On a serious note, this is a concrete example of how serious Russia's logistical issues are do to a logistics vehicle (especially lightly armored transportation vehicles/APCs) shortage.

Do a quick google search for "wars that were lost because a numerically superior army on the offensive overstressed and outran its logistics capability", it might be almost all of them.

Honestly this is a terrible strategy as how can Russia ensure that enroute that the carts don't become traps for the Russias meeting up to resupply from them? Either literally Ukraine could intercept and place explosives on the cart or an intelligence drone just follows the cart until the soldiers come out of the bushes to get their food and water and then the drone calls in an artillery strike.. end of story.. Humans driving a lightly armored logistics vehicle or an unmanned small ground vehicle driving erratically as it moves to an unknown destination would be much harder to predict. Really, in the day in age that FPV fiber optic drones can loiter and wait on the ground next to the tracks, this is the kind of solution you try when all of your good solutions are no longer available for you to choose. Russians are fools to continue this war.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

And people have to go to the tracks to collect the supplies. I guess if you're not close to train tracks, fuck you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

The main defense a rail network has is that it is fairly easy to repair track at an industrial scale so long as you can clear the area and rebuild, and as a result that even though a train is a very very vulnerable large loud target, it is difficult to know WHEN to ambush a train because you might just be standing in the middle of nowhere for hours and the train never comes before hostile patrols make contact with you.

Under this logistics system however rail networks become constant sources of intelligence on enemy movements, this seems like a disastrous idea to me given the sophistication and skill of Ukranian UAV and unmanned ground vehicle operators. Also, it wouldn't take much to stop a whole kilometer long length train of these unmanned logistics carts, you just need to blow the one up in front with an FPV drone and the rest of them are stuck. This is the war equivalent to placing a traffic cone in front of a self driving car in order to immobilze it, and by virtue of not using a truck or a train with a human driving it Russia leaves itself open to massive amounts of logistical disruption this way... which is what loses wars ultimately.

As you point out Russian troops are screwed if they aren't near train tracks but that also means Ukrainian intelligence can assume the Russian troops are having to tactically come within a certain distance of tracks to resupply which makes their movements massively more predictable and easier to disrupt. You just look at a satellite image and start drawing lines to the closest rail lines in enemy territory and extrapolate from there...

Trying to predict where an MRAP or APC will rush in much needed supplies to a heavily suppressed defensive unit on the otherhand is much harder to do both from the increased mobility standpoint but also from the standpoint of needing to muster a far greater degree of precise firepower needed to knock out the logistics vehicle even if you can predict where it will be.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Couldn't be that hard for ukrain to make or capture one and have it explode at a resupply depot

[–] [email protected] 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

They could already do that with their own machine so I presume that the train lines are all broken between the front lines.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

The meaning of "frontline" gets confused very quickly the closer you zoom in, yes you are right but also Ukrainian assets whether infantry or drones can absolutely reach the intact rail lines Russia would be utilizing to get last mile logistics to their troops, is it a difficult and lifethreatening task? Yes, but for this kind of a strike this is exactly when you would take that risk and try to penetrate into the enemies backline.

It also provides a stupid easy way for Ukraine to track Russian logistics movements with surveillance equipment, since presumably these little carts are being used to resupply Russia forces at a more granular level closer to the front line than a traditional train would be useful for, but doesn't that also just actively map out at a granular level where Russia's infantry is and where it is massed?

You don't even need a camera, just some kind of extremely minimal simple sensor attached to the rail that could detect a small cart passing and artillery could then pretarget and precalculate based on that and just wait until the Russians indicated they needed some refreshments....

The reason these kinds of things haven't largely been done in rail warfare until this point, is as far as I am aware that there haven't been many recent wars where trains and rail networks have been used in such a desperate fashion to try to maintain an offensive. Ukraine can track a logistics freight train coming into a major forward staging area, and that will give Ukraine valuable information but there isn't much Ukraine can actually do to interdict the train, or capitalize on the vulnerable period of unloading of said train... because presumably this is all happening behind the enemies frontlines in a heavily protected area and you need a decent sized weapon to seriously hurt a train. Why would Russia do what this article is suggesting if Russia could do the above plan with traditional trains?

The answer is they can't protect any major staging areas for their offensive anymore that are close enough to the frontlines to be relevant, which means they are LOSING... BADLY and as a result they have to increasingly decentralize their logistics the closer they get to the front which is inherently inefficient and confusing to friendly forces.