Powered by RND
PodcastsGovernmentWavell Room Audio Reads

Wavell Room Audio Reads

Wavell Room
Wavell Room Audio Reads
Latest episode

Available Episodes

5 of 49
  • The Defence of a Baltic Bridge
    It was our own fault, and our very grave fault, and now we must turn it to use, We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse!" Rudyard Kipling Context This short story aims to bring tactical lessons from contemporary conflicts to life for junior commanders. Inspired by Captain (later Major General) Ernest Swinton's classic work The Defence of Duffer's Drift, it follows a young British officer and a small group of soldiers tasked with defending a key position, using a series of 'dreams' as a device to enable the defenders to iteratively improve their tactics. While Swinton's original was set during the Second Boer War (a "drift" being a vernacular term for a ford), this updated version shifts the setting to a near future war in the Baltics. Each failed attempt to defend the position, in this case a bridge, resets the scenario, giving the defenders another chance for success. The memories of the previous failures remain available to the protagonist, allowing a series of lessons to emerge through trial and error. This narrative device may feel familiar to modern audiences from the Duffers-inspired Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow (or Live. Die. Repeat. for American viewers). No new resources are available at the commencement of each attempt. No new tech, no new kit, no external support. Much like the contemporary British Army, the defenders must adapt to fight tonight with what they have. It must be stressed that this is not an 'academic' piece. It is intended to be a light, quick read for the junior commander. The lessons are also not intended to be definitive or prescriptive; rather, they represent a curated set of observations drawn from military, academic, and open-source material. Indeed, many of the basic lessons have not changed since Swinton's original text and simply need to be re-learned. The chosen dream sequence for this story focuses on the infantry platoon the bedrock of our warfighting capability, but the style could (and should) and should beused as a prism through which to teach and refine other capabilities. As the character of conflict continues to shift, in evolutions and revolutions, this specific story will also likely need to be augmented by new 'dreams' to address new tactical challenges. How we defended the bridge over the Šventara By Lt Foresight Backthought, 5 LOAMS. Prologue Upon a still summer's afternoon, after a long and bone-rattling journey across the flatness of the Baltics, we arrived at our objective: the bridge over the River Šventara. The long day of travelling, and the Vegetarian Mushroom Omelette ration pack that I had consumed, was likely responsible for the unsettled sleep and the resultant repetitive series of dreams I experienced that night. Each dream began the same, with our arrival that afternoon to that key bridge over the river, but each one played out differently. With each new dream I learnt new lessons and, somehow, I carried the lessons of each dream forward with me to the next. The First Dream - relearning the basics I felt a pang of dread and elation as the last of the column of vehicles rumbled across the bridge, down that straight tarmac road amongst the Baltic pines, and away into the distance towards the front line. This was the first time that I, Lt Backthought, had ever been alone in command of soldiers on a real operation. My platoon's task was clear: as part of the Division's Rear Area Security Group, we were to hold this bridge, some distance behind the FLOT and on a secondary route, to enable future operations. We would be here for 48hrs, after which time we would be relieved by follow-on forces. I had some thirty-odd soldiers with which to achieve the task, the rest of the company having now rumbled off to secure other bits of key terrain. The rest of our division was committed away to the east, towards the border, where it remained engaged in efforts to break through the enemy's frontage. It was doing its best to manoeuvre, to try and ave...
    --------  
    50:30
  • Drones Take Centre Stage: The New Face of Modern Warfare
    On June 1st 2025, Ukraine carried out well-coordinated drone attacks on four airbases deep inside Russia. In the operation codenamed 'Spider's Web', 117 drones were utilized to allegedly hit over 40 Russian strategic bombers inflicting a damage of around seven billion dollars. As part of the operation, drones were first smuggled into Russia, hidden inside wooden sheds and subsequently loaded onto the trucks. When the trucks were in close proximity to the air bases, the roof panels were remotely lifted, allowing the drones to initiate the assault. Ukraine claims that the targeted bomber fleet was being used by Russia to strike infrastructure inside the Ukrainian territory. The increased utilization of drones in contemporary times is indicative of the future face of warfare. While the Ukraine-Russia war has seen widespread drone use, similar patterns have emerged in other conflict zones including the Azerbaijan-Armenia war and the India-Pakistan conflict of May 2025. It is pertinent to note that the India-Pakistan conflict did not witness the same level and intensity of drone usage, possibly due to its short four-day duration, contrary to the Ukraine-Russia and Azerbaijan-Armenia wars. However, these instances collectively signal the pattern of future warfare, which would be dominated by the increasing use of drones, particularly drone swarms. During the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, drones played a prominent role in countering Armenian ground forces on the battlefield, highlighting the vulnerability of conventional military equipment to drones. Utilization of drones by Azerbaijan played a significant role in determining the outcome of the war. The war concluded with Armenia accepting a ceasefire agreement under severe terms. Similarly, the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, saw the use of drone from both sides. During the four-day conflict, India used a variety of drones in an attempt to saturate air defence environment and take out the air defence and radar installations deep inside Pakistan. However, after detecting the threat, Pakistan likely switched to radar silence to prevent emission of signals and intercepted the incoming drones using soft and hard kill mechanisms. In response to India's use of drones, Pakistan also launched drones that hovered over the Indian military installations and major cities making it the first instance of drone warfare between the two nuclear armed states. All of these instances suggest that drones are dominating the present conflict environment and future conflicts might see a surge in the employment of drones. Previously, countries were investing in large drones, however, more recently these platforms are optimized for targeted strikes and are less suited for the dynamic and saturated threat environments of modern conflicts. Recognizing this limitation, countries are now shifting their focus towards developing scalable and cost-effective drone swarms capable of overwhelming enemy air defences. In this context, the US, in August 2023, announced Replicator initiative with the goal to harness advancements in autonomous technology to mass-produce expendable systems capable of providing a strategic edge in contested operational environments through Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) and Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (DEAD) missions. The program focuses on developing drones, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs). Similarly, China's military drone capabilities have seen significant growth. Chinese President Xi Jinping has portrayed, drones as capable of "profoundly changing war scenarios" and pledged during the Communist Party's Congress in 2022, to "speed up the development of unmanned, intelligent combat capabilities". In this context, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) operates an arsenal of diverse drone types, with estimates suggesting a fleet size in tens of thousands, vastly outnumbering the drone fleets of the US. Besides this, countries are also raci...
    --------  
    5:55
  • Who wants to be a millionaire? Life in occupied Ukraine
    President Putin has only been able to sustain his war by bribing the poor, desperate and marginalised. The deal has been straightforward: sign up and you will be paid a fabulous lump sum and generous salary. You will receive benefits and a veteran's pension. In the event of your death your family will be compensated. A surprising majority believe they are signing one-year contracts and are unaware that service is indefinite until the end of the war. Even when told they still sign on, taking the gamble that the war will be over soon and anxious not to miss out on a get-rich-quick scheme. Just five percent of volunteers have a higher education and 40% are 50-year olds and older (last year the recruitment age was increased to 70 years-of-age, and the oldest recorded death has been a 72 year-old). The sums offered are stupendous. The one-time signing on bonus in Nizhny Novgorod can be as high as 3 million roubles ($38,300). Impoverished Bashkortostan - which has suffered the most war losses with over 3,100 confirmed volunteer deaths - offers 1.5 million roubles. 'You'll earn 3.7 million roubles [$44,000] your first year!' shouts an advertisement in Novosibirsk. Who wants to be a millionaire? The reality, naturally, is different and the subject of this article. The reality of life in occupied Ukraine A volunteer may earn a monthly salary of between 200,000-300,000 roubles $2,550-$3,800). This is many times higher than the average Russian salary and unimaginable in the poorer regions of Russia. Yet the soldiers are not kings of the castle. The costs of serving in occupied Ukraine swallow salaries. Some of those costs are itemised below: Food: Soldiers have to supplement inadequate rations by buying their own food. Locals routinely double and triple prices to Russian soldiers because they know they can pay. A monthly bill can run to 20,000-30,000 roubles ($255-$380). In one unusual case, a Russian soldier serving in 68 Motor Rifle Division on the Kupyansk front saved on food money by turning cannibal and eating a dead comrade. Reportedly this provided him with sufficient meat for two weeks. Water: Occupied Donbas is a water disaster area with daily rationing and water cuts. Tap water - when it runs - is undrinkable ('you cannot even wash in it', one soldier has averred). A daily five litres of water costs 100-150 roubles, or around $38-$57 per month. Sex: The Donbas has been transformed by a sex industry chasing roubles. As much as 500,000 roubles ($6,380) can be earned in week. Roughly one third of prostitutes work from stationary brothels and the remainder do 'shift work', or two-week shifts in rented houses in Mariupol, Berdyansk, Melitopol, Donetsk and Luhansk. A chat with a prostitute can cost 15,000 roubles ($190). One night costs 120,000 roubles ($1,530). Payments are in cash. 'It seems to me that 90% of my clients feel regret [about joining the war],' one prostitute has opined. Another has said that every second order she gets is 'just to sit down and talk, because they don't see anything there except men and corpses.' Cigarettes: The issue cigarettes are unsmokable and thrown away. Cigarettes are sold at inflated prices in the Donbas (around 200 roubles or $2.50 per packet) and are smoked apace. Roughly half of all Russian males smoke, one of the highest rates in the world. Smoking in the army is widespread. Alcohol: There are no numbers for alcohol consumption. There is abundant anecdotal evidence that the high alcohol consumption rates of Russian civilian society - and alcoholism - have been exported to the frontline. Indeed, some volunteer to get their lives in order, having lost control to alcohol in their home towns and villages. Clothing: Soldiers invariably resort to buying their own uniforms, especially cold weather clothing. There are mobile 'uniform shops' operating in the Donbas. They can charge as much as 10,000 roubles for a uniform ($125), or twice the going rate in a shop in 'the mainland' (it is telling th...
    --------  
    9:36
  • Military Human Augmentation: Still Some Way Off
    The publication of Human Augmentation - The Dawn of a New Paradigm by the Defence Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) in 2021 demonstrated the importance of this topic within UK defence.1 Human Augmentation (HA) is also referenced in the recent Defence Command Paper (Defence's response to a more contested and volatile world)3 relative perceived effort,4 reduction in muscle EMG activity,5 cognitive function,6 and metabolic activity7 inter alia. In addition, translation of these outcome measures to military utility is not yet convincing. Another fundamental challenge with exoskeletons for military applications is power requirement. The reported improvements in physical performance in tethered systems described in these studies need to be viewed with scepticism as they will be reduced significantly once the systems carry their own power supply. Finally, there is evidence that while performance in one domain (lifting / carrying) may be augmented, this comes at the cost of reduced performance in another (walking).8 Remote sensing and measurement has been explored as a means to prevent injury and assure the health of our fighting force. Several remote sensing systems have reached an advanced technology readiness level and have shown promise in the field.9 However, there are several key problems that range from technological challenges (e.g. signal noise, calibration, drift, attachment-related artefact, etc) to the lack of causal evidence in the literature to link injuries or illness states with particular measurable parameters.10 This last problem is a fundamental barrier to this technology finding a military utility. We are currently at the stage of discovering what we can measure, but to be useful we need to know what we should measure. This problem of lack of fundamental knowledge is profound in the more invasive areas of HA. Much of the means by which HA can be delivered remains entirely theoretical. For example, the specific genetic modifications of the human genome to improve muscle strength or prevent MSK injury are not known. Our literature search has not revealed any human research in these areas, meaning that deficits in understanding are unlikely to be resolved soon. If the HA technology is to transform our fighting force within a generation then significant investment in basic human research is required now. The scientific problems discussed above are not the only difficulties in this area. Key ethical, legal, societal, and economic problems will need to be overcome for HA to deliver meaningful performance gains. Ethical issues are discussed clearly in the original paper (1) and relate to permanence, harm, societal acceptance, military proportionality, and fairness. Another ethical problem that has not been discussed in the literature is the question of whether HA is a medical therapy. HA intended to mitigate traumatic injury may be argued to be analogous to preventative medicine such as vaccination and may be considered within the remit of our current understanding of healthcare and medical ethics. However, HA that has no preventative medical application has no current medical analogy and cannot be considered part of healthcare as we currently understand it. Multiple unanswered legal questions will need to be answered before HA can be used in practice (table 2). However, the UK government has no legislative agenda to clarify the law surrounding this area so these questions are likely to remain unanswered for now. Legal Concept Legal Questions Informed consent Montgomery ruling: patients must have individualised discussion of potential risks, benefits, alternatives, and implications. If HA is not defined as a medical technology, what consenting safeguards apply? Liability Who is liable if harm is caused to the individual as a result of augmentation if something goes wrong during augmentation procedure or during use? Who is responsible for the removal of HA technology in the case of obsolescence or request from the use...
    --------  
    8:45
  • Russian World
    At around the same time the video headlining this article was recorded, President Putin was hosting Russian Language, or Pushkin Day. This precedes Russia Day which is celebrated on 12 June. Putin spoke virtually from Novo Ogaryovo, his favoured residence on the outskirts of Moscow which boasts a heated, indoor, Olympic-sized swimming pool. Russian was one of the most expressive languages in the world, he extolled, 'reflecting our spiritual and moral traditions, culture, and unique identity.' The Russian president often blathers about Russia as a great 'civilisational-state'. It is even written into the country's national security doctrine: 'Russian World'(Russkiy mir) as counterpoint to the wicked 'Collective West'. A reader glancing at the image would likely imagine it shows two Ukrainian soldiers at the bottom of a sand pit. Not so. The two unfortunates are Russian soldiers - refuseniks. Not visible in the footage is another Russian firing live rounds into the sand around them and taunting them. This 'Russian World' - a reality far removed from the scented, polished corridors of presidential villas in Moscow - is the subject of this article. 'On the Russian Peasant' In 1922, the Russian writer Maxim Gorky wrote a later much-quoted essay 'On the Russian Peasant'. Why, Gorky mused, were Russians capable of apparently bottomless cruelty? 'I experienced and saw many atrocities. I could never find a justification for their existence …Where does this human cruelty come from?' His view of the Muscovite (Russian) national character was low and deserves to be quoted in full: 'It seems to me that the most striking feature of the Moscow national character is actual cruelty, just like English humour. This is a special cruelty, and at the same time a cold-bloodedly invented measure of the degree of endurance and resistance in patience that man can attain… The most interesting feature of Moscow brutality is its devilish finesse, its, I would say, aesthetic refinement. I do not think that these features can be explained by such words as "psychosis", "sadism" or similar. Because in essence, they do not explain anything. A consequence of alcoholism? - But I do not think that the people of Moscow were more poisoned by alcohol than other European nations. However, it must be admitted that the influence of alcohol on the psyche of a Muscovite is particularly fatal because our nation is worse off than others. I am not talking here about cruelty, which appears sporadically, like an explosion of a sick or perverted soul. These are exceptions that will chill a psychiatrist: here I am talking about mass psychology, about the nation's soul, about collective cruelty.' In Russia, he concluded, almost everyone enjoys beating someone. On the 'Special Military Operation' Putin's 'Special Military Operation' will be remembered for its barbarism. The Russian president arrogantly presumed to take Kyiv in three days and the rest of eastern and southern Ukraine in two weeks. Instead he has mired Russia in a disaster and revealed to the world the true nature of 'Russian World'. The Donbas, which he presumed to 'liberate', has been turned into a ravaged, depopulated wasteland, a region drained of children, jobs, hope or a future. Scores of settlements and towns have been erased from the map. The 'Russian way of warfare' has proved to be naked banditry. 'This is not the 'second army' of the world,' as one Ukrainian expressed following the invasion, 'this is a bunch of marauders, degenerates, executioners and rapists.' From Kherson to Kharkiv, daily and nightly drone attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have not stopped for over three years. Russian contempt for the Laws of Armed Conflict and International Red Cross (IRC) has been breath-taking. Ukrainian PoWs are currently dispersed in around 300 prisons across Russia (Ukraine maintains five transit centres and five permanent prisons). Moscow will not allow the IRC anywhere near Ukrainian PoWs and...
    --------  
    8:34

More Government podcasts

About Wavell Room Audio Reads

An improved audio format version of our written content. Get your defence and security perspectives now through this podcast.
Podcast website

Listen to Wavell Room Audio Reads, Any Questions? and Any Answers? and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app

Get the free radio.net app

  • Stations and podcasts to bookmark
  • Stream via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
  • Supports Carplay & Android Auto
  • Many other app features
Social
v7.21.2 | © 2007-2025 radio.de GmbH
Generated: 7/29/2025 - 3:50:52 AM