Russia’s Battlefield Bikes

This new tactic has a place but comes with a high cost

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Today we’re looking into the relatively new Russian tactic of motorcycle focused assaults and operations in Ukraine. This is based around the work done by Tatarigami on Frontelligence Insight who’s article will be linked below. Overall, there’s a place for this in the current fight but so far it appears to come at a heavy cost.

Source article: https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/21st-century-dragoons-dissecting

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so it turns out motorcycle assaults can actually be an effective tactic that is of course assuming that you don’t care about casualties so today we’re taking a look at this relatively new phenomenon that is spreading all across the russian military but we’re starting to see pop up in ukrainian units as well now this is based on an assessment that just came out earlier today titled 21st century draons: dissecting russia’s military assault tactics and this was put together by tataragami a former ukrainian reserve officer uh in his front intelligence insight substack it’s going to be linked in the description below uh if you’re interested at all in these subjects or following what’s going on in the war i i can’t recommend his substack enough he says “in 2024 when russian motorcycle assault groups began appearing with increasing frequency along the front lines their presence quickly caught public attention and their use has since become a common feature of frontline engagements more recently ukrainian forces have also announced the formation of their own motorcycle units now two years ago we did start to see uh a lot of motorcycle units the use of motorcycles pop up especially in the east with pmc espanola it’s a russian private military company fighting in and around chasar and they started to utilize motorcycles pretty regularly it’s not clear if what we’re seeing now is you know the evolution of that but you know it’s worth noting that motorcycles have been used throughout this conflict from day one and it’s not unique to the russian ukraine war what we’re seeing now is the dedicated creation of motorcycle specific units and their you know kind of tactics alongside these being introduced to the armed forces he says “in a battlefield where neither side holds air supremacy and large-scale combined arms operations remain difficult to execute combat has shifted to smaller tactical formations usually at the squad or company level backed by armored vehicles in this environment traditional platforms like tanks and infantry fighting vehicles face growing challenges especially amid constant artillery fire and the widespread use of cheap fast drones and this is something we’ve seen play out for quite a while now when you look at how the front line has moved over the last really two and a half years with the exception of a couple key offensives and counteroffensives by and large what we’re seeing are company level assaults and below so a company think roughly 100 peak strength in this case probably closer to 50 so you’re talking about a half dozen maybe 10 total armored vehicles taking part in kind of the largest assaults that we’ve seen in recent years by and large it’s much smaller scope so you’re seeing squad think 6 to 10 on or about platoon 20 to 40 so these smaller scale engagements are conducive to lighter vehicles smaller vehicles things like motorcycles he says “these bikes are far cheaper to replace than infantry fighting vehicles with minimal maintenance costs their mobility and low silhouette allows them to slip past obstacles and evade detection more easily than larger platforms especially when paired with onboard electronic warfare gear and we are seeing that some pretty interesting pictures coming out as well uh of electronic warfare jammers on the back of some of these bikes and there’s a couple different ways we’re seeing this play out there are uh detectors that just let you know that there’s a drone nearby which does serve a purpose and it’s quite a bit less expensive than these ew jammers roughly think $100 and this these prices change but think about $100 for a detector maybe depending on the jammer $3 to $8,000 for the jammer so we are seeing at least one of the bikes in these formations coming with a jammer to try to provide a little bit of a protective bubble against in this case ukrainian fpv drones he says “conce concealable even in small buildings and nearly silent at night in electric variants these motorcycles preserve the element of surprise a motorcycle can reach a position in minutes outpacing a noisy slower bmp and narrowing the window for for enemy fpv drone response.” and this is a balancing act we’re going to get into how exposed the soldiers clearly are sitting on these motorcycles i mean any infantry fighting vehicle or any traditional military vehicle for that case uh even if it can’t survive a direct hit from some of these munitions it’s going to be able to stop shrapnel that impacts nearby a shell that doesn’t hit it directly not for these guys in the motorcycles right they’re right out there in the open and we’ve seen that i mean a lot of the footage in recent months has been ukrainian forces just straight shredding russian attacks uh as they’re being carried out on these motorcycles and the fpvs are a lot faster than the guys are on the motorcycles and of course coming down from a top down angle makes them pretty easy targets again in this case you don’t actually have to hit the guy on the bike although a lot of the drone pilots are effective and accurate enough to do just that but just an impact nearby could be enough to severely wound the soldier and possibly destroy the motorcycle and then the guy’s just out there walking all of a sudden much easier target for ukrainian drones now when looking at the structure of these units i thought this was interesting tatarami broke this down as well he said “despite the term assault in their name these units are not solely used for direct assault attacks in practice their roles are more diverse ranging from diversionary maneuvers and reconnaissance to behind the line infiltration logistics and flanking support during larger assaults in in general a group typically consists of six to eight motorcycles with one to two riders per vehicle rarely have we seen the tandem motorcycle there were some goofy ones like a sidecar but those were an anomaly occasionally we’ll see two guys on a motorcycle pretty safe to assume most of the time it’s just one from all the footage that i’ve seen but it is possible that every so often they do stack up another rider there holding on tight they say resulting in total personnel count ranging from six six to 16 individuals on average at least one motorcycle in the group is usually equipped with a drone detection system which scans the area for the presence of fpv drones additionally these groups are expected to carry two to three electronic warfare stations either mounted directly on motorcycles or carried in a backpack on the rider to disrupt communications between drones and drone operators during the assault so the way these ew kits work is they essentially sever that connection between the drone operator and the drone so it doesn’t you know for something that’s carried on someone’s back or even on a motorcycle it’s a relatively small bubble it might only extend out 50 maybe 100 meters but the idea there is as the drone is coming in for its attack run it’s spotted you it’s coming in the operator loses control and can’t do those final moments of uh of correction to effectively strike the target so it doesn’t necessarily make the drone fall out of the sky it likely will still impact just not as accurately now assessment here tedami goes into some common tactical maneuvers that they’ve seen play out on the battlefield so far and i’m going to run through five of these but then they expand out into a bunch of other tactics as well so for starters he says single flanking maneuver a maneuver where motorcycles circle enemy positions from one side to attack an unexpected position pinser movement simultaneous flanking attacks from both sides to overwhelm or encircle the enemy again with the idea that they’re going to be moving faster than bmps or armored vehicles deep penetration the rapid advance behind the first line of defense to disrupt rear air area logistics or rotations diversionary maneuvers aimed at drawing enemy attention away from the main assault force and reconnaissance and force probing enemy positions while remaining mobile often testing defensive response and locating weaknesses the reconnaissance and force is interesting because when you see how many eyes there are in the battlefield both sides are able to pick up this movement a long ways out so you’re seeing things engaged sometimes they’re hit actually in most cases now uh russian vehicles moving forward are hit with drones or artillery long before they’re accessible or even within range sometimes anti-tank guided missiles so it’s a long ways out that gray area between the front lines is significant it’s a long ways in both directions so what the reconnaissance and force allows russia to do in this case is to move a fair number of soldiers forward again call it six to 16 in that one group and move along the front until they find a weak point and then press forward and with how fast they can get from their position to the ukrainian position there’s some value in that again they’re sacrificing protection and numbers for speed but it’s one direction that russia has been trending in recent months but additionally they’re uh they’re talking about some logistical operations here as well tatarangami says they conduct limited medical evacuation extracting wounded personnel one at a time due to space and weight constraints and carry critical supplies such as food water or ammunition with their within their load limits in offensive operations these teams have even moved troops into urban objectives during the capture of kurov columns of three to four motorcycles shuttled small groups of soldiers rapidly into the city finally they rotate individual fighters in and out of frontline positions again limited by the bike’s capacity but offering a faster alternative to foot or vehicle movement there’s a lot to unpack there so for any sort of medical evacuation of course that would be limited to only certain types of casualties you have to think there’s there’s only certain types of wounds that would be conducive to having a soldier on the back of a motorcycle largely something upper body maybe to an extremity an arm or a hand something like that uh lower body or anything to the midsection would be very challenging to extract on a motorcycle even if that’s your only possibility we have seen the use of motorcycles again by both sides pretty consistently in moving supplies to the front we’ve played countless videos on this channel showing these roads of death moving up to certain positions especially in the east around pacovsk on the russian side of the line specifically where ukrainian drone units are just hammering them day in and day out and you know the alternative version is up around kursk as ukrainian forces were getting pushed out of kursk that road from sudza back into sunumi was absolutely swarmed with russian drones and there was destroyed equipment every few meters along the road so what we’ve seen in both of those cases is both sides um defer more to faster civilian type equipment like regular vehicles atvs or motorcycles to get men and equipment forward and try to essentially outrun some of those drones now in talking about the effectiveness kind of the big question about all this we understand that it’s happening the assessment here is h kind of you know it’s something so they say battlefield theories and expectations from tactical experimentation often diverge from reality many ukrainian interviewees expressed skepticism around the growing hype surrounding motorcycles as a battlefield wonder weapon emphasizing that while motorcycles can be useful under specific conditions they remain just a platform far from a transformative innovation and you know for what it’s worth i feel like we’ve heard wonder weapon or gamecher a dozen times in this at least in this conflict probably a dozen times on each side so it is worth squashing that before it gets too out of control it definitely gets a lot of attention because it’s something new and unique and fancy looking i guess right it’s interesting motorcycle assault units but in practice probably not the best way forward they say while more maneuverable than traditional armored vehicles and better at avoiding artillery fire motorcycles leave riders exposed and vulnerable to shrapnel from the same artillery they also offer little protection against fpv drones which often outpace riders with ease again speed in exchange for protection and that’s you know through throughout history that’s kind of been the debate and usually we kind of land somewhere in the middle but right now russia in this specific case is prioritizing speed they say and this one is to nobody’s surprise they say “finally casualty rates remain a major concern feedback from across the front reveals two consistent patterns either motorcycle assaults fail to deliver meaningful results or success comes at a steep cost with only one in several groups surviving to complete the mission this raises serious questions about whether such losses would be considered acceptable by commanders in western militaries they add when properly coordinated with other assault elements these units can enhance operational success and serve as a force multiplier however russia continues to struggle with synchronized operations significantly limiting their effectiveness and this one i feel like we can see just from the publicly available footage we have so far a lot of the firsterson view footage that we have from russia is during training exercises and from ukraine for what it’s worth the limited uh the limited footage we have of ukraine doing this as well it’s during training the overhead footage the drone footage from the other side uh is showing strike after strike after strike so my gut says just based off of that a small percentage very small percentage of these motorcycle assaults are actually effective again that’s entirely different so moving towards defensive positions entirely different than the resupply operations maybe medevac or even shuttling troops to and from a position but when they start getting within drone strike range of ukrainian lines at this point it’s looking it’s looking pretty messy and to kind of expand on that rhino liry the commander of chosen company a volunteer unit in ukraine which i think maybe is in the process of disbanding we should get into that maybe in another video ryan says “while motorcycle assaults and other quick maneuver vehicles like atvs can indeed be potent inflicting significant damage on defensive lines i wouldn’t label them as the ultimate gamecher for months we focused solely on hunting and targeting enemy drone teams and motorcycle units in one operation a single team disbanded eight motorcycles in half a day during a large-scale 50 motorcycle assault near picrosoft a few months ago we even resorted to crafting homemade claymore charges air bursting them about 5 to 10 meters away from the target which shredded the ever living [ __ ] out of them this approach however isn’t particularly suited for western militaries given the high casualty risks tied to unar unarmored exposed assaults so what he’s getting at with the air burst is a lot of uh drone munitions depending on the target not everything explodes the same so some have uh more anti-personnel uh characteristics like you might have small pieces of shrapnel designed to go into people or unarmored vehicles others have shape charges that are designed to penetrate armor so technically a shape charge would work on a dismounted personnel but you might have to be more accurate if you don’t hit the person exactly you’re dealing hoping that the over pressure does the trick whereas if you if you outfit those munitions or use anti-personnel munitions like ryan’s talking about here you don’t necessarily have to hit the target directly think of it like a a big grenade going off at the point of impact right so it’s going to do a lot of damage in a broader area but of course an anti-personnel munition against a tank is just going to be like a scratch so with the rise of these motorcycle assaults ryan’s talking about well we just switched over to a lot of anti-personnel type munitions air burst type munitions and just shredded these guys watching them come in he says “had ukraine been adequately equipped with more cluster munitions and modern air burst rounds russia might have already abandoned motorcycles for anything beyond probing reconnaissance and rapid logistics runs that said the tactic does prove effective albeit at an extraordinarily high cost but as seen previously the last three years russia culturally acts as a sponge when it comes to casualties and they just absorb it and carry on i’m not sure about the cluster munition piece there i think we’re my gut says the drones are more effective against these than cluster munitions it’s very hard even for uh even for dpicm cluster type munition to hit a moving target it’s easier because there’s more spread on that but you still have to time exactly where the the road that the motorcycles are going to be moving on and even at short range you’re talking about 30 to 90 seconds time of flight from the time you you know fire the round to the time it impacts over the target so yeah it could definitely you know one round could shred 15 or 20 motorcycles depending how far apart they are but in the current setting my guess is that drones are probably a lot more effective in taking these out one after the other so i’m i’m glad the tataragami or the the front intelligence insight team put this together again tataragami linked in the description below please go give these guys a follow do an incredible incredible uh work like this that it kind of matches what i would have expected right there are some use cases for motorcycles clearly the the people fighting this war are not stupid i think we tend to look at this every so often and say “well we know better clearly this isn’t the right way to do something.” but if it’s continuing to happen a certain way there’s a reason for that and it looks like the reason for that is there is some added benefit to the mobility and the speed and definitely the logistics side of things being able to shuttle soldiers to and from the front or to and from uh a forward position uh out in out in kind of no man’s land but again the susceptibility to drones artillery small arms everything cannot be overlooked and as mentioned by tataragami and ryan here and as we’re witnessing with our own two eyes with the footage that’s coming out a lot of these motorcycle assaults are getting pretty beat down and it’s hard to see very many of them at this point being very effective at actually penetrating through ukrainian lines but nonetheless that’s all we got for now thanks for watching and i’ll see youall next time [Music]