The biggest attraction of the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield in 2023 is the summer big ** where the Ukrainian army has been building momentum for a long time**, and Ukraine and the Western world expect to replicate the victory of Kherson-Kharkiv in 2022**, recover more lost territory, and seize the initiative on the battlefield. However, after months of fierce fighting, the Ukrainian army has only made a few advances in a few sections, failed to break through the main defense line of the Russian army, and the battle situation is still deadlocked, and the goal of drinking the Sea of Azov and reoccupying Crimea is far away.
The Leopard 2 tanks and M2 infantry fighting vehicles of the Ukrainian army, which were destroyed in June 2023 on the Zaporozhye front, became the epitome of Ukraine's ** defeat in the summer of 2023.
In this anticlimactic **, the performance of the "NATO Pro-Training Brigade", which was previously pinned on by the Ukrainian army and the West, is really indescribable, and it was trapped by the Russian army's mine array as soon as it appeared, and the entire counterattack was like sleepwalking like soy sauce, and it did not play the role of destroying the withering and decaying and determining the situation at all. The outside world is quite puzzled, why did this elite army equipped with Western ** and trained by NATO fail? Now looking back at the formation, training and actual combat of the "NATO brigade" of the Ukrainian army, we will find that these units have fatal flaws in six aspects, and it is difficult to support the war situation.
The name doesn't live up to its name. It can be said unceremoniously that Ukraine's "NATO brigades" are completely a group of half-baked parallel goods, and none of the brigade's ** equipment has been fully NATOIZED, and not a single brigade of officers and soldiers has received complete and systematic NATO training. The "NATO brigade" and the army composite brigade of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other countries are completely two different concepts, which is actually similar to the gap between the US military ** and the US military back then. Before the Volunteer Army entered the Korean War, the combat effectiveness of the US Army was set to be slightly higher than that of the five main forces equipped with all American weapons, but when it came to the Korean battlefield, it was found that it was not the case at all - empiricism kills people. The firepower of the genuine US military is several times or even dozens of times that of the first country, and the level of training, logistical support, team relations, and combat style are also far apart.
During World War II, the Chinese people who were trained at the Ramgarh base in India were the first-class troops in the US Ordnance Army, but their combat effectiveness was difficult to compare with the regular US troops.
Due to the fact that the equipment aided by the West arrived in phases and batches, and it was different, the equipment models of the "NATO Brigade" of the Ukrainian army were complicated and very chaotic. In the "NATO brigades", the tank battalion may be armed with German-aided Leopard 2 tanks, while the infantry battalion is armed with Soviet-era BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, and the artillery battalion is armed with American-aided M777 howitzers. This mixed form of combining things and things is the actual situation of the current equipment of the "NATO brigade".
Western countries often provide first-class equipment according to the overall structure of their own troops, which also means that the "NATO brigade" of the Ukrainian army also needs to adopt the Western establishment, but it is very different from the existing Soviet-style establishment of the Ukrainian army, which brings many problems in operational command. Take the 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks aided by the United Kingdom as an example, this is exactly the number of tank companies in the British army, while the Ukrainian army continues to use the Soviet tank company, with 10 tanks per company, and the extra 4 tanks will make the commander of the Ukrainian tank company extremely awkward to command.
Britain has provided Ukraine with 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks in accordance with the formation of the British Army's tank company.
The British tank company had three platoons of four tanks and two companies, and the four tanks per platoon were usually in a square, parallelogram or diamond formation during battle. On the other hand, the Ukrainian tank company has 3 platoons, 3 tanks in each platoon, 1 in the company, and 3 tanks in each platoon usually adopt a regular triangle or inverted triangle formation during the battle. The difference in the number of tanks and the transformation of the battle formation require the tank company commanders and platoon commanders of the Ukrainian army to spend more training time to adapt, but what the Ukrainian army lacks most is time. This is just a difference in a tank company, and when it rises to the battalion level and brigade level units, the difference in establishment will cause more problems.
In terms of equipment and establishment, the "NATO brigade" of the Ukrainian army is simply unable to achieve both physical and mental capabilities, at most it is just a vain name. Therefore, its combat effectiveness must not be judged by the standards of the composite brigades of the armies of NATO countries.
Inadequate training. The more sophisticated and complex the equipment, the longer the training time is required, and the Western equipment has always been more delicate and delicate than the Soviet Russian equipment, so the training time required is naturally more. According to the original assumptions of Western military advisers and the Ukrainian army, the Ukrainian army units equipped with Western equipment will receive systematic training in the military camps of Poland, Germany, Britain and other Western countries, and the training cycle will vary from one month to six months depending on the complexity of the equipment.
The German-made Leopard 2 main battle tank equipped by the Ukrainian army can be called a trump card in the summer, but it did not play the expected role.
Taking the tank crew driving the Leopard 2 tank as an example, the training time of the German tank crew in peacetime is several years, but Ukraine obviously can't wait so long, so the German Ministry of Defense has compressed the accelerated training time set for Ukrainian tankers to 6 8 weeks. If the trainees are veterans of the Ukrainian army who already have rich experience, on the basis of ensuring that the average training time of the crew is at least 4 6 motorcycle hours per day, 6 8 weeks of conversion training can only be said to be barely enough.
First of all, the crew spent about a week to understand the difference between the Leopard 2 and the Soviet-style tank through theoretical study and actual driving, the Leopard 2's advanced hydraulic suspension and the Soviet-style tank's torsion bar suspension are very different, the precision is extremely high, and frequent maintenance is required; Secondly, it takes 1 to 3 weeks to complete the basic training subjects, be able to drive the Leopard 2 tank, which is more than 10 tons heavier than the Soviet-style tank, on simple terrain, and master the maintenance skills of the 1500 horsepower MTU diesel engine; Finally, it takes 4 weeks to master the advanced driving subject, and you can drive the tank in complex terrain conditions with dense minefields and craters, and be able to complete simple repair skills such as short tracks and changing load wheels on the battlefield.
Two Ukrainian tank crews who are being trained in Leopard 2 tanks in Germany are interviewed by the West**, they only have 6 to 8 weeks of intensive training, and it is difficult for them to master combat skills.
However, due to the large number of personnel on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield**, it has been difficult for the Ukrainian army to send experienced tank crews to Germany for training, because once the veterans who are the mainstay are lost, the front line is in danger of rapid collapse. Therefore, most of the tank soldiers that the Ukrainian army can provide are novices who have just been forcibly conscripted, and they first need to complete a month of recruit training in Ukraine, and master basic skills such as queue, shooting, bomb throwing, tactical maneuvers, and military discipline before they will be sent to Germany for training. It takes at least 6 weeks for a novice to master the basic tank driving training subjects and the ability to maintain the tank, and it takes another 6 to 8 weeks of training to master the advanced driving subjects.
A tank armored vehicle of the Ukrainian army abandoned by the Ukrainian army after hitting a mine in the minefield of the Russian army in the summer of 2023**.
The reality is that due to the urgent military situation at the front, the Ukrainian army is not allowed to train step by step at all, and Germany can only compress the training time by reducing the difficulty of training and reducing the content of training. Under the rapid development of pulling out seedlings, the tank crews of the Ukrainian army can only reach the level of barely driving the Leopard 2 tank to the battlefield, and they do not have the ability to coordinate tactics at all. Therefore, the Ukrainian army can only put the Leopard 2 tank into battle on a platoon-level scale, and no matter how large the scale is, it will be chaotic first, because before the war, it has not practiced coordinated operations above the scale of the company at all. In the same way, the Ukrainian army's "NATO brigade" has not practiced brigade-scale coordinated operations at all, and was forced to rush into the war under a patchwork.
As a result, the "NATO brigade" is trapped in a vicious circle: insufficient training - ** surge - urgent need for replenishment - insufficient training, and so on, the "NATO brigade" has never been well trained and is at a high **, high attrition, and cannot pose a threat to the Russian army at all.
Logistical dilemma. As the so-called soldiers and horses have not moved, grain and grass go first, the West's first-class equipment has always been known for its sophistication, but the degree of dependence on logistics support is far greater than that of the Soviet-style **. The Leopard 2 tank's off-road performance and fast-stop braking performance are based on highly sophisticated hydraulic suspension, which requires a large amount of high-standard hydraulic oil, and the 1500 horsepower engine is a proper oil tiger. The already overburdened logistics supply line of the Ukrainian army is simply unable to support the high material consumption of the West, and the logistics bottleneck directly limits the combat scale and frequency of sorties of the "NATO brigade".
The U.S. military's M1A2 main battle tank is refueling, and Western armored vehicles are basically at the "oil tiger" level, which is very dependent on the efficient supply of the logistics system.
The Ukrainian army has received ** equipment and ammunition from many Western countries, including NATO standard equipment, stocks of former Warsaw Pact countries, and old goods from the international arms market. ** The complexity is a nightmare for the logistics department of the Ukrainian army. Taking fuel as an example, as we all know, domestic civilian gasoline is divided into three grades and 97, corresponding to different cars, if the wrong gasoline is filled, the engine failure rate will surge, the life will decrease, and the oil circuit will be blocked and the engine will be scrapped. The quality of military fuel in Western countries is generally better than that of Ukraine's own fuel, and the standards are also very different, but the Ukrainian army neither has enough Western fuel nor the conditions for accurate distribution, so the Ukrainian army can only add what fuel to what on the battlefield, and there is no room for picking. Not only can the fuel be mistaken, but the hydraulic oil and lubricating oil cannot be accurately distributed. As a result, the vehicle breakdown rate of the "NATO brigade" will inevitably surge, and the untrained Ukrainian drivers do not have the ability to repair them, so they can only abandon a large number of valuable vehicles.
Compared with the dilemma of fuel supply, the problem of ammunition ** is more serious. The wrong fuel engine can barely run for a while, and the wrong ammunition will explode directly. Take the most basic 762 mm guns and ammunition as an example, the Ukrainian army is currently equipped with as many as 4 kinds of guns and bullets of this caliber, although the caliber is the same, but the volume, scale, shape, and weight are obviously different, and they are suitable for different types of firearms, which cannot be used universally.
The Ukrainian army was originally equipped with three types of Soviet-era developed 762mm cartridges:
62 54R mm rifle cartridge, which has been around for more than 100 years, was originally a matching ammunition developed for the Mosin-Nagant rifle, although the Mosin-Nagant rifle has long been retired after a hundred years, but the ammunition is old and strong, and the PKM general-purpose machine gun and PKT tank side-by-side machine gun still use this cartridge, which is still the main machine gun cartridge of the Russian and Ukrainian armies. On the basis of this shell, the Soviet Union also developed a special bullet for the SVD sniper rifle, but the SVD can also use the basic bullet in an emergency, but the accuracy is slightly reduced. After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Ukrainian army also unsealed a small number of Mosin-Nagant rifles and Makqin heavy machine guns, which also used 762 54r mm rifle cartridges.
A Ukrainian soldier shoots from a bunker with an ancient Makqin heavy machine gun, which fires 762 54r mm rifle cartridges.
62 25 mm pistol cartridges, which were copied from the Mauser 7The 63mm pistol cartridge was first used in the TT33 pistol, and was later mass-produced and stored as a companion ammunition for PPSH and PPS submachine guns. Although the above three old guns have been retired during the Soviet Army, many old firearms have returned to the battlefield on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, 762 25mm pistol cartridges have a place of use in the Ukrainian army.
62 39mm rifle cartridge, which is a matching ammunition developed for the AK-47 assault rifle, the AK family is still the absolute main rifle of the Russian and Ukrainian armies, and the AK-47 series and AK-74 series are used in large quantities, so 762 39 mm rifle cartridges were also in high demand.
Ukrainian soldiers are trained with an AK-47 assault rifle, which fires 762 39 mm rifle cartridges.
With the arrival of Western aid, the Ukrainian army has added a fourth type 762mm cartridges:62 51 mm rifle cartridge, which is a NATO standard rifle cartridge, is mainly used for M14 sniper rifles, M240 general-purpose machine guns, M60 general-purpose machine guns, MG3 general-purpose machine guns, M219 tank side-by-side machine guns, etc., and the vast majority of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles provided by Western countries use this round-by-side machine gun.
NATO brigade "tank battalion equipped with Leopard 2 tanks need to be used 762 51 mm rifle cartridges were used as side-by-side machine gun ammunition, and the BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles equipped with infantry battalions required 762 54R mm rifle cartridges as side-by-side machine gun ammunition, AKM in the hands of infantry needed to use 762 39mm rifle cartridges, sniper's SVD needs to use 762 54R mm sniper cartridges, the officer's TT33 pistol needs to be used 762 25 mm pistol cartridges. Therefore, the Ukrainian army has to guarantee 4 kinds of 7 at the same time** of 62 mm bullets, these ammunition come from multiple manufacturers in different countries, and the outer packaging is marked with a variety of colors, and it is difficult to identify, which can definitely make the heads of the logistics officers of the Ukrainian army three circles.
Improper tactics. According to the assumptions of Western military advisers and the Ukrainian army, the "NATO Brigade", which has high hopes, should participate in the big ** as a sharp knife unit to break through the Russian defense line after it is fully equipped and well-trained, or as a reserve to counterattack the Russian offensive. However, the plan is not as good as the change, in the first half of 2023, the Wagner mercenaries will attack ** Mutt regardless of **, and the battle situation is precarious, forcing the Ukrainian army to put the "NATO brigade" into battle in advance as a firefighting team, and fill this flesh mill one by one with refueling tactics, so that by the time the big ** was launched in July, almost all the "NATO brigades" of the Ukrainian army were exhausted and their combat effectiveness was greatly reduced. It is precisely because of the existing losses that the "NATO brigade" will not be able to launch a large-scale attack with the brigade as a unit during the ** period, and can only fight piecemeal with battalions and companies as units, which is difficult to form an effective impact on the Russian defense line.
The soldiers of the Ukrainian army who participated in the Battle of Mutt, and many "NATO brigades" were thrown into the battlefield of Mutt, with considerable losses.
At the tactical level at the battalion and company level, the messiness of the equipment of the "NATO brigade" also leads to confusion in tactical coordination. When a reinforced tank company launches a coordinated attack on the infantry tank, the radio frequency on the Leopard 2 tank is not consistent with the radio frequency of the BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle, and the radio station of the Leopard 2 tank has an encryption function, while the old BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle radio cannot be encrypted, and the two sides can only conduct unencrypted voice calls within a limited frequency range, which is easy to be intercepted and interfered with by the Russian electronic countermeasures detachment, and poor communication will directly lead to the difficulty of implementing the tactical coordination of the Ukrainian army. And the leakage of intelligence will bring about the failure of the entire combat operation.
The infantry of the Ukrainian army, which conducts coordinated exercises with the BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle, the "NATO brigade" has problems with tactical coordination.
Lack of system. The core factor of NATO's strong combat effectiveness is that they have a complete modern combat system, and there are unified NATO standards for equipment, ammunition, fuel and even the electromagnetic spectrum. A French infantry battalion could be integrated directly into the German armored brigade as an independent combat unit, refueled by Dutch tankers and replenished from Belgian ammunition depots. This French infantry battalion can also receive intelligence support from the US Army Intelligence Brigade and cover from the British Electronic Countermeasures Force, and call for air support from the US Air Force and artillery support from the Italian Artillery Battalion M270 rocket artillery.
In 2015, a Leopard 2A6 main battle tank of NATO forces was refueled at a gas station somewhere in Denmark. Thanks to the implementation of uniform system standards in terms of equipment, ammunition, supplies, and communications, NATO forces have gained a strong system combat capability.
The "NATO brigade" of the Ukrainian army is obviously not capable of tactical coordination between NATO countries. As a result, the "NATO brigade", which was dissatisfied with the bottle and swayed in half a bottle, could only learn from Handan, and used the Leopard 2 tank, which could not communicate with each other's radio stations, and the BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle to carry out incompatible infantry and tank coordination. The commander of the "NATO brigade" cannot plan overly complex tactics for the troops at the tactical level, but can only carry out very simple coordination by setting goals, setting routes and timings. Once the battle begins, all cooperation can only be expected to give full play to the subjective initiative of the commanders of each tank and armored vehicle.
The MT-55 tank bridge-erecting vehicle, developed on the basis of the T-55 tank, could hardly withstand the weight of Western main battle tanks.
The tank bridge-building vehicles originally equipped by the Ukrainian army are matched with the Soviet-style T-64 72 80 three series of tanks, and the total combat weight of the above-mentioned tanks is 40 tons, while the total combat weight of the Leopard 2, Challenger 2, and M1 series assisted by Western countries is 60 tons, which is a weight that the Soviet-style tank bridge-building vehicles cannot bear at all. So much so that the Leopard 2 tanks of the "NATO brigade" are often stuck in front of the anti-tank trenches of the Russian army. From this point of view, the combat capability of the "NATO brigade" is not as good as that of other Soviet weapons brigades of the Ukrainian army, at least the latter can ensure smooth communication and supporting equipment.
Military-political entanglements. The military should serve politics, but political leaders also need to be well-versed in military affairs, know people and responsibilities well, and respect the professional opinions of military leaders, rather than being led by laymen and blindly commanded by insiders. Similarly, military leaders should also have basic political literacy and be able to consider military issues from a macropolitical perspective. However, since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the ideal state of communication and tacit cooperation between Ukraine and the army has not been reached, and military and political contradictions have repeatedly erupted, and they have become public as the war situation has become increasingly unfavorable.
Zelensky inspected the command of a brigade of the Ukrainian army, as a **, Zelensky often interferes in military command out of political needs.
Zelensky, who was born as an actor, can be called a novice in military command, and should have fully trusted the command ability of army generals, but he often forced the military to launch an offensive in order to cater to political needs and international perspectives, resulting in the loss of troops and the loss of troops in the Ukrainian army. Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, complained about Zelensky's decision, and even publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the conscription work, and also demanded that another 500,000 people be mobilized to join the army. In addition to the internal military and political contradictions in Ukraine, the deep intervention of Western countries has made the situation more complicated, and units at all levels of the Ukrainian army are equipped with many Western military advisers, and many combat plans are directly drawn up by Western advisers, and actually control the actions of the Ukrainian troops.
The former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Zaluzhny, had disagreements with Zelensky on the course of operations, which eventually led to his dismissal.
All three parties had different considerations in the process of formulating the battle plan. During the Battle of **Mutt, Zaluzhny and Western military advisers resolutely opposed the use of refueling tactics to put the poorly trained "NATO brigades" into the direction of **Mutt, and then suggested abandoning **Mutt, but Zelensky forced reinforcements from the Ukrainian army out of political influence. In the subsequent big **, the above three parties had disagreements on the timing, direction of the main attack, deployment of troops, and the distribution of ammunition of the Ukrainian army, resulting in several "NATO brigades" being split and used in different directions, and no joint force was formed at all, and the final defeat was also an inevitable result.
Epilogue. To sum up, the "NATO brigade" in the current Ukrainian army is actually nothing more than a half-baked unit that decorates the façade with Western **, facing many difficulties such as mixed equipment models, chaotic logistics support, serious lack of training, lack of system support, etc., and the tactical coordination in actual combat is unfavorable and deeply affected by political factors, far from reaching the level of combat effectiveness expected by the West and Ukraine, and their crotch-pulling performance in the summer of 2023 fully proves the weakness of their real capabilities.
The "NATO brigades" of the Ukrainian army are equipped with American-made M2 infantry fighting vehicles, but they did not perform well in the summer.
In fact, since World War II, from the Korean War to the Vietnam War, from the Iraq War to the Afghanistan War, the United States has cultivated a lot of "first-class troops" with American-style and American-style training to assist the US military in combat, but most of them have been labeled as the scum of war. Although the current Ukrainian army occupies the moral high ground of "resisting Russia and defending the country", it is fundamentally still shedding blood for the West against Russia, and the Ukrainian leadership is not afraid of this, and is even proud of it. However, how can it be done in a year and a half to completely transform the Ukrainian army, which was born out of the Soviet army, into a modern NATO-based army? How can a limited number of Western ** change the huge power gap between Russia and Ukraine?