Why Did the UAF Offensive Into Kursk Fail?

Was it the Koreans or the pipe-crawlers, or the DRONES?

Since I mentioned Sofa Strategist yesterday, I felt I would be remiss if I didn’t cover his latest video. Again, all you have to do is turn on the captions to get a decent translation of what he’s saying:

He raises some interesting points.

First, he makes the claim that the evidence points to American generals coordinating the whole invasion into Russia. This is based on the testimony of US generals to Congress and the standard operating protocols/procedures for the use of the long-range NATO weapons in Kiev’s arsenal. All of them require express permission from Western officers to be used in Russia and they also require NATO satellites and other coordination to work. Thus, he concludes that the Americans took the lead in the operation, because of how heavily dependent it was on American missiles, which were absolutely devastating.

Now, I saw the incursion in more political terms, as a Zelensky-sponsored initiative to escalate the war, prolong his stay in office and spike the energy talks that were going on at the time.

However, SS sees the Kursk invasion as an experiment by the Americans to see how viable a combined NATO + UAF invasion of Russia would be. And he says that the results were mixed. On the one hand, the breakthrough was successful (as usual) and Russia’s top generals charged with protecting that section (Gerasimov, Lapin) did nothing to prevent it. However, the UAF proved unable to mass enough troops quickly and in time to throw into the fight and exploit the situation. This is part of a long-emerging trend that has been observed about the UAF military capabilities.

Namely, their elite units are mobile, motivated and effective.

The regular conscripts? Not so much.

In the static, defensive war being fought in Donbass, the UAF uses the conscripted cannon fodder to soak up the initial Russian attacks on their positions. Their goal is to die slowly while the elite units are scrambled to plug in the gaps. Russia usually throws its cannon fodder into headlong attacks that make headway initially that then are beaten back once the elite UAF units arrive on the scene. Repeat this script 6 million time and that’s essentially the entirety of the “grinding” along the static positions in Donbass for the last three years summarized for you.

Very depressing stuff.

Russia has also demonstrated that they no longer have the capability to launch coordinated breakthrough assaults on the enemy lines. In contrast, the UAF is able to consistently and quickly and effectively coordinate these kinds of assaults that break through Russian lines and seize key positions. However, they have proven unable or unwilling to commit their less-than-exemplary reserves into these exploits and actually achieve large scale encirclements or larger strategic objectives. This puts them a head above Russia in war-making capability, but not enough to win decisively.

Assuming the higher-ups even want to win decisively, of course …

Defensively, Russia also keeps decent units in reserve (marines) that are then scrambled to stem the bleeding, and, once committed against breakthroughs, the fighting usually gets bogged down. Like it did in Kursk. Also, the North Koreans helped a great deal — more on them in a bit.

So far, we’ve seen the failure of the UAF to exploit their initial successes many times.

They break through ==> they wait for reserves ==> something goes wrong at this point ==> Russia stems the bleeding ==> and the static positional grinding resumes along the new lines.

However, the UAF have been able to significantly improve on their drone capabilities. SS points out that the UAF now enjoys a 6:1 or even 10:1 drone advantage over Russian forces. And, when used effectively by either side, FPV drones essentially destroy the ability of the other side to continue its advances.

Why is this the case though?

Simple:

• no massed armored columns can stand up to drone waves aimed at them

• it becomes impossible to reinforce and resupply forward units due to drones turning roads into graveyards

• not even artillery or planes are safe from the drones, without the support of which it become impossible to support an advance

So, we’re in a WWI scenario, essentially.

If, in WWII, armored vehicles overturned the static trench warfare reality of the previous war, then in this war, drones have overturned the dynamic, highly mobile paradigm of WWII onwards, which relied so heavily on fast-moving armor formations.

• Armor struggles to mass and punch through defensive lines on a large scale

• Supplies struggle to reach the forward advance

• Support from the air and artillery is rendered inconsistent

…

As for the North Koreans, Sofa Strategist is complementary. He says that despite the initial failures and heavy losses incurred by their troops being sent into headlong assaults across open terrain, they have since adapted and stopped doing that. In contrast, Russian generals continue to throw men away with abandon. Furthermore, he believes that the UAF was allowed to retreat from Kursk intact, despite the fact that they could easily be encircled by the NORKs and Russian forces, who outnumbered them there and had already cut off the supply routes and reinforcements to the advanced UAF positions.

To his mind, this is further proof of how comprised the RF leadership is, of course.

For that particular thesis we have lots of proof at this point.

Sofa’s suggestion: all resources and research should be committed to improving drones, making more of them and coming up with ways to defend against them. Using our WWII example, they are the breakthrough weapon that heavy tanks were then, and the militaries that learn how to utilize them the best will dominate the battlefields for the foreseeable future.

There is, sadly, very little reason to believe that the Putin regime will take the necessary measures, of course.

…

Being a bad and immoral person, I can’t help but notice just how much damage these little toys can do and feel a sense of awe and even possibility about the near future as a result. It occurs to me that never before have the citizenry of the world had such an unprecedented and easy access to technology that is so incredibly cheap, acquirable, low-skill intensive and EXTRAORDINARILY deadly. And history occasionally experiences periods where a new weapon takes the scene and because of it, an entire existing social order is upturned. Like, think the feudal samurai orders of Japan being confronted with Colt revolvers, just as an example.

Consider: what defense did the average citizen of the 20th century have against bombers, tanks and masses of machine-gun bearing troops that their Imperial governments could bring to bear on them?

He had absolutely none. All he could hope for was to be able to hide out in the mountains and jungles with his fellow desperado rebels, unable to put up a fight against weaponry that required large factories, large labor forces and a centralized economy to create en masse and which decided the results of wars.

But now, well, there are a few malcontents here and there all over the world who have seen the footage of these little toys taking down actual warplanes, ships, tanks, artillery, buildings, bunkers and so on with ease and with the operator far away from the danger zone. This is probably a development as dangerous and unprecedented and potentially socially destabilizing as the invention of dynamite and revolvers and their adoption by all sorts of political malcontents a century and some ago.

Don’t scoff — no less a political figure than Stalin himself got his start in politics as a dynamite diplomat who threatened the assets of Swedish oil magnates (the Nobel family) in modern-day Azerbaijan. Ironic, I suppose.

Depicted: Stalin explaining the position of the proletariat at the Nobel oil depot in Baku (colorized).

But, I expect drone technology to start being clamped down on and regulated intensely in the coming years as the implications of what these things can do starts to dawn on the people in charge.