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Quick Explainer: Hypothetical Crimean Campaign Part II--Wrecking the Crimean Rail System [1]
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Date: 2023-05-16
Imagine you command an army, and you’re engaged in a standoff with the enemy on a peninsula. Your supplies arrive from the southeast. To supply the eastern and western wings of your army, you need to deliver supplies to both ends.
The best possible arrangement for your logistical chain would be for the supplies to run east-west as far as possible from the front lines, before running up behind your lines.
What’s the worst possible arrangement? Where the “juncture” between the east and western supply areas has to run right up to the front lines.
If Red Army is pushed back even a little bit, the western half of the Red Army suddenly has a lot of difficulty being supplied. Blue Army can press the western flank to further stress Red Army’s ability to resist, and the further the Red Army’s Western Wing is pressed back, the further they are driven from their lines of supply.
Let me introduce you to the Crimean Rail System.
Russian supplies on the Crimean Peninsula flow almost exclusively by rail. The good is brought across the Kerch Bridge (southeastern corner) from Russia, then transported via the rail system.
if Ukraine succeeded in bringing down the Kerch Bridge (as we discussed in Part I), Russia would then be forced to bring in supplies by shipping. Crimea has 5 major commercial ports which can handle the kind of logistical tonnage it would require to supply the Russian Army: Kerch, Feodosia, Yalta, Sevastopol, and Yevpatoriya.
I will write further details of imposing a maritime exclusion zone that would restrict shipping to Russian-held ports, unless the freighters are first subject to search in Ukrainian ports for contraband, but suffice it to say that Ukrainian land-based anti-ship missiles should have no trouble interdicting Russian shipping to Yevpatoriya and Sevastopol.
If Dzhankoi is captured by Ukraine, it effectively splits the peninsula’s supply situation. Russians could try to run supplies along the roads by truck from near Feodosia to Sevastopol (over 120km), or they could ship military supplies to Yalta—where there is no railhead. Goods would need to be transported 60km to Sevastopol, where they would be reloaded onto trains for transport.
Dzhankoi’s key importance to Russian logistics in Crimea cannot be overstated.
The problem for Russia is that Dzhankoi sits right on the front lines of a Ukrainian-Russian standoff north of the peninsula.
Right off the bat, THE key rail junction that holds the Eastern and Western wings of the Russian logistics situation in Crimea begins within HIMARS GMLRS range.
It gets worse for Russia.
Northeast of Dzhankoi is a peninsula called the Chonhar Peninsula.
it’s connected directly by land to the rest of Kherson Oblast to the North, but it connects to the Crimean peninsula via a road and rail bridge on the southeastern corner of the peninsula.
Meaning, it’s very difficult to supply or defend for Russia, but Ukraine could put artillery there and supply it without worrying about a bridge being destroyed to their rear.
It’s hard to see how Russia could defend Chonhar in the early stages of a Crimean Campaign. Ukraine could bombard the bridge and interdict the small peninsula with ease, then hit the defensive positions with munitions and conventional artillery before overrunning it with a mechanized infantry unit.
I’m not sure if the Russians will even try to defend it given how hopeless a defensive position it is. Maybe they put a few mobiks there to eat lead while they try to hit Ukrainian troops with artillery in Crimea.
But if Chonhar falls into Ukrainian hands, Dzhankoi is in REALLY bad shape. From the southern tip of Chonhar, Dzhankoi is just 27km. NATO 155mm howitzers like the M777s or M113 can fire RAP (Rocket Assisted Projectiles) that have a range of 30km-40km, putting Dzhankoi well within artillery range.
Southeast of Dzhankoi lies another logistical vulnerability for the Russian position: rivers and bridges for its supply lines.
A map of Crimea’s rivers and canals shows how southeast of Dzhankoi, a series of small rivers run north/south across the Crimean Peninsula’s east-central plains.
Most of these rivers are not large.
For example, the Salhyr River runs from Simferopol in southwestern Crimea northeastward, intersecting with the North Crimea Canal and flowing to the Sea of Azov. At 202km, it is the longest river in Crimea. It is not, however, very wide: it ranges from 2-3m to about 15m at the broadest points.
However, whether it is 10 feet or 1000 feet, a train or truck cannot cross a river without a bridge. Rail bridges represent logistical chokepoints where Ukrainian forces can direct attacks that can severely disrupt Russian logistics.
The bridge crossing of the M17 highway and the railway that connects northern Crimea to Kerch cross the Salhyr River just 57km south of Chonhar.
This would put the Salhyr River crossing well within GMLRS range should Chonhar be secured. A small bridge of this type might be brought down with repeated GMLRS or GLSDB strikes by HIMARS or M270 rocket artillery.
Alternatively, this is closer to the front lines than say, Luhansk is on the Eastern Front. Luhansk, about 90km from the front lines, was subject to bombardments by Ukrainian forces from what are believed to be Storm Shadow cruise missile strikes.
For that matter, the Salhyr River crossing is only the northernmost of these crossings. Utilizing its air force in a similar but smaller scale manner to that described in part 1, Ukrainian forces could target any of the 3 river crossings with JDAMS GPS-guided bombs and/or Storm Shadow cruise missiles near the Sea of Azov to break the logistical chain leading from Kerch.
Storm Shadow cruise missiles in particular give Ukraine a powerful new weapon that allows it to strike deep into Russian territory with with Ukrainian air assets. Due to limitations with Russian SAM units to intercept low-flying cruise missiles and radar detection limitations for low-flying air craft over the Sea of Azov, Russia will be sharply limited in its ability to stop Ukrainian air attacks on its lines of supply.
Cutting the railway to Dzhankoi will have grave consequences for Russian logistics. The Russian Army suffers from systemic problems with supplying larger formations any distance from railheads. This derives, in part, due to the organization of the Russian Army.
Compared to the US Army, Russian units are generally supplied by far smaller-sized units.
They can sustain this domestically by relying on railroads for a smaller number of trucks and transport vehicles needed, requiring much less personnel devoted to logistics.
However, when deployed beyond Russian borders, Russian troops are similarly heavily reliant on train logistics and have yet to demonstrate an ability to break free of these constraints.
Russia may be procuring an expanded number of heavy trucks in the hopes of improving its logistical chain, but essentially sizing up the scope of its logistical operations for a Corps or Army-sized unit mid-war is an enormously challenging logistical endeavor, not just from an equipment perspective, but from organization, training and operational planning.
It remains unclear if Russia will be able to use naval and truck transport to augment a disrupted rail network to supply an army-sized formation. If they cannot in Crimea, the defense of Northern and Western Crimea will be pushed to collapse quite quickly.
This problem can be accelerated by navally interdicting Sevastopol and Yevpatroyia on the western coast of Crimea, an issue I will explore in Part III.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/16/2169675/-Quick-Explainer-Hypothetical-Crimean-Campaign-Part-II-The-Crimean-Rail-System
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