draws heavily on digital interactive platforms, including modified commercial titles […] These environments — ranging from real-time strategy games

Already is a red flag.

«Real-time strategy game» usually is a misnomer, and perhaps an oxymoron.

RTS games generally fall under one of the two setups (even the same game on different maps):

A) Puzzle, when resources are very limited, so the game is slow and all about using the resources as efficiently as possible. Or

B) Mouse-wank fest, when enough of resources are delivered that the advantage is in using them quickly (or in bootstrapping resource extraction ASAP, then using up).

Which the lucid part of RTS crowd (specifically Netstorm players, curiously) have noticed long ago.

Also, RTS are generally optimized to be a game for fairly stupid AI (necessarily so, otherwise AI sucks outrageously), thus a human player ends up basically emulating AI — going through “building order”, etc.

None of the above, of course, is strategy.

What strategy there is, seems to be playing head games and rock-paper-scissors on a map. Because that’s where the edge is after the opponents are equally conditioned to moving a mouse through the relevant sequences.

Bob Sykes says:

In fact, considering the appalling losses suffered by the Ukrainians in both the 2023 Counter Offensive and the Kursk Incursion, both of which were planned and led by the US/UK

Kursk probably wasn’t. Rather, a case of desperation. It was a lunge toward a nuclear powerplant, presumably to run nuclear blackmail and/or get the suzerain involved more. The latter didn’t receive it all that well either… until it was repainted as “territory negotiation chips”.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-8624-shaky-start-of-zelenskys

When this didn’t work, what the Orange Revolution state was left with? An all-or-nothing operation that failed to achieve much, and too many forces stuck in a narrow salient. Which looks like a bad enough situation already. Add the need for showy “results” to convince sponsors to not write it off just yet, plus habit of doubling down, and this could only end very poorly.

“Do what works,” shall be the whole of the doctrine.

In fact, considering the appalling losses suffered by the Ukrainians in both the 2023 Counter Offensive and the Kursk Incursion, both of which were planned and led by the US/UK, it is clear that it is the US/UK which still relies on meat grinder offensives. The Somme 1916 lives on at West Point and Sandhurst.

If I wanted advice on how to conduct a military operation, I would ask the Russians and send the soy boys to their rooms without supper.

Redgrave, the Russian style of “See that hill, don’t come back unless it’s to tell me you’ve taken it” ground the WW2 Germans into meat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtC-QxsSyYM

It may be impossible for them to escape the “bomb the entire country into rubble” approach while stuck in the abattoir style of warmaking.