Good afternoon!
Hope everyone is doing well on this Monday afternoon. I thought I’d take a moment to discuss plans for the upcoming week’s blog posts. With the war continuing on with no conclusion in sight, I’m going to divide this week’s post between what’s going on in Ukraine, and dipping our toes into the D+21 waters a bit to see how that plays out. It’s definitely not time to go back to the war in 1987 full tilt, but I think one post this week can be dedicated to it. I’ll see how it is received and then determine whether or not moving forward on the ’87 timeline is a good idea or not. So, expect to see a D+21 entry up on Wednesday.
Tomorrow or Thursday, I will talk about the present-day war going on in Ukraine. The topic of discussion will be the performance of Russian Airborne Forces so far. Russian paratroopers have been involved in nearly every major engagement of the Russia-Ukraine War so far. Western media, Ukrainian government and military spokespeople, and many OSINT observers on social media have made critical observations about the performance of Russian airborne and airmobile troops in the fighting. Many of these have come without enough facts to draw a proper conclusion or were knowingly presented in the wrong context just to fit into a specific narrative. While I am in no way rooting for Russia in this conflict, I do believe the presentation of Russian airborne and airmobile units and their operations so far has been biased and made without enough knowledge of these types of operations or how they fit into Russian strategy. I want to talk a bit in detail about the role these specialized units are playing on the battlefield, deficiencies in tactics, weapons and equipment and a host of other topics related to Russian Airborne Forces.
I’ll hold off on a decision for what the rest of the week and weekend will hold until we see what direction the war is going in. If there’s a specific topic any readers might like to see discussed, please leave a note in the comments. –Mike
Third World War 1987 
The paradox of the VDV is that:
1: It’s designed to be both elite AND expendable, taking on inherently risky and casualty-prone missions.
2: The Soviets/Russians have frequently had to lean on it more because of issues with their line troops. This in turn means even more losses.
What’s interesting is that it only exists at all because of good politics. In World War II, the Soviet airborne operations were for intents and purposes, failures, but it endured. In contrast, their amphibious operations were much more successful, but that didn’t stop the Naval Infantry from being temporarily disbanded (!)
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Right. Expendable if need be, but they will prove to be of value before taking their last breath.
We’re seeing Point 2 in action right now.
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Thanks, Mike, for your time and energy in continuing to provide insights on UKR/RUS and the WWIII blog. v/r Ron
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My pleasure, Ron. 🙂
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I’m definitely excited forma deep dive into the airborne and (hopefully) air assault component in UKR. Seems from what I’ve read its been quite a failure. My concern is our US doctrine is fairly similar.
All our Infantry BCTs are theoretically AA capable (maybe not 101st level but trained and expected).
Our forcible entry doctrine is basically the same as what RU was attempting. Airborne and/or Air Assault, with possible Amphib Op, to seize Ports air or Maritime, and then surge in forces.
Also, we totally rely on the 82nd AirABBCTS, as our initial response force for almost every type of Op. I hope there are some lessons learned, I’d hate to see 1 or 2 82nd BCTS slaughtered in Korea, Taiwan, Baltics, Poland in the future.
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I think it’s been a partial success, simply because they pulled off some of the missions they were best suited for early on. I’ll definitely talk more about it though in the post, which will be up on Thursday.
Tomorrow we’re back to D+21 for a bit
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I’m looking forward to this entry on the VDV operations. It looks to be that in some cases they have done their traditional role of airfield siezure, and similar high priority targets. But it also looks like they’re being used in a mechanized infantry role in their BMDs and in that case are being needlessly thrown away with obviously less than desired results.
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That was where they went overboard, using them as mechanized infantry to expand the footprint closer to Kiev. Big waste, sadly
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the level of wasted potential and mis-use of what is supposed to be a LIGHT force with teeth…. is a damn crime. Really is. Its almost like the Russians can’t figure out if they are air deployed mechanized troops or Airborne troops with some light armored assets for a bit of teeth.
And as noted above where US operations are concerned, we’ve *mostly* figured out how to employ them with proper support in the air and along side of them. Its one of the reasons the 101 has so damn many gunships. 🙂
Air Assault operations, as I’ve been given to understand, are similar- Vietnam taugh a large number of lessons for that. And to my knowledge, very much incorporated into planning. The other big lesson we learned from was Desert One…
My opinions on this- I was a dirty leg but did a bit of reading. Believe it or not, the non-fiction Clancy books are pretty accurate (for what they are)
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For anyone interested in these Soviet / Russian units, I can recommend
David M Glantz “History of Soviet Airborne Forces”, Frank Cass, 1994
He also wrote a research paper back in 1984 which is available here:
Click to access glantz.pdf
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Thanks for sharing these!
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Thanks for your posts about the recent conflict! I really like your blog, although bit behind schedule with the days 🙂 but it is quite helpful that you try to analyse parts of the conflict in an objective way, especially that I’m living in a neighbouring country of UKR and news are usually onesided (in both ways)
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Thanks 🙂 This conflict has sort of changed the focus for a while. The news is one-sided here to an extent to. Mainly because the reporters are focusing on the human stories and not what’s really happening on the battleline. No worries about being behind with the days. I know there’s a lot of posts out there. Needless to say, this blog took on a life of its own
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