Saved Rounds 1.5.24
Articles, resources, and responses for your weekend coffee
Editor’s Note: Saved Rounds is a weekly post for the CxFile Staff to share articles, resources, and responses we’ve found to the wider audience.
Retrans - Responses from the Community
From Shady Maples in reply to 60mm Mortar Employment:
Here's an example of using terrain creatively to hide mortars and keep the platoon alive - Ukrainian heavy mortars using hide-and-shoot tactics in Bakhmut. Hide(s) and perhaps the FDC are in underground cellars, tubes are staged at camouflaged firing points (time permitting there should be alt and dummy FPs as well) and the crews expose themselves only as long as necessary to lay the tubes and hang the rounds. By now the Russians have likely adapted to counter this tactic, but it's illustrative, not prescriptive. The situation always dictates.
Shady Maples is a Canadian Army military officer and commentator on warfare at the tactical level. Check out their Substack LOCON.
On the Net
Modern War Institute: Amphibious Operations-from History to the Future Battlefield
LtCol Tim Heck (USMC) sits down with MWI to discuss his, and B.A. Friedman’s most recent work, On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare. Discussion includes the past, present, and future of amphibious operations. For those looking to head straight to the publication, which is free, you can find it here.
The Bulletin Board
The Telegraph: Russia’s EW tactics are helping it turn the tide against Ukraine
In this well reported article, the authors discuss Russian EW equipment, Ukrainian counter-EW techniques, and compares it all to Western/NATO standards. This is worth your time to learn about spectrum analyzers, swarm tactics, and drone reprogramming as methods to combat adversary jamming.
The Feed
YouTube: Covert Cabal
Today we want to highlight the YouTube Channel - Covert Cabal, an OSINT commentator who covers a lot of ground ranging from conflict analysis to weapon systems and ordnance. The channel dates back six years, when its debut video explained how a SAM works. Since, they have produced hundreds of videos, most notably, recent analysis of Houthi attacks in the BAM and analysis of Russian armor capabilities and limitations. Unlike many who only offer unsubstantiated opinions, Covert Cabal focuses on details that he pulls from archival sources and satellite imagery. Specifically, this channel deals in quantifiable numbers of equipment, for example, using satellite imagery to count tanks in Russian army depots over time, tracking how many were in storage before the war, how many have been pulled out, and balancing these figures with Russia’s slim capacity to refurbish old models and manufacture new ones to provide interesting totals of equipment they are sending to the fight. Highly informative and enjoyable, we believe this to be one of the better OSINT PME sources available.
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