Here’s the fifth episode from Adjutants Lounge, all rights are Neil (Royal Engineers, UK), Ben and Phil.

Half an hour transcript for everybody, the rest for paid subscribers. Might release for free to everybody in future, might not.

Full audio for free here

Transcript

00:00:00 Ben Skipper

Today, we're gonna continue the the discussion and the series, the Russian Web War. This is now part 5.

00:00:08 Ben Skipper

I'm joined today by Doctor for Blood. What? How?

00:00:14 Philip Blood

Good afternoon chaps.

00:00:17 Ben Skipper

And Neil Pointer, who is also OC's Royal horse engineers, how are?

00:00:24 Neil Pointer

You doing, Neil? We're, we're, we're. We're gonna drop that one at some.

00:00:27 Neil Pointer

Point. Aren't we, Ben? Yeah, yeah.

00:00:29 Speaker 4

Hello. Hello all. Yep.

00:00:31 Speaker 4

I don't.

00:00:32 Ben Skipper

Know it makes it. That's a that's a warm, cosy feeling.

00:00:36 Ben Skipper

If you will.

00:00:41 Philip Blood

Wasn't wasn't. Wasn't that the guy charred in Zulu in the red tunic, came round on a horse. Is that it? Am I getting it or am I getting?

00:00:49 Philip Blood

It all confused.

00:00:50 Neil Pointer

No, no, no. The the Royal Horse Engineers was a nickname. I think it was more an internal nickname for the armoured engineers within the sappers rather than the Royal Horse Artillery. It was the Royal Horse Engineers. So that's where it came.

00:00:57 Speaker 4

OK.

00:01:03

Good.

00:01:03 Ben Skipper

I I I'm quite happy to keep sports prevention officer.

00:01:10 Ben Skipper

I'm. I'm not. I'm not giving to fantasy titles.

00:01:18 Ben Skipper

I think I'm just gonna keep to that one. It keeps me.

00:01:23 Ben Skipper

So.

00:01:24 Ben Skipper

Serious heads on now.

00:01:26 Ben Skipper

So we're gonna be discussing what's going on. A lot has changed since I last spoke with Phil at the beginning of the week.

00:01:35 Ben Skipper

We we've got Neil.

00:01:35 Ben Skipper

In because we've invited Neil into this discussion because he's gonna sort of be bringing perspectives that neither Phil nor I necessarily have, and he has the experience, which I think the list will find exceptionally interesting into into the current state of play with what's what's happening in Ukraine.

00:01:54 Ben Skipper

Especially around the use of battle groups and armed forces, I mean.

00:02:00 Ben Skipper

Neil, so I don't make an absolute **** up a bit of what what you're trying to say and I don't don't misinterpret it, I'm I'm just gonna sort of let you go on.

00:02:07 Ben Skipper

Cool.

00:02:08 Neil Pointer

Cool. OK, so number of things that are going on, I can summarise it and and this is almost conceptual that we're moving into a new stage of land warfare.

00:02:22 Neil Pointer

Or it's not a new stage. It's a repeat and it's the constant to and fro that there is between the defence and the attack and which one has got supreme.

00:02:32 Neil Pointer

See.

00:02:34 Neil Pointer

And what we're seeing quite clearly at the moment and in fact this was backed up and I I can't remember which American general tweeted about this this morning.

00:02:43 Neil Pointer

But he was.

00:02:44 Neil Pointer

Basically saying that we're moving into a stage where defensive firepower.

00:02:49 Neil Pointer

Has preeminence over the attack.

00:02:54 Neil Pointer

Now let's just do a little bit of history on this. You know, if you go.

00:02:57 Neil Pointer

Back to the First World War.

00:02:59 Neil Pointer

You had trench warfare. Why? And it extended trench warfare because the infantry couldn't get close to the other trenches because of the machine gun and.

00:03:10 Neil Pointer

Therefore, we went into the war of attrition.

00:03:15 Neil Pointer

And there was no real way to break the stalemate.

00:03:19 Neil Pointer

Now if you go up to the conceptual level of.

00:03:24 Neil Pointer

Strategy and tactics, and we're really talking about perhaps the operational and tactical level here rather than the strategic.

00:03:33 Neil Pointer

At some point and and you know, if you look at the British Army's principles, the principle of defence is, you know, you only go into defence.

00:03:41 Neil Pointer

To shape the battlefield to go onto the attack.

00:03:45 Neil Pointer

Because the only way you win eventually is to attack.

00:03:50 Neil Pointer

You've gotta seize ground. You've gotta. And if you if we relate this to the Ukraine situation now.

00:03:58 Neil Pointer

At the if. If Ukraine are going to win, and I mean really win, they've got to attack the Russian positions.

00:04:06 Neil Pointer

And they've gotta feel they can. Like, how do you do this when?

00:04:11 Neil Pointer

What they have just demonstrated.

00:04:14 Neil Pointer

Is that with well placed defensive positions and what seems to be the preeminence now of guided weapons? And I don't just mean against anti tank, but I also mean against anti air.

00:04:30 Neil Pointer

Now is this that the warheads have got better? I think it's more what people are saying is that it's the guidance systems. So what you've got is this ability for a you know and we used to joke about this in the army about small bands of determined men with handheld anti tank weapons. Well this is now the fact.

00:04:51 Neil Pointer

If you look at the strategy that the Ukraine army has used.

00:04:58 Neil Pointer

And bushes shoot and scoot. A few people ambush a convoy. The convoy can't manoeuvre off the road because of the mud. That's a completely different issue, which really, we don't want to get into now.

00:05:12 Neil Pointer

But how do you what we're going into now is that armour, if I go back into the 80s, nineties manoeuvre was the God.

00:05:24 Neil Pointer

The tank was at its preeminence.

00:05:30 Neil Pointer

In the IT we we, we suddenly had the the weaponry we had the manoeuvrability and and something to think about with armour. The principles of armour are firepower, mobility and protection.

00:05:46 Neil Pointer

Every tank, every armoured vehicle is a mix of those 3.

00:05:52 Neil Pointer

And there's some ratio that you look at and there's a compromise.

00:05:57 Neil Pointer

You can't have the perfect tank.

00:06:00 Neil Pointer

It doesn't exist because there's a compromise somewhere. But in the 80s, nineties we had challenger. We had Abrams, we had Leclerc, we had T80, and the anti armour weapons weren't really there yet.

00:06:14 Neil Pointer

So massive manoeuvre warfare, you know, and tanks on the ground. We're God.

00:06:22 Neil Pointer

Now what we're seeing.

00:06:25 Neil Pointer

Is. Yeah, I if I can cannibalise you and ambush you with and it would appear that javelin.

00:06:33 Neil Pointer

Can get through anything.

00:06:37 Neil Pointer

How do you attack?

00:06:40 Neil Pointer

How does?

00:06:42 Neil Pointer

A modern army now go on the assault.

00:06:49 Neil Pointer

Now it's an interesting question and I let me now bring in something else that's important. I I'm reading a book by Jim store. Hi, Jim. If by any chance you happen to listen to this?

00:07:00 Neil Pointer

And I'm gonna eat. Tweet you later. It's a book called Battle Group. The lessons of the Unfought battles of the Cold War. And in it, there's some reference given to.

00:07:12 Neil Pointer

Some analysis that was done by the British.

00:07:16 Neil Pointer

And that they looked at 159 land campaigns from the 20th century. And they looked at what were the common factors of those that succeed and those that didn't. Now here's the thing. Those that achieved A breakthrough, a significant breakthrough within two days.

00:07:37 Neil Pointer

Of launching the operation.

00:07:40 Neil Pointer

Had an 84% success rate.

00:07:44 Neil Pointer

OK, so within two days significant breakthrough within two days launching the operation 84%.

00:07:54 Neil Pointer

Those that took longer than two days.

00:07:57 Neil Pointer

Only had a 15% success rate.

00:08:01 Neil Pointer

OK, that's pretty significant.

00:08:05 Neil Pointer

Now when they broke and now once they looked at those, they went right. Let's look at those 84%. What were the common characteristics?

00:08:12 Neil Pointer

And this is where it gets interesting in terms of the modern battlefield.

00:08:16 Neil Pointer

So four things.

00:08:20 Neil Pointer

Surprise. Hey, big, big. Tell surprise. No surprise has always been one of the first principles of war.

00:08:29 Neil Pointer

At every level and the point they make in this analysis is it's not just that the strategy.

00:08:35

Level.

00:08:36 Neil Pointer

It's at every level operational strategic, a strategic operational tactical level. The more you can achieve surprise, the more greater your chances of winning.

00:08:47 Neil Pointer

OK, doesn't sound that obvious. Doesn't sound that difficult to comprehend.

00:08:52 Speaker 4

Now.

00:08:53 Neil Pointer

The other one is what they call shock effect.

00:08:58 Neil Pointer

That is and let me see if I can just find the definition of shock effect it. Basically, it's where you impose a paralysis of action on the enemy.

00:09:11 Neil Pointer

By whatever you do.

00:09:13 Neil Pointer

By and and surprise is a factor in that.

00:09:16 Neil Pointer

But a lot of it is speed.

00:09:19 Neil Pointer

Speed. Where you come from, how you do.

00:09:21 Neil Pointer

It.

00:09:23 Neil Pointer

But achieving what they call shock effect and then the ability to seize opportunity and exploit.

00:09:33 Neil Pointer

So you achieve a local success. You can then exploit.

00:09:38 Neil Pointer

Right now the the side question to this one. And then I've seen that the tank is over.

00:09:45 Neil Pointer

They you know, the days of the tank have gone right. OK, fine.

00:09:50 Neil Pointer

You have to be able to manoeuvre to attack. You have to be able to deliver shock action. You have to be able to deliver the shock effect. Now. I'll tell you what.

00:10:00 Neil Pointer

Back in 1980, something when you know, I don't know, strange beasts walked the earth and etcetera. I was part of the Engineer Squadron. In fact, I was the OPS officer, the Engineer Squadron that ran and built the Staff College.

00:10:20 Neil Pointer

Demo in Germany.

00:10:22 Neil Pointer

And as part of the end of that.

00:10:25 Neil Pointer

Was a battle group attack.

00:10:30 Neil Pointer

By a three one bass group, SO31, meaning 3 squadrons of tanks, one of infantry.

00:10:37 Neil Pointer

On a company position.

00:10:40 Neil Pointer

That enables you to have a squadron of tanks in fire support, a squadron of a tanks of tanks that assaults and then up to a squadron in intimate support of the infantry. When they arrive on the position.

00:10:56 Neil Pointer

Now what you haven't got at that demonstration is the artillery that suppresses your your ability to fire your javelin. Now what I'm getting at here is how do you?

00:11:09 Neil Pointer

And what we've perhaps seen.

00:11:12 Neil Pointer

Demonstrated or poorly demonstrated that so far and my question is, can the Ukrainians produce coordinated effect?

00:11:24 Neil Pointer

Do they have any ability to overcome?

00:11:29 Neil Pointer

Presumably we haven't really seen yet. Do the Russians have the quality of guided weapons? Can the Russians produce this defensive effect?

00:11:43 Neil Pointer

But we seem to have got into. We've got into a new stage. We've also got drones, of course.

00:11:48 Neil Pointer

For reconnaissance and also for hitting your build ups.

00:11:55 Neil Pointer

My question, what are we into here? Have we got a new stage of warfare and does this play into and I think feel this is your bit potentially. Does this play into the Russians hands in the current situation of potentially attritional war?

00:12:15 Neil Pointer

Rather than the Ukraine's army, which really has to attack, how does it attack when it has just demonstrated perfectly how to defend in the current climate? I Chuck this one up in the air and go there you go have a chew on that one gentleman because I think there's a real challenge here.

00:12:36 Neil Pointer

I think.

00:12:37 Neil Pointer

My personal view.

00:12:39 Neil Pointer

There's something about the command. The combined arms attack.

00:12:45 Neil Pointer

At every level.

00:12:48 Neil Pointer

Air ground the combo and now this is classic. If you go back to the Cold War days when we used to get the the Soviet videos of them training, this is what they absolutely specialised in, coming in with everything.

00:13:06 Neil Pointer

Hind attack, Heck attack helicopters, tanks on the charge, artillery and that coordination.

00:13:17 Neil Pointer

The.

00:13:18 Neil Pointer

Enables your infantry and your armour to get onto the enemy position before they can fire back, and that's the art format. You know, how do you do it? Or are we now into stalemate again? And is this now another arms race?

00:13:36 Neil Pointer

For the attack to overcome the defence, I don't know. But it's an interesting topic. Go.

00:13:45 Ben Skipper

OK, he's playing some notes. So the person that comes up to me and and you're actually spot on is the combined arms attack, you know.

00:13:53 Speaker 4

Yeah.

00:13:53 Ben Skipper

The Soviets drilled this solidly once. They've got the helicopter forces sorted in the early 60s. It was the key point. It reached its epoch in in Afghanistan.

00:14:04 Ben Skipper

Regardless of everything else that went around it, they're they're air ground support.

00:14:08 Ben Skipper

Was boltless no two ways about it. The doctrine worked. What I've struggled with in terms of air power is where the VKS I've seemed to have dropped that standard of coordination and commander control that they they excelled at in Afghanistan.

00:14:24 Speaker 4

Hmm.

00:14:28 Ben Skipper

And like you know, he was still very much. You could see it still in Georgia and to a point in Syria. But I think Syria that the cracks were starting to show. I don't know why.

00:14:39 Ben Skipper

They we we sort of Fast forward to this point.

00:14:42 Ben Skipper

The one thing that I have noticed is this is like a coordination between air power and artillery.

00:14:50 Ben Skipper

And so there is, you know, the Russians are either using one or the other, not in combination. Now, I appreciate it. It's very hard to deliver air power in an area where you've got round being chucked up in the air up to 10,000 feet. You can't operate safely within that unless you have a good coordination system. And they seem to have lost that. Now, I know they've changed their lot of their communication systems.

00:15:10 Ben Skipper

And the latest one that they had, the secure one, was operating on a 3G system.

00:15:15 Ben Skipper

The 3G masks that the that were still situated in Ukraine.

00:15:18 Ben Skipper

Were taken out by the Russians, so they they sort of blinded themselves straight away.

00:15:25 Ben Skipper

The the the I I don't know what what the standard pilot the VS have at the moment but the initially they they said strong. They were aggressive especially the the the the SU-24 outs they were they were coming in hard they were coming in fast.

00:15:42 Ben Skipper

Helicopter pilots and team seem to be a little bit more reticent. Seem to be a bit more standoffish, and now they've virtually disappeared from the battle space. I don't exactly know.

00:15:50 Ben Skipper

What's going on there?

00:15:51 Neil Pointer

Quite peculiar. So no, it it's an interesting one because you get, there's gotta be a progression down as you get closer to the enemy as your attack force your assault force.

00:16:04 Neil Pointer

Get closer to the enemy.

00:16:06 Neil Pointer

You have to go down to more and more localised direct fire weapons.

00:16:12 Neil Pointer

So you start with your artillery. There's then a point where your helicopters take over.

00:16:18 Neil Pointer

You know, and you clear the air, you say last rounds in the air, you know, and the art form is that the moment that last airburst stops over the enemy position.

00:16:30 Neil Pointer

Or ground burst? Is that the helicopters are coming in?

00:16:35 Neil Pointer

Rockets, whatever. Now the moment those are getting and the tanks are getting close and both your assault, your assaults probably now rolling. So now you let rip.

00:16:47 Neil Pointer

From your your fire support base.

00:16:50 Neil Pointer

Now here's another point about the tank. How many javelin can a platoon carry? Let's say we had a company of infantry doing the fire support. OK, company 90. They've got 90 javelin. You can only carry one each. And how many can you carry in the back of your transport? Not many before it's full.

00:17:10 Neil Pointer

I checked yesterday using Challenger.

00:17:14 Neil Pointer

Challenger has carries 50 rounds of main armament ammunition.

00:17:20 Neil Pointer

Put a squadron of 14 challenger.

00:17:24 Neil Pointer

14 * 50 is a big number.

00:17:28 Neil Pointer

You know, you've got a lot of them. Oh, that's also anti tank. Also anti personnel you start firing hash.

00:17:35 Neil Pointer

The files you in.

00:17:38 Neil Pointer

Then you got the assault squadron that arrives at the last minute.

00:17:43 Neil Pointer

So switch fire, but they the assault, the the Fire Support Squadron can see them. That's the whole point.

00:17:50 Neil Pointer

So they switch fire to depth, targets, depth, engagement, whatever assault squadron rolls through, and as soon as the Assault Squadron has rolled through the actual combat, the infantry company, with its intimate support tents, arrives on the position. It's all about coordination, but.

00:18:12 Neil Pointer

I'm intrigued. One as your point.

00:18:15 Neil Pointer

Ben, why have the Russians? Why did the Russians not what?

00:18:20 Neil Pointer

Weren't they able to do that?

00:18:22 Neil Pointer

Because you can suppress fire, you can stop someone. You can stop an infantryman popping up and firing his javelin from a defensive position. You start putting air burst over them. They're not coming out.

00:18:36 Neil Pointer

You know.

00:18:38 Neil Pointer

It's it's an intriguing situation. I don't know the answer as to why it's happening.

00:18:45 Neil Pointer

But this is what Ukraine has got to overcome. If the Russians have got the same capability.

00:18:53 Neil Pointer

Of guided weapons, have we reached a new stalemate? This this is really my question.

00:19:03 Neil Pointer

And the silence was deafening.

00:19:07 Ben Skipper

Ohh, I'm looking at Phil cause I can see Phil's got a got a response he's formulating, isn't he?

00:19:12 Neil Pointer

Yeah, he's like that.

00:19:14 Ben Skipper

Yeah, you're considering it.

00:19:20 Philip Blood

You, you, you covered a lot of ground, Neil.

00:19:24 Neil Pointer

Yeah, I know it's a it's a conceptual question.

00:19:28 Philip Blood

And.

00:19:29 Philip Blood

High gym we were. We were in the, we were taught by the same character, Richard Holmes.

00:19:36 Philip Blood

Back in the day and we graduated on the same day with another great guy, Roger Cirillo.

00:19:45 Philip Blood

Who was ADT ADC to?

00:19:50 Philip Blood

Sink Europe.

00:19:52 Philip Blood

In the 1980s, and he was with the 11th farmer, Benjamin to the US Army.

00:19:58 Philip Blood

Hmm.

00:19:58 Philip Blood

Was he wrote a history of the.

00:20:03 Philip Blood

European command. I'm only saying that so I can buy time to find the place that I'm actually looking for.

00:20:13 Speaker 4

Maskirovka yeah, I.

00:20:17 Philip Blood

Yeah, the, the, the Putin boys are teaching me how to use that, although my my ability to say the word is getting worse and worse as time goes on. It's obviously something wrong, but the the the area where I was looking at was.

00:20:36 Philip Blood

The whole thing that has confused me about the Russian Armed Services as this reform that came into operation.

00:20:43 Philip Blood

Round about 2000 and.

00:20:45 Philip Blood

8.

00:20:47 Philip Blood

Well, there's so many different stories the, the, the, the, the.

00:20:53 Philip Blood

Military balance listed the Russian forces to have an enormous enormous capability in armoured fighting vehicles.

00:21:04 Philip Blood

And and you just looked at those things, those numbers and you're thinking very large, very large thousand here, 1000 there. And then I was taken by the artillery that 4342 pieces of artillery, it's on the military balance today, that's page 196.

00:21:24 Philip Blood

Now what what fascinates me about all of that artillery is it's not just that it's self-propelled. There's huge, huge 152 millimetre self-propelled gun.

00:21:35 Philip Blood

A A massive range. I mean it. You look to the other armies.

00:21:40 Philip Blood

Nobody's got quite the range of artillery that that the Russians are still.

00:21:46 Philip Blood

Building into their.

00:21:50 Philip Blood

Organisation of battle and.

00:21:55 Philip Blood

In this whole exercise, the thing that stuck out for me, as has been since the very beginning, has been the the nature of this coordinated model.

00:22:03 Philip Blood

What the the Russian artillery call it the annihilation bombardment, which is where you.

00:22:11 Philip Blood

You ain't this.

00:22:13 Philip Blood

This is actually worked into their dogma and doctrine that you aim to destroy 90% of an area and anything in it.

00:22:24 Philip Blood

So you would find a grid coordinate for a certain hectare. Like we said before, the hectare is about the size of Trafalgar Square.

00:22:33 Philip Blood

And you would literally turn an area of that size into dust.

00:22:38 Philip Blood

And anything that's in it is to be completely and utterly wiped out now.

00:22:44 Philip Blood

If they run into grid coordinates.

00:22:47 Philip Blood

And and are prepared not to care about the damage that they do to civil communities.

00:22:54 Philip Blood

We are indeed in a form of attrition, which is.

00:22:58 Philip Blood

Staggering now.

00:23:01 Philip Blood

If the Russian army retreats.

00:23:05 Philip Blood

To the border, just in front of those guns.

00:23:08 Philip Blood

The Ukrainian army, if it tries to take up space or ramp that Russian army on the leave.

00:23:15 Philip Blood

It's going to get.

00:23:16 Philip Blood

It's it's literally going to walk into areas which are just going to rubberized them.

00:23:23 Philip Blood

And and that can that that I that I think is why the Ukrainian army has been so reluctant to take up the the the, the the chase because surely.

00:23:35 Philip Blood

All military army, all all modern armies would, if they see if they see a retreat, they want the route because they know if they route the enemy forces it's gonna be a long time before they come back.

00:23:49 Philip Blood

And and the thing that struck me was the Russian army. Forget what they left behind with the horrors and the the criminality is that they left.

00:23:59 Philip Blood

They left the scene of the crime.

00:24:02 Philip Blood

Largely intact and orderly, it wasn't mayhem. OK, a couple of soldiers missed the truck. And and there was all that fuss. But if you looked at it, they just walked away. Ukrainians then took over the ground and discovered what was going on. And there was no rush to to chase them.

00:24:22 Philip Blood

I think the Ukrainians are still in a.

00:24:25 Philip Blood

Very weak position and they can't follow up because then they go into those ranges because those Russian self-propelled guns and that fixed artillery can hit them from 20 kilometres away.

00:24:39 Philip Blood

And if you can't get drones and air cover over that artillery to stop it from doing what it's doing, cause I suspect strongly suspect that all that mobile anti aircraft capability which we never saw supporting the front end of the Russian advance is protecting all of that artillery. So it's almost like untouchable.

00:24:39

Leave, leave.

00:25:00 Philip Blood

Funds.

00:25:01 Philip Blood

And and it goes back to what I said in a previous paper, using the case of seed or coppack, who is the famous Soviet partisan general who who marched 1500 kilometres behind German lines?

00:25:18 Philip Blood

What they need is somebody like Compaq who can dream up an idea to get at those guns.

00:25:24 Philip Blood

Cause if you can get to those guns, then Russia is done.

00:25:30 Neil Pointer

It's a really interesting the.

00:25:32 Neil Pointer

Only other part of that.

00:25:34 Neil Pointer

And this comes back to the manoeuvre piece because as you were talking, I'm going, yeah, OK, so.

00:25:44 Neil Pointer

You're absolutely right. If it's a fixed target, I can pulverise it.

00:25:50 Neil Pointer

If it's moving at speed, you can't.

00:25:54 Neil Pointer

And but if you but you still gotta have your target acquisition capability.

00:26:00 Neil Pointer

You know, you've gotta know what's going on. So again, are the Russians using drones for target acquisition? Could well be, don't know.

00:26:12 Neil Pointer

But each each.

00:26:12 Philip Blood

Do they actually have?

00:26:13 Philip Blood

Satellites like Elon Musk.

00:26:15 Neil Pointer

Yeah, but that but your download speed, tactical target that's moving on the ground. You're talking seconds.

00:26:22 Philip Blood

Now I understand that, but all of this capability, if it's all LinkedIn, then the Russians are no more, no less advanced than the West. That's all I'm.

00:26:32 Philip Blood

But that's all I'm saying. All I'm asking.

00:26:35 Neil Pointer

Yeah, but it's just.

00:26:38 Neil Pointer

The challenge, you know why? Why you're absolutely right. I don't wanna sit in the kill zone.

00:26:45 Neil Pointer

But if I'm moving at speed and modern armour can still when the ground is right. So I'm just wondering whether the the mud that we've talked about is now, of course, playing back against Ukraine.

00:26:59 Neil Pointer

You know, is that has that been part of the reason why they couldn't pursue at speed they?

00:27:05 Neil Pointer

Also, what's the air threat again? How painful is the Ukraine?

00:27:12 Philip Blood

Plus, the questions left mines all over the roads, which made it difficult to just run after them.

00:27:18 Neil Pointer

Yeah, well, you know, you know, counselling ability. Yeah, absolutely. Ex Sapper here. That's what you do. You foul everything up. You get inside people's heads.

00:27:29 Neil Pointer

You start leaving tin plates on the ground with only a random number of mines under them. Then all you have to do is to put tin plates on the ground. You know it. It it you, you get inside people's heads with count some ability and you know you can really play with their mind.

00:27:44 Philip Blood

There was a hand grenade. Wasn't that linked to two doors?

00:27:47 Philip Blood

Yeah.

00:27:48 Philip Blood

So I mean the the.

00:27:51 Philip Blood

Again, you see that all kill that all makes.

00:27:55 Philip Blood

Makes me wonder why there wasn't.

00:27:59 Philip Blood

Why there was such a an easy departure and then continuation of the war elsewhere? It's telling me that Putin isn't fighting the war that the West wanting to fight.

00:28:13 Neil Pointer

I agree in the in the sense that it's now moved away, I think.

00:28:22 Neil Pointer

If I go back to that first point, I'm first first couple of points I made about what makes the penetrate, you know that 2 1/2.

00:28:29 Neil Pointer

Day.

00:28:31 Neil Pointer

That that two days 84% success rate if you get the breakthrough in two days.

00:28:38 Neil Pointer

And as I say, this is not not so much I'm I'm conceptualising here.

00:28:44 Neil Pointer

Have we seen the end of the ability right now to achieve breakthrough in 2 1/2 days because defensive firepower now has whether it's artillery or anti tank guided weapons we've seen on the.

00:29:01 Neil Pointer

British Defence review can't remember what it's called the the integrated review, the IR review.

00:29:09 Neil Pointer

About the emphasis on depth fire.

00:29:12 Neil Pointer

OK, that's great. That stops your enemy winning.

00:29:18 Neil Pointer

I can stop you winning, but how do I win?

00:29:22 Neil Pointer

How do how do? How do we?

00:29:25 Neil Pointer

Or. Or is this you know how do we break the stalemate? And that's the bit, you know that I'm sort of interested in here because that's what I'm kind of seeing cause.

00:29:35 Neil Pointer

You're right, Phil.

00:29:37 Neil Pointer

The Ukrainians couldn't get after them. Why not?

00:29:40 Neil Pointer

The Russians haven't been able to mount a significant breakthrough yet.

00:29:45 Neil Pointer

Not by what not by any modern army standards.

00:29:51 Neil Pointer

We've not had a breakthrough.

00:29:53 Philip Blood

Yeah. And you know, OK, you've got the big lodgements down in the South and he's made a lot of space and the Russian armies haven't been, you know, they haven't lost.