'Rout' of Putin's forces could take just 'a number of days' after breakthrough | Nicholas Drummond

we

could

see a russian ukrainian support effort begin to decline it is a collapse of russian

forces

we know alcohol consumption is a big problem in the russian military morale is at an all time low leadership is not good there

could

be an event in which Ukraine makes a significant

breakthrough

in a matter of

days

, prompting a

rout

e and mass withdrawal or surrender of Russian

forces

. Hello and welcome to Frontline on the radio with me, Kate Chabot, and today we're talking to Nicholas Drummond. Nicholas is a former army officer. and land warfare specialist, he has 20 years' experience in the defense industry and is the UK's strategic advisor on the British Army's new all-terrain armored personnel carrier, the Boxer.

He is also a respected defense analyst and strategic consultant. Nicholas, welcome to Frontline. Thank you so much. and today we're going to use his experience to talk about some of the images we've been able to get from the front lines. In recent

days

, Ukraine captured the city of Rock Bottinee and we have seen images of Ukrainian Troops using Western equipment in this battle, first let's

take

a small look at the use of Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles used by the 47th Mechanized Brigade from Ukraine on robotsnae, so Nicholas, what do you notice when you watch this footage?

It reminds us how brutal and visceral ground warfare continues to be, and there is a real human element that remains constant in war. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and in war terms, that means sacrificing human lives to achieve strategic objectives. and when you look at this, can you really read anything into the tactics that Ukraine has used to re

take

robotics, but what they do suggest is that the Ukrainians are conducting a traditional combined arms war, using tanks, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery to use artillery to bring infantry very close to the objective and then come out of their positions very close to the objective and literally use rifles and bayonets to dislodge the enemy from their positions.

A very traditional war. Can you tell us a little more about the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and how it is used? In this type of warfare, basically, the Bradley is an infantry fighting vehicle that carries nine personnel, carries a crew of three and six dismounts, so the commander and gunner will fight the vehicle using the monster cannon. 25 millimeter bush and the crew uh. The dismounted infantry team will be at the back and advance as far as they can using the Canon to suppress the enemy. It is also equipped with two towed anti-tank missiles so good at suppressing or defeating enemy armor as the vehicle advances. then when you get close enough the infantry will divert towards the objective and eliminate the position and obviously it takes a large

number

of them to eliminate an enemy position and of course Ukraine only has a limited

number

so We will depend on other armored vehicles The Times has reported that Ukrainian soldiers use their armored vehicles to drive into Russian trenches before launching an assault, is it something they have learned from NATO or are local tactics.

I think a little of both, obviously. You want to get as close as possible because the longer the infantry has to resort on foot, the more vulnerable they will be not only to their own artillery, which will fire as they get closer to the enemy objective, but also to enemy direct fire defending that position, for example. You really want to eliminate the bus as close to the enemy position as possible and of course the important thing about the Bradley is that it is very well protected. We have seen several of them eliminated, but very few crew members have been injured or killed traveling in that vehicle, very well protected and very capable, you say that several have been eliminated, what does it take to take apart a Bradley, well, now You know, a standard anti-tank missile, an RPG 29 or even enough igp 7. enough to neutralize your Bradley and of course they will have dug in tanks that will use direct fire to deflect the attack, so the T-72s or whatever and Bradley can't really withstand that kind of firepower, so they might be able to withstand a cannon fire, but not the fire from a large tank that is aimed at them.

You say the Bradleys need more Bradley vehicles. It is not enough and they have to rely on other ways. What kind of options do they have? in being able to create enough numbers given they lack those vehicles so we have seen the Ukrainians use Striker 8x8 vehicles which are like the UK boxer and they have used 4x4 mraps of all types and also if they have had the UK sees the RT, the senator um and the Spartan vehicles and they will basically use everything they can to advance the infantry using protective mobility, so for the initial stages they will use the vehicles that offer the maximum amount of protection. like Bradley supported by leopard tanks uh or Challenger actually and then they will bring in the mrats that will unload the other infantry units to these are the mine resistance ambush protected vehicles exactly yes, yes, I mean obviously in the minefields are proving to be a major obstacle, um,

just

the sheer number of them and keeping progress extremely slow.

I

just

wanted to see now some footage of Ukrainian troops clearing minefields with Western vehicles, so this is from the Ukrainian 36th Separate Infantry Brigade in Julia Paul on the front, um, just to talk. through what you're seeing here please, what they're using is something like the UK's Viper or Python mine clearance system and this is like a modern equivalent of the World War II Bangalore torpedo, so that you shoot this explosive line. and basically clear a channel through a minefield, usually about 100 to 200 meters deep and about 30 meters wide, and that will allow troops to advance reasonably safely through that gap and how important minesweepers are for the Ukrainian war effort. support for the maneuvers that need to be taken into account if you are like that is absolutely essential and it is the one thing that Ukraine has not had enough of and the problem with these minefields is not only that there are so many but that they are so deep and in some cases are a kilometer deep, so you need to do this five times before creating an effective gap for a force to pass through and all the while you will know that units trying to force that gap will be under control. attack under fire, so it makes them very vulnerable, it makes it very difficult and that's why artillery is very important and there was a lot of discussion about using different types of munitions, and you know, particularly cluster munitions because they have a large number of bombs that can also be very useful in clearing minefields, although we have not seen that here the Ukrainians have used calculations extensively to clear minefields and then they can create a large path through which this type of exercise is difficult and time-consuming. and very expensive in human terms, very time consuming, you say, I mean, how long does it take?

For example, I simply pull and calculate the air to advance one kilometer. Well, that's a tough question because it depends on the level of resistance you encounter. but you know we could probably literally take a day in some areas where there is very stiff resistance. Every guy you move forward, you know, is eliminated, you just have to bring someone else forward, another vehicle, you know, we saw pictures on Twitter of a number. Of the Ukrainian vehicles taken out while trying to clear a path through a minefield, there were seven or eight vehicles and they will have to have been recovered and towed, the new vehicles will have to have been overtaken and that takes time, so ideally I want to do this under the cover of artillery, but the supply of artillery shells is finite, so you must plan these operations very carefully.

You will often try to do this at night, when the enemy will be less alert and rely on night vision devices. um the Western supplied leopard tanks have also been filmed fighting in robotics and we have some limited footage of that let's take a look now so these are footage released by the Ukrainian military. Can you tell us something about the way the leopards are behaving? used to make this look like a leopard too, it is a 120 millimeter firing gun, very effective at taking out other tanks, but will also fire high explosive shells, in direct fire mode, to take out bunkers, so these will provide fire support. direct fire to assault infantry and will be very important in that role the leopard can absorb a lot of punishment it has very thick frontal armor and a couple of days ago a report was published showing a colonel from Bundesville responsible for training Ukrainian forces with leopard saying no A Ukrainian soldier had died traveling in a leopard tank.

The Ukrainians have a good number now, both the Leopard 1 and the Leopard 2. The Leper 2 is obviously a quantum leap over the older Leopard, a very mobile, agile and very capable tank, as is, of course, the Challenger. 2 and the Abrams that they will soon receive and these tanks will provide that intimate fire support that will also neutralize the enemy tanks and will be instrumental in taking that ground in terms of the challenge of the tanks and the equipment that has been supplied by the West. How much input are they having in terms of helping maintain those vehicles, so the Ukrainians have relied a lot on the companies that make the Leopard tanks to support them and the challenges, so Ryan Mattel and Knds will support those tanks, I mean the good? about the Leopard tank is that there are around 4000 in service in and around Europe, so there is a very abundant supply of spare parts, so the OEMs will extract those spare parts and create logistics centers where the tanks are returned. be repaired um or fixed um when battle damage occurs uh and I very much believe that those bases will be in Poland or within Ukraine um where they are well protected from Russian offensive action, so that will continue on an ongoing basis and the good thing about the Leopard is which is designed to be easy to repair and care for, it is a very reliable and well designed tank.

I recommend it to the people who make it and, after having seen it very closely, it is an incredible piece of equipment and very well suited to the type of war, but it is a task undertaken and like winter and everything is fine, autumn and then As winter approaches, what kind of considerations should Ukrainians make in terms of what they will or won't be able to wear and whether they have it? to adapt your equipment for that, we just saw how the mud is incredibly thick so you really need vehicles that can negotiate that mud or else you are restricted to moving on the roads which obviously makes you very vulnerable , so you need vehicles that have very wide tracks, so something like the Arctic Vehicle, the BVS-10 Viking used by the British Army, would be a very useful addition to the Ukrainian Army or the CV90 IFV, which again has tracks. very wide and is good for negotiating snow, so you will definitely need tracks. vehicles more than wheeled vehicles because they have a lower ground pressure of course the scimitar cvrt family from the UK which we have now retired have a very low ground pressure and we have donated many of them to Ukraine and that will be very useful in those conditions and just take a step back and look at the big picture of the war in Ukraine, how do you think you will come to a conclusion?

There are so many different opinions about war and how it can be concluded, yes. So what's happening now in Robotene is that the Ukrainians have finally made something that looks like a

breakthrough

and once you've cleared that line, that defensive line, you'll be able to move a significant amount of forces through that gap to isolate the Russian forces. in the west, from those in the east, then you can start to escape, so to speak, and advance, and ideally they will try to advance towards the Sea of ​​​​and then further east and then isolate the Russian forces in the to the west by forcing a surrender and by advancing towards that occupied terrain south of robotene, they will be able to target the Russian logistical lines directly and that will force the Russians to withdraw those logistical bases further back, which will make resupply more difficult and that only strengthens the position ukrainian what we could see as a russian effort ukrainian support begins to decline uh it's a collapse of the russian forces we know that alcohol consumption is a big problem in the russian military morale is at an all-time low the leadership is not Well, there could be an event where Ukraine makes a significant breakthrough in a matter of days, which will trigger a

rout

e and a massive withdrawal or surrender of Russian forces and then that will be a major gain, but I think just a word of caution.

I don't think we can expect a complete victory before Christmas. I think it's too much to ask. This has been a very difficult process and Zelensky was very clearwhen he said: "Look, you know, we have to be careful when we are carrying out this offensive because one of our objectives is that at the end of this war we want enough Ukrainian men left to enjoy peace and that's why they don't want to sacrifice everyone To regain this lost ground, it has to be done in a meticulous and carefully planned manner and that is what they are doing, so I expect this war to last possibly beyond Christmas into the new year and perhaps into next summer, but As long as all of this continues and as long as Ukraine applies continued pressure there There will be pressure on Russia because the number of casualties Russia has suffered are simply unsustainable.

During a press conference earlier this week, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alex C. Reznikov He said that they are expecting other good and interesting things from the West and what kind of equipment Ukraine has found particularly useful and what they would like to need more of if they are able to build on and surpass the progress they have already made on the front line. you need a higher amount of tanks and ifv, so if you're going to reclaim ground, these are the only type of vehicle, but you'll need, oh sorry, both types of vehicles, you'll need tanks and ifv, and um, so the more The better we can provide them, you also need more artillery and in particular you need ammunition resupply and with these three elements you will be able to take the fight to the enemy, of course the other element that is missing from your combined arms maneuver tactics so far has been made. has been air power and that will now change with the provision of the F-16 fighter jet and we know that they will arrive in decent numbers in the near future, although it takes much longer to train a pilot to be competent in the use of that aircraft, but It is in a crew's best interest to use a tank, but when they arrive they will be a game changer because they will be able to drop a large concentration of artillery on an enemy position very quickly, so in combination with the artillery it will allow the Ukrainians to retake the takeover. . lost ground, the United States announced yesterday that it will send $250 million in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, but with a possible Donald Trump presidency, what capacity does Ukraine have to manufacture its own ammunition in the future with national weapons?

Manufacturing well, for the moment, its economics are known. You are under real pressure and making your own systems, whatever they are, will be very difficult. Imports, you know, will be difficult and it is very much up to NATO and Western countries to keep it replenished and as long as we continue to do so. can sustain combat operations against Russia, but by the same token we must also remember that Russia is having its own problems and that Ukraine's logistical effort is actually much better than Russia's and that is what will give it an advantage in the front for Russia to have They have been really limited in bringing in new units, bringing in new equipment and of course the equipment that they are bringing in is inferior to what Ukraine is using and once this war is over I hope that Ukraine will re-equip completely its Armed Forces throughout the West. lines and will look to create highly resilient supply chains that ensure it can manufacture its own projectiles, but also ensure it has adequate stocks of ammunition.

One thing Ukraine has proven to be very skilled at is making do with the equipment it is provided. and adapt it in scenarios where perhaps Western allies would never consider being able to use it and cannibalize the equipment. I just want to show you something from the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade of Ukraine, so obviously this is a rocket artillery system that has been improvised by mounting a very simple system on the back of a truck and very clever of course, not only have they been using rocket systems like this and, of course, rockets have been, you know, one of the game-changing artillery systems of conflict, very effective. delivering massive firepower very, very quickly, but they've also been using Australian cardboard drones that are very cheap and cheerful.

They make their own homemade drones and other, you know, improvised types of equipment, add armor to trucks, etc., so it seems like three. inches Rockets um, I can't see what they are, but again, a very simple system, um, necessity is the mother of invention in Warfare, yeah, interesting, you say that, I mean, do you think these improvised weapons are? I speak a little of desperation or ingenuity. Actually, the problem with improvised weapons is that they don't have the precision of some of the more modern Western equipment we provide, so they will be quite crude in some ways, but as long as they can achieve something. type of precision when used to target enemy positions, will obviously contribute to the effect.

Former UK defense secretary Ben Wallace, who resigned today said that over the next decade the world will become more insecure and more unstable, is there anything the West has? In fact, I learned from the way Ukraine fights. People often say, "You know, what are we learning that's new?" I say there are few things we are learning that are particularly new, other than the use of drones. What we are relearning are many very old lessons. and that is that you know that there is no substitute for mass and that wars are mainly on land, not in the air and at sea, and therefore you need to have well-resourced ground forces, so I think one of the things key thing that is happening The way out of this is the need to re-equip our military and make it more credible than it is.

I think one of the things we're really going to have to question is whether an army of 73,000 is viable in the long term. You know, during the Cold War we had an army of 160,000 or now we are less than half and you know you go to war with the army, you don't have the army that you would ideally like, so that advance preparation is and the reserve stocks of They are all incredibly important and what we have done in the last 20 years is we have depleted our stocks of everything and of course we have given a lot of material to Ukraine and that damages our reserves even more, so we will have to rebuild them, so like rebuilding our ground forces, have you seen anything new in the way war is conducted?

When you look at the war in Ukraine, I think the only thing that is really radically new is what people call algorithmic warfare and this is where open source data from Internet searches is used. Trends in using mobile phone data to view enemy troop concentrations or to see what people are looking for to discover enemy intent. that's new and we're using AI to do that and that's transformative because what it can do is provide unique targeting data for artillery and it can also provide deception and electronic warfare opportunities for our own forces, it could even be a way to disable enemy systems or communications in the future, so it is a very important area and something we will have to look at in more detail.

I'm wondering, "um, yourself, as someone who has worked in the defense industry for 20 years, if you look at what's going on in the war in Ukraine and what caught your attention in terms of equipment and weaponry? Have you learned something new? um. I was very nervous, you know, about whether the tank would still have a role in Warfare. It was Warfare going on, you know? change in such a way that, you know, armor was completely redundant, but that one didn't has been the case, then you know everything we did during the Cold War, what people said when it was irrelevant to how we would fight in the future.

In fact, it is not irrelevant at all if you want to make up lost ground and you have to do it in the war, if you're going to win, you literally have to drive out the enemy, you have to have resources to do that and we're not in the moment where we don't have the right resources, we're just going to go back to the UK I mean, we know we're going to withdraw to the warrior in 2025 and I don't think that's a good thing. I think we should replace it. I think Box. It is a great vehicle, but it is not an IND, it is a mechanized infantry vehicle, it is a support vehicle, so I think we will have to rethink our plans, in light of the integrated review update and the document update of Defense command that we expect for the future.

The soldier strategy will be published around the dsei and I very much hope that everyone addresses these points and in terms of what you have really seen the need for in Ukraine, do you see any gaps in the defense industry? The market that can be filled is now there. We need more artillery, particularly we need air defense and we need to completely reconfigure our forces around drones, so we will need to have drones at all levels of our Armed Forces, so we will not do that. No need for separate drone regiments or unmanned aerial vehicle regiments.

Unmanned aerial vehicles will need to be incorporated into every type of unit because they provide vital information, change the way we conduct reconnaissance, and save incredibly important lives. Ammunition or armed drones are also equally important. and we just don't have them and as much as we need drones, we need the ability to counter them and that's why air defenses are becoming more important, which is why a lot of gaps have been identified, particularly on the artillery side and so of course, in Communications and Logistics. I think perhaps the story, to continue, the most important thing to remember is that what has really allowed Ukraine to prevail is excellent logistical support and we forget that at our own peril and that is what is so damaged for the Russian units is They simply have not been able to reinforce the success or reinforce their front line quickly enough to prevent the Ukrainians from taking advantage of their successes, so lessons must be relearned and how their claim has been so successful in their logistical support.

Well, I think it's because it's had a lot of support from the west, but I also think it's a very well-run army. I mean, I've been amazed at the way your soldiers have been led and performed on the front lines. I've been very impressed with their planning and obviously their logistical support processes and the way they've worked with us and they've worked independently of us to do what they think is right and I think you know, a lot of us have taught the Ukrainians how to run things. like Western-style combined arms maneuvers, but after this war is over we will go to them and tell them what you can teach us now, Nicholas German.

It's been great talking to you. Thank you very much for the time you have been observing in life. of times radio with Me Kate chabo my thanks to our producer today Louis Sykes and you for watching if you would like to support us you can subscribe now or you can listen to times radio for the latest news and in-depth analysis or go to thetimes.co.uk for now goodbye