H/T Sam Culper III’s FB page:

Russia’s learning some lessons.

“An awful lot of expeditionary warfare revolves around logistics,” Aboulafia said. “A lot of it comes down to experience. They don’t have that much of it.”

So while there’s a whole lot of this upfront, there’s also a whole lot of this:

Outrunning their Supply Line

Given a careful eye, every enemy will tell you everything you want to know. All too often(actually every single time) the topic of foreign incursions or invasions are brought up, amongst pretty much anyone, no considerations are ever given to exactly how stuff gets to the battlefield.

Like it or not the Afghans have it right- “You’ve got the watches, Tourist, but we’ve got the time.”

Other than the obvious, a few lessons can be gained just but carefully reading the news.

1. Russia has little current Operating Experience at the Macro-level. This means they’re having problems keeping fire to the front.
2. Their maintenance and logistics Corps is lacking.
3. Are they learning from their lessons? Time will tell.

What does this have to do with Us?

Actually, a whole damned lot. As a Scout, it’s YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to target and learn every detail about the cracks in your enemy’s foundation. A weak supply line is exactly that. So while there’s little you can do to stop CAS once it’s airborne, you absolutely can figure out how to keep it from getting airborne.

Your job is to get inside their OODA Loop.

A photo like this can be extremely effective at demoralizing your OPFOR:

And this was only made possible by terrible morale by the folks guarding the strip, caused by an improper supply line, a fatalistic attitude, guarding a plane that could only run one sortie a week. Never mind the fact that twenty three guerrillas died getting to this point, they got here, and the photo was infinitely more powerful than disabling just one aircraft.

And now you’ve used Open Sources to your advantage. Go back and re-read this. Learn absolutely everything you can about your OPFOR now. This is the core of Asymmetric Warfare. It’s not rocket science either. But if you’re not thinking in three dimensions, you’re doing it wrong.