Kill ratios
I wish I was as smart as these military people or Philips O' Brien
@RALee85 @Biz_Ukraine_Mag @HistorianBlood well ain’t that a doozy. Nobody figured this out before. @BuddNicholas @WriteBenSkipper Nobody could have known.
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 8:50 PM ∙ Mar 5, 2023
FFS.
What if both sides have suffered devastating? This war has been on magic Winter War kill:ratio mythology since day one whole @HistorianBlood raged against this analogy.Spoiler Finland lost badly especially in terms of 2 lost generations.Send NATO in. @BuddNicholas @konrad_muzyka https://t.co/WewmnJjGfI
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 2:02 PM ∙ Mar 4, 2023
The question is how many Ukrainian civilians and soldiers die before Putin is stopped? Which is the question we raised in our podcast coming out Tuesday. Spencer’s statement is exactly what you would expect from a kill-ratio US COIN ‘specialist’. @HistorianBlood @BenRigbyJourno
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 10:21 PM ∙ Nov 6, 2022
@BuddNicholas @SashoTodorov1 @HistorianBlood @RUSI_org More casualties doesn’t change the ratio - weapon type,
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 11:26 AM ∙ Dec 2, 2022
medic availability and evacuation methods significantly change. Perhaps on the Rus side things get bad say at Bakhmut
@ChPalme @SashoTodorov1 what’s your Junior officer to private kill ratio in WW2?
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 6:15 AM ∙ Oct 11, 2022
@DustinDuCane @FinestYew @militaryhistori I could speak of many more stories told directly from friends and relatives of Ukrainian combatants, but I can assure you.
— Nick Budd (@BuddNicholas) 11:04 AM ∙ Nov 14, 2022
The word ‘easy’ or casualty ratio numbers are never mentioned.
‘It’s hard’ is the common denominator.
I mention how analysts speak of such ratios.
3)
@SashoTodorov1 @BuddNicholas @DustinDuCane @FinestYew @militaryhistori Not sure how much we should read into it but this bit from Milley also seems to suggest a relatively even loss ratio
— Alex Almeida (@AlexAlmeida2020) 12:49 PM ∙ Nov 14, 2022
@TheVoicesOfWar @eugene_finkel Ukraine is losing its best soldiers because war but everybody quality had a turn in service thx to the Donbass war after 2014. The smart fit healthy Russians are avoiding service like the plague while ‘elite’ VDV are dead and/or rubbish.
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 10:04 AM ∙ Sep 21, 2022
AND MY MOST PERTINENT TWEET ON SUBJECT
@HistorianBlood hate these comparisons and so do mostly I, but as a flawed analogy -> Kursk risk. New tech, last of trained plus reserves, slap into defenses and vast reserves. @BuddNicholas @warmatters @konrad_muzyka
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 3:25 PM ∙ Jan 14, 2023
Yeah, instead of an offensive we have a last stand annihilating Ukrainian reserves. Maybe there will be an offensive to follow. Hopefully not Kursk like.
Plus Nick Budd on similar subject:
The short term challenge Ukraine faced was that if it committed to offensive operations early in the year it might exhaust its reserves and lose a critical number of armoured vehicles, leaving it vulnerable to Russia later in the year.
— Nick Budd (@BuddNicholas) 5:41 AM ∙ Jan 29, 2023
4)
@BuddNicholas Kursk!
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 10:01 AM ∙ Jan 29, 2023
Who knew?
@BuddNicholas Yes. It’s still 300k (?). Ukraine doesn’t have endless reserves and even at 3:1 Russia can win. @SashoTodorov1 has threads on this and should write a post for Fallout.
— Dustin Du Cane (@DustinDuCane) 10:28 AM ∙ Sep 29, 2022
Who could have called it?
This from an email from January 23 to my co-authors:
Thought for the week, did Clausewitzian fixation on destruction of enemy troops, mass, lose the Eastern Front when a drive on Moscow and the heart of the empire would have been deadly for Stalin and led at worst to a peace with a new regime.
And is Ukraine at the Kursk stage where it will have superior equipment and soldiers but tries a bold maneuver which will destroy its reserves while Russia gets stronger.
But instead of an attack which at least could have given a victory, we have Ukraine draining it reserves in a defense of a worthless strategically city. Stalingrad or Kursk?
Discussed here and in other podcasts:
And of course two weeks ago:
The supplies have forced Ukraine from a sound strategic response to the war and into stop-gap battlefield management. Holding the front at all costs, retaining lost ground at all costs, are honourable operational decisions but are limiting Ukraine’s strategic options. Ideas of giving up ground for a better strategic position are heckled as cowardly or defeatist, which takes us back to why positive propaganda has become a curse to Ukraine’s warfighting. Ukraine has acquired the defender’s dilemma, even after fighting serious defensive battles, the lines have barely changed. But Ukrainian exhaustion is beginning to show, and the Russians have not retreated but on the contrary are getting stronger.
I think we deserve a coffee, chaps.
Its frankly depressing and demotivating to see nonsense hack writers like Philips “Not an original thought” O’ Brien or MAGA genocidal (I have the receipts) Trent Telenko be viewed as oracles.
Update 15 March 2023
What if Russia “wins” this war?
— Ralph Janik (@RalphJanik) 2:15 PM ∙ Mar 15, 2023
Update 12 March 2023
1: Bakhmut is no longer a good place to attrit Russian forces
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) 1:22 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023
2: The attrition ratio became worse once Russia seized the northern flank in mid/late-Feb
3: The attrition ratio in Bakhmut is worse than elsewhere
4: The % of Russian casualties from elite units is higher elsewhere
Rob was in Bakhmut personally, so I think that he has some awareness of how things look on the ground there.
— Status-6 (@Archer83Able) 3:10 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023
Some of the replies are ridiculous.
Update 5 March 2024
Kursk mentioned.
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