Within this attritional approach, the Ukrainian military has employed effective combined arms at a small unit level that is not seen in U.S. forces. Based on simulations that lack context and the friction of war, the U.S. Army has been moving toward centralizing assets in a manner similar to France’s methodical battle of the 1930s. This approach will continue to slow decision-making and operational tempo. When situations at the front change, soldiers will need to wait for the prolonged planning processes of headquarters removed from the fight to make a decision. They waste precious minutes and will risk being overrun as they call for a fire mission that is routed from battalion, to brigade, to division, then back down to a divisional artillery headquarters, a field artillery battalion, and finally a firing battery. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has decentralized to an impressive degree with unmanned aerial systems tied into platoon operations and artillery working on demand with an Uber-like app. The Ukrainian approach is a much quicker and more flexible form of warfare than the centralized target working groups and 72-hour air tasking orders that drive American operations.
A further critique has been that “Ukraine hasn’t been able to master combined arms warfare at scale.” Instead of attempting a single, massed breakthrough, they are attacking along three axes in dispersed attacks. Soviet interwar theorists, such as Aleksandr Svechin and Vladimir Triandafillov, examined the difficulty of overcoming a continuous defense in depth. They recognized the value of multiple axes of attack to prevent an enemy from massing their operational reserves on a single breakthrough. They highlighted the Brusilov offensive in 1916 as an example of a broad front offensive with multiple breakthroughs that overwhelmed the Austro-Hungarian reserves. Ukraine is attempting a similar approach, which is even more appropriate given the contemporary threat of Russian unmanned aerial systems providing observation for concentrated artillery fires on any massing of Ukrainian forces.
https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/bi...ional-context/
Interesting read By Maj. Robert G. Rose, U.S. Army, is the operations officer for 3rd Squadron, 4th Security Forces Assistance Brigade.