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Ukraine: What's the salient idea here? Let's cut to the point. [1]

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Date: 2022-09-08

On Daily Kos most of my writing since the Ukraine war started has been focused on both hope, and pointing out critical aspects of the war that I’ve felt others have been missing or not putting enough importance on. At times I’ve attempted to predict what might happen based on extrapolating out what I’ve felt are the key points to the conflict. In composition, this is sometimes referred to as the salient point.

The salient point in any piece of writing is the concept on which the entire composition is dependent upon. Online Websters defines “salient point” as starting point, or a prominent feature or detail. I’ve taught freshman college level writing, and the part most students struggle with (and many of us non-students, myself included) is properly identifying the salient point of the composition you are working on. I assume most of us have experienced that point in writing where you have a mass of ideas you wish to convey but when it comes to putting it on paper, it becomes an unwieldy, undecipherable mess. Identifying your salient point, the idea on which most of your thesis rests, is critical to providing a starting point to your writing. Once identified, the rest of your piece can then be organized around supporting the salient point or expanding upon it. So let’s cut to the point here.

Identifying key elements of war is similar to identifying key elements in writing. To understand what is going on in a war and to get a sense of where it might be going you need to process volumes of information and then figure out the key bits that will be key to the outcome. At the start of the Ukraine war, those folks who focused on the purported Russian technological, numerical, and doctrinal superiority expected a fast Russian victory and ended up quite wrong. Some of that was a result of buying into false information (something we all do at times) and/or focusing on the wrong metric.

An example of focusing on a wrong metric would be the consistent comparison by some (including MSM articles) of the size of the Russian Military listed as over a million versus the size Ukrainian army listed as between 100,000 and 300,000 depending upon how they were counting. Well, the Russian Army, the ground troops, is NOT over a million. Russia has a considerable number of people in the Navy, most of whom have played zero role in this conflict (The Black Sea Fleet and the Naval Infantry being the exceptions). The estimates of Russian troops IN theater, ie those troops most relevant to the fight, were commonly listed as 190,000 for Russia and some number of troops from the separatist regions. There is a big difference between 1 million attacking 100,000 and 300,000 attacking 300,000.

That focus on the wrong metric was being fed by Russia itself. Russia had identified the salient point of the conflict as a combination of projecting inevitability while quickly eliminating Ukrainian leadership. Early in the war we saw Russia use salients (in the military sense of the word as a long thin position with the enemy on three sides) in an attempt to get to Kyiv and forcibly remove the Ukrainian leadership. The map below is the best I could find. Kos, Mark and Hunter have written so many articles on this it is not easy to find the one ideal map from months ago.

Some of the salients are portrayed as being “fatter” than they were in actuality, but you hopefully get the point.

And this is where the two terms meet. The point of a salient, as in the very end of it, is (if successful) the critical place on a battlefield which, if taken, will cause the collapse of the enemy positions. Many battles have essentially two lines of troops running into each other. These are most commonly attritional battles where each side attempts to wear down the other. By cutting to the point with a salient, one side attempts to fatally weaken the position of the other forcing a retreat, surrender or being annihilated if they don’t. Commonly seen in movies as “We’ve taken the high ground, they have lost” or some version. In actual military usage at a theater level, the salient point is frequently a key supply node which if taken causes the enemy to lose critical supplies and be forced to retreat, be annihilated, or surrender.

Salients can be dangerous, though. If the salient point is not reached, or even worse is NOT the critical position around which the enemy defense relies on, then not only has the attacker wasted resources, they have exposed themselves to potential counterattack on three sides. When Russia failed to reach Kyiv quickly enough, Ukraine was able to harass supply lines, and eventually attack Russian positions themselves until Russia was forced to retreat or risk losing even more soldiers and material.

The salient we see on the map at the start of the diary is Ukraine risking a salient to hopefully reach the salient point of Kupiansk which has the potential to put a huge area held by Russia out of supply. We will see in the coming days whether this was worth the risk or not (I personally think it was an excellent move by Ukraine and will succeed as intended). Ukraine has apparently already entered into Russia’s backfield and this will force Russia to move a large number of troops in response. Those troops need to make it to Kupiansk before Ukraine does or risk becoming meshed in the trap themselves. The breakout needs to be contained by Russia or Ukraine can keep driving deeper to others areas of Russian occupied territory further creating more and more problems for Russia.

The key here was US and Ukrainian forces successfully identifying both this key maneuver on the battlefield, but also identifying a key feature of the Russian BTG. I wrote this story a while back summarizing a much older US defense analysis of the Russian BTG. Click through to the original article (the defense report, not mine) as it is well worth a read. Two of the key findings was Russian over reliance on artillery and difficulties the Russian BTG has fighting in a fluid situation. The Russian BTG is primarily what you would call a “set piece” formation. It is meant to be strong in a mostly static battle with small amounts of maneuver. The US military article calls for both local maneuver and larger scale maneuver to keep the Russian BTG on the move and uncoordinated.

Ukraine has clearly digested this report well. Early on, they met the Russian BTG with a hybrid set piece conventional defense of key positions combined with a highly maneuverable guerrilla style attacking vulnerable parts of the Russian salients. The situation in the north was mostly fluid and BTG performance suffered as a result. Once Russia retreated and was attacking from solid lines the BTG was finally being used as intended and the Russian artillery advantage came to fore. The combination of getting Russia to move on a strategic level to Kherson with the logistical strikes by HIMARS has forced Russia again into a dynamic where the BTG is not as its best. Ukraine has created a fluid battle environment where the advantage goes to moving fast, quick decisions, and robust logistics capable of keeping up with the movement.

Russia’s top down hierarchy limiting key decisions to higher ups is inferior to Ukraines empowerment of NCOs and junior officers to do what needs to be done in the moment. Russian reliance on set piece BTG doctrine means that when their artillery spotting by drones is limited (as we see at the start of this counteroffensive near Kharkiv) they will be challenged to get artillery missions on target in a timely manner. The degradation of Russian combat vehicles means they won’t be able to move as fast as the Ukrainians and the over reliance of Russian logistics on rail infrastructure means they will have difficulty supplying those units on the move.

Russia is screwed.

Identifying salient points is extremely difficult. Even more difficult in war than it is in writing (though I’ve been trying my hardest to lose the plot with this piece). Identifying the key concepts that lead to the salient point is hard and only truly mastered with experience and true talent, which means I can’t tell you how to do it. I got lucky on some points where I stumbled into getting somethings correct. I’ve had plenty of errors as well. Ukraine has done a masterful job of breaking down this conflict, identifying key points, and acting upon them. I can’t wait for the books after all this is over to learn how Ukraine really did it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/8/2121568/-Ukraine-What-s-the-salient-idea-here-Let-s-cut-to-the-point

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