Even flatworms have demonstrated the ability to learn from experience. Flatworms, like mammals, have a centralized brain; they can be trained to remember a behavior and perform it on cue. They can also be trained to avoid behaviors.
The same apparently isn’t true of Russian Army field commanders.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the staggering incompetence of their field commanders, who repeatedly fail to take even the most basic precautions to protect their troops. I mean, anybody who has spent any amount of time in military harness just assumes their commanders are fucking idiots who are casually trying to get them killed. The difference is that in the Russian Army, that appears to be true.
Behavioral psychologists back in the 1950s trained flatworms to avoid electric shocks. The Russian Army has failed to learn that lesson. In the weeks since they invaded Ukraine, the Russians have repeatedly left troops and vehicles in vulnerable, stationary positions. And the Ukrainian military has repeatedly shelled the shit out of them.
Last week, the Russians decided to take the town of Lysychansk, which meant they had to cross the Siverskyi Donets River. Crossing a river in a combat zone is a big deal. It’s a complex tactical situation for a couple of reasons. First and most obvious, the troops and vehicles crossing the river are terribly exposed. There’s no cover or concealment on a bridge. Second, you have a LOT of vehicles and troops concentrated in the same place, waiting to take their turn crossing the bridge. So they’re exposed, vulnerable and stationary. An army has to prepare to cross a river.
The Ukrainians knew the Russian Army needed to cross the Siverskyi Donets River. They sent a guy named Max–an engineer and an EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) officer–to scope out the situation. He took a recon unit along the river, found the best place to ford it, and left some recon troops in place to keep watch. They prepared to defend the river.
And hey, the Russians showed up as expected. The Ukrainians let them build a pontoon bridge. They let a few troops and combat vehicles to cross over. Then they shelled the shit out of the bridge and the troops and vehicles waiting to cross over. When the artillery subsided, the Ukrainian Air Force showed up and did some close quarters bombing. The Ukrainian recon units hunted down and killed the troops that had already crossed the river and had no way back.
We don’t have any solid numbers, but it appears the Russians lost over 50 armored combat vehicles and anywhere from 1500 to 2000 troops–and that includes specialized combat engineering troops, which are really hard to replace. That’s effectively a couple of battalion tactical groups eliminated. It’s a staggering loss for the Russian Army at a time when they’re already getting their ass kicked.
This was clever work by the Ukrainians, but it was made possible by the incompetence of the Russians. They failed to do any reliable reconnaissance before the operation. They failed to have reliable real-time drone recon information. They failed to establish and provide any artillery protection for their troops. They failed to provide close air support. They failed in every possible way.
A flatworm can learn from experience.
As a supporter of Ukrainian independence, I’m glad to see Russia get bloodied. But as a military veteran, I hate seeing any troops get killed because of the rigid stupidity of their leaders. The Russian Army has demonstrated it can’t win a traditional, linear ground war, not even against a smaller nation.
The Russian Army is dumber than a flatworm.
UPDATE: It appears the Russian Army attempted to cross the Siverskyi Donets River three times. They failed in their first attempt as reported, so they made a second attempt AT THE SAME LOCATION. I’m not making that up. And hey bingo, they got the same result. Lots of destroyed vehicles, lots of dead troops. So, being the Russian Army, they decided to try cross the river a third time AT THE SAME LOCATION AGAIN. With the same result.
EDITORIAL FLATWORM NOTE: Okay, this has nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine, but there’s an exceedingly cool thing about flatworms and memory. Like a lot of other types of worms, flatworms can regenerate themselves. If you whack off a flatworm’s tail (and really, you shouldn’t, because what’s a flatworm ever done to you?), in a couple of weeks it’ll grow into an entirely new flatworm, complete with a shiny new centralized brain.
But that’s not the cool thing. The cool thing is that if the original flatworm had been taught to run (well, not run–it’s a flatworm, after all) a maze, the newly regenerated flatworm would remember how to run the maze too. Which suggests memory isn’t limited to the centralized brain. Memory MAY be somehow stored in other cells. How cool is that?
gregfallis.com 
This is further proof that the Russian Army has completely forgotten that while battles are won by the guys with the pointy sticks, wars are won with logistics.
And there’s a reason (at least in the U.S. Army) that the older NCOs in the Engineer Corps are generally crusty bastards who have no problem telling company and command level officers that their operational plans are dumber than mud that’s been fucked by a donkey. THEY know that it’s gonna be their asses hanging out there when executing a river crossing.
I think another problem here is with all the command level officers that have been killed by the Ukrainians, we’re seeing a command structure with a deficit of training and experience in executing operations at the command level. Combine that with the general slipshod approach that Russia has taken during the prosecution of this war, the fact that it’s mostly conscripted troops, and you’ve got a recipe for ongoing disaster.
None of these issues (failed logistics, unmotivated conscripts, dead command officers, and recently promoted and inexperienced command officers) cannot be addressed quickly. Russia’s gonna be suffering through this shit for a while.
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Whoops! That second to last sentence should read:
“None of these issues (failed logistics, unmotivated conscripts, dead command officers, and recently promoted and inexperienced command officers) CAN be addressed quickly.”
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wars are won with logistics
Absolutely correct. And a river crossing is perhaps the most demanding sort of combined forces maneuver. You need recon to check out the site, you need a skilled force on the ‘wrong’ side of the river to clear the area and secure the attempted crossing, you need to reduce the enemy’s ability to use artillery to prevent the crossing, you need combat engineers to actually build the damned pontoon bridge, you need traffic wardens to prevent a bottleneck while trying to cross and to determine which units need to go first, AND you need a logistics team to insure everything and everybody gets where they need to be when they need to be there.
The Russian Army, at the beginning of this fiasco, may have had some of the skilled troops necessary for this sort of thing. They don’t have it now.
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