, preferably before their irruption.

In the interfaces there are certain critical points, where our tactical interaction with the enemy will be especially effective. These are their tactical vulnerabilities, their gaps in protection or combat capacity or their neglected means of defense, even if they are only so for a time. Combat reconnaissance is essential to detect them and it is the tactical leader’s mission to decide which one or ones to act on, seeking in the tactical decision, the operational significance of the higher command.

Combat capacity is applied on an interface with a variable depth depending on the weapons. Combat capacity has a maximum, useful, relatively stable value for the different weapons or weapon systems, which we can measure in men per meter of action interface.

For the shock, for example, it is not possible to use more than one man per 1.5 ms. of contact interface. For rifle fire, considering a platoon of 50 men useful for about 300 ms of interface, its value drops from 0.6 to 0.15 men per m. of front. Artillery would produce a blinding, disruptive, neutralizing or destructive effect, added to the action in the interface, but complementary to it and never a substitute. Machine gun fire would not substantially lower the proportion, since its fire “equivalent” to that of a certain number of infantry, depending on the terrain and its ability to acquire targets, in rapid fire of 15 rounds per minute and marksman.

Development.

However, from the wars of antiquity to the wars of the 1980s, dispersion has increased from a proportional value of 1 to 5,000 on the battlefield or tactical field. For modern static organized defense, it is equivalent to a battalion of 750 men in 3 km2. Mobile or nuclear defense can triple that surface. This dispersion has emptied the battlefield, now covered by direct fire and indirect fire support, and has allowed the operational terrain of large units to be greatly deepened, up to 50 to 75 km.

An obstruction, a gorge, a river in which the interface was reduced or altered, would limit the real possibilities of the attacker and greatly empower the defender. Thus, the defensive battle of King Leonidas in the Thermopylae gorge would be an example of containment of overwhelmingly superior forces, due to the absolute limitation of the interface of action between the Persian and Spartan armies and not being able to apply it to the critical Greek centers, for example, an exposed flank, until a shepherd served as a guide to a Persian contingent to reach it.

All this operational complication simultaneously makes most of the forces employed in an action unproductive or inactive at a given time.

Given that there is this practical limitation to the use of our available combat capacity, due to the disproportion between tactical space and combat interface, the issue of achieving the maximum application of our force arises.

To achieve this we must:

Increase as much as possible our favorable interfaces with the enemy, especially on the weak and critical points of his deployment; adequately rotate the units in tactical contact; maintain an adequate space for maneuver in our tactical rear, which allows us to push forward the necessary spears of attack or maintain the different possible defensive interfaces in the face of enemy irruption or penetration.

And employ each weapon in the most favorable possible interface of action:

Thus, the weight of the effort will be borne by the infantry in prepared attacks against an enemy ready to repel (for example, an anti-tank front), at long advance distances and in terrain with limited visual control, such as forests, built-up areas and broken terrain, with the tanks supporting them with fire and advancing by covered jumps. The tanks can go ahead in encounter attacks, in slightly undulating terrain and if the enemy has a poorer combat readiness, but taking care that the infantry closes the distance quickly. For short distances, we use the joint attack in the same sector; both weapons can advance from different positions in a convergent attack in encounter combats and in enveloping combats, the synchronization of both being fundamental. Inside the enemy position, the tanks attack the firing positions with their fire and the infantry clears the positions from their flanks.

It is also possible to structurally increase our favorable action interfaces with the enemy.

This is achieved in the attack by breaking through and penetrating favorable sectors and always by encirclement, reversal of fronts and encirclement and by coordinated frontal and overflow pursuit. The attacker’s successive echelons can, in turn, create a favorable action interface against an enemy that is not sufficiently defended, for example, artillery positions or communication centers or logistics parks, and also by a flank attack from our depth with mechanized or armored units, on an enemy counterattack against our penetration.

In the defense, the opposite will occur. The breach of the defense zone, even if it is mobile, will be avoided by increasing the possible unfavorable interfaces for the enemy along its «range».

This is achieved by the echelon in depth of active defensive means and by their preferential placement on the counter-slopes, in covered, hidden, preferably flanking, alternative and supplementary positions and received by a local infantry defense and seeking good and intersecting firing sectors. Also by the increase in interceptions (reinforced cuts, quickly placed minefields, natural obstacles more or less perpendicular to their sectors of advance) defended by fire, which channel the attack towards zones of convergent fire or which delay and erode it. And, finally, by the timely use of local counter-shocks and counter-attacks by mobile or, at least, rapid, tactical or operational reserves. These constitute the extraordinary and unexpected force that acts on enemy vulnerability, which is then in disorganization, dispersion and neutral morale before the consolidation of its gains from the attack.

The effective action factor in the action interfaces is the combined arms or inter-arms system. Each of them individually presents “action characteristics” and more convenient transitability, which give them a preferable target profile and tactical deployment qualities, from whose combination in the system arises the synergy of the whole.

(To be continued)

The Tactical Maneuver in the Defense.

Introduction.

The spirit of mobile defense is ingrained in forward detachments. They fight the enemy using mobility, surprise, harassment, opportunity and local and punctual superiority, depending on the case. And, whose fight is always framed in the probable transfer of space to the enemy. Maneuver always presides over his tactical behavior.

This “active spirit” that animates and inspires the units that fight in front of the defense positions, must animate, or, at least, not be neglected or forgotten by the units that occupy them.

The defense must not only cling to its fortified or improved positions, to carry out the effective rejection of the enemy attack, through its precise, decisive and opportune fire.

Development of the Fight.

At least part of the defense forces, depending on the missions, the possible opportunities, the battlefields, their own capabilities and that of the enemy, must be trained and emotionally prepared to carry out tactical movements, to more effective and timely defense positions.

For example, carrying out from another support point, with part of its garrison, a local counter-shock against a partial penetration, not yet consolidated, achieved by part of the attacker. Enemy break-in that closely threatens another support point, preferably in the same defense sector.

If we make a delay defense, staffs from other delay points will make larger and more definitive tactical maneuvers. In the former, when a delay point is in danger of being surpassed or overwhelmed by an enemy attack, it must release and withdraw. Generally, by successive jumps, to the rear or to another delay point in the mobile defense by forward detachments. Where they should be received, to facilitate their new deployment in the location.

These delay points would be supported by a natural obstacle, a height, a river, etc. Delay points should never be deployed on the forward slope; seeking, for example, to open fire on the enemy at maximum distances. On the other hand, observatories and resistance nests should be placed on the forward slope or on the military ridge. The delay point will be deployed well down the back slope.

Use of tactical reserves.

Own reserves, concentrated at the end of the infantry zone or at the front of the artillery zone, as part of the defense, will also carry out marches and attacks, that is, maneuvers, in their tactical zone. That they will be, perhaps, more complicated in their deployments, unfolding and opportunities. To attack, from starting points in one’s own depth, the enemy forces that have broken through. Or, that are stopped in front of the defense zone.

The critical moment for the reserve counter-attack will be: when the enemy has passed the “culminating point” of his attack; is quite weak and is disorganized (loss of cohesion). The fire of the own artillery and of the nearby support points, those affected by the enemy attack, must also harass, neutralize the attacker.

These attacks by a combined arms reserve from depth, taking advantage of their mechanical mobility, and attacking on the enemy’s flanks and/or rearguard, are very effective for active tactical defense of friendly forces.

Heterodox applications of good working in Defense. And, if you want to be perfect…

Even, many times, with an unexpected Maneuver and, better yet, if it is also unusual, an enemy can be upset, confused and frightened. If he is governed by military more orthodox and serious canons and norms.

A premature withdrawal and, obviously, with cession of space, can mislead and disturb the enemy. Or, boost his self-esteem and greed and lure him into a dangerous chase.

A favorite Tactic of the Mongols, especially effective when their enemy was longing for the encounter or more confident of success, for reasons of sheer initial numerical superiority, was the «mangudai«. It consisted in the fact that an «army» corps of the Mongols, inferior to the enemy, seriously engaged in the fight. Its size was large enough for the Mongol effort to be considered significant.

With this, they were going to mentally attract the enemy and separate him from any other thought.

BATTLE OF LIEGNITZ, SILESIA, POLAND

After a hard battle, the sheer weight of the enemy forced the Mongol corps back. What was a tactical withdrawal, never disorderly, was taken by the enemy for an exploitable defeat, a rout.

His total and permanent ignorance of the Mongols did not make him suspect anything. And his desire for victory, increased by the real effort made in combat, did not let him see beyond.

The promising pursuit ended by scattering the close and solid formations of the enemy horsemen. At one point in the pursuit, always far from the rest of the waiting enemy forces, the bulk of the Mongol heavy cavalry emerged, hidden, fresh, and thrown into the shock. Which ended up breaking up the disjointed cavalry groups, into which the pursuers had scattered. After a real hunt, the enemy forces remaining in the initial positions in the battle either dispersed or were in turn attacked by the whole Mongol force.

We will now quote a special case of how the mental and moral dialectic of the two opposing commands, the given circumstances and the development of defense and attack, led to an incredible result of the faced battle.

Chu Ko Liang ordered Wei Yen and other generals to gather their forces and march east. He, waiting for news, stayed in Yanh Ping with 10 thousand men to defend the city.

His rival Ssu Ma I said to himself: «Chu Ko Liang is in the city, his forces are small, his position is weak, his generals and officers have lost courage.»

For his part, Chu Ko Liang was calm and confident. He ordered to remove the army banners and silence the drums. He forbade the soldiers to leave the city. And then, opening its four gates, he spread out his men in small groups through the streets of Yanh Ping.

20 "Chino Kongming Chu ko Tres Reinos Zhuge Liang Zhu ge Sabiduría Estatua|statue| - AliExpress
Chu Ko Liang idealized

Informed Ssu Ma I of the existing situation, he feared a prepared ambush. The «appearances» had done damage to his courage, discernment and reason. And hastily he retreated with his larger army to the northern mountains.

Chu Ko Liang explained to his commanding general, «Ssu Ma I believed that I was laying a trap for him and fled to the foot of the mountain range.»

When Ssu Ma I learned later all that had happened, he was overwhelmed with disappointment and disgust.

An opera has even been written about this Chinese war episode.

Well, but what you are telling us seems to be something very special and very difficult to repeat. And, as if from other times of fear and superstition.

Now see you an almost similar case. Only more modern. And, where all the maneuvers and combats are in sight. But, its result is just as spectacular, unexpected and incredible. Than the previous one, taken as «unusual and difficult to repeat».

Battle of Cowpens
(Washington’s cavalry attacked on the other flank.)

On January 17, 1781, the 45 year old American General Daniel Morgan engaged in a small battle in Cowpens the English regular forces of 27 year old Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Both had similar contingents but 2/3 of Morgan’s around 1,000 men belonged to American territorial militias.

These troops were at risk of shock in face of the force of the regular troops, whose use of bayonets in close combat would terrify them. The militia men were better than normal shooters, being hunters, and had great personal initiative, but they lacked training in close fighting.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Military and National Intelligence, failures and results.

Introduction and Development.

The intelligence services of large countries are often correct in their opinions and forecasts.

The specific intelligence tasks to which a few modern agents are dedicated usually end with partial or total success.

Complex works with ramifications and developments, which hide an estimable but not certain future, fail miserably. Because of this complex and future peculiarity. And, because the ability to observe and measure a parameter of the human soul is something elusive, doubtful and uncomfortable. Next we will see several specific cases.

The reasons for the divergence of successes between singular cases and the projection into the future (foreseen solution) of complex issues, transcending time, are partly in the difficulty of their conception, in the risk that is run in venturing and in the non contrasted exposure to the commands. Obviously, there is a dialectic here between the concealment carried out and the cognitive and intuitive process of its imagination, development and projection (estimated solution).

Only analysts freed from Scholasticism and field manuals are capable of placing themselves in the free, impartial and lucid mental state or position. To capture anomalous, complex and difficult enemy situations. Since they are paid for results and speed, which are contradictory variables, the luxury of putting an analyst agent in a “quiet position” for an unpredictable, indefinite period of time is not usually acceptable.

The new techniques for detecting, observing and tracking targets should not be underestimated. Based on computers, electronic sensors, Artificial Intelligence. But, the presence of field agents should not be suppressed, but rather supported and increased. Cyber monitoring can specify for our spy the precise area of investigation and study.

BRIEFING OF A FIELD AGENT

The field agent is an infiltrator in a neutral or hostile environment. Able to approach and penetrate the government, business or social media of the rival. And capture relevant, important information in a consistent and sustained manner. The field agent gives a seal of verisimilitude or even reality to the information captured from the enemy.

It is not easy to recruit, train and insert your own field agent. Hence, in an era of haste, superficiality and intellectual complexity, technological means have been favored over field agents for espionage work.

Afghanistan 2021.

We all remember the moments of the change of government in Afghanistan in August 2021.

During almost 20 years of staying there, the United States had spent enormous sums of money on said stay, providing various support to the Afghan State and to choosing, training and equipping the Afghan National Army. The Americans even boasted in their public communications, especially from the Defense Department, that they were making progress in the anti-terrorist fight against the Taliban.

MARINES GUARDING KABUL AIRPORT

This turned out to be like the “Potemkin villages.” That the Russian minister of that name prepared in the path that Tsarina Catherine the Great would follow on a trip. So that her trashy inhabitants would appear happy and shiny as her Imperial Majesty passed by.

As soon as the last American troops had to withdraw, the Afghan soldiers, who also turned out to be shoddy, began to surrender their weapons and escape the feared wrath of the Taliban. US forces were only able to secure a defensive perimeter of the Kabul airport. But, the “friendly Afghans” and their families had to get there to board a flight. Fleeing the tidal wave of the barbarity of the Taliban (scholars of the Koran).

As it had been negotiated with the Taliban to accept control of the airport by Western soldiers for a few days, this was not enough for many «collaborators» of the Westerners (translators, drivers, cleaners, etc.) and their families. Many had to make a painful journey to Pakistan to gain their freedom and their lives.

Vietnam War. American stage,

In the United States, during the Vietnam War, the “Igloo White” program was established, endowed with 1.7 billion US dollars, between 1966 and 1971, for the tasks of collecting information on the North Vietnamese and Vietcong supply routes in South Vietnam. The route started from North Vietnam, entering Laos, near the common border, and was the line of all kinds of supplies for the aforementioned forces, operating in South Vietnam. The route was strewn with devices that simulated a plant and were transmitters of information for US intelligence. They measured 1.2 ms. and their battery lasted 50 days. Many times an unmanned flying object, a drone, was used, which collected information from the ground and transmitted it via television to a distant plane.

A SECTION OF THE HO CHI MINH ROUTE

With the data collected from traffic on the roads, the Americans decided on interdiction bombing actions, carried out by their different aerial devices, including the invisible, inaudible and precise B-52 strategic bombers. In early 1971, data from aerial photos after the bombings, taken from planes flying after the attack formations, allowed analysts to assume that the “truck war” was causing a very severe strain on the industrial capacity of North Vietnamese suppliers (China and the USSR).

Historia Desterrada: La ruta Ho Chi Minh: Eje logístico clave en la Guerra de Vietnam

But, if it was true that so many trucks and equipment were destroyed, how was it possible that the communists maintained the initiative in South Vietnam? On the other hand, where were the tens of thousands of remains of trucks and other materials that literally plagued many of the roads and logistics parks on the Ho Chi Minh Route? Who bothered to remove them?

A more primitive stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Route

Another embarrassing issue was that the total number of vehicles counted by the US aviation as destroyed, exceeded several times the total number of cargo transport vehicles that North Vietnam had, according to Intelligency.

The answer to this essential mystery was soon given by the young American officers (juniors): they were eaten by a monster called the “Great Laotian Truck Eater”; a horrendous scavenger that rose towards dawn and devoured the vehicles destroyed by aviation during the night, after the required photographs for the “wreck count”, the count of debris achieved. Because Americans are very scrupulous with statistics and consider lying a «social sin» that is almost unforgivable for officials.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Hamas attacks Israel in 2023.

General introduction.

Hamas commandos knew they would fight deep in Israeli territory. Very far from their supports, supplies and other Hamas units. Their targets were there: Israeli civilians and military personnel killed or taken hostage. And they knew that once 2 or 3 days had passed, the Israeli forces, superior in human and material resources, would attack, pursue, and ambush them. Their end, in general, was death. Since the Israelis would in this case still have a surplus of captured enemies. To interrogate and learn the parameters that Hamas used, to surpass them for a time: surprise them and establish combat superiority over their troops in many parts of Israel.

The various attackers carried out a “swarm attack” on positions in central and southern Israel. Several of the principles or norms of military forces in a conventional attack were disregarded. For example, the unity of the objective and the unity of command of the forces and the maintenance of a structure, of a deployment for all attacking forces. Here, each small Islamist “unit of action” had its own leader and its own objective. And, it is the set of actions of the “attacking swarm” that defines the strategy and complex real objective of Hamas.

YAHYA SINVAR, PALESTINIAN MILITARY CHIEF OF THE GAZA STRIP.

Here, Hamas forces attacked divided into a multitude of independent groups, small and sufficient, in charge of striking and/or destroying. Or occupy the Israeli military post, kibbutz or cooperative, and take Israeli or Western foreign hostages to send them to Gaza.

All of this reveals and shows us that the military effect sought by Hamas‘s multi-objective attack is an Internal Moral Shock, increased by the surprise factor of the action, already installed in the military establishment and in the populations of Israel. The aura of invincibility of the Israeli Armed Forces and the effectiveness attributed to Mossad and other affected security agencies, not so conspicuous, have been broken.

It is the set of «action units» of the militias, composed of variable weapons or branches of the FA: infantry, airborne, anti-tank, light armor, health, military police, which carries out, through these multiple and quasi-simultaneous actions on the Israeli Nation: The effect of shock, shattering, heartbreaking material and moral.

SEMI IRREGULAR HAMAS TROOPS PARADING

This multiple and general effect is inexorably transmitted to Israelis in arms through social mechanisms. The effects of damage to people and property not protected by the army, the invasion of cruel and vengeful Palestinian forces, which occupy and destroy different points in Israel, commotion and produce shock and disorientation of the troops.

Israel says it has mobilized almost 300,000 reservists to attack the Gaza Strip. They are not the best troops to maintain combat readiness and combat alert.

The geographical and military social scenario of the Islamist radicals.

The so-called Gaza Strip is a narrow, flat and small coastal corridor next to the Mediterranean Sea, located south of Israel. More than one and a half million people live crowded together in its approximately 363 km2 of surface. 99% of the inhabitants are Muslims and Christians number between 15 and 20 thousand souls. The strip reaches a demographic concentration of around 4,150 people per km2, which is one of the highest in the world. Its shape is that of an elongated rectangle, about 45 km long, measuring 12 km at its widest part. At the south is its border with Egypt of about 11 km, around the strategic city of Rafah.

To the east and north the Gaza border with Israel extends for about 51 km. The most important population of the strip is the one that gives it its name, Gaza, located in its northern third. The other prominent towns in the strip actually constitute “districts”, “peripheral neighborhoods” or “satellite towns” of the “ecumene” of Gaza. Among those not yet mentioned we will highlight Beit Hanoun (in the extreme north), Beit Layla, Sheikh Zaid, Dayral Balah (in the center), Jabalia and Kan Yunis (in the south, but not on the border with Egypt).

The unemployment rate of the population is between 35-40%. This makes it very dependent on external aid. And, furthermore, it excites their identity and social demands and defines as “solely” responsible for their evils the most visible, socially and culturally different, and close enemy, Israel. The search for a quick and utopian solution for this population necessarily requires a sufficient defeat of Israel, the oppressive and imperialist power. This makes its population very inclined to embrace “radical Islamist militants” doctrines and parties (the RIM). They allow them to glimpse and evaluate a solution, even in an indefinite and imprecise future. And at least they give them the hope they all need. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are the two main Islamist organizations with implant in Gaza.

Ideology of radical Islamist Palestinians.

Hamas, as a totalitarian socio-political-religious organization, exercises extensive power in all areas of civil coexistence of the inhabitants of Gaza. This power is also conditioned by the nature of the struggle in conditions of isolation, encirclement and hardship. This allows Hamas to invoke in its “general defense” the oppression to which the entire Palestinian population of Gaza is subjected, whether real, felt and/or magnified. Without, in practice, the tremendous suffering of the Palestinians being clearly distinguished from the victimhood wielded by Hamas or the Islamic Jihad. Between 100 and 200 thousand are the actual active militants of both radical organizations. In addition, there are their sympathizers and collaborators, with different degrees of involvement in the services and time dedicated to supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

ISRAELI SOLDIERS DISCOVER FIRST HAMAS TUNNEL SINCE 2014 WAR

Hamas mesmerizes, tenses and grows due to the prospects of a more or less close confrontation with Israel. A people cannot be kept permanently in arms, much less in “combat readiness.” But, the reason for being of Hamas is to recover and imitate doctrinally, socially and militarily the epic and glorious times of the first century of Islam, which approximately coincides with our 7th century and the first part of the 8th. It was the era, after the death of Muhammad, extended in time beyond the first 4 caliphs, from Abu Baker to Ali, called by the Sunnis the Rashidun, the “rightly guided (by God)”.

Because its radical totalitarian ideologists have decided that, when Islam practiced armed Jihad and was rigorous in its faith and customs, Islam convinced, overwhelmed, spread prodigiously across three continents and was almost invincible… And they believe that by reproducing the “basic conditions” of that social context, of that booming civilization, today’s Muslims will once again be great, feared, respected and accepted. There is nothing more and nothing less.

We verify that every few years a “casus belli” occurs or is caused, worthy of its name and with its pernicious effects for the corresponding populations. Thus, there are not many possibilities of being able to truly dialogue with this, to reach common ground and reach peace agreements that are consistent and acceptable to all.

Operational considerations of the Defense of Gaza against Israel.

The land defense of Gaza is very difficult to sustain over time. The strip lacks geographical space to establish a flexible, mobile and echelon in depth defense. This is necessary to give power, solidity, continuity and support to the rejection struggle.

Furthermore, the external supply of weapons, ammunition and military equipment to Hamas would be strangled by Israel. To ensure the sealing of Gaza, the Tsahal could establish “locks”, located transversely in the strip and occupied with reinforced mechanized infantry. They would prevent the transit of military equipment from Egypt. Iran‘s weapons and equipment have their hub or logistics center in Yemen. From here they are transported across the Red Sea to northern Sudan, from where they depart in caravans of trucks. They cross into Egypt halfway along its southern border and head to Rafah.

The Israelis sporadically carry out bombing raids on this “evil route”, concentrating on the intermediate depots along the route and on cargo vehicles. In October 2012, an unexpected explosion destroyed a weapons factory near Khartoum, the capital, and other times, truck convoys are destroyed. The naval persecution of this smuggling flow, through detection and exploration drone flights over the Red Sea, is carried out by the USA. And it is the scarce and reluctant collaboration of the three countries involved, Yemen, Sudan and Egypt, which does not allow the transit (traffic is merchandising) of heavy reactive artillery weapons to be made excessively burdensome for intermediaries and with little return for the end user.

(to be continued)

Valery Gerasimov, Russian military commander in Ukraine.

Introduction.

With all the accumulated defeats suffered by the Army of the Russian Federation in its «special military operation» in Ukraine from February 24, 2022 until now, Vladimir Putin does not rest, he is irritated and has no peace.

The latest «ace up his sleeve» is Army General Valery Gerasimov, born in the Russian city of Kazan, 67 years ago and Chief of the General Staff since 2012.

An almost ideal age for the work that is coming up. Defined by organization, structural changes, discipline, sufficient flow of means and a strong hand.

Almost as USSR Marshal Georgi Zhukov had it. When he went to important battle places to preside, on behalf of STAVKA, the General Staff of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, the main offensives of his Front Groups against the Germans, A Front was the Western equivalent of Army Group, although the Red Armies were smaller in men and means than the Western ones.

MARSHAL OF THE SOVIET UNION GEORGI ZHUKOV, WITH ALL HIS AWARDS.

When Putin appears with his senior military commanders in the photos, his Defense Minister Shoigu is to his right and Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of all the Armed Forces, is to his left.

As Assistants at his Main Command Post, probably in Crimea, Gerasimov will have the Chief of the Land Forces of the Russian Federation, to which the vast majority of the troops present in that theater of operations belong, and the current deputy chief of his General Staff (his G-1, in our nomenclature).

At first there was talk that the appointment of Gerasimov was a maneuver by the top Russian military commanders. To see how an intellectual general, a modern hybrid warfare theorist, performed in the field. But, it is not true that he has no combat experience. He has enough of her.

Gerasimov already participated in his day in the two «anti-banditry wars» or counterinsurgency (Russian name) in Chechnya. That was fighting hard for his independence from Russia, as the heir of the USSR, the former imperialist oppressor. In the second, in 1999, he was the deputy head of the Russian armed forces in the campaign. He is accused of war crimes against Chechen populations for his direct action.

He also acted, already as Chief of the General Staff of the Russian forces, during Russia’s campaign in direct support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, since 2015, making frequent trips to the Syrian theater of operations.

Based on his direct experiences and his ability to analyze and synthesize the issues of his profession, Valery Gerasimov developed his Theory of Military Doctrine, currently in force in Russia. It’s his Hybrid War Theory.

Although it is nothing more than a Compilation of diplomatic, heterodox foreign, economic and military action policies and their trends. In short, what Gerasimov advocates is to use against the enemy all the means of a modern State in a great centripetous and synergistic action: diplomats, heterodox exteriors (various support for internal enemy dissidents, including armed forces, boycotts, promotion of popular discontent), economic, military

Thus, Putin decided with his military leadership to replace the «butcher of Syria» Colonel General Surovikin, as military chief of the Ukrainian campaign, appointed just a few months ago. He was the fourth replacement for the Russian campaign manager in Ukraine.

The general of ideas and methods with a strong and intransigent hand and centralized orders, which were given from top to bottom, by a general with more flexible and fresh training and ideas.

Based on his direct experiences and his capacity for analysis and synthesis of the issues of his profession, Valery Gerasimov developed his Theory of Military Doctrine, currently in force in Russia. It’s his Hybrid War Theory.

Although it is nothing more than a Compilation of diplomatic, heterodox foreign issues, economic and military action policies and their trends. In short, what Gerasimov advocates is to use against the enemy all the means of a modern State in a great centripetous and synergistic action: diplomats, heterodox exteriors (various support for internal enemy dissidents, including armed forces, boycotts, promotion of popular discontent), economic, military

Thus, Putin decided with his military leadership to replace the «butcher of Syria» Colonel General Surovikin, as military commander of the Ukrainian campaign, appointed just a few months ago. It was the fourth replacement of the Russian campaign commander in Ukraine.

The general of ideas and methods with a strong and intransigent hand and centralized orders, which were given from top to bottom, by a general with more flexible and fresh training and ideas.

That adapted the stagnant and heavy working of the Russian Army to a war of IV (guerrillas) and V (hybrid) generations.

Fighting against a very well equipped enemy (with better equipment and materials than theirs, for a conventional war, in general), committed and determined in their fight, with highly trained officers and cadres, tremendously motivated.

And, educated, trained and mentalized for a modern war, both of «operational movement and combat» and of «guerrillas and counterguerrillas».

Some Problems for Gerasimov.

Many are the problems accumulated by the Army of the Russian Federation and not all of them are solvable in the short term. Probably because they are already structural.

Continuous, effective and sufficient military logistics.

One of the star, creaking, problems of the Russian military is to establish a modern and effective comprehensive military logistics. Even defining it is quite simple for a professional.

INDOCTRINATION IN A SOVIET STATE AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE.

But, in the USSR and now in the Russian Federation, they have not been able to or did not know how to do it well.

In the USSR it was a classic that the potatoes collected in a kolkhoz or sovkhoz rotted in the field. Meanwhile, a few tens of km away, the urban people suffered from hunger or a nearby alcohol manufacturing industry did not receive the potatoes to produce it, from the starch of them.

Probably, the seminal error comes from the Marxist-Leninist economic doctrines, far from reality even in theory. In this case, the economy.

Where logistics is not considered, nor is «added value» attributed to it in the economy. Therefore, in the Budgets and the theoretical Soviet Five-Year Plans it was not taken into account.

The “total value” of a good comes from the “labor of the workers” and, later, of the peasants as well. And, amen.

As all the value of the good is attributed to the producers, the difference between the sale price and the production cost of the workers, the famous surplus value, is accused of being Appropriated (Stealed) by the bloody capitalists.

Capitalist production is not simply the production of commodities; it is essentially the production of surplus value.

This is one more theoretical fallacy of communism, with disastrous economic and military consequences for the country.

Although communism has already disappeared from Russia as a theoretical ruling force, many of its styles, ideas and methods, applied for 70 years, have penetrated and endured in the idiosyncrasies of society and its culture.

(To be continued)

The Opportunity as Command’s Instrument for Victory

Introduction.

The opportunity arises from the play of dialectical actions between the opposing units. Opportunity is the tactical, even operational, weakness that arises in an enemy sector or is about to do so. We can act on it and even precipitate it with our combined weapons system in an «action interface» especially favorable to us. In opportunity always underlies an enemy error. If this was insurmountable for him, it would be due to the unforeseen, surprising circumstances that concurred. Opportunities are a useful and advantageous feature provided by the dialectic of actions in the chaos of war.

The intermediate objectives foreseen in the plans are not opportunities. They are forecasts derived from the planning and the well-founded resolution of the command. When contacts with the enemy begin, its achievement begins to be tested, as Moltke said, in the dialectics play.

Functioning.

Of this play in a chaotic environment, independently of the greater or smaller deviations from plans, will arise the opportunities and the dangers. The dangers would be the enemy opportunities on us. Both are unexpected, but accessible and exploitable during a certain time. The reason of the unpredictably of the opportunities in the time is in the number almost infinite of variables and individual and collective actions that concur to define a “situation” and the successive cycles of action in which it develops.

The opportunity arises when the enemy fails to use his forces and means of support. It can originate in differences in the qualities of enemy forces and in the transitability of a given terrain, that debilitates a defense or the momentum of an attack. It also appears in the negligence of the enemy in presenting an exposed flank, that is, an interface of action real or potential favorable with us, not properly taken care of by him to face our available combined arms system. The opportunity is an emptiness in combat capacity that arises in a cycle of action for a unit, or a sector, that is unprotected and neglected for long enough allowing it to be detected and exploited by the enemy.

It is necessary to take advantage of opportunities quickly. The dynamics of interaction in a chaotic environment makes opportunities unattainable after a short time. The succession of cycles of action continually modify circumstances.

Developing.

To detect opportunities at any level of military activity, intelligence is necessary (elaborated the exploration and reconnaissance and converted into useful, continuous, sufficient knowledge) and the sufficient presence of the corresponding command. To take advantage of them, simple and vertical communication is necessary, supported by implicit communication between subordinate leaders and mobility, flexibility and combat capacity available in the units and commands involved. If the opportunity is transcendental, the tactical or operational center of gravity of the military means is transferred to it by the command. If it is important, their use must contribute concentrically to its creation and development.

The same characteristics just mentioned, but focused on ourselves, are the ones that, in turn, will protect us from enemy dangers or opportunities. This will prevent its appearance, compensate for the danger or mitigate its presence and reduce our time of vulnerability. If despite foresight and care, surprising or unexpected circumstances concur in its appearance, even due to a mistake on our part, the means to be used are the last two actions mentioned for its detection and use.

What is that sufficient presence of the commander? The one that allows him to take advantage of the opportunities that arise at his level of activity. All of this is directly related to the two different command styles or forms for carrying out the tasks of the different levels of command.

Tactical command must be exercised bySensing the “action interface” with the enemy, exchanging actions with him on the ground. The limit of tactical command is clearly in the brigade. And, in large operations or in the attack or in the armored forces, it probably reaches in greater or lesser degree to the division, whose commander must drive forward the march or the attack behind the first important marching force of the bulk of the unit.

The command of the army corps is clearly an corps’ operational management and must have a broader perspective of the whole. As well as a greater distance from direct contact with the enemy, which overcomes the interface of action and its immediate rear. This gives the command breadth, vision, serenity and security.

In the immense chaos that is created in a combat, the foresight of the command can impose and outline its evolution in a direction and sense.

Like the effective command, is capable of «searching» and «feeling» the enemy’s signs of weakness and discouragement. And then he prepares the forces that he will use in the persecution and the support that he will give them. Putting them under the command of an energetic, spirited, leading and lucid commander.

The command must prepare «rapidly available forces» in the units under its command. For example, a mixed company in the battalion; a combined arms battalion in the brigade. In such a way that the appearance of the opportunity, close and surprising, allows him to take advantage of it. Since the surprise will help the opportunity to be seized at first by a relatively small force of their own. And that may soon be reinforced by the bulk.

Example of the effective, non-physical presence of a High Command.

Erich von Manstein directed the counterattack operation of the German Armies Group Don, mainly against the Soviet Southwestern Front of General Vatutin, from his headquarters in Zaporiya. By mid-March1943, the Germans had eliminated six tank corps in the order of battle of Vatutin, recovered Kharkov and settled a resistant defense front from Tangarov to Belgorod, supported in the Mius and the Donetz. They also had enough mobile reserves in the south of Russia to reject possible soviet operational ruptures in the zone. And, after the setback of Stalingrad, they had recovered the strategic initiative, at least in the southern theater of operations.

HITLER, WORRIED, VISIT MARSHAL VON MANSTEIN AT ZAPORIYA, UKRAINE.

An attack against the Kursk salient, completed its formation by von Manstein‘s advance on Belgorod, which would have begun in April, then had a chance of success due to the lack of Soviet preparation.

This same offensive, which began in July 1943, determined that no more mistakes by the German High Command (Hitler) were of any importance: then, the subjet of total strategy or state strategy was no longer who would win the war, but how long it would take to do so.

A Failure in the effective presence of command.

Let’s see an example of an inadequate presence of the commander, in relation to the echelon that he is supposed to command. It starred Rommel in North Africa in November 1941.

Rommel’s advanced command post in the desert.

Mistakenly believing that the British armor was dispersed after some fighting, Rommel ordered to concentrate his Panzers on the Libyan-Egyptian border. Directly dedicated to it, acting as a regimental commander, he was involved in the repulse of a British attack. He was even isolated with his command vehicle, due to a mechanical problem, for half a day at the front.

This temporarily deprived him of control of operations in Tobruk. This was Rommel’s main operational objective, while resisting the German siege was the main objective of the English. Due to this unjustified distraction, Rommel had to abandon the attempt to take that fortified port, located in his operational rear, which he could have consolidated for his defense of his won territory.

In less than a month, the advances of the English tanks and infantry forced him into a long retreat towards Tunisia. He had to give up almost all the ground he had gained since March, when he arrived in Africa, until he recovered and was able to fight back, as British pressure lightened.

Fallen Russian Generals in Ukraine.

Russian Generals missing from their Battle Forward Post in Ukraine

Introduction.

There are hundreds of videos of Ukrainians neutralizing Russian air, naval and ground vehicles. That more than fighting at close distances, it seems that they pose as if they were shooting ducks at a town fair.

Cuatro generales rusos muertos en Ucrania en 20 días, tantos como en Afganistán en 10 años

These videos are mostly produced by almost unknown film companies.

And sometimes even a supposed Russian general falls almost in the battle’s first rows.

Developing.

A general never accompanies or stands in combat with a platoon lieutenant or company captain or a battalion commander or lieutenant colonel.

His tasks are not to hit shots. Nor haranguing the men around him. Or drive them into combat by his example. That is done by the officers in charge of the units and the non-commissioned officers in immediate command of the soldiers. Who know their soldiers like nobody else. Or will it not be so here?

Ucrania mata en un mismo día a dos generales rusos y pone en evidencia el grave problema del ejército de Putin

The task of the general officer is to conceive and conceptualize the combat and the maneuvers of his tactical units, fulfilling the Tasks and Missions of the Army in campaign.

And, facilitate the means in: combined arms units; anti-tank, artillery and air support for them and the logistics for it: from health to supplies of all kinds, from fuel to ammunition, through maintenance teams and removal of damaged vehicles and kitchens and food distribution to the collection points of the units.

Baja en el ejército ruso: muere el alto general Sukhovetsky - AS.com

He harangues and drives the commanders and chiefs of units dependent on him. And, to all the soldiers on rare occasions.

To fulfill Those, fulfilling the universal principle of the economy of human and material means. That is, following the best and most optimized use of it.

And, as I have said before, the death of a general is a national disaster. And, the death of a 4-star general, commander-in-chief of an army of many tens of thousands of soldiers, is a national catastrophe.

Simply because they are very important military assets.

US HIMARS rockets, latest evolution of reactive artillery.

Introduction.

Reactive artillery has changed a lot since the Soviet times of World War II. That the so-called Soviet Katiuskas rockets scattered fear among their enemies. For its persistence, simultaneity and its fire wake and noise when flying. Its range was 4 to 5 km. and the carrier truck weighed about 5 tm.

It consisted of a military truck on which was placed a battery of 10 or 12 tubes rocket launchers of caliber of the order of 80 to 122 mm. The battery was fixed in the direction of the front of the truck and it was oriented towards the target. Several rocket trucks formed the smallest tactical support unit.

Lanzacohetes Katiusha

«No matter how long a man is exposed to bombing. He will never be immune to fear of it. Machine gun or rifle fire can be frightening, but it cannot be compared to the sensations that fill the throbbing hearts of men, when the sounds and whistles of aerial and terrestrial bombs are perceived approaching». F. Mowat. The Regiment. Toronto, 1955. pp. 162-163.

Another example of a weapon designed both to demoralize with this said effect, and to cause damage and casualties, was the Junkers-87, known as the Stuka. Their sirens were placed to produce a terrifying high-frequency screech as they dive over the target at high speed. A British officer described the effect of the weapon during a dive bombardment received by his men in the spring of 1940, which caused only ten injuries and destroyed three trucks: «The boys were completely broken. After the bombardment, the officers and some sergeants got up and tried to restart the activities. But, the men were lying or sitting in complete daze. And it was necessary to push or drag them to wake them up.” L. Deighton. Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk. London, 1979. Page 247.

Well, but what you are telling us happened a long time ago, with normal forces.

Well, let us point to the repeated case of a battalion-type or multi-company infantry unit, dismounted, deployed, and advancing to the attack. That, in several cases, they were units such as the Guards or the Highlanders, considered among the best in the world. As soon as it was subjected to effective fire from the enemy and suffered some casualties, especially if they were some officers and non comissioned officers, it would freeze on the ground and stick to it. It immediately transmitted that it had been pinned down and requested reinforcements to get out of trouble, unable to react on its own. General Richard Simpkin. Race to the Swift. London, 1994. Page 214.

Tactical utilities.

The advantage with conventional artillery is that its barrels have to withstand the tremendous explosion of smokeless powder. This initial push along the barrel is what propels the bullet throughout its mileage travel up to target. Those rifled barrels require advanced metalworking and the explosions and bullet paths coming out of the barrels wear them down quickly and need to be replaced.

In reactive artillery, the cannon is replaced by the launcher or rail that directs the rocket towards its target. This is impelled by propellant at the rear, behind the warhead. The fiery trail of the booster is perfectly visible during launch and part of the flight.

Sistema BM-21

This flight was governed by ballistic physical laws. There was no direction of flight, once the rocket was flying off the ramp.

These reactive artillery fires were not very precise. They were really designed to neutralize the enemy located on a surface target, which generally became a zone of destruction. The fires were directed at open, non-urban land.

Soldiers placed in individual or group positions with adequate cover or fortifications survived well.

Evolution.

The Soviets liked this artillery, which was part of their doctrine of using abundant and overwhelming heavy fire in breakout operations of the enemy fronts.

The Katiuskas were replaced by the Soviets with the BM-24 reactive launchers, first, with about 7 km. range, and BM-21, from 1964, with a range of 15 km. The configurations were the same, a bank or batteries of free-flight rocket launchers loaded in the back or gondola of a truck.

HIMARS system.

Other nations began to be interested in this type of weapon. Looking for more precision and combat readiness of vectors. To obtain a plus of efficiency and utility against the Russian armament.

We see that in the name they mention its improved mobility and they do not do it with its precision. When it is what stands out to crush very sensitive enemy targets and, above all, specific ones, such as parts of the logistics system, communications, command posts and concentrations of enemy offensive means.

The HIMARS launcher of high mobility

The secrets of success are multiple and act in synergy to achieve their effectiveness. One is that the rockets have a modern and sophisticated MILITARY GPS system. That allows the rockets to be directed precisely to the indicated target, in a directed flight. The effective range of simple multiple rockets is about 90 km.

Then there is the suspension system of the all-terrain trucks, with less than 11 tms of weight, which allows the rapid movements of the truck on not very rough terrain. And the handling is clean and fast. The reloading of the 6 rockets of a mobile platform is completed in 10 minutes.

The Russians in the Ukraine try, usually in vain or too late, to locate the Ukrainian HIMARS batteries using drones. To annoy the Russians, the Ukrainians use fake HIMARS launchers and continually change the location of the real ones.

The Russian-Ukrainian War six months later.

Situation.

Everywhere we get news of:

Missiles carrier ships, corvette, frigate, destroyer, light cruiser type, of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, sunk from the ground by Ukrainian guided missiles.

Moskvá (2000) - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Black Sea Fleet flagship «Moskva», sunk at beginning of the war.

Groups of Russian tanks, interspersed with fuel or ammunition logistics vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles, (where is their marching column or attack deployment or their security against the enemy?), that roam the combat zone erratically and disjointed.

Así es el T-90M, la joya de los tanques rusos también cae en Ucrania: misiles a 10 km y armadura reactiva
Russian Main Battle Tank T-90

And that are destroyed by the Ukrainians, using personal anti-tank rocket launchers and artillery with very modern fire direction, of American or European manufacture. German 155mm self-propelled guns are especially good. Their entire direction of fire is automatic and the Ukrainians did not get used to it well.

Russian planes and helicopters are shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft positions on the ground, fixed or mobile, including personal manned.

🥇 Avión Sukhoi Su-57 (T-50 PAK FA) -【AvionesdeCombate.org】
Russian Fighter Sukhoi SU-57, but not shipped to Ukraine.

Putin continuously threatens his potential enemies, in short, the liberal West, with intercontinental ballistic missiles of hypersonic speeds and each carrying several warheads. They separate in the last phase of flight towards the target area, from the carrier missile.

They are the MIRV or multiple independent reentry vehicles.

Putin, de emperador romano

With all the hilarious and ineffective «destructive defensive potential» (DDP) of its weapons of ultramodern technology and extremely poor results. Why doesn’t Putin establish a modern, effective, Motivated and smaller army? Following the fashion of the Israeli army, as example, and of dimensions according to Russia’s own needs.

And, he abandons his echelons and his massive advance and attack tips. Where its deployment hinders itself. To move and to attack or retreat with agility, precision and effectiveness.

Results.

According to a summary of prestigious foreign journalistic media (The Economist, Forbes, The Washington Post) and the newspaper El Mundo, the Confirmed Casualties in this conflict by August 24 would be:

Tanks

Ukrainians 240

Russians 967

Aircraft and helicopters

Ukrainians 74

Russians 213

Ships of all kinds

Ukrainians 19

Russians 11

That number of Russian tanks would be the equipment of four tank divisions or five or six mechanized or motorized divisions, according to nomenclature, with their full order of battle. Also, in its war in Afghanistan, the USSR lost 147 tanks. And, furthermore, the number of Russian tanks lost so far is higher than the active tanks of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, combined.

If Russia cannot deal with Ukraine, which is much weaker militarily, how is it going to deal with a certain probability of success with the USA or the UK or France?

Promising Background.

Mijaíl Tujachevski – Edad, Muerte, Cumpleaños, Biografía, Hechos y Más – Muertes Famosos del 12 junio - CalendarZ
Mikhail Tujachevski

Russia, formerly the USSR, was in the years 22 to 37 of the last century, an advanced power in military philosophy or «modern theory of military art and science«. Marshal Mikhail Tujachevski, Lieutenant General Vladimir R. Triandafillov and Brigadier Georgy S. Isserson shone there with their own light… with their teams of auxiliaries and collaborators. All scholars and advanced in the theory of the Deep Maneuver in the enemy tactical, operational and, even, strategic rearguard of modern armies.

Georgii Isserson (1898–1976) | Weapons and Warfare
Georgy S. Isserson

Which I believe was more solidly reasoned and argued than the German mechanized warfare theory. Which was more like “practical”.

Germany, with excellent commanders and officers, cadres (unparalleled in the world) and soldiers, some of the best in the world; and, for the moment, in 1939, all highly trained and motivated.

By the way, they call Blitzkrieg the German way of fighting. Name given by a journalist. And people think it’s because of the speed of their maneuvers.

Триандафиллов, Владимир Кириакович — Википедия
Vladimir R. Triandafillov

But, the specialists called it blitzkrieg, because of the continuous changes of direction of the tactical movements of the main forces. Following the weakest or least protected points or positions of the enemy. Changes tracing the paths of the beam on the surface of the combat area.

Only Triandafillov died peacefully and recognized, in 1931. Isserson was in jail when the Great Purge and his merits or contributions were not recognized. Tukhachevsky was shot in the 1937 great purge of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. To eliminate the military cadres that could overshadow the power of the Party, the excuse (or Stalin).

This sterilized the creativity and freshness of the surviving military commanders. Surveillance and denunciation among peers increased. The military ideas and concepts of those purged acquired their infamy and vituperation; this was fatal for the USSR and its military forces 4 years later in a foreign invasion. The commands and officers only cared about carrying out the orders without errors; so as not to be victims of purges or dismissals or transfers; which leads in war to not doing anything effective, forceful or decisive.

And it led the Army to assume the old doctrines of the Russian Civil War against the White armies. When the mechanization of the forces was still a desideratum, the Red army logistics used to survive the dispossession of the trodden territory, the sole command of the military chief was shared with the political commissar in the unit and the Red armies were hordes.

And this is how the USSR faced the German invasion of June 22, 1941, without able and trained senior officers, officers and non-commissioned officers and without adequate doctrine.

Are we now in a similar Stage or Phase of Decline in Putin‘s Russian Army, which has more than a million people enrolled at arms?

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MILITARY SUPERIOR THOUGHT

The formation.

A quick glance and intuition must be developed so that, following a series of accepted techniques, they help those in command to control and direct the operations.

Studiousness and reasoning are used to know the best techniques and how to apply them. Once learned by experience and reflection, these must open the way to governance by intuition. This prevails in a global, holistic sense – in an internal processing of the spirit – that settles down a pace and gives proportion and adjustment to the given situation. Which is much more rapid and effective, that the continuous resource to the analysis, the feedback and the check list of things to do.

Aníbal - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Hannibal Barca

The possibilities, advice and techniques that follow one from another in a given and changing situation, grow in exponential form. Knowing all of them at any given moment is impossible. And it can be source of errors, since that stance does not allow readily for feedback, verification, and adaptation. That stance is not very useful either, because it slows deliberation and because possibilities, techniques, and advice are sometimes contradictory, in light of all the conditions that define a situation.

Vasilevski, Aleksandr: biografía y la posición
Alexander Vasilevsky

Thus, once formed, an officer must trust his military sense, that is, the specific intuition on how to act in all occasions. Excessive emotion, especially fear and hatred (negative ones), block the intuitive management and the agility of the mind, reducing its effectiveness to that of fallible reasoning. Serenity and discipline are the best assistants of intuition.

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (Reichsheer) | Cronología de la Primera Guerra Mundial - WWI
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

An anonymous sage said that «reasoning was a way to err with conviction». The cause or reason of this is nothing more than «we do not have at hand all the conditions or parameters that define a complex situation».

The practice application.

The search for a solution for an operational or tactical mission happens through a mental process of investigation, information and deliberation. The results of intelligence and exploration must also inform and be rooted in the command’s mind. According to the western psychology, these mental processes give rise to intuition.

Erich Von Manstein | Eurasia1945
Erich von Manstein

In this process it is not absolutely clear the nexus between deliberation and solution, since these cases have numerous “variants” and diverse possibilities for reality or certainty. The solution does not arise by accumulating data and its ruminating,

But by a “qualitative leap”, after which the essential concept of the situation or its total conceptual apprehension is clearly contemplated.

Dos siglos de la muerte de Napoleón, el emperador que temía a los gatos
Napoleon Bonaparte

These “leaps” take place in unconscious mental elaboration by a mind trained to discern these essential concepts. That can be absolute or referred to the mind in itself, or relative, referred to situations or external facts to it, as parcels of the knowledge. After information is considered, the analytical mind verifies it and validates the correctness of one or two “special” solutions (better than “ideals”) available.

Georgios Grivas - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia
Georgios Grivas

This apparent incoherence between the Solution which we postulated, and the branched solution that is obtained, arises as a result of the natural indetermination that exists in defining and considering all the variables in any given phenomenon or situation. Mental courage is the best aid of wisdom, enabling one to overcome doubt in a situation and take hold of creative opportunities.

Daniel Morgan - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Daniel Morgan

This is even more important in a military action, surrounded as they are by the “smoke or fog of war”, and being affected by friction and the errors ofoperatingmen and units. Part of that “smoke” is generated by our own knowledge, that is incomplete, erroneous, and only partially correct, about the “enemy at the other side of the hill”.

Some practitioners of theory.

All the examples we present are characterized by having repeatedly overcome their enemies in their confrontations. And, maintaining a striking creativity and freshness in their use of the «art science of war».

Although, at times, an operational strategy of hammering, on the part of an enemy with more means and resources, has finally deprived some of the victory.

The Combat and the Operational Movement as the Essential and Complementary Opposites of War. 2nd. Part.

(FINAL)

A favorite tactic of the Mongols, especially effective when their enemy was willing to meet or was more confident in its exit, for reasons of pure initial numerical superiority, was the «mangudai». It was that a Mongol «army» corps, inferior to the enemy, was seriously engaged in fighting. Its size was large enough for the Mongol effort to be considered important. With it he would mentally attract the enemy and remove him from any other thought or possibility. After a hard battle, the sheer weight of the enemy forced the Mongol corps to retreat. What was a tactical retreat, never really disorderly, was taken by the enemy as an exploitable defeat. His total and permanent ignorance of the Mongols made him suspect nothing. And his desire for victory, augmented by the true effort made in the combat, did not let him to see beyond.

Mangudai - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
MANGUDAI

The yearning persecution ended up scattering the tight, solid formations of the enemy riders. At a moment of pursuit, always far from the rest of the enemy forces waiting, the bulk of the Mongol heavy cavalry emerged, hidden, fresh and thrown to the clash. That ended by undoing the disjointed cavalry groups, in which the persecutors had dispersed. After a real hunt, the enemy forces that remained in their initial positions in battle, either dispersed or were in turn attacked by the whole of the Mongol forces.

The modern working of the combat and operational movement binomial.

In putting into practice with a «correct sense» these things, the combats and the operational movements are continuously and cyclically renewed in their possibilities. Giving each one mutual impulses, opportunities and reasons for action. In this intimate collaboration, decisions are outlined and consolidated until objectives are achieved.

The operational movement of units in military operations, returning to the physical force simile, is not an applied force, but a potential one, that has not yet produced work. It is like free gas or a stream of water. Its potential character, which is perceived by the enemy, is a threat that can cause disorganization and dislocation on its operational advance. Combat is like a concentrated, regular and kinetic force, capable of immediately performing the service asked of it. It springs into action as steam exits a boiler and as water moves the turbine paddles of a dam.

Another pair of better-known complementary «opposites» exist between interarms groups and it is the factor of efficacy that they possess.

FDRA - Historia de la Defensa: SGM: El frente oriental y la Operación Barbarossa
GERMAN TANKS, ICV AND RECONNAISSANCE VEHICLES.

This refers to cooperation between mechanized infantries and tanks, which is derived from the nearby combat capacity of the first and the protection and direct fire power of the second, that are united in comparable tactical and operations speeds. Both forces maintain the impulse and the shock of the armored corp, according to opportunities that are offered to it and framed by its intentions and resources, the terrain, and the intentions and means of the enemy.

We have to remember that at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, proponents of a war of maneuvers in America argued that combat (bad) harmed movement (good).

BMP-3 - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
The BMP-3 is a ICV very good equiped to fulfill its missions

But, without combat there is no decision and without operational movement there is no exploitation of the operational and strategic enemy zones, nor there are high profitable combats against enemies whose deployments have been dislocated. A mobile corp «influences» the enemy by damaging him through combat or by the timely interruption of vital parts of his deployment. Nuclear dissuasion worked because its destructive capacity was real and intolerable and because the possibility of its employment was credible.

Amx-56 Leclerc Carro De Combate Principal Frances - Fondos de pantalla HD, Fondos de escritorio, Imágenes y Wallpapers HD para móvil, tablet y ordenador
MAIN BATTLE TANK AMX-56 LECLERC

Operational movement and combat are necessary, complementary, cooperative and mutually transcendent instruments of the operational strategy. Problems and contradictions arise when, deprived of freedom of action, it is necessary to use or substitute one in the detriment of the other, in order to generate a new impulse for continued military action. When forced to do this, the effects are grave, as they harm «total time» required to planning, preparation and accomplishment of combat or movement operations. It is for this reason that, for example, to engage in an unexpected combat during a march, is inadvisable, as it wreaks havoc on operation «time» and squanders the combat capacity of the units.

Los primeros vehículos blindados de reconocimiento CRV 8x8 Boxer, con la torreta de 30 mm llegan a Australia. – Galaxia Militar
SPANISH MODERN RECONNAISSANCE HEAVY VEHICLE

In the movement phase, combat is secondary and should be used against opportunistic objectives, to secure the sector of advance, and, especially, to thwart enemy efforts when possible. In the combat phase, combat capacity should be used according to tactical established procedures and looking in its conception to ensure that decisions have transcendence in operational strategy. Doing this results in each element stimulating and strengthening the other in their respective operations, something that often has a multiplier effect in causing final results that were unexpected «a priori». The feeling that a special «pace» or tempo has been achieved is a sure enough sign that one’s forces have freedom of action and are operating correctly with the nature of war in its favor.

The relative characteristics of combat are:

Its great intensity in a tactically «dense» environment, with heavy operational actions; the depletion of combat capacity, with a corresponding loss of «influence» on the enemy, that comes from not being able to further damage him; and the maintenance of movement capacity to carry out an operational exploitation.

Descargar fondos de pantalla Coche blindado, Fennek, de reconocimiento de coches blindados, alemán de vehículos de combate, modernos vehículos blindados, el Ejército de Alemania | Military vehicles, Army vehicles, Armored vehicles
LIGHT RECONNAISSANCE VEHICLE

Combat allows one to gain operational «impulse» by breaking through and penetrating, enveloping and pursuing the enemy. Including a delayed defense when forces are obliged to stop their advance, and, in general, to take advantage of tactical opportunities.

The relative characteristics of operational movements are:

Operational lightness that allows for a high speed of march; the depletion of its movement capacity with the corresponding loss of «influence» on the enemy, that comes from not being able to reach him; and the maintenance of combat capacity in a system where combined arms are balanced.

Operational movement becomes obstructed when mobility is impeded. This can be caused by: the enemy (mine fields, reinforced and/or covered by fire obstacles); the necessity of responding to enemy fire or tactical movement; the lack of supplies or the dislocation of mobile groups from their «mass of support«; deployment changes, the force reorganizations, the uncertainties caused by the lack of intelligence, and the undecisions or doubts within the command.

Finally, when logistics are well-organized and communication lines are secure and adequate, the capacities of combat and operational movement can be recovered. Even if they have been depleted by the mobile corps and by its support mass in the different operations, in order to move forward on objectives ordered by the command.

THE END.

The Combat and the Operational Movement as the Essential and Complementary Opposites of War

Combat and operative movements are not antagonistic forces. Rather, they are necessary and complementary forces. That move harmonically and opportunely our military resources in the effort to achieve the objectives that an enemy would violently denies us. Combat is the utilization of combat capacity, while operational movement refers to the employment of the operational movement capacity of a military system.

Introduction.

Both form a unit of action, so that one without the other can not exist from conceptual and practical points of view in the machine of war. One force may sometimes be predominant, such as when it is being employment, and during that period it is more visible to observers and in its effects.

UNED - Literatura Inglesa de la Primera Guerra Mundial: Poetas en las trincheras (I) - 25/07/14 - RTVE.es
The trenches covered soldiers from enemy machine guns deadly fire.

The combat without opportunity and operational transcendence ultimately falls, in unbearable human and material losses and brutal and successive shocks. That enervate and degrade participants. Effects that could get in «the chaos born from itself». An example are the battles on the Western Front during World War I. Which originated the tactic of slow, prolonged, stabile and undecided fighting, whose results and personal and economic costs were terrible.

Maurici de Saxònia - Wikiwand
THE MARSHAL OF SAXE.

Operational movement that systematically avoids combat also fails due to the lack of decision and transcendence. It becomes superfluous and useless, a spendthrift arabesque that depletes logistics and results finally in paralysis. This is illustrated during the epoch of Marlborough and Marshall of Saxe. As Beaufré claims, this war that began in the 17th century lasted through much of the 18th century was characterized by mobile but only slightly decisive operations.

John Churchill, I duque de Marlborough - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
THE FIRST DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH

An example of the synthesis of these factors in an almost perfect system of war is art of war achieved by the Mongolians through their conquests and invasions. As example, its series of sustained attacks that managed to seriously threaten the center of Europe in the middle of 13th century.

The Mongolian Warfare: an harmonic synthesis of the combat and the operational movement.

On one hand, the Mongolians possessed an incredible capacity for consistent movement. Their minimal needs were met by pillaging the land and each rider possessed several mounts. These provided both meat and transport for their rapid tactical and operational actions. One Mongol horse could supply enough meat for more than 100 men’s daily rations in campaign. Their success was enhanced by a few polished, simple and forceful tactics. Based on discipline and that made use of their hunting experience with the compound bow, their expertise in managing herds and their knowledge of the human feelings that combat intensifies. The know-how of the Mongolians with the compound bow –a skill that takes much time to acquire and that must be maintained by frequent training– came from their productive activities as nomadic shepherds, who had a great deal of free time.

What was the operational zone of the Mongols?

They did not have it, nor did they need it. Their optimal level of enlistment was both simple, effective and quick to achieve. They start from «their» strategic zone, defined by the advance and the location of their nomadic hamlets, never observed or suspected by their enemies, to the tactical zone with it. No need for the transition or adaptation imposed by the complexity of manufacturing technology and the combined arms groups and their deployments and the entire logistics chain of an army. Their operations do not require the physical support of the operational zone.

In front of the discontinuous front of the positions of their enemies, there is a wide, unprotected and empty area, controlled by no one, that the Mongols use to the fullest for their strategic approach.

There is nothing, on the part of its enemies, that reminds advanced detachments or reconnaissance groups. Although the Marshal of Saxony in a similar war context, because there was not yet mechanization of armies or long-range fire, warns that they can be relatively safe, in their operations independent of the forces advancing behind them.

This double character, punctual of the combats and independent of them in the operations, favors to the maximum the art of the Mongol war, which is always operationally offensive.

En busca de la tumba de Gengis Khan
GENGIS KHAN

The Mongol preoccupation with the enemy is generally strategic, thinking of its exposed flanks at the level of the occupied countries. Somehow, it is originated in its ever-small number for their objectives and in the tactical non invincibility of their forces. If they find an organized, skilled and, above all, serene enemy. Genghis Khan, in 1221, after the conquest of the Muslim empire of Samarkand, located in Turkestan, Persia and Afghanistan, systematically sacked Afghanistan. His son Tului killed most of the inhabitants of northern Persia (Khorasan). With this they protected the southern flank of the empire.

Subuday-Bagatur.Mongolia | Монголия, Скульптура, Доспехи
MONGOL GENERAL SUBUDAI

In 1241 100 thousand Mongols, under the command of the crown prince Batu and general Subudai, crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border to attack Hungary. Around 20000 men, two Tumans or divisions, under the command of Prince Baidar and Prince Kadan, are charged with ensuring that the Hungarians will not receive reinforcements from Poland, Germany or Bohemia.

To this aim, they defeat the concentrations of the forces of these nations in Chmielnik (attracting the enemy in their pursuit, without a previous fight, to an ambush, appearing as a incursion group that was retiring to its base), at 18 Kms of Krakow, and in Liegnitz (by means of a “mangudai”), at 60 Kms to the west of Breslau. With this last victory and a feint to penetrate in Germany, they drive away, until more than 400 Kms of Hungary, the King Wenceslau of Bohemia, who goes back to defend his lands. In less than a month, the Mongol detachment had travelled 650 Kms and fought two decisive battles for its plans. Poland was stunned and prostrated after their passage and the Germans, at west of the Oder, were preparing to defend their lands. This action also protected the Mongol’s land communications with Ukraine, their base of departure, where their nomadic hamlets remained. Which were unable to follow or logistically support so spectacular advances.

Its large units, divisions or tumans always advance covertly, disguised and informed by what was an operational reconnaissance with combat capacity. It was based on squadrons of light cavalry (archers protected with a silken wadding that enveloped, isolated and allowed to remove very easily the points of enemy arrows) from 50 to 100 men. Their exploratory tests and rapid movement also contributed directly to misleading and intimidating an enemy who was unaware of the role of these units. And many times he took them for the vanguard of the armies. Also, this way, the enemy saw Mongols everywhere…

Guerra abierta: Sd.Kfz 232
SdKfz 232 reconnoissance vehicle. It had a 20 mm. gun to do it «in force».

This function of operational reconnaissance has not always been recognized by modern armies. The Germans were masters in it, especially in theaters like the African and the Soviet, where discontinuous fronts and the vacuum of enemy operational areas allowed very well it.

Independent of this reconnaissance of their immediate area of operations, the Mongols maintained another strategic exploratory activity, as a generator of intelligence for immediate use: espionage and the use of agents at their service, inside enemy countries. They sought to understand the characteristics of those nations and the alliances and divisions among them. The Mongols, in turn, were virtually impervious to their knowledge by their enemies. Even in tactical details that, when they found the Mongols, had to be more obvious to them.

(TO BE CONTINUED)