Review by Martin Koenigsberg
Just finished my 14th Book Review of the Year!!
When the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, sparking a war now going into its third year, I was like many Americans who thought the war would be one-sides in Russia’s favor. I HOPED Ukraine could fight off the aggressive Russian war machine- but I was pessimistic. Now- that we all have seen the brave Ukrainians hold off the sometimes incompetent Russian “Special Operation”, I wanted to get a military author’s opinion- and in more than 250 character bursts. General John S Harrel is a US Army and California National Guard veteran and an expert on Soviet Mobile warfare in WWII and the Cold War, and he’s here to give us a survey of the first Year of the War. With a Map or diagram every few pages and a good color photo section -I was very interested in this book as a Military history buff- but I think the General Reader will also like getting this expertise to inform their current event knowledge base. The big concept for me to get my head around is the death of the Division. Army and corps HQs seem to manage Brigades directly- with the maneuver unit the BTG – and the Battalion Tactical Group. This seems to be an often ad-hoc- mixture of brigade assets in a Battalion size “Kampgruppe/BattleGroup” with a platoon or company size amount of infantry- with a few Tanks, IFVs, APCS, perhaps some mortars or artillery, and maybe some engineers/support units. to me, it seems like the “Penney packeting” of assets – instead of the Military principle of mass – and apparently, when these units get into contact they don’t have enough infantry to hold gains or exploit gaps. The Ukrainians- with better Western command and control principals- can coordinate local Territorial/National Guard units and Volunteer Infantry units alongside their regulars to hold them off. As for actually projecting the Russian invader out of Ukraine, Harrel discusses what it might take.
