Russian Advancement through Tank Assaults Proves Suicidal Given Ukraine's Drone Supremacy. Consequences Yield No Gain.
Explosive minidrones have significantly elevated the risk of large-scale, armored attacks, making them almost lethal, along the 800-mile long battlefront of Russia's 35-month ongoing conflict with Ukraine. As a Russian blogger lamented, translating their words via WarTranslated, a renowned Estonian analyst, Russian troops encountering vehicle assaults consistently end up with zero success.
However, this doesn't mean the Russians have been stagnant. They have shown rapid progress, particularly south of Pokrovsk, the fortified city in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, and in the outskirts of the Western Ukrainian Kursk Oblast's 250-square-mile salient, established by a strong Ukrainian force in August.
These advancements are primarily achieved without using vehicles. Instead, they resort to infantry, aided by artillery and drone support, methodically capturing tree line after tree line.
Russian troops are swaying towards an infantry-focused strategy, explained Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. The major reasons being reducing equipment losses and the problematic challenge of overcoming fortified positions shielded by extensive reconnaissance and drone surveillance.
Nevertheless, certain vagabond Russian commanders persistently involve their tanks, infantry combat vehicles, and improvised battle vehicles like vans, cars, and golf carts in these attacks. Unfortunately, these attempts lead to no significant progress, no victorious dismounts, and no devastation of the enemy's forces by autocannons.
The blogger scornfully referred to the directors of these suicidal incursions as "geniuses." By sending vulnerable vehicles and their crews to risky dashes across drone-patrolled no man's lands, these tank commanders sacrifice everything while offering no wisdom, making for intense entertainment for Ukraine's armed forces and their drone operators, eager to record each Russian attack's failure.
The Russian emphasis on infantry assaults puts pressure on the Ukrainians to respond, compelling them to mobilize infantry forces of their own. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian military is grappling with a major shortage of combatants, making it difficult to replace losses while simultaneously creating new units.
Tatarigami, founder of Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group, attributes this problem to the rash decisions of Kyiv's leaders. Unprepared for wartime mobilization, they believed large-scale wars were a thing of the past, and delaying controversial recruitment decisions to strike a balance between public approval and the military's escalating needs during the conflict.
Struggling to recruit the necessary manpower, the Ukrainian military has resorted to desperate measures, including borrowing specialized personnel from their support units to join combat situations. Consequently, support teams become depleted, and inexperienced soldiers find themselves catapulted into battlefronts.
Paradoxically, the draining of drone units to reinforce infantry units, as a temporary solution to counteract Russian infantry attacks, may unwittingly contribute to making it safer for Russian vehicles to launch renewed attacks.
Despite the Russian shift towards an infantry-focused strategy, some rogue commanders continue to use vehicles in attacks, which often result in failures. Meanwhile, Ukraine's struggle to recruit enough combatants has led them to borrow drone operators from support units, potentially weakening their defenses against drone surveillance and attacks from Russia.
