Don's Weekly, 13 January 2025: Part 4 (Equipment & Ukrainian Defence Positions)

by Donald Hill

(…continued from Part 3…)

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Equipment

As mentioned by Tom, two days ago, December saw a sudden, and major increase in deliveries of 155mm artillery shells from Germany to Ukraine:

These are the 155 mm shells delivered by Germany. The earlier increase - back in June - was from the Czech ammunition initiative financed by Germany. Meanwhile, factory production capabilities are increasing - even if the actual shell production depends on future German funding.

For those that are interested, here are connected threads talking about motors, flight controllers, and gyroscopes used in drones. It makes sense to create a source for motors that isn’t impacted by changing foreign policies, so a group of Russians invested in the equipment to make motors. The Russian government isn’t interested, though, and they’re on the verge of shutting down the operation. The outdated machinery, lack of automation and low production capacity are all factors in why they can’t compete. This plant in China produces 2,000,000 stators (a stationary component in electric motors) a month. When combined with the other components, the result is a lot of cheap motors.

The 414th (Magyar) produces a copy of the PTM-3 anti-tank mine. The Russians are using actual PTM-3 mines and cutting them in half to reduce weight so they can be dropped by light drones.

Ukrainians measure the penetration and fragmentation of a shaped charge in development. They also tested a shaped charge against spaced armor, which could replicate the bolted-on armor of turtle tanks.

Images of KF41 production in Hungary. They are also being produced in Ukraine now.

The first KF41 Lynx was delivered to Ukraine for testing. The 44 ton tank has either a 30 mm cannon with a 3000 meter range, a machine gun, and an anti-tank missile launcher. It moves at 70 kph, has a crew of three and can carry nine soldiers. Rheinmetall’s first factory in Ukraine had been used to repair damaged vehicles but is now building KF41’s. The first of about ten Lynx’s will be delivered soon. A second factory is near completion. Two more facilities that will produce ammo and propellant are in the planning stages. Rheinmetall is also working with Kyiv to produce air defense systems in Ukraine.

Russian drones are carrying AT mines with 7.5 kg of explosives.

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Ukrainian Defence Positions

If one thinks it’s ‘just’ the incompetent generals and all the resulting problems - including major failures of leadership at top levels, incompetence in command, failures to coordinate between single units, and/or very poor training provided to the mass of mobilised troops - that are debilitating the effectiveness of the ZSU: sorry, that’s ‘just’ some of most important factors.

Another is that the Ministry of Defence in Kyiv continues squandering millions for construction of defence positions in wrong areas, at wrong positions, and in wrong directions. Atop of that, the poor quality of training provided both to officers and troops of the ZSU is resulting in too many of these having no idea how nor where to construct their field fortifications…

Ryan O’Leary, commander of a foreign volunteer unit, briefly mentions that some leaders of units repeatedly fail to establish a proper defense and this makes it more difficult for units to their left and right to defend their positions. He then moves on to discuss the construction of defensive positions.

There has been a lot of discussion of all the money and time spent on the construction of trenches and other defensive positions behind friendly lines, many of which turned out to be poorly designed, poorly built, not useful, or even useful to enemy attacks. As an example, O’Leary uses the defensive positions of Karlivka, 18 km west of Avdiivka. At the time they were being built, they were far from the front lines and they weren’t in range of the enemy artillery. Also, the defensive positions should have overhead protection from drones. He mentions that the materials to build the roofing lay next to some positions for six months and were never installed. On top of that, none of the positions take advantage of the terrain, such as the treelines and buildings.

He shows how many of the defensive positions were built on an east-west axis with the friendly forces in the west. To face the enemy in the east, defensive positions should be built on a north-south axis, so all defensive fires can engage the approaching enemy. In fact, defensive positions on an east-west axis actually help the enemy because not only will the enemy face less defensive fires when approaching the trench, once they gain access to the trench at one end it will provide them with cover as they attack the rest of the trench. Attacking a trench from the side is called a flank attack, something all attackers want to achieve. The people who built these positions put the flank of some of the trenches closest to the enemy.

Typical (negative) example (and the main reason for continuous Russian advances in the Pokrovsk area):

He also points out that optimally you’ll have two men for every ten meters of trench line. If you have a trench line longer than the defenders can man then it will be easier for the enemy to reach the trenches even if he attacks them frontally because there won’t be defensive fires in the unmanned sections to keep them all out. Then the enemy can use the long trench to attack the defenders in the parts that are manned. The defensive positions should be small enough to be manned and the defensive positions should be able to support one another.

For specific examples, he offers three images located near Karlivka.

In the first image, a trench complex was placed in the middle of a field. The main road is at the top of the image and has tree lines on both sides. The trench complex is not close enough to defend the road, it does not have a line of fire to the road because of the tree lines, it does not have any overhead protection, and it doesn’t take advantage of the terrain. If just the easternmost line of trenches were manned, it would take 100 men (if at the preferred 2 men for every 10 meters of trenches) or 20 men (if stretching it to 2 men for every 50 meters of trenches). That’s a lot of men to put in the middle of a field without fields of fire on the main enemy avenue of approach.

In an alternative image, two-man fighting positions could fire on the road or into the adjacent fields, overhead protection is easier to construct on smaller positions, and they’re close enough to support each other. If they need to pull back, there are prepared positions behind them and some of the withdrawal routes are through treelines. The buildings at the bottom of the image is the western district of Karlivka. Depending on the resources available, which includes time, they could conduct a fighting withdrawal fighting from unprepared houses or create positions in the basements of that district. The basement positions would need to have clear fields of fire to the front and flanks and have a covered withdrawal route.

An important caveat to any positions proposed on a map is that map positions are a good initial step towards planning but the proposed positions must be viewed on the ground to see if they are actually viable or if subtle terrain elevations, obstacles to sight and other issues render it unusable.

In the second image he again illustrates how a 500 square meter trench complex is seemingly set up to repel an amphibious assault across the reservoir but can only observe 200 meters of the road.

A wider view further illustrates how ridiculous the actual positions were. There was a choke point only 220 meters wide that could be easily defended in front of and behind the narrow passage. The solid rectangles represent small fighting positions and the hollow rectangles represent houses and buildings that could be turned into defensive structures. Generally speaking, the positions should be close enough to support one another but not so close that a single bomb can impact them all. Given the series of successive positions, this terrain should be able to stop any frontal attacks over a long period of time and should only have to be surrendered because positions on its flanks two and five kilometers away were pushed back.

In his third example, he shows how a long trench that is parallel to a road does little to help defend against a Russian advance down that road. A wider view shows how the road could be blocked by destroying a bridge across the river. Successive positions could provide resistance against any crossings by dismounted infantry and any attempted bridging operations. Multiple houses could be incorporated into a single defensive position by creating tunnels or trenches between the basements of the houses, much like they did at Marinka.

Defensive fortifications are force multipliers. They should make any unit occupying them more effective. During Ukraine’s summer offensive of 2023, Russian forces excelled at creating and utilizing defensive positions. With the Russians attacking, Ukraine must ensure that there is competent leadership in the design and construction of defensive positions in order to maximize the destruction of Russian forces and minimize their own losses.

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(…to be concluded in the Part 5…)