Just like to comment first and hear what you and other experts think went wrong, on Ukrainian Leo tank loss.thank you.
But, even I thought straight away that this should have been during the night. The tanks and armoured vehicles need to be spaced out and they needed to be moving a lot quicker than what they were. Why no recon on forward enemy positions, why no air cover no drones as they’ve been using? Something is definitely not right with this, it just seems off. I can’t see tactics being that bad? I can’t believe they’ve made such basic mistakes. Very Russian type operation blundering into an ambush. A mine field. Thanks .
I don't know much on the actual operational parameter (Well, only Ukrainian high up knows) so I can only guess what happened.
First of all, this have all the hall mark of mine damage, so you would think something went wrong with mine clearing/breaching operation. This Forbes article suggest there are a IMR-2 and Leo 2R involved in this operation. But somehow, as per the article, failed the breaching.
The 33rd and 47th Brigades' debacle near Mala Tokmachka might be Kyiv’s first big defeat of the counteroffensive. But losses don’t necessarily mean strategic defeat.
www.forbes.com
Breaching operation is traditionally hard to carry out. This is probably one of the most difficult, if not the most, especially if you have to do it to an defending enemy, under fire.
In the US, the doctrine we were taught is SOSR, it stands for
Suppress,
Obscure,
Secure and
Reduce hence SOSR. What it entailed is 4 steps to successfully conduct a breaching op.
Suppress - Suppress your enemy with overwhelming firepower, preferable with 3 to 1 or more advantage.
Obscure - Take out your enemy eyes and ears to obscure their knowledge and reaction to the breaching operation.
Secure - Secure your lane of approach, eliminate enemy interference.
Reduce - Create lane to by-pass/avoid obstacle, reduce time and casualty from said operation.
As I said, I don't know what the mission parameter is. So I can only comment on what I can see or know, which mean that could be wrong. But my guess is, Ukrainian failed to suppress the Russian, if they were travelling in a light column (with the IMR-2 and Leo2R up front with a battalion of M2 Bradley across), that is obviously not enough to suppress the enemy, on the other hand, it didn't show whether or not the Ukrainian have a larger force behind or uses artillery to saturate the enemy for suppression, so I don't really know is it because they don't have enough units for the job or was it a tactical mistake.
Another issue I have is that the Ukrainian seems to me did not think of by-passing that particular obstacle (the mine field where you see all the Ukrainian tank and Bradley abandoned. The first rule of breaching ops is, if you know that there is an obstacle ahead, you first try to avoid it by diverting to somewhere it's less likely to be affected, only go across and breach when you have no choice. you can see almost all the vehicle "loss" (I don't know if they actually lost those equipment as I pointed out before, those equipment looks salvageable to me) are on that single lane. Which suggest to me that the Ukrainian did not try to avoid that choke point by alternate the breaching lane.
Finally, what I can see is the fact that they have 9 Bradley or more following that Breacher vehicle is a wrong move, you shouldn't pile on security asset behind that breacher. Now, I don't know when the Russian strike to make that result, they may have done with the initial lane clearing and the Bradley was hopping on across the lane, I don't know, but judging from the fact that they did that and at least one Bradley hit mine and all those vehicle was disabled in close proximity, it would suggest to me the demining op was not finished, they were just following the deminer.
This is what they should have done if I was in charge of that particular operation.
- Position the security to the flank of the breaching op. And use them to suppress the Russian instead of having them follow the Breacher (again, they may have done it but I don't know)
- Obscure the breacher by either attacking the enemy OP with artillery, the Ukrainian have a few months to watch that line, they should have known where the Russian OP are.
- Conduct the breaching with suppressive fire on the flank
- Move the column into the breaching location after the lane was secure.
That is what I think was wrong and why they lose all these equipment in that lane.
