Not long after the Russian dictatorship was mocked and ridiculed for coercing thousands of its own citizens to needless deaths — ill-equipped, unprepared and misled conscripts sent into “action” against Ukraine — news started circulating about its “best tanks” loitering empty and abandoned.

Ukraine Just Captured Russia’s Most Advanced Operational Tank: The T-90M is the latest main battle tank to enter front line Russian service, and one has now been captured by Ukrainian forces.

Perhaps it is easy to see why Russia’s “most advanced” weaponry would be just a sitting duck, empty and silent, for its alleged targets as they approached.

This tank’s crew had been abandoned by Russia long before they climbed out and walked away from their poorly maintained armor in a feckless “action”. I’m sure they were thinking “if this isn’t a war, then why am I being asked to die in this dumb box”.

Russians have a far higher chance of living to see another day when they walk away from the false leadership of team Putin.

The Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive around the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine starting on Sept. 6 destroyed half of the best tank division in the best tank army in the Russian armed forces. A hundred wrecked or captured tanks in a hundred furious hours. That’s how much destruction the Ukrainians inflicted on the Russian 4th Guards Tank Division, part of the elite 1st Guards Tank Army, the Russian army’s best armor formation.

A large amount of the “most advanced” technology by Russia in their “best armor formation” was toast within a few hours.

Abandonment in mid September is thus predictable if we believe Russian soldiers in any way were aware of that action let alone initial battle test results five months ago in early May.

Russia’s Best Tank Destroyed Just Days After Rolling into Ukraine […] Kyiv first reported the presence of the T-90M in eastern Ukraine on April 25.

There’s no need to get into the weeds on why this tank is terrible, I mean beyond understanding that Russia delivers sub-par engineering, with unreliable service/support, and non-existent ground leadership (a norm in dictatorships).

From an engineering quality and safety perspective you might say Putin is on par with Musk, driving a Russian tank in Ukraine is about as safe as being in Tesla on public roads.

In other words the “best” technology delivered from a dishonest flip-flopping “strongman” who loves censorship has been proving itself (whether a T90 or Model 3) basically to be…a death-trap.

Or if you prefer history as a comparison instead of “future” cars, Russia appears to be repeating mistakes much like the doomed Nazi crews condemned to serve the hot-headed and disorganized Rommel in WWII.

A detail about Russian tank engineering is still worth noting here, given the increasingly low morale of Russians who expect to die in them. Instead of latching onto an industrial-age fantasy of “automation” that treats its soldiers as disposables, the American tank platform actually is designed to depend on highly skilled and valued operators.

Difficulties fielding the latest and greatest tank led Russia to pivot from the T-14 and reinvest in older T-80s and T-90As. […] “China and Russia are still operating under a three-man crew mindset and maintaining an auto-loader system,” Sgt. Emmett Fulgham, a tank gunner with 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, told Coffee or Die Magazine last summer. “We have a four-man crew with an actual human loader. Most loaders can do their job in five seconds on a bad day but usually in under four. Russian tanks still take 10 seconds to load, if not longer, so for every round they get off, we can fire two or three times.”

Read that again just to be clear on this point. And especially keep in mind Tesla CEO’s false promises of a future with no need for human interaction with machine.

Over-confidence in full-automation has led both to difficulties in the latest generation of technology achieving readiness. And even if it goes to full production in real-world conditions (battle deployment for T90, public roads for Model 3) it’s not even on par with more-reliable higher-performance human-centered augmentation machinery.

To put it another way Russian leadership doesn’t care about humans much, and certainly doesn’t care about quality or reality. This translates into a ruthless bully mindset that targets defenseless civilians, the most vulnerable, as a quick fix to feel artificially powerful.

Bodies recovered from mass burial site in liberated Ukrainian city ‘show signs of torture’. More than 400 bodies said to be buried at site, including women and children, with Ukrainian president likening discovery to massacre of Bucha.

When any real resistance shows up — military force of trained soldiers and modern weapons — the Russian bully melts into a puddle or runs away.

Russia’s latest response to all this, in light of a very public melt-down, brings us to yet another empty-sounding move.

Putin has said he’s calling his non-active reserves to join his “non-war” with a “non-country“.

Any Russian citizen who is in the reserve can receive a call-up notice. Basically, this can be any man up to the age of 60. “There haven’t been cases like this in peace time, yet by law it is possible. Generally, soldiers and junior officers in reserve are called up. […] “There is no criminal responsibility for refusing the call-up. Just an administrative warning or a fine of up to $10,” Murakhovsky concluded.

Oooops.

Sorry, my bad, that’s actually a story from 2018.

I guess it’s still worth noting from 2018 that Putin is legally allowed to try and get military reserves to fight during peace-time (keeping up the ruse of not being at war with a foreign country while sending soldiers to predictable death in one) and that there’s no penalty for refusing such a suicidal call.

On that point, here’s the actual September 2022 news story about Putin flaunting a call to action.

One-way flight tickets out of Russia began to rapidly begin selling out following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial military mobilisation to call-up 3,00,000 reservists to shore up Russia’s manpower-depleted forces fighting a floundering war in Ukraine…. searches for Aviasales — Russia’s most popular platform for purchasing flight tickets, with a monthly audience exceeding 15 million users — spiked considerably immediately following Putin’s announcement.

The migration data is important. It’s a superb counter-argument to hawkish analysts who try to float things like “at some stage, all the ‘dumb Russians’ will be dead and a few good generals will ultimately become replacements”.

Uhhh, nope. Smart Russians are either leaving, if not already gone, or desperately trying to appear dumb to avoid being seen as a threat to Putin.

Perhaps we can say it’s like the American Civil War where Generals on a rather stupid side of fighting to expand slavery became dumber and dumber (brutal, petty and useless) as time wore on.

Soon headlines should read something like this (puns obviously intended):

Put-in something they don’t want, Rushin’ to get away

The Russian soldiers, despite being under Elon Musk-like censorship and propaganda, clearly saw they should be leaving behind Tesla-like death-trap automation boxes. Russian reservists meant to replace them now also apparently think it’s better to leave behind their military duty.

It all shows how Putin’s attempts to play his best hand instead has repeatedly revealed major weakness of the dictator.

“The whole system is in shock and what makes this situation worse is the absolutely inadequate reaction of Putin personally,” [ex-speechwriter to Putin] Gallyamov told CNN, adding that when Putin “is in shock himself” and “doesn’t know how to act,” the Russian leader “is trying to show that nothing bad is happening.”

Expect passive resistance in Russia to soon turn very hot.

No clear leadership transition plan in that context begs the obvious next question.

Who can replace Putin? It doesn’t bode well for Russian stability that a smooth transition isn’t in the deck of cards Putin wants Russia to play with.

Dictatorship suggests a very rough road ahead (e.g. see recent news of “suspicious ends met by those who crossed the Kremlin“), unless maybe Putin takes a note from everyone around him (including his infamous friend Snowden) and runs away.

On a related note, how many innocent people must die before Musk leaves Tesla?

North Africa in 1942 gives a useful study of disinformation because the British kept their moves a total secret by duping Germans with fake ones.

The first battle of El Alamein in July 1942 became a clear victory by British forces against over-stretched, exhausted and poorly organized impatient Nazi invaders. Battalions of M3 “Grant” Lend-Lease tanks from America ripped apart Rommel’s best armored divisions as he predictably advanced from the south below Alam Halfa Ridge. The second battle would be an even bigger victory, a huge rout, thanks to almost perfectly executed disinformation strategy.

Conflict typically means incentives are really oppositional positioning. Defenders have to predict where and when an attack will come, allocating resources wisely. Attackers meanwhile have to predict where defenders are pooling resources to go somewhere else. The side that telegraphs a move increases chances of failure because the other side can transform intelligence advantages into hugely asymmetric effects.

The Nazis had been confident as the summer began in 1942 that they soon would be rolling tanks into Egypt. General Rommel infamously became so unrealistic about the situation that Mussolini himself flew into Libya towards the end of June (under Italian rule) expecting he would be sitting atop a victory parade through Cairo.

Instead, General Rommel’s hot-headed and poorly constructed strategy of attacks stalled. His forces were in a disarray and his propaganda became seen as a laugh. Mussolini high-tailed it home in July as Nazi leadership began to waffle and flail.

From this point onward the Axis troops rapidly would be pushed back until entirely out of North Africa by a British General appointed to make haste.

The man Britain appointed was General Montgomery who on August 13 shipped in to command the Eighth Army. His entrance was a classic British shake-up, a move reminiscent of 1917 in WWI when General Lord Edmund Allenby landed as Commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

Deception was a game Allenby had famously adopted in WWI to turn tides and roll through and around the Ottomans (and Germans). He also had written about it after the war, as captured by many books.

Such tactics were back on the table for British planning, as Montgomery decided disinformation would be essential to victory in a second battle of El Alamein. In fact, he would repeat much of the tactical strategy used in WWI — deceive and offset, weaken with artillery, surprise and smash through.

The connection to Allenby’s WWI campaigns was no coincidence for the British in El Alamein. The head of British deception in WWII arguably was Field Marshall Lord Achibald Wavell (British Commander in Chief in the Middle East 1939-1941). He served as a senior officer under Allenby in WWI and thus was well aware of what had worked before and where.

An early WWII test, for example, was the decisive 1940 victory for the British at Sidi Barrani. Successful plans (Operation Compass) were credited to Wavell’s deception expertise. His intelligence operations definitely made a big impression.

Wavell had enabled just 2 divisions (less than 50,000 ready under General O’Connor) to confidently head into battle against over 300,000 Italian soldiers in Egypt. Using an old Allenby WWI tactic, he faked British troop movements and generated bogus radio traffic to suggest they had started relocating out of Egypt and into Greece.

Total surprise was the result. After three months in 1940 just 500 British were killed yet 10 Italian divisions had been destroyed and over 100,000 men taken prisoner.

Fast forward two years, the 6th of October 1942 was the day Montgomery ordered disinformation to be fed to the Germans.

Specific tactical procedures for Operation Bertram were conceived by the brilliant yet controversial Dudley Wrangel Clarke. Deception would be to protect a surprise night offensive near the Mediterranean coast by the British on October 23rd.

Some readers may recall September 25, 1942 was the day an Allied plane had crashed near Spain, which created a certain sense of urgency to deception methods.

There were no survivors; one fatality in particular that worried Allied commanders was a courier who carried sensitive documents about [November 1942] invasion plans for North Africa, called Operation Torch. Allegedly those documents didn’t leak yet it was this incident that inspired Allied intelligence to attempt an intentional leak.

Some readers also may recall that February 1942 was when the British were ignominiously defeated in Singapore due to significant intelligence failures, not least of all reallocation of its own tanks coupled with allegations that the sound of enemy bicycles had been mistaken for approaching tanks.

And on top of all that, “visual deception” had been formalized to confuse and disorient Nazi attacks.

In 1941 the filmmaker Geoffrey Barkas was made Director of Camouflage at General Headquarters (GHQ) Cairo. Among the specially trained Royal Engineers, camouflage officers under his command were artists, zoologists, and theatre and film set designers. Creative improvisation remained key to their success.

Thus in 1942 the British were thinking a lot about shifting from defense to offense and using deception methods to improve chances of success; how to give Rommel the impression of a large slow offensive to come from the south sometime in November, while actually it would come very quickly in the north weeks earlier.

Four elements of disinformation were set in motion for Bertram.

First, the mass of actual British preparations had to be hidden, such as extensive materials in movement around the north.

Second, all the preparations had to appear much slower than reality by a factor of several weeks.

Third, a fiction of British preparations for an attack from the south had to be convincing.

Fourth, during the actual attack along the northern shore there would be sea-borne tactics to distract and disorient the Germans.

The most complicated of these was procedures to conceal actual equipment and men in the north. Mechanized tracks for thousands of tons had to be erased, stacks of supplies had to be minimized. Painted canvas (another Allenby tactic, although dummy horses in WWI) created “dummy trucks”.

Guns and tanks were covered over before sunrise to become invisible by aircraft. Many real trucks also were staged ahead of time so they could be swapped with the canvas ones concealing arrival of more tanks, for example.

Water was of course essential to any bluff in the desert, as Allenby’s WWI disinformation tactics also had demonstrated so well. A fictional assault launch point in the south was set as a target for a fake water pipeline to work towards. It was very openly built using a timeline meant to attract German observation. It was hoped the Nazis would think pipeline status was how they should estimate a attack from the south sometime in November.

The clever efficiency of the fake pipeline was how it reused a small section of props (disused cans) over and over again. A trench was excavated during the day next to materials only to be filled in again at night. This gave the appearance of forward movement to airborne observers. The operation slowly shifted like this indicating progress without any pipe being laid at all.

Another overt procedure by the British was moving tanks during daylight to attract attention. At night these tanks moved forward elsewhere to be concealed, and their last positions filled by dummy tanks coupled with noisy wireless signals to convince Germans of slower progress.

All the emphasis on a southern front and late attack then led to yet another deception tactic when British forces began their actual attack in the north along the coastline. Fast boats fitted with loudspeakers played recordings of battle sounds to give the impression of flanking by an amphibious landing. This also helped serve as disinformation related to November plans in Operation Torch amphibious landings.

Montgomery’s operation worked as intended. The Nazis were unprepared and disorganized, shortly in retreat.

The third phase of the battle, ‘Break-out’, was fought between 1 and 4 November 1942, when Montgomery, judging Rommel’s forces at breaking point, ordered the final blows against them. By 3 November it was obvious that Rommel was preparing to withdraw, and the next morning the 5th Indian Brigade attacked, driving a wedge through Rommel’s front, thus enabling the 1st and 7th Armoured Divisions and the 2nd New Zealand Division to go in pursuit of enemy forces, now in full retreat. In Britain, the church bells were rung for the first time since May 1940 to celebrate the Eighth Army’s success which was, as Winston Churchill described it, ‘a glorious and decisive victory’.

British deception had worked so well it completely convinced Nazi observers they faced no threat at all in the north, right before they were attacked from the north. Montgomery faced difficulty, of course, yet his surprise tactics rolled quickly towards victory with troops in high morale laughing at Rommel.

Despite replaying a (modified) WWI strategy that had been widely discussed by the British themselves over the 20 prior years, Montgomery managed to achieve high shock value. Rommel by comparison was entirely predictable and defeated as such (although more research is needed to determine whether Axis communications, especially Italian, were decrypted at Bletchley Park and their North Africa campaigns had been totally compromised).

Perhaps then, even more to the point of security, the true triumph in deception under Operation Bertram may have been achieving such a level of secrecy that Allied plans were neither compromised nor even guessed.