Azor....will respond here vs the previous article which IMHO does not really say much other than someone wrote it.....
1. From 2006 to 2013 I trained over 41 BCT Command Staffs both at the National Training Center Ft. Erwin and or here in Germany....
2. At no time were any of those 41 BCTs capable of fighting tank on tank and using artillery in a 1990s style of fire and maneuver.
3. Artillery units were largely being used for personnel backfill...meaning either in Iraq or AFG they were prison guards, convoy escorts etc....but never did fill the role of artillery units firing in support
4. Fire and maneuver typical for the US Army from 1990 largely no longer existed and tank units had literally lost their edge in this area...at the height of say 1990 a US tank was trained to handle up to 24 moving targets in a kill chain before maybe underline maybe they would be hit themselves...then it was on to another 24 targets...in 2013 they were lucky to acquire three...in a kill chain before being hit.
It is just now that the NTC has finally and fully shifted to exercising Russian combat doctrine in the deserts of California and where it is again tank on tank with artillery in fire support.....
For the first time this writer is starting to get close to the acutal UAF issues and initial problems......
BUT a small reminder....both the 30th and 72 Mech Bdes in 2014.....using fire and maneuver had moved literally into a position of actually militarily defeating Girkin and his rag tage army of so called separatists and had established fire bases actually along the Russian Ukrainian borders. If you remember from 2014....all my posts will back this up....it was only through extensive Russian cross border artillery and rocket strikes that beat UAF back from the border areas and it was a FULL scale Russian active duty military invasion of Donbass in 2014 that "literally" saved Girkin and his rag tags.
Social media was reporting those cross border ongoing attacks...MSM largely ignored them BTW.....
AND yes it was the volunteer BNs using whatever weapons they could get their hands on that beat back elements of Girkin in heavy fighting especially in the Mariupol and Odessa areas....AND it took regular Russian Army units to beat the volunteers and regular UAF in Debaltseve in 2015....and it was Azor that took back portions of the Mariupol front lines and held it repeatedly against heavy Russian regular army attacks....
And it was the Cyborgs a mixture of volunteer and regular UAF that held the Donetsk airport for over 272 days of heavy fighting....that gave UAF time to reorg, refit and reposition.....BTW that defence of a single surrounded point was longer than Stalingrad.....
The author is right the UAF is attempting to balance a NAO style concept with the war of trenches, heavy arty strikes, heavy EW and constant GRU raids and recce....seen now daily in eastern Ukraine....almost like 1917....in some aspects.
NOT even the US Army would have during the 2016 and now in the ongoing trench fighting have held their own as has never been trained to fight in radio silence under heavy artillery and rocket strikes and without a large scale fire and manuever element in the fighting....in depth positional fighting is not the US style....
Two things have come out of the fighting.....
1. UAF has developed a unique style of defense in depth that has largely stymied all Russian attempts to break through their defensive lines and UAF has taken ever slowly territory back under control along the Minks line
2. UAF has built up via private medical training and massive US and NATO field medical training and recovery of wounded and how to evac wounded while under heavy fire without copters......a solid capacity to do all of this and fight at the same time ....lowering the high wounded loss rates in 2014 and 2015......even the US has never really exercised that piece before 2016...
The building of an immediate treatment and rapid medical recovery capacity has gone a long way in stabilizing the UAF personal views on survival under heavy fire. and has given UAF a mental resilience that is missing in the Russian separatist units...
Lastly what the separatists cannot match nor have been able to match is the troop leadership in the BNs and below and lately greater improvement at the Bde levels...this is exactly where you will find a majority of the separatist units having even now Russian active duty staff officers.....
So again based on actual experience with US BCTs the 30th and 72th are equal to some of the better US BCTs in the current fighting style of eastern Ukraine....
Example, in Iraq a BCT main base would panic if the insurgents fired a rocket barrage or mortar barrage of say three rounds.....and what does UAF see daily and under fire from up to 152mm artillery....
Even in VN our camp was use to 700-1300 rocket and mortar rounds per day and yet we continued with ease combat operations..and all we had was a helmet.....and no body armor.....the current US Army units are nowhere close to understanding how to operate under these conditions...they are learning but until they get hit with the real thing it is only an "exercise"....
Reference SOF, while they were never armed and equipped as their NATO and US counterparts...they participation in the early fighting has largely remained unknown....but their recce abilities were in heavy use during 2014 through 2016....
You hear even from US SOF their surprise in how good UAF SOF actually is vs. what the image of them is out there....it has been the excellent UAF SOF counter Spetsnaz operations that many do not hear about...that led to the latest elimination of an entire Russian active duty Spetsnaz team...5 captured six killed.....
I still go back to the original statement by one of the respected separatist commanders who is still alive since 2014...the UAF would walk over us if not for the Russian army on the border....
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