Putin’s ‘heavy losses’ leave major gaps in Russia’s offensive capabilities | Prof. Justin Bronk

Putin’s ‘heavy losses’ leave major gaps in Russia’s offensive capabilities | Prof. Justin Bronk

the the Russians because they Contin they continued to take incredibly heavy losses for most of the beginning of this year even though the ukrainians were very short on ammunition the Russians were only really able to push that strategy of just pressure with these relatively small scale infantry and artillery attacks in terms of small scale infantry units with lots of artillery all across the line they didn’t really have the capacity to do like a big concentrated push that may have changed hello and welcome to the front line for times radio I’m James Hansen and today we’re talking about the latest on the war in Ukraine and I’m delighted to be joined by Professor Justin Bron senior research fellow for air power and technology in the military Sciences team at the Royal United Services Institute Justin always a pleasure welcome back to front line thanks for having me to begin with what’s your assessment of the Russian offensive in the northeast of Ukraine particularly in harv oblast are we seeing Signs Now that it has slowed certainly the the rate at which Russia was um managing to occupy new bits of territory near the front near the border uh has slowed down although it’s worth noting that Ukraine never um pushed troops right up to the Border um because obviously then they’d be at huge risk from Russians just on the other side um so you know Russia was essentially pushing into almost kind of No Man’s Land um areas I think what we’re seeing is definitely that they they’re not pushing any further and Ukraine has managed to regain tentative control over some of those areas but that unfortunately the Russian uh action is broadly speaking achieving its objective which is to further spread Ukraine’s um pretty thin um available Manpower and resource and ammunition across um an Ever wider front line um because one of the huge benefits that Ukraine gained as well as of course liberating lots of occupied territory when they they took back um most of Hy VA blast in in late 2022 was that it shortened the front lines um so it enabled them to to um generate better Force ratios uh in the rest of the the roughly thousand kilometers of front so Russia has pursued a a strategy over the last couple of months of maintaining consistent pressure at multiple different points all along the front line um in order to without expending huge resource in any one kind of major push just exploit the fact that it has far more manpower in Ukraine to draw on in terms of trained and available personnel and uh has some significant still and had a very significant ammunition uh Advantage so yeah it it suits them uh to try and wear down Ukrainian capacity by by keeping up the pressure and as many different points as they can um so yeah in that in that sense unfortunately I think h is is achieving its objective for for the Russians at the moment although it has proven very costly for them they’ve taken very significant losses um and continue to do so does that mean The Logical extension The Logical next step is that we may see Russia moving into Sumo Blast for instance um I think it’s more the question of exactly where is not necessarily one that I would I would think has an has an immediately obvious answer I think the the the the the greater issue is that the next step that we would expect to see from the Russians is a more concentrated uh large scale sum are offensive um so one of the points of disagreement between um you depending on essentially whose information and whose sources you look at uh is how much of a reserve Force the Russians have managed to build up over the past six months where the ukrainians have been very short of ammunition because of that cation of us deliveries for so long um which has lowered Russian casualties compared to what they were although they’re still very high and that’s enabled the Russians to reestablish training regiments um around the borders of Ukraine so they can train a higher proportion of the roughly 130,000 conscripts that they can mobilize every six months which they’ve always been able to do and you know that’s uh been a sort of consistent Factor but in in for most of the war they weren’t able to actually train the majority of those 130,000 six months the question now is how much Russia has been able to build up essentially new offensive units and equip them and train them to a decent standards while maintaining that pressure with those huge casualty rates that they’ve been suffering all along the front some people think the Russians don’t have huge amount of spare capacity um others would assess that actually they have significant new groupings of forces that are broadly speaking um likely to be available for a concentrated push somewhere and what we’ve seen consistently is that Russia does tend to plan on at least a sum a major summer offensive so what we’ve seen kind of at the moment is the sort of softening up phase trying to diminish Ukrainian capacity as far as possible before doing a big major push uh and that would at least if you were following Russian military Doctrine which they often haven’t for for particularly early on in the war but that would tend to be at a at a narrow point in the front where they can achieve maximum concentration of fire power and resource um so the key question there will be whether Ukraine um can have its ammunition and also crucially it its stocks of trained people um you know they’re not running out of people they’re running out of trained people um because that mobilization decision was in terms of mobilizing more younger people and and um increasing the training volumes has been slow um particularly because they they didn’t have uh any guarantee that they would get additional supplies from the US for so long and there wasn’t much sense or there was the argument there wasn’t much sense to mobilize large numbers of additional people if you can’t equip the ones you have um so Ukraine is trying to catch up with that training and mobilization backlog if you like question is can can the influx of new ammunition and that training effort um Shore up the gaps enough to to to hold back that Russian offensive um push when it comes H have Russia almost made a mistake by not making a concentrated offensive earlier given by the summer Ukraine May well have felt the benefits of of the renewed US military aid I think the Russians were pushing as hard as they could at the time um one of the consistent problems for both sides uh one of the consistent problems for both sides sorry is that um they have both taken such heavy losses in sort of established pre-war formations that had the the the longer term training and the the the officer sort of mid-rank Officer sort of cardas to conduct large scale Brigade or or or division scale operations both sides have very much um dimin you know very much lost that capacity and so what you’re seeing is that both sides are operating essentially mostly in in augmented company scale groups which is you know a couple hundred men uh and that’s partly why you’ve seen such kind of incremental positional attritional Warfare uh so again going back to that the question of have the Russians managed to build up a sufficient reserve of new units and have they managed to get the breathing space to train units that can fight at a larger scale because that’s what you need to do a big kind of concentrated offensive to try and essentially break through the lines and then maneuver to to expand and exploit that as the ukrainians did in har in in Autumn 2022 um so the the Russians because they Contin they Contin to take incredibly heavy losses for most of the beginning of this year even though the ukrainians were very short on ammunition the Russians were only really able to push that strategy of just pressure with these relatively small scale infantry and artillery attacks in terms of small scale infantry units with lots of artillery all across the line they didn’t really have the capacity to do like a big concentrated push that may have changed I want to come on to the situation with Ukraine’s air defenses in a moment just but but just on what we may see from the Russians in the coming months if they were going to launch a new concentrated offensive somewhere where do you think they would be targeting where are the likely areas they will Target I mean the the immediate Russian um objective is likely to be to complete the conquest of of donet and Lans uh which would mean pushing towards U katos and Sloans um and and one of the reasons the ukrainians are fighting so hard to try and keep Chaz OFA is that first of all it’s a very well fortified position it has high ground it is it is a a very commanding position uh so they they don’t want to lose it but also if it falls then um significant towns and and you know larger larger towns will come within Russian uh artillery range and the Russians have have consistently pursued a policy of essentially trying to depopulate the towns that they can so they just indiscriminately fire artillery into towns to force the population to leave because that further hurts Ukraine’s economy it creates more internally displaced people it’s obviously demoralizing and so um part of what’s driving where the ukrainians are choosing to to try and hold and fight at different points in the front line um not only in places like CH of where they where they have good ground that they want to try and defend but also often in places where it’s really not OP all to try and fight there it’s because they’re trying to avoid the Russians getting into position to be within a regular artillery range of additional towns which or even small cities um so yeah um it it’s the the Russian push is likely to at least initially be towards katos and slans um and the initial stages would be trying to take key points like Chaz ofada would unlock parts of that um on the other hand there is always is the danger that the Russians in a relatively small scale attack manag to find a weak point in the line and just push through it and then exploit it um so you know we we we’ve seen on both sides throughout the war that sometimes because of for example bad rotation Handover of units or just you know misallocation of resources relative to Intelligence on where the enemy is planning to conduct attacks that you get these sort of relatively unexpected breakthroughs which if they can be rapidly exploited before the en before the other side has a chance to plug the Gap as it were to move forces around then can actually become a much bigger um movement in the lines um particularly if key ground lines of communication start being taken so key Railways key roads um you know a lot of Ukraine is is very arable um forested in some areas and so uh in many cases lots of the country is not easily traversible at speed by armies um and so Key Road and rail um routes are are kind of a a subtlety which you don’t necessarily see on just a a Territorial map um but if key bits are are taken or at least put under under Fire and observation then that can really affect the ability to move things around large areas up front let’s come on to the situation with Ukraine’s air defenses it’s interesting that Germany are once again pushing for more Patriot missile systems to be sent to Ukraine how badly needed are the Patriots currently and more broadly how would you sum up Ukraine’s air defenses at the moment I think it’s fair to say the Ukraine’s air defenses are are very overstretched and are really in in having a difficult time at the moment um you know the the the blunt truth is there just isn’t enough ammunition um ex you know that is that is possibly available it’s not necessarily a question of funding or willingness um you know in a lot of cases the ammunition required is is just you know it’s having to be made um and uh and there’s a lot of particularly for Patriot there’s a huge amount of competing demands for it um in an environment where there just isn’t enough production capacity to meet that demand so for example um you have uh you know countries with huge spending power uh such as Saudi Arabia or the the United Arab Emirates which are routinely attacked with ballistic missiles uh from Yemen and so you know into their cities so these are countries that are not just trying to build up a stockpile because they kind of want to have a stockpile in case of contingencies they need Patriot uh and they have the money to spend on it um equally you know there’s huge us requirements for Patriot capacity in the Indo Pacific China has a massive um ballistic and cruise missile Arsenal um and the US has to defend key bases uh for example in okanawa or or you know even further field for example in Guam um and so you just and the same goes you know that the South Korea needs Patriot ammunition Japan needs Patriot ammunition Israel is is clearly a key draw as well um and then lots and lots of nations in Europe have given Patriot ammunition and launchers to Ukraine uh and are trying to find ways to give more but also they you know want to be able to defend themselves as well uh so yeah it’s it’s not unfortunately the air defense ammunition is probably the most critical ammunition shortfall in Ukraine at the moment and it’s not a problem that can be particularly easily fixed um so you know unfortunately Ukraine is is having to make very difficult allocation decisions on where it puts very scarce not just batteries you know so launchers and Radars but also um just where it allocates ammunition and so you see for example just an inability to defend H um from these these large SC bomb attacks as well as s300 missile surface to missiles being used as bombardment tools um because risking those launchers close enough to the borders to have a chance of intercepting these things that are coming in very very you know with very little warning in many cases is just not something Ukraine can afford to do um and when you talk about that production shortfall particularly for the Patriots I mean how how big is it I’ve seen some estimates that the order back log is up to two years I mean could it be that severe uh it depends on which country is trying to buy and how much the US is perceives them as as needing to be prioritized in terms of allocation of production and to a degree how much they’re willing to pay you know ultimately the companies producing these missiles are businesses um you know if if you are a country that is trying to set up a patriot capacity um let’s say the UK decided that it wanted to buy Patriot in order to bolster its own groundbased air defense capacity capability um you would be waiting a lot more than two years for um any significant ammunition supplies or batteries um because there is a just an enormous Global um outstripping of demand against Supply um and uh you know a lot of the Western medium range Sam systems so things like nay Sams IR um which are critical for providing defense against cruise missiles not ballistic but cruise missiles both in uh inside deep in Ukraine um for key Cities Power stations but also near the front lines um the the issue there is not necessarily the ammunition it is quite short priority um but you know nasams for example uses um the same amram so Advanced medium- range air to a missile um which is the standard kind of NATO air to a missile so there there is ammunition the issue there is batteries um in the sense that because Western countries have had a superiority for so long um themselves in in any wars that they’ve had to fight um you know even if you if if NATO were to end up in a direct conflict with Russia the big problem would not be Russian aircraft um per se so we just haven’t ever really prioritized building large numbers of samp systems for kind of Battlefield medium- range things so as Ukraine continues to run short of uh its kind of bread and butter tactical sound systems the book as we would say sa 11 the oso the sa8 um we’re having to find sources to try and get them ammunition but we don’t make it um these are Russian ultimately Soviet era um and now russian-made systems um so there are countries around the world that you know may still have stocks of these things but um that you know there there’s a lot of politics involved in whether those can be sourced uh and yeah it’s it’s a real challenge um Ukraine went into the war with an enormous air defense system um and so replacing that augmenting that to a serious scale let alone replacing it with Western equivalent systems is is just going to take a long time um so yeah air defenses is a really serious shortfall for ukrainians at the moment in some better news for Ukraine Belgium has agreed to deliver 30 us made F-16 fighter jets do we know when they will arrive and when they do how much of a difference will the f-16s make Justin uh so there have been some suggestions uh from uh Denmark for example that um f-16s may be delivered uh into country next in the next month um certainly the uh first uh sort of class of Ukrainian Pilots uh I believe are are um through F-16 conversion training now um the the question will be on the ground support capacity so where do you put the aircraft um F16 requires long comparative to to the MiG 29 and c27 aircraft at the ukrainians been flying up to now you me F-16 with a combat load requires long um runways but also crucially runways and taxiways that are very smooth and that are completely clear of gravel Stones you know any what we call foreign object debris fod um because it’s a single- engined aircraft with an intake positioned underneath right next to the the the ground um which because of the shape of it when when the engine is at takeoff power so high power it it creates a sort of very very strong almost Hoover effect um so it will suck up any fod that’s on the ground and because it’s a single engine if you get the engine if you get engine damage because of ingested stuff uh on takeoff and an engine failure there’s no second engine so you’ll lose the jet um so that’s not a problem uh if you are most Air Forces not having to develop a cap capacity Under Fire um because you will have you know you can do what the US Air Force does which is to have um you know lots of you take most of the people on a given base do what’s called a fod walk so everybody just walks up and down the taxi ways and the runways um two or three times a day uh looking for any bits of anything and picking them up uh and as long as you do that and you have smooth nicely conditioned surfaces F-16 is very efficient it’s it’s you know it’s the reason the landing gear is relatively flimsy and you know the aircraft’s design the way it is is to minimize weight so to maximize thrust to weight ratio and and Agility and all of that the trade office in Ukraine um there’s there’s quite a lot of work that will need to be done to the air bases um that have up to now been being used for and maintained to the standard required for um mig29 and s27 which are much more fod tolerant are twin engine designs with much more robust landing gear um designed to operate from pretty rough strips um and it’s not that Ukraine can’t prepare strips to that bases to that level it’s that doing so is not only visible so you you’ll see that you know they filled in the cracks and the runways and or or the the gaps between you know Runway Paving slabs and things um but also that it’s quite Personnel intensive and Ukraine is desperately short of trained people for all sorts of tasks um so if you don’t do it if you if you can only afford to do it at a couple of locations then the Russians will work out where they are very quickly and at that point they will probably go all out to hit them on the ground um and even if they don’t hit the Jets to hit the ground support equipment the maintainers um you Ukraine has very effectively used a dispersed operating model for most of the war when they’ve needed to so moving Jets around regularly from different bases and and using forward um Forward Air bases to you know conduct rapid re refueling and rearming and that kind of thing mirer the front line all of that is much more difficult to do with F-16 and again it goes back to the the severe overstretch already on Ukrainian groundbased air defenses if you’re also then trying to protect f16s on the ground um from pretty concentrated Russian attacks um that that’s that’s a pretty big challenge so I suspect um that when they are pushed into theater it will be relatively small numbers in order to try and minimize those dangers well minimize the challenge minimize minimize the number of personnel that you’re having to move around between bases minimize the target size for the Russians and so try and potentially disincentivize you know the use of mass strikes um for a relatively low payoff um but yeah and in terms of the the combat Effectiveness you know the the Ukrainian Pilots are um some of them are are combat experienced and very combat experienced but they’re combat experienced in very different tactics uh with using very very different aircraft that are designed to work in a very different way um and so there will be a question as to how well the aircraft adapts to Ukrainian tactics can be adapted to Ukrainian tactics um and to what degree the pilots are able and or willing to use western style tactics and whether those western style employment methods for aircraft like the F16 can be integrated with a Ukrainian military that is still very much ground focused and and so the the Air Force is very much a secondary component within the Ukrainian military you as it is in the Russian military it is a military that is fundamentally run by land officers and even in the Ukrainian Air Force a lot of the senior officers are um groundbased air defense officers because Ukraine had a huge groundbased air defense network for you and has done for many years and as as has essentially saved it from Russian air power for um for the the war so far far um all of which is to say there’s a lot of questions around how effective relatively small numbers of F-16 will be able to be in country it’s it’s not to suggest that the program isn’t useful it it’s vital to keep the Ukrainian Air Force extent and and to give them capacity for at least internal air defense um against Cru you know help to help with cruise missiles and intercepting shads and and other things but I think it’s important to manage expectations because because there’re such a symbol and because it was such a political um priority after main battle tanks but by you know the zilinsky government and the Ukrainian military and a lot of the kind of Ukrainian supporting um you know media social media kind of community should we say that there’s a really overinflated expectation among most people about what these Jets can achieve um F16 is not a wonder weapon it is a design from the 1970s that NATO Air Forces would not employ as the main tool in a threat environment like we see in eastern Ukraine um anywhere near the front lines and the tactics that you would normally in a western Air Force use to mitigate some of those limitations are large formation tactics using a huge number of different weapons in each sorty for suppressive and and targeting purposes um and while you can train Ukrainian Pilots relatively quickly to fly the F Well very quickly to fly the F-16 relatively quickly to operate them individually training Pilots to lead large complex formations to plan and to actually employ and and coordinate in the air you know let’s say for ship tactics that takes years and years um you it takes Western Air Forces you know a minimum of a minimum of about 3 years um under ideal circumstances to get people to the point where they’re a good foreship leader after they join a Frontline squadrons they’re already current on type um and we would also normally draw on things like tankers um aerial refueling tankers to extend the range to to give more tactical Freedom the ukrainians can’t operate tankers because of the longrange air defense bubble so they will have to be at low level with relatively constrained range because jet engines use a huge amount more fuel at low level and they’ll have to be low level anywhere near the front lines because of that long ground based long range air to ground surface to air threat so yeah it it will help to some degree with air def a missile and air and missile defense in depth and it will give you crine some more options for delivering air to ground Munitions from some degree of standoff um which they’ve already been doing to a significant extent with with kind of um adaptations for use of Western weapons like GBU 62 which is a jdam Glide bomb um from their existing aircraft but it’s not going to change the course of the war Professor Justin Bron always appreciate your time thank you for joining us today on front line

“They didn’t really have the capacity to deal a big concentrated push.”

Russian losses have hampered Putin’s capability to build reserve training units that can be deployed to make breakthroughs, RUSI’s Prof. Justin Bronk tells Frontline on #timesradio

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