From Kherson Then on to Crimea, the Ukrainian Ground Offensive Has Begun

As of this writing, there are signs that Ukraine has opened major offensive operations in Kherson with fighting in at least seven locations. Kherson, a Russian army-occupied city that was once home to nearly 300,000 people, was the first Ukrainian city to fall to the Russian invasion beginning on February 24th, 2022.  Since that time most of the civilians still loyal to Ukraine have fled as the Russians advanced or escaped after the occupation. There are credible reports that Russia is also forcibly relocated Ukrainian civilians inside Russian concentration camps, where those deemed loyal to Russia were released while others less inclined to support Putin and Moscow have been sent to places unknown.

The city is mostly deserted now with Russia firmly in control of the local government, the police, and local utilities.  For Russia, the prize in Kherson is its port which is where river, rail, and road traffic come together at the Black Sea in the delta of the Dneiper River.  The port has four large slips and it’s visited by 2,000 ships a year handling approximately 2 million tons of cargo.

Cutting Ukraine off from the port was a major blow to their economy for both imports from abroad and shipments of grain and petroleum products. It also provided Russia with a seaport to bring in troops and supplies by rail, road, and ship in offensive operations to the West towards Odesa.

For weeks now the armed forces of Ukraine have been striking at bridges across the Dneiper river to cut Russian troops in Kherson from supply and reinforcements as well as striking at stores of ammunition and supplies well to the rear.

Following an all-night bombardment of front-line positions as well as read areas on the 29th, Ukrainian tanks, fighting vehicles, and infantry made a three-pronged attack to the South towards Kherson.

It has apparently met with some success in the initial stages

Speaking to reporters yesterday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby did not comment on any operational details related to Ukraine’s offensive but did say that Russia was forced to respond by repositioning forces in other sectors to stem the assault saying, “The Russians have had to pull resources from the east simply because of reports that the Ukrainians might be going more on the offense in the south — they’ve had to deplete certain units from certain areas in the east and the Donbas”.

Ukraine has had six months to prepare for this assault. Its newly mobilized troops have had since late February to train inside the country as well as in Poland, the UK, and even the US in the case of some Ukrainian pilots.  It has also had time to amass the fuel, ammunition, shells, bombs, and other supplies it needs to go over to offensive operations.

As for the assault itself, we are seeing reports that that attack is advancing in three prongs in a South East from Mykolaiv towards Kherson some 30 miles distant.  Russian media reports are already saying that the offensive has enjoyed some success.  The Armed Force of Ukraine has asked that we do not give up information that would help the Russians but we would say a few things about how this offensive will likely be fought given the military situation on the ground.

Ukraine Became a Conflict of Positional Warfare Early in the War

The First World War in Europe was a conflict of what is known as Positional Warfare. While it is not defined as a doctrine, it generally involves using your amassed firepower and infantry to displace an enemy from one position and force him to fall back to another position.  The advancing army consolidates the ground it has taken and then begins the process again with an intense and prolonged artillery barrage and then the advance of infantry or tanks and fighting vehicles to take new ground.  The enemy driven from the position tries to reconstitute his forces and supplies in order to counterattack and drive the enemy back and regain their lost ground.  In Europe, the trenches extended for hundreds of miles from North to South, and staggering numbers of troops were lost on both sides for gains of only a few miles. The reason was that the trench lines were not single lines but a series of fortifications and trenches behind the main line that presents a defense in depth.  The French or British might drive the Germans back from the first line of trenches only to find they had occupied new positions only a couple of miles to the rear.  As the infantry advanced to these new enemy trenches they would come under intense artillery fire that would drive them back with heavy losses.  With the British or French troops now exhausted and low on ammunition, the Germans would mount a counterattack with fresh troops and drive the French or British troops back to their original positions.

Following the war, German generals carefully assessed the battles they had lost and reappraised their tactical doctrines with the introduction of two new weapons that came into existence during the war, the airplane and the tank. The Germans believed that using the mobility of these new weapons could end the mass slaughter of positional warfare tactics to not just reduce losses but to decisively defeat an enemy.  The idea that came to be known as “Blitzkrieg” or Lightning War was fairly simple. Instead of advancing along an entire front, a preparatory artillery barrage would be laid down to fix the enemy in place and hamper his movements. Then tanks and troops riding in trucks or lightly armored fighting vehicles would smash through one part of the enemy’s defensive line using their cannons at close range.  The infantry would dismount and clear the enemy positions to the flanks of the tanks.  Tactical aircraft would strike at enemy artillery and any reinforcements they tried to use to fill the gap.  Once the breach was made, the armored formations would turn to the left and right to envelop the enemy and now attack his positions from the rear.  Infantry on foot would pour through the gap and exploit the positional gains and prepare to repel a counterattack. Under this theory of warfare, tanks would not be these huge machines built to fight other tanks, but small, light, and fast, armed with machine guns and short-range howitzers and guns used to support the infantry.

And it worked.  German tanks and their tactical aircraft would invade France and overrun the country in a matter of weeks.  In Russia, the terrain favored maneuver warfare and German armored forces punched through to encircle and capture more than two million Russian troops and force them to surrender in the first few months of the fighting.

The US adopted blitzkrieg tactics as well but put it on steroids.  American tanks were lightly armed and armored by comparison to German tanks, but there were three times as many of them. US artillery was also far more numerous than German artillery and the airforces attached to support US armored units on the march were also much larger in terms of numbers and types. While the Germans relied primarily on the Stuka dive bomber for close support of the troops, an American commander had at his disposal, dive bombers, fighter bombers, and medium bombers as well. With the medium bombers, he could strike well into the rear areas of the enemy he was fighting.

American artillery was not only numerous it was highly mobile.  The Brits were said to marvel at how quickly a US artillery battalion could get set up and firing.  It would arrive at its position like a stampede of cattle, and be set up and firing its guns in about 45 minutes.  It took a comparable British unit half the day to get set up and send shells down range.  As the tanks and infantry advanced, the guns would too, packing up and roaring out of there to their new position just as quickly. A US Artillery battalion could cover 160 miles a day, while for the most part, German artillery was horse-drawn.

While the Germans probably had the better gun in their Flak 88mm cannon, the United States had a better system of employing its guns.  Looking at the fighting in Italy, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was said to remark, “The enemy’s tremendous superiority in artillery, and even more in the air, has broken the front open.”

Not only did an infantry division have 4 battalions of artillery attached to it, but armored divisions had 3 battalions of self-propelled guns attached to them as well, one for each regiment of tanks.  In a pinch though, all three battalions of SPGs could be turned to support a single tank regiment in trouble.

In Ukraine, advances in weaponry in the area of anti-tank guided missiles and surface-to-air missiles quickly neutralized the Russian ability to advance its tanks quickly while supported by tactical aircraft. There was hardly a tank, vehicle, aircraft, or helicopter that could move in daylight without attracting a missile being fired at it. As a result, the Russian’s offensive stalled everywhere almost at once, and they were forced to employ positional warfare tactics to hold on to what ground they could.  They began digging trenches and building extensive bunkers complexes in defensive positions in Donbas and Luhansk.  The Russians had anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles too and Ukraine found that its own airforce and tank forces were just as vulnerable to attack and were forced to do the same thing, dig in and hold on.

In the six months since the war began both sides have tried to move from their trenches offensively, only to be repelled by mass artillery fires with heavy casualties, the stalemate that ensued mostly favored Ukraine, as weapons from the West flowed into it. For Russia, the extended time was a liability.  Sanctions were biting into their ability to replenish their losses, and what Putin had told his people would be a brief “Special Military Operation” was turning into a costly quagmire they could not easily extricate themselves from.

The Russian army was under considerable pressure from Moscow to take ground so they were constantly being exhorted to attack whatever the cost and it cost them greatly in terms of men and material.  Ukraine by contrast actually enjoyed some advantages in waiting things out.  Almost every day that went by, Ukraine was acquiring new and better weapons from the West and was able to train its conscript troops more extensively, not just in training camps at home but in England, Poland, and other EU countries.

By holding off the Russian army so effectively and inflicting such heavy losses on them, Ukraine was as able to prove to western countries that giving them more advanced weapons was not just throwing money away on a lost cause.  Ukraine showed that while Russia may have the best army in Europe, it definitely had the second-best army in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s troops also enjoy the advantage of being able to survive long enough to improve as soldiers, by taking far fewer casualties the average Ukrainian soldier has gotten the chance to improve his combat skills and also pass them on to new recruits in the unit. By contrast, the Russian soldier is fortunate to survive just a single battle against Ukrainian soldiers and given the reports we’ve seen is not too keen on doing it again.  Ukraine also enjoys the advantage of fighting within their own country with the support of the local population and enjoy a high state of morale as well.  The fearsome and vaunted reputation of the Russian army has been broken in this war, and Ukrainian soldiers believe they are is fighting on a winning team.  This is invaluable in war.

The Ukrainian offensive is not likely to move very quickly at first for several reasons.

First, Ukraine doesn’t have the ability to send fast moving tank formations with mechanized infantry into battle, at least not yet.  It has received some 250 tanks from Poland which could make for a potent striking arm with attached mechanized infantry, but it will take some time for them to train these formations to fight and amass the supplies to sustain them in the field.  As the Russians have demonstrated you can’t just throw unsupported tanks at an objective and expect to win.  Tank have to be supported with close air support, infantry, artillery and a considerable logistics “tail” with fuel ammunition and repair vehicle to keep them moving. The Russians enjoy a considerable advantage in the number of artillery pieces they have in the field.  We know that they are probably worn out to a considerable degree and we know the crews are not very well trained and their system of bringing fire onto a target can be nearly glacial in terms of speed, but they still have a lot of guns pointed at Ukraine and lots of ammunition for them still. To operate mass armored formations in the field, Ukraine would need a permissive environment both in the air and on the ground and it lacks the ability to create that right now. So there will not be any massive breakthrough of Ukrainian tanks into the rear of the Russian lines to wreak havoc. So, very much like WWI, this offensive will be mostly infantry slowly slogging it out on the ground using tanks and fighting vehicle in support and perhaps making short, rapid flanking movements.

Second, Ukraine has done very well so far, attacking Russia where it is weak, not strong which is very smart, so its offensive will seek to exploit what it perceives as weakness in the Russian positions.  For their part, the Russian doctrine will be to create a defense in depth with lines of trenches and fortifications behind each other for miles.  The troops the Ukrainians are encountering right now are probably not the best troops on the line, but the poorly armed and trained local conscripts they have recently levied from the civilian populations of Donbas and Luhansk. When they encounter the regular troops of the Russian army they may bog down in that fighting. As Ukraine’s infantry moves East it moves closer into the range of Russian guns and further away from its own artillery protection. Ukraine’s artillery will need to be constantly moving to avoid the much larger barrages that Russian guns are capable of. Ukraine’s army has fewer, but more accurate guns, while Russia has 4-5 times as many less accurate guns.  They just about cancel each other out.

A major task of this offensive will be taking as many Russian guns out of action as they can as concentrated artillery fire can stop just about any ground assault(including one by tanks) in its tracks.

Ukraine will have to keep pounding rear areas of supply for Russian forces, which will quickly run out of fuel and ammunition in the fighting in 3 to 5 days unless resupplied.

Third, Ukraine has had 6 months to prepare “5th Column” operations against Russia that are beginning to bear fruit. Behind the lines in Russia, saboteurs have struck at factories, warehouses, supply depots, and other targets while providing intelligence on Russian troop and equipment movements to the front lines. The car bombing in Moscow of the daughter of Putin advisor Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin complicates things even more since the group claiming responsibility, the National Republican Army represents an organic Russian-led resistance movement bent on deposing Putin and his government.  These 5th Column actions tie down Russian troops and other security forces in guarding military targets that are needed on the front lines.

Don’t Expect a Major Showing by Ukraine or Russia’s Air Forces

As stated earlier, Ukraine will not be able to bring its air force to bare on the fighting too much of a degree. Like Russia, Ukraine does not have a strategic air force able to strike deeply behind the Russian lines, but a tactical air force trained and equipped to support the troops on the ground. There are still a lot of active air defenses in the Russian-occupied regions that they will have a great deal of trouble with if they fly too deep into Russian-held territory. This is mitigated somewhat by the presence of HARM missiles now equipping Ukrainian fighters.  Right now, Russian surface-to-air missile systems like the S-300 and S-400 force Ukrainian fighters to fly low to the ground, but armed with HARMs they can now “pop-up” to altitude to invite the S-400 radar to lock on them, then fire the HARM which tracks on the emission from that radar and then swoop back down to tree top height.  Flak suppressions missions like these are a very dangerous game. Ideally, you would want the missile battery to fire its missiles first to expend them before you launch the HARM, but that does not work with the missiles of the S-400 system which have active radar homing systems in the warhead.  But the HARM on the battlefield will probably force the Russians to change their tactics and limit how long their search radars are active to prevent getting a HARM shot at them. Ukraine will have a very hard time replacing any aircraft it loses, so it will use them sparingly in this offensive.  The same goes for Russia, whose air force also serves the primary role of supporting the ground forces. Using them in a ground attack role with so many Stingers and other surface-to-air missile systems in Ukraine’s hands would create losses that Russia cannot easily replace either.

The Role of HIMARS will be Decisive in this Offensive

That being said, Ukraine does have a force multiplier in the 40 or so HIMARS systems the US has provided to them along with long-range precision-guided rockets.  Ukraine has been employing these rockets like a strategic and tactical air force of sorts, striking at roads, bridges, railroads, trains, and ammunition and fuel depots behind the lines. The intention has been to cut off Russian forces in Kherson from their supplies, reinforcements, and communications.  This is known as isolating the battlefield. It is of note that while Ukraine has made the bridges across the Dnieper river impassable for heavy trucks and tanks, they can still be crossed by foot traffic.  It is actually very shrewd for Ukraine to leave an open avenue of retreat for Russian soldiers on foot(at least a seeming one anyway) otherwise they may be forced to fight with the courage of despair.

Ukraine has also been very clever in creating dozens of wooden decoys of the HIMARS for the Russians to expend expensive cruise missiles trying to kill.  The numerous reports from Moscow claiming to have killed at least 20 HIMARS are probably these decoys.

After the war is over the US may reassess its own use of tactical aircraft and decide that in the future that long-range precision-guided HIMARS rockets married to good photo intelligence from drones and space satellites may be the way to go in terms of close support of the troops in the field in the future, rather than using tactical aircraft.

Ukraine probably means to press into Kherson leaving the Russians with their backs to the river and forced to either retreat across it or surrender.  Even though Ukraine would like to take the city and its port mostly intact, the Russians may force Ukraine to reduce it to rubble to displace them.  Russia will probably destroy the port facilities as well rather than surrender them intact.

From a strategic standpoint, it would probably be better for Ukraine to capture a large number of Russian troops than to annihilate them completely.  Having 10,000 Russian prisoners would bring a lot of pressure on Putin from the families of these men to end the war, whereas killing 10,000 of them might galvanize the Russian population to win the war against Ukraine at any cost. The capture of large stores of Russian equipment and ammunition would also be very hard for Russia to replace.  Losing Kherson will be a military and political disaster for Russia, but it is not the worst disaster Moscow is facing,

Once Ukraine takes Kherson it will leave Russian forces in the south on the other side of the Dnieper River which is formidable to cross with pontoons or barges.  It forms a natural defensive barrier that Ukraine can use to build up its forces for the next offensive which is likely to be the recovery of Crimea.

Crimea is the Actual Goal of the Offensive

Ukrainian President Zelensky has made it clear that their offensive goals include the recovery of Crimea and victory in Kherson would put his armed forces closer to achieving that goal. Once again, HIMARS will play a pivotal role. From Kherson, its long-range rockets would be able to reach the Russian naval base in Sevastopol and destroy what remains of the Black Sea Fleet stationed there.

So far, Russian air defense systems have not shown themselves to be effective in intercepting HIMARS rockets and they would be faced with having to vastly increase the number of air defense systems they have in place or evacuate the Black Fleet from Sevastopol and relocate it to Russia, possibly to Novorossiysk Naval Base in Russia several hundred miles to the East. Sevastopol is not a single base but the hub of several naval bases and air bases in Crimea, including the Chernomorskoye Military Base, the Donuzlav Naval Base, the Feodosia Naval Base, the Kamov Military helicopter testing center, the Kacha naval air base, the Saki naval air station and the Lake Donuzlav Naval Air Station.

These bases in Crimea support Russian naval operations in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean as well. The loss of these bases and airfields would be disastrous for Russia strategically and politically.