Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Sheilbh]

Just read a German language article on how the Ukrainian arms industry is actually rather creative and productive, but cannot on its own cannot compete with Russia. Their examples were some kind of drones being mass-produced and an truck-mounted howitzer, basically a less sophisticated Caesar.

Yeah - my impression is give Ukrainians the tools and they will deliver and there is a lot of innovation.

I believe they are ramping up domestic production of artillery shells too. I suspect part of the issue for Ukraine's domestc war industry (which is growing) is they're getting lots of Western aid - I'm not sure they're getting licenses for manufacture/support etc. I know some Western companies like Rheinmetall are opening there but not sure what they'll be manufacturing there.

[grumbler]

People should also keep in mind that repair work cuts into production as well.  The right balance between kit produced for new tanks and that produced to repair existing tanks, for instance, is hard to hit.

[Josquius]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Ukraine ought to be able to supply a lot of that itself. With western support and money of course.

We also need to get our shit together and start producing, but for us it isn't as important as for the Ukrainians.

Aren't a lot of Ukraines industries tied into Russian supply chains though?
Like yes they've a tank factory but various bits for their existing designs are only made in Russia.
Which isn't an impossible work around but does make quickly scaling up hard.
Or do I have that totally wrong?

[grumbler]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Ukraine ought to be able to supply a lot of that itself. With western support and money of course.

We also need to get our shit together and start producing, but for us it isn't as important as for the Ukrainians.

Aren't a lot of Ukraines industries tied into Russian supply chains though?
Like yes they've a tank factory but various bits for their existing designs are only made in Russia.
Which isn't an impossible work around but does make quickly scaling up hard.
Or do I have that totally wrong?

The Ukrainians can only indigenously produce their T-62 variant, if I have been reading the various posts/reports on that correctly.  Anything later uses parts no longer available to them.

[jimmy olsen]

Doesn't the Ukraine also produce the T-80? 

[viper37]

It's not like Germany and the UK weren't bombed in WWII...

And it's not like Russian bombing is very extreme...

But it was a war economy for everyone.  Germany was starving and relying on slaves.  The UK was being supplied by its colonies&allies and had factories well out of reach from German bombers.

[Sheilbh]

But it was a war economy for everyone.  Germany was starving and relying on slaves.  The UK was being supplied by its colonies&allies and had factories well out of reach from German bombers.

Yeah Germany was not just relying on slaves but also on the production of conquered Europe - French steel and coal production was very important for the German war economy. It was in that sense also imperial in a way.

The British war economy was imperial, as you say. The UK domestically out-produced Germany - I think marginally on tanks, by about 50% on planes and vastly in naval equipment. Obviously imports from allies were hugely important but that's from factories in the UK, largely safe after the Battle of Britain. There were still blitzes and rockets but by the end of the blitz British domestic production was 50% higher than at the start and broadly the UK could fend off German attacks (or the costs were too high for the Luftwaffe). Even in 1941 and early 1942 as US production ramps up and gets more coordinated, the UK is sending arms to the USSR (and under constant pressure from Stalin to send more). That was possible because of the Royal Navy (and Canadian Navy for that matter) and winning the Battle of the Atlantic which allowed Britain to keep importing food - which is where you see the difference in Britain as an empire in the 1930s and 40s v the rest of Europe, including Germany. The success is that during WW2 Britain's imports basically remained as high as they were in the 1930s.

At the start of the war Germany employs three times as many people in agriculture as the UK does - part of that is the UK's agricultural revolution over the previous 2-300 years, but also a lot is because Britain had since the early 19th century mainly imported its food. I think we domestically produced less than a third of what we ate in the 1930s. That shifts with the land girls and "Dig for Victory" and rationing but fundamentally we are able to mobilise agricultural workers into industry and army because of trade routes (imperial and non-imperial, like Argentina) as well as women and increased production at home (parks being turned into veg gardens etc). The UK was the world's largest importer of food in the 30s and wheat was about ten times the price of coal - that was part of the imperial economic model basically food imports, coal exports. All of that effort was about reducing the amount of shipping Britain need for food to increase import capacity for more essential things. It's why for all the criticism of the Argentines for being too close to Germany, Britain's policy in the war was to keep Argentina neutral as that required less naval protection for imports. Germany tries to fill the same gap with slave labour but it still requires more people to have any food. But basically Germany needs to do it all.

The other big things that are required for the war effort imperially are some raw materials (obviously not coal ) and fuel as well as increasingly being able to import US ammo and other wider war production. At the same time the British imperially and the US are ramping up shipping, closing down German U-boat attacks and the UK is increasingly producing more food domestically meaning more war goods can be imported all the time. Germany has some through its continental empire but not enough (especially on fuel) and is less and less able to rely on that. On the one hand it is a transformative war (including in forging Britain as a nation rather than an imperial metropole) but in other ways, from my understanding, it's not a million miles from the Napoleonic Wars or WW1 of  whale v elephant (including, I think arguably, the US' war effort). I think the way the discourse has gone on empire is part of the problem in how we talk about empire in the UK because I think we miss the point - empire is described as something Britain did rather than something Britain was. David Edgerton's book is really good on this.

Allied bombing really cut into to German steel production.  There is a reason the Germans started building factories underground.  These days you don't need as many bombs, a few guided missiles can interrupt production.

Yes but also it required the Germans to defend the skies. I think at the height of the invasion of the Soviet Union something like 40% of German production was building fighters, which were not needed on the Eastern Front but essential to try and defend against allied bombers - and obviously that is production that, from an Eastern Front perspective, would have been better used on tanks, weapons, ammunition, repairs.

I don't know on Ukrainian anti-air production (and obviously there's no Western support on fighters) but I wouldn't be surprised if they're having to make similar choices and that industrial capacity directed at air defence is not being used for artillery shells etc.

[The Minsky Moment]

Offensive bombing campaigns do cause some direct damage and also force the adversary to use resources on air defense.  But they are also extremely resource intensive themselves. The debate about the efficacy of bombing in WW2 (or Korea or Vietnam or now Ukraine) isn't just about its effectiveness but about opportunity costs.  In Vietnam the US relied a lot on very expensive bombing campaigns of questionable military effect in part because there weren't a lot of obvious alternatives - the US wasn't going to use those resources to increase ground presence. (although the effort to pursue both guns and butter in the late 60s eventually produced costs in likely spurring inflation) In WW2 OTOH opportunity cost could have been a real factor; Britain in particular probably could have used the enormous resources devoted to heavy bombing to other useful effects.

Unless the attacker has total air dominance, the cost-benefit ratio of bombing campaigns is usually going to look pretty bad for the attacker.  I.e. Ukraine has had to dedicate resources to air defense but the relative costs as compared to the Russian expenditure of air and missile assets are favorable to Ukraine. And that is typical for such offensive bombing campaigns.

In WW2, Britain (in Europe) and the US (in Japan) sometimes argued in favor of the effectiveness of bombing campaigns based on the resource strain caused by mass civilian "dehousing".  There was probably some effect, but no where near enough to justify the heavy costs of conducting the campaigns, not to mention the moral dubiousness.  Such a rationale could not pass the proportionality tests of contemporary international law as a I understand them.  Luckily, we don't seem to have reached that point in the Ukraine war. Yet.

[Sheilbh]

Offensive bombing campaigns do cause some direct damage and also force the adversary to use resources on air defense.  But they are also extremely resource intensive themselves. The debate about the efficacy of bombing in WW2 (or Korea or Vietnam or now Ukraine) isn't just about its effectiveness but about opportunity costs.  In Vietnam the US relied a lot on very expensive bombing campaigns of questionable military effect in part because there weren't a lot of obvious alternatives - the US wasn't going to use those resources to increase ground presence. (although the effort to pursue both guns and butter in the late 60s eventually produced costs in likely spurring inflation) In WW2 OTOH opportunity cost could have been a real factor; Britain in particular probably could have used the enormous resources devoted to heavy bombing to other useful effects.

Maybe. I don't know enough. I think the British context of that time was relevant, in the same way as you mention with Vietnam and the ground effort. In Britain's case I think particularly the experience and memory of the First World War.

To an extent I think Britain's strategy was the classic one it's always used - with added bombers. So keep the sealanes open for Britain and its allies (and, not so much in WW2 obviously, supply and finance those allies), close them for the enemy, fight in the peripheries - and basically close the net. I think bombers fit into that as a way of striking the enemy directly in their heartland as well. There was a similar approach in WW1 but with a (for Britain) large continental expeditionary force. Obviously that could have been the experience again or worse (but for Dunkirk). But I think everything Britain's doing in WW2 is with half an eye on not repeating WW1 - and I thin the focus on airpower (and also tanks, other armoured vehicles etc) is part of that and it also aligns with the American war (and production) effort.

I also wonder about the interaction of production and empire. With the RAF it was to an extent an imperial force - there were Caribbean pilots as well as free European forces like the Poles. But you outfit the RAF and it covers all of that (a bit like the Royal Navy). I'm not sure but I feel like it's different with the army. I don't think there were many if any "armies" that were entirely "British". I feel like almost all of them will have included units from the Indian Army and I have no idea how that worked in terms of production etc.

And to go back to Ukraine that is a truism of always fighting the last war and with Britain and WW2 it was to avoid WW1. With Putin and the people around him who actually matter, I think, have the fall of the USSR as their defining experience that shapes everything in their views and actions. There are big differences and it's not the same, but it seems striking to me that that leadership cadre have, perhaps inadvertently, recreated something in many ways seems to echoo Afghanistan (especially in its social impact which was, ultimately, so corrosive) but more inequitable. Of course that might just be a trick of perspective that it's also how we interpret the past.

In WW2, Britain (in Europe) and the US (in Japan) sometimes argued in favor of the effectiveness of bombing campaigns based on the resource strain caused by mass civilian "dehousing".  There was probably some effect, but no where near enough to justify the heavy costs of conducting the campaigns, not to mention the moral dubiousness.  Such a rationale could not pass the proportionality tests of contemporary international law as a I understand them.  Luckily, we don't seem to have reached that point in the Ukraine war. Yet.

Yeah and as I say in the UK there were people expressing concerns around that from a moral perspective at the time - and almost immediately afterwards it becomes dominant.

I think I mentioned before but Bomber Command did not get a campaign medal until the 2000s. They were the only campaign Churchill didn't mention in his VE speech - which cause Arthur Harris to turn down an honour (I think a peerage) because he felt his and his command's contribution was immediately being wiped out of the picture. Just from my own memory of Sunday afternoon war films with the exception of Dam Busters (where the civilians casualties are in a way incidental - they're not the aim), there aren't any I can think of about bombers v the navy, the army, the fighter pilots. I think because of almost immediate unease the second the war was over (and for some while it was happening).

I'm not sure what the Russian justifications are - if these are all "misses" of more legitimate targets (which has definitely, inevitably happened) or how they otherwise justify targeting civilian infrastructure like power plants. I don't know how those are being justified by the Russian state or to the Russian people.

[dane]

Philips Payson O'Brien argues in "How the War Was Won, Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II" that allied bombing campaigns, in conjunction with naval blockades, were in fact devastating to the German and Japanese war economies as well as their strategic mobility. In his view, the bombing allied bombing campaigns were undertaken because they were able to cause significant damage with relatively little loss of allied life - a priority in democracies.

He argues that the early bombing missions caused significant damage, but had limited effectiveness because they couldn't be sustained due to lack of fighter cover. Losses were too high for sustained bombing and the Germans were able to repair whatever damage was caused before a follow-up mission could be launched.

Late in the war two things changed. First, adequate fighter cover was provided allowing sustained campaigns. Second, targeting priorities changed, focusing more on industrial inputs, especially coal and mobility, especially railroads. Factories that had been painstakingly dispersed in response to earlier bombing weren't able to work full time due to lack of coal and other industrial inputs. Industrial output wasn't consistently able to reach the front lines and reserves couldn't be moved without risk of destruction. He quotes German and Japanese sources saying that around half and 1/10th of industrial output (respectively) ever reached combat units.

Further, the eastern front was denuded of air support in order to defend against the western allies' bombing campaign, allowing the Red Army to advance much more rapidly than before.

I thought his book was an insightful reassessment of the air war and very convincing, but I'm far from an expert. I'm curious if any of the World War II scholars here have had the opportunity to read it and what they think of it.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm not sure what the Russian justifications are - if these are all "misses" of more legitimate targets (which has definitely, inevitably happened) or how they otherwise justify targeting civilian infrastructure like power plants. I don't know how those are being justified by the Russian state or to the Russian people.

One of ugly realities of bombing campaigns is that there is a political purpose of retribution; of demonstrating to one's own domestic population that pain is being caused to the adversary. Vergeltungswaffen. At the most benign is something like the Doolittle raid, a stunt of no strategic purpose other than propaganda effect. But mostly this rationale leads to very ugly campaigns because viciousness becomes an end in itself.  One of the reasons even pro-Israel voices have expressed some uneasiness is the concern that Israel's campaign has veered into this rationale. 

With Russia in Ukraine, I think it is more straightforward, these attacks where the "revenge" motive is paramount, although with the twist that the "wrong" being requited is entirely invented. To what extent the justification is truly resonating with the Russian people is hard to say.  But there appears to be no other rational military purpose other than the sense that the armed forces should be doing something other than getting dozens of tanks and hundreds of men blown up to advance a few yards.

[Jacob]

Philips Payson O'Brien argues in "How the War Was Won, Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II" that allied bombing campaigns, in conjunction with naval blockades, were in fact devastating to the German and Japanese war economies as well as their strategic mobility. In his view, the bombing allied bombing campaigns were undertaken because they were able to cause significant damage with relatively little loss of allied life - a priority in democracies.

He argues that the early bombing missions caused significant damage, but had limited effectiveness because they couldn't be sustained due to lack of fighter cover. Losses were too high for sustained bombing and the Germans were able to repair whatever damage was caused before a follow-up mission could be launched.

Late in the war two things changed. First, adequate fighter cover was provided allowing sustained campaigns. Second, targeting priorities changed, focusing more on industrial inputs, especially coal and mobility, especially railroads. Factories that had been painstakingly dispersed in response to earlier bombing weren't able to work full time due to lack of coal and other industrial inputs. Industrial output wasn't consistently able to reach the front lines and reserves couldn't be moved without risk of destruction. He quotes German and Japanese sources saying that around half and 1/10th of industrial output (respectively) ever reached combat units.

Further, the eastern front was denuded of air support in order to defend against the western allies' bombing campaign, allowing the Red Army to advance much more rapidly than before.

I thought his book was an insightful reassessment of the air war and very convincing, but I'm far from an expert. I'm curious if any of the World War II scholars here have had the opportunity to read it and what they think of it.

 

... so apparently I already asked who you were two years ago, but I forgot.

Good points, though

[Barrister]

Philips Payson O'Brien argues in "How the War Was Won, Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II" that allied bombing campaigns, in conjunction with naval blockades, were in fact devastating to the German and Japanese war economies as well as their strategic mobility. In his view, the bombing allied bombing campaigns were undertaken because they were able to cause significant damage with relatively little loss of allied life - a priority in democracies.

He argues that the early bombing missions caused significant damage, but had limited effectiveness because they couldn't be sustained due to lack of fighter cover. Losses were too high for sustained bombing and the Germans were able to repair whatever damage was caused before a follow-up mission could be launched.

As I understand it the argument has never been that the allies should never have used strategic bombing.  Clearly the attacks on factories were effective.

The complaint has been that the allies spent far too much time going after civilian targets / housing stock, right up to the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo.  These were in no way military targets.

It has been quite interesting to see the Russian-Ukraine war.  You can clearly see that Russia has fairly limited stocks or it's long-range missiles, but you can clearly see the repeated dynamic of the Ukrainians score some tactical victory on the battlefield, and almost like clockwork the Russians follow up with a strike on Ukrainian civilian targets in order to get revenge.

[The Minsky Moment]

Late in the war two things changed. First, adequate fighter cover was provided allowing sustained campaigns. Second, targeting priorities changed, focusing more on industrial inputs, especially coal and mobility, especially railroads. Factories that had been painstakingly dispersed in response to earlier bombing weren't able to work full time due to lack of coal and other industrial inputs. Industrial output wasn't consistently able to reach the front lines and reserves couldn't be moved without risk of destruction. He quotes German and Japanese sources saying that around half and 1/10th of industrial output (respectively) ever reached combat units.

German military production in 1944 was much higher than 1943 and several times higher than 1942.  Even in 1945 production levels were around that of 1943, pro-rated, despite the loss of the occupied territory and labor.  I suppose it's possible to argue that production would have been higher absent the bombing campaign but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the greatest impact on reducing German military production was by physical occupation of space and labor forces.  The reason production eventually did collapse in 1945 is that it became hard to produce when allied troops occupied all the factories and their workers.

That leaves the logistical effects.  There is no question that German forces on both fronts began suffering supply shortages in late 44 due to breakdowns in the supply system.  But Robert Pape argued in Bombing to Win, that much of damage to rail bridges, rolling stocks and lines was done by tactical air forces supporting the ground troops, not the strategic bombing force (his source is the official USSBS survey). He also points out that while advance German units suffered from supply shortages, Germany was able to maintain ample supplies in their rear area depots until the end of the war, thus permitting them to resist until overwhelmed by Allied ground forces supported by artillery and tactical air.

There is no question that strategic bombing was intended to minimize allied combatant casualties. To what extent it succeeded in doing so is the question.  Certainly, the casualty rates among allied bombing crews were horrific for most of the war.  Did it help save the lives of GIs and Tommies on the ground? In Europe, the Germans were not defeated until the last allied boot occupied the last piece of German land. The western allies did not so much succeed in substituting stategic airpower for the lives of their infantry as in substituting the lives of Soviet soldiers and greater Soviet influence over postwar Europe for the lives of their own soldiers.  In Japan meanwhile, the horribly destructive firebombings did not coerce surrender, although atomic weapons did.

[dane]

Interesting points, thanks. I'll have to check out Pape's book.