How is a modern war like Ukraine, Syria... fought today?

• a book
  
• a long blogpost
  
• a good documentary
  
• or a very realistiv movie
  
  

• Conventional warfare since WW2 -believe it or not- has not changed significantly. Other than Nuclear weapons (which in Russia's case, are horribly out of date but that's a whole other topic), the arsenal remains the same but with better technical advancements. For example, MG42 is still used today with modified NATO rounds and better optics depending on military. Mortar rounds and rocket artillery are majorly the same fundamentally, just with better and faster reloading of shells etc. I think you would understand.
  
• The war in Ukraine up to this point is fought on two levels: on the battalion-level, what the Russians are trying to do are use Superior Firepower which they certainly have with massed artillery against urban targets and strategic zones and also using unmanned rockets (imagine late war V2 rockets) in order to create breakthroughs that mechanized assault groups (I am sure you have seen the pictures) can take advantage of. At the grand strategy level, I believe they are trying to pull of an encirclement tactic on the whole Kiev area, in order to create a pocket inside the urban territory around the Dniepe river. This would be a done deal for the war, seeing that the Ukrainian people are fighting bravely but with very limited resources.
  
• In the Ukrainian side, sadly they are fighting mostly guerilla style due to their very poor military capacity and military unpreparedness (borderline criminal military unreadiness for me). Schoolgirls are making molotovs at school, they are giving civilians weapons and armor to fight without even calling the reserves first . If we make a parallel to WW2, it was not until 1945 till Volkssturm got mobilized.
  
• Urban warfare in general is very risky and tactically complex since it functions on three strategical dimensions due to the amount of huge buildings that act like mini fortresses. That's why encirclement is always the most decent and manpower-conserving tactics.
  
• Morale on the Ukrainian side is very high, since fighting for one's homeland is historically the main rallying force of the conscripts and volunteers.
  
• Propaganda plays a huge role on both sides. It remains to be seen what happened, and I cannot speak about it.
  
• Let's close on a literary scale: War is the province of chance. In no sphere of human activity is such a margin to be left for this intruder, because none is so much in constant contact with him on all sides. He increases the uncertainty of every circumstance, and deranges the course of events.
  
• The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over any country unopposed.
  
• War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.
  

Jump back to quoted post18 Mar 2022, 20:58 PMBasedSecretary

Interesting take.
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