Comments by "Stephen Sipe" (@stephensipe5405) on "Russian Desperation: The Counteroffensive is Coming" video.

  1. Listening to a fellow MI trained person was refreshing. My 1 point of variance is Ukrainian organization. Although Ukrainians have a NATO style NCO Corp and have received NATO style tactical training, the Companies, Battalions, and Brigades style use Soviet formations. This may be because retraining every level of Command to NATO standards might not fit the timeline. However, having less maneuver Units at each level of Division 86 organization pushes maneuver decisions to Division and Corp Commanders. It is not necessarily a fatal flaw, but it slows decision making the higher the Command level. This can be mitigated IF Ukrainian Division and Corp Commanders are physically close to their front. No one knows how a war will turn out. A sand storm saved Desert Storm/Iraqi Liberation. US Units at Bastogne thwarted the Nazi Ardennes Offensive. But it can go the other way. The US won the 3 Tet Offensives and lost the political part of the war. What Ukrainians succeed at doing during their Offensives matters. There is an old saying about how to eat a whole elephant; one bite at a time. Ukrainians need an immediate success. Cutting the Russian land bridge will achieve this 1ST victory. Sieging Crimea including destroying the Kerch Bridge is victory #2. My suggestion of enveloping the Russian Donbas Pocket south of the Donetsk River is victory #3. Reducing 175 Russian Battalions to Company strength of less is victory #4. Liberating all of Kherson Oblast East to the Crimean border is #5. The question is how many Ukrainian casualties will get us to this point? If Ukrainians can roll out 3 more Brigades during their Offensives, then everything is possible. Liberating Crimea has never been easy. Liberating northern Luhansk may be difficult too. Capturing Taganrog or even Rostov, with tge Donetsk River as a barrier of defense, may be an option to consider. This could be more practical if Russians retreat in disarray. President Zelinsky cannot make the bad German call on attacking Dunkirk. Few Russians should escape being POWs. This is why I suggested enveloping Donbas after a breach and cutting the land bridge.
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  2.  @andersgrassman6583  I agree the Ukrainian Army with a NATO trained NCO Corp is much more agile at lower levels than Russians. Ukrainians can win with their transitional style force. Having said this, the timeline to completely remake the Ukrainian Officer Corp and reorganize Units may have been too short to implement at this time. You can have friendly fire deaths when Units do not understand exactly what they are doing. The 5 Paragraph OPORD and how to create it, The Process, has to be trained with multiple practical table top exercises with Officers and NCOs down to Battalion level. The wargaming part of The Process has to include key Company level Officers and NCOs. Companies do NOT create OPORDs. However, they have to pull their pieces out of Battalion OPORDs and explain them to every troop. If a Corp General asks a Private in a Company what’s the plan, he had better hear that Company’s plan or at least a Platoon version of the Company plan. These plans get weaker as a battle progresses. OPORDs become FRAGOs. There are less discussions about plans. The coordination with adjacent Units also becomes weaker, sometimes confused. If a Battalion Commander has 4 maneuver Companies in a NATO organization instead of 3 in a Soviet organization, this is an extra advantage at the Battalion level, to resolve situations with your own resources. In the Soviet model, all those 4TH Companies are reformed into additional Battalions. But Soviet Brigades do not get the additional Battalions. These extra Battalions are reformed into additional Brigades. Its at the Division Command level that the additional Brigades can be maneuvered. Remember, when 1 Unit gives up the battlefield to another friendly Unit, this is called a Battle Handover maneuver. It is dangerous at any level because of Enemy artillery fire. However, the higher the Command level, the more dangerous. This is why extra internal resources at each level are so important. If a Battle Handover occurs after an Objective is secure, great. If it occurs in between Objectives, this is a risky maneuver which increases in risk the higher the Command level. After Ukrainians win the War, a NATO style AAR (After Action Review) has to be conducted. It has to be honest and thorough. This is the only way things improve. Bottom up 360 management has to be used. The US after Vietnam did this to learn SOME lessons. They did it in Grenada, Panama, and the Desert Storms. Each time they learned more lessons and made adjustments. Equipment matters, but so does organization and training to apply the equipment used. The Ukrainian Military Command cannot let post war civilian euphoria or depression color their AAR. Each Unit in each level of Command has to document their experiences. Higher Command has to interpret these reflections to determine where there were positives and negatives. They have to compare these to their own initial assessments. Finally, an Official AAR has to be published. In some cases, 2 Battalions or 2 Brigades or 2 Divisions may have different AAR reflections covering the same topics. Why? Is leadership training or quality to “blame”. In this case it’s not personal blame but finding what to fix blame. Is it an equipment advantage 1 Unit held versus another? This is a purchase recommendation. Were there intelligence gaps or Russian surprises? The reasons why have to be determined. Collectively, these all will produce a better Ukrainian Military. It will give them intelligent questions to ask in NATO Conferences and Workshops.
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  3.  @andersgrassman6583  Your understanding of my post is well comprehended. An athlete has a single brain and still struggles to change from one way originally trained to new way to win with new equipment or a new scheme. It is much harder to change from one military scheme different, new scheme using leaders at different levels all adapting at different speeds. It may take several different types of exercises, both field and table top, to get the concepts to sink in using a variety of scenarios. Ukrainians did really well learning how to build an NCO Corp from 2018 to 2022. This the basic of Crawl. Having Junior Officers used to delegating to a Senior Sergeant group is the next level of Crawl. Platoons are the same 3 at Company Level as in a Soviet model. Learning new equipment and understanding how to pull the Company information out out Battalion OPORD are the top of Crawl at the Company level. Battalions are the lowest level of maneuver Command. This Crawl is much harder. Battalion Staffs each have thinking component parts, the brain, of the Battalion. NATO Battalions have 4 maneuver Companies. Their formations are: linear (moving fast), diamond (possible contact); square (expected contact); and horizontal (full attack). Getting Company Commanders to understand the battlefield, applying the formations to the battlefield, and making sure the Companies are ready to maneuver when required. The road and maneuver fields for each Battalion in each formation throughout the AO (Area of Operations) has to be planned, war gamed, and run through with key Company Platoon Staff. This all takes time to perfect. Ukrainian timelines did not allow for this much change at Battalion level. Now imagine adding an extra Battalion to each Brigade! I am not sure what The Process is in a Ukrainian Brigade. Does Staff at this level create their own Plans the way NATO Units do? Are Plans made at a higher level in micromanagement detail and handed to Brigades? NATO Plans at high levels via the OPROD. Each lower level creates their own OPORD down to Battalion level. This is how Staffs are trained for promotion. I believe Ukrainians just did not have enough time to adopt and implement all of these changes for 2023 Offensives.
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