The nature of warfare is inactive changing, and meanwhile, generals, like engineer Mamoń from the movie Cruise, only like songs they already know. The consequence is that the generals are always prepared for those wars that have already been, and all fresh ones proceed to surprise them. However, the current conflict in Ukraine, in terms of the vastness of overrated elements of war doctrines and widely accepted views, is far superior to everything that happened after planet War II.
Firstly, actions in Ukraine questioned the advantage of the attack over the defence. This is peculiarly severe for Russian generals who have believed, practically always since, that the best form of defence is attack. And it turned out that under the present conditions, the human and material costs of conducting attacks are besides large to accept.
It is besides to be admitted that specified a constatuation is not entirely new, since there have been many years with concrete manifestations of an expanding advantage of the defence over the attack.
Such, possibly the first in the 21st century, an example of this trend, was the alleged Second Lebanese War in 2006, where the Israeli army confronted the Hezbollah militants. Despite a immense advantage, quantitative and fiery, the Israeli army failed to defeat the opponent.
The most meaningful example of this is the defence of the city of Aita Szab, located 3 kilometres from the Israeli border. It was hailed Stalingrad Hezbollah due to the fact that the Israelis, despite large efforts, could not get it. It was a shock to Israel's society. erstwhile Minister of Defence, Moshe Arens, said on September 12, 2006 for Israel Radio Station: “First of all, we lost and were defeated by 5,000 Hezbollahu militants who should not be any opponent to the Israeli army.”
They should not be, and yet they were, due to the fact that the fight was based on the earlier engineering preparation of the site for defense, utilizing many bunkers and underground hiding places where there were hidden fire stations.
Another example of the extraordinary effectiveness of the permanent defence, based on the prepared positions, was the epopeia of the city of Dajr az-Zaur in Syria, which lasted 3 years and 2 months and ended in unlocking the garrison by government forces.
Some have learned from these experiences and others have not. From the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian battles in Donbasa, it turned out that the Ukrainian defence of the airport in Donetsk was highly effective and it took almost 4 months for the Russian separatists to get the completely destroyed buildings of the airport.
This showed that defence based on various buildings and industrial installations is very hard to break. Of course, there were no conditions for the fast preparation of specified a defence, so the Ukrainian authorities decided to rapidly supplement it by building permanent reinforced concrete fortifications along the full front of the Donbasa fight.
The Russians then called these fortifications, which was a large exaggeration, the fresh Mannerheim Line, and any even talked about the Maginot Line, and pointed out the strength of these fortifications as the main reason for their army's deficiency of advancement towards the Donetsk direction.
According to fragmentary data, it was to consist of 3 fortification lines over about 600 kilometres and 4,000 conflict shelters. any of them were created, for example, by digging into the ground and pouring concrete into railway passenger cars, so that valuable shelters were obtained very cheaply and quickly.
These fortifications proved to be an exceptionally effective barrier for the Russian army and have been preventing it from gaining the Donetsk circuit for over a year. Continued assaults on fortifications origin only large losses among attacking soldiers, and field captures are very low.
The military importance of fortifications was besides acknowledged by Putin himself erstwhile he stated that their continued expansion was the origin of the acceleration of the attack on Ukraine, as they feared that a small longer and "these fortified areas would not only lie along the line of contact in Donbasa present but would be everywhere".
If this is the case, it is worth considering whether, besides in Polish conditions, the construction of fortifications along the border with Russia and Belarus would not be the most effective and in full the cheapest way to defend the territory of Poland from attempted aggression.
At present Minister Błaszczak recommended the deployment of steel and concrete dams at the border. However, it is worth considering whether the appropriate completion of this thought is not the construction of full-value fortifications, since in Ukraine they proved so effective in stopping the advancement of the Russian army.
There are no large traditions of building fortresses and fortifications in Poland. In fact, for the last time on a large scale, specified works were carried out in the days of King Casimir the Great, almost 700 years ago, and then there was no continuation, but for single and fewer fortresses specified as Kamieniec Podolski, Krakow or Zamość.
Most of the monuments of fortifications on Polish lands are souvenirs of the activities of the invaders. possibly present we request to rediscover the value of Kazimierz the Great's work?
This fortification force is only 1 visible aspect of the current changes in warfare. Others are even more surprising. Such, simply shocking, is the low importance of aviation activities, which were inactive just overestimated.
An example of this is the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia in 1999, which resulted in its government, after 72 days of air strikes, accepting the imposed conditions.
Some of them were euphoriaous at the time and claimed that air forces were able to win the war on their own. Even then, however, there were large shortcomings in specified thinking. Even Zbigniew Brzeziński admitted that the losses suffered by Yugoslavia during these 72 days of bombings were not large adequate to force submission and he did not realize why Slobodan Milošević then stepped down.
In Ukraine, however, the situation was clear. Aviation had almost no meaning there. The Russians attempted to attack in the beginning with aircraft, but due to large losses, caused by strong Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, they rapidly stopped it and then their aircraft served mainly to launch rockets, but from areas outside Ukraine's territory.
They could have fired most of these missiles from a land launcher, they didn't request planes for that. Also, attempts to support the aviation activities of their own land troops have caused only large losses to the Russians. The evaluation of these actions led any analysts to conclude that the time of tactical aviation is over and now their function will be completely taken over by drones.
The actions of the naval forces proved to be a akin shock. Ukraine, which had only a residual fleet, could sink the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and it was rockets launched from the coast. After this loss, Russian submarines closed down in bases and stopped practically going out to sea.
The elite Russian naval infantry, which she had, with the aid of naval landings, to capture Odessa, was not even able to keep the tiny rocky Viper Island.
Similarly, the actions of another elite troops, namely the celebrated air-departure army – the WDW.
These forces, very extensive, consisting of as many as 4 divisions and 3 brigades, did not appear in this war. With tiny forces, the flight to Hostomell airport, which was to lead to the capture of Kiev, ended in a full defeat and then the Russians did not even effort anything similar.
The elite forces of the WDW and the Marines were then utilized like average infantry, to storm the fortifications, for which these formations were not prepared, did not have the right weapons and equipment, which caused highly dense losses.
The military experience of this war is simply a nightmare for Russian generals and admirals who are most likely incapable to realize what happened and why.
But this war effort may besides be a origin of concern for US and NATO commanders, who besides on the strength of aviation and fleet, with any disregard for land forces, have based their plans for military action. The results of the Ukrainian war may seriously undermine the correctness of their calculations.
Stanisław Lewicki
