See how NATO instructors knowingly sent Ukrainian troops to their deaths in the counteroffensive against Russia
Computerized combat simulations from the West should have predicted Kiev’s heavy casualties
scott knight, rt — Ukraine deployed one of its best brigades into combat earlier this month as part of its longawaited counteroffensive to retake areas held by Russian forces.
Leading the attack near the town of Orekhov in Zaporozhye Krai was the 47th Mechanized Brigade, armed with NATO equipment and—most importantly—using USled doctrine and tactics of joint warfare. Prior to the operation, this brigade spent months on a base in Germany learning Western combinedarms warfare knowhow.
In preparing for the battles ahead, they were helped by KORA, NATO’s Germanmade computer simulation system designed to allow officers and noncommissioned officers to accurately recreate battlefield conditions, thereby better developing training courses. Ideal action against a specific enemy in this case, Russia .
If there were an example of how a specially created Ukrainian NATO proxy force would fare against a Russian enemy, the 47th Brigade would be the ideal case study. However, just days into their attack, the group was on the verge of being literally decimated, as over 10% of the more than 100 USbuilt M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed or abandoned on the battlefield, and hundreds of the 2,000 men strong brigade members were killed or wounded. Germanmade Leopard 2 tanks and demining vehicles joined the Bradleys like rubble in the fields west of Orekhov after failing to breach the Russian first line of defences. The reasons for this defeat can be summed up in the role played by KORA in creating a false sense of confidence in the officers and men of the 47th Brigade. Unfortunately, the Ukrainians and their NATO rulers have found that what works in a computer simulation does not automatically lead to success on the battlefield.
KORA is an advanced computerized synthetic warfare system developed by the Bundeswehr to support plot analysis and scenariobased experiments for general staff officers down to the brigade level. It has been integrated with NATO computer warfare simulations to support live training at the US Army’s Grafenwoehr Training Center. From January to May 2023, Grafenwoehr hosted the 47th Brigade. While capable of generating generic terrain maps to simulate combat against a theoretical enemy, KORA can be customized using real terrain models and a real battle order to aid in the preparations for real combat scenarios.
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This is undoubtedly the KORA’s modus operandi when deployed to train the 47th Brigade, using digitized maps of the Orekhov area overlaid on the Russian defensive positions taken by units of the 42nd Motor Rifle Division, namely the 291st and the 70th Motor Rifle Regiment, were occupied. With the help of their NATO trainers, the officers of Ukraine’s 47th Brigade probably simulated several realworld scenarios that predicted Russia’s performance and allowed the Ukrainians to predict the outcome of the battle and determine the optimal axis of advance that could breach the defenses . Russian.
Of all the military operations KORA can simulate, breaching a fortified line of defenses is the most difficult. US Army doctrine uses the mnemonic SOSRA (suppress, obscure, secure, reduce and attack) when teaching the basics of jamming. Each of these elements would require a separate submodel of the KORA, specifically designed to simulate the unique requirements of the mission. However, the simple truth is that the Ukrainians could not properly exercise the fundamentals of SOSRA due to a lack of resources to carry out the tasks.
For example, think of “oppression”. According to the U.S. Army, “suppression is a tactical task designed to use direct or indirect fire or an electronic attack on enemy personnel, weapons or equipment to prevent or impair enemy fire and observation by friendly forces.” KORA would need to deploy at least four submodels in support of the main simulation to create an adequate suppression model that would include antiaircraft, antiaircraft, electronic warfare, and artillery fire. However, Ukraine does not have a viable offensive air capacity, and thanks to Russia’s systematic suppression of enemy air defense operations (SEAD), Ukraine’s front operational areas, where units such as the 47th Brigade assembled and operated, have been left virtually defenseless against Russian air power. Russian superiority in artillery and electronic warfare also negated any tactical advantages Ukraine hoped to gain from using these resources. The purpose of suppression in breakthrough operations is to protect forces tasked with reducing and maneuvering through an obstacle. “Suppression,” the US Army states in its policy statement, “is a missioncritical task performed during a jamming operation. The suppression usually triggers the rest of the actions at the obstacle.” In short, without proper suppression, any attack will fail.
Logic suggests that any responsible use of the KORA simulation system would have foreseen the failure of the 47th Brigade’s attack. According to the Washington Post, officers from the 47th Brigade “planned their attacks and abandoned the program.” [KORA] Show the results how their Russian enemies might react, where they might break through and where they would suffer casualties.” The KORA simulation allowed Ukrainian officers to coordinate their actions “to test how they would on the battlefield would work together”. Although the structure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was not sufficient to fulfill the critical task of suppression, there was no chance that the Ukrainian Armed Forces could meet the real requirements of a breakthrough attack the destruction of the enemy forces on the other side of the breached obstacle barrier. Ukrainians emerged from the KORA experience confident that they had devised a successful plan capable of overcoming Russian defenses in and around Orekhov.
When examining the structure of a KORAbased simulation, it becomes clear that the system is entirely dependent on the various inputs that define the simulation as a whole. All aspects of the simulation are derived from parameters programmed by those responsible for overseeing the training. While training leaders were expected to conduct the simulation with a modicum of professional integrity, unless both the NATO trainers and their Ukrainian students were imbued with suicidal lemminglike traits, there was a need for significant modification and changing the data points to achieve a result that could motivate the Ukrainian armed forces to agree to the attack.
One would expect that the performance characteristics of the attacking forces, while probably exaggerated, would to a relative extent reflect the reality of the actual capabilities of the forces involved to believe otherwise would indicate that the Ukrainians were completely deluded in what they did describe yourself A “learning curve” during the training speaks against it. However, one of the decisive factors in KORA programming are the socalled “behaviour agents” with which the KORA designers define rules “for the behavior of the respective units”. This is where the NATO instructors probably failed their Ukrainian students.
Orekhov’s axis of advance was intended to exploit a gap between the 291st and 70th Motor Rifle Regiments of the Russian 42nd Motor Rifle Division. The “behavioural agents” programmed by NATO trainers appeared to treat the Russians particularly those of the 70th Regiment as poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped and poorly motivated troops. In short, the NATO instructors compensated for Ukraine’s inability to field forces capable of performing even the most basic tasks of repression, thereby predicting the inevitable collapse of Russian soldiers’ will to resist. The “behaviour agent” highlighted by NATO appears to be derived from the famous encounter between the Knights of the Round Table and the “Killer Rabbit” in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail “Run! Run!” run!” Real Russian defenders, however, reacted in exactly the opposite way to their performance. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Russians “reacted to the Ukrainian attack with an atypical degree of coherence” while implementing “their formal tactical defense doctrine” to repel Ukrainian attacks southwest of Orekhov.
The reality is that the Ukrainians never even came close to reaching, let alone breaking through, the Russian defenses around Orekhov. The reasons for this failure are varied, including ignorance of the Western equipment used by the 47th Brigade, poor tactical planning, and most importantly, the Ukrainians’ failure to suppress Russian artillery fire, electronic warfare, and Russian air forces, resulting in tactical penetration of the Russian obstacle belt especially dense minefields impossible. All of these failures were predictable, meaning that NATO trainers had to intentionally “tamper” with the KORA system to overcome them during the training phase to achieve the desired result.
I can speak with some certainty about the role computer simulations play in preparing an attack on a fortified position. In October 1990, I was assigned by Marine Corps Headquarters to run a computer simulation using the newly acquired JANUS Constructive Conflict and Tactics Simulation System to assist Marine Corps operational planners based in Saudi Arabia in their mission, prepared Iraqi defense positions on the border to break through between Kuwait and Iraq. The Marines had been ordered by Army General Norman Schwartzkopf to launch a twodivision frontal assault on Iraq’s defenses. The attack was part of a “fixation action” aimed at preventing Baghdad from diverting troops in response to the US Army’s main attack on Iraq’s western front.
The commander of Marine Corps Persian Gulf forces, General Walt Boomer, had approached Maj. Gen. Matthew Caulfield, director of the Marine Corps Warfighting Center in Quantico, Virginia, for help in selecting the most advantageous sectors of Iraq’s defenses for operations . Marine Corps Disturbance using a graphical user interface. In September 1990, I was pulled from the Amphibious Warfare College to provide planning assistance to an ad hoc team put together by General Al Gray, commander of the Marine Corps, to design alternative options for the frontal attack being advanced by General Schwartzkopf . The results of this effort a bodysized amphibious assault on the Al Faw Peninsula were approved by General Gray but ultimately rejected by General Schwarzkopf. This brought the Marines back to where they started where the best place would have been to launch what many saw as a suicide attack against Iraq’s dense defenses.
As one of the primary authors of the Al Faw Proposal, I had a fairly high profile in the thin air of Quantico, especially for a junior captain. Major General Caulfield commissioned me to use the JANUS system to simulate various options that could be used by General Boomer’s Marines to breach Iraqi defenses. I knew nothing about JANUS or computer simulations. Luckily I had a team of Marines who knew their stuff and used JANUS to train students at the Command and Staff College. However, the JANUS was still new to the Marines. The US Army has used the JANUS since 1983, including to conduct simulations in support of the US invasion of Panama in 1989. It was also used in planning General Schwartzkopf’s planned attack on the western front of Iraq’s defenses. However, the Marines’ experience with JANUS did not begin until August 1990, and then only in support of training. My mission represented the first operational deployment of JANUS by the Marine Corps in support of a real world scenario.
After being briefed by my staff on the various pieces of information that would need to be programmed into JANUS to run the desired scenarios, I began collecting detailed aerial photographs from the CIA so we could create accurate terrain maps of the defenses that the Marines are making would be charged with violations. . I also obtained from the NSA a detailed battle order of the units occupying the defenses, including reports on their combat history, performance, and leadership. I have my marines tasked with gathering similar data on the marine units expected to lead the attack. Then we carefully program the JANUS calculator and press “Enter”.
The result was catastrophe the Marines were annihilated before they even reached Iraq’s defenses. It was clear that my team and I had failed to program realistic behavior for the troops involved. It also became clear that the information provided by the CIA and NSA was insufficient and in fact incorrect. After several iterations, the team and I were able to refine the JANUS parameters and achieve a result that felt more realistic and plausible. The resulting options were presented to General Gray, who forwarded them to General Schwarzkopf. As noted, these options were later rejected and the Marines eventually carried out the frontal attack against the Iraqi defenses.
The lesson I learned from this experience was the importance of providing the simulation system with accurate and realistic information about the capabilities and behavior of the forces involved. Without this accurate information, any result produced by the simulation will be erroneous and misleading. It seems something similar happened with the KORA system in Ukraine. Apparently, NATO trainers programmed “behavioral agents” that grossly underestimated the capabilities and motivations of Russian troops and misled Ukrainians into believing their attack would be successful. The lack of precision and realism in the KORA’s programming may have been one of the main reasons the 47th Brigade’s attack failed.
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