Also former infantry: To expand the point, in US Army doctrine, an obstacle has one of four effects, block, turn, fix, or disrupt.

Typically, you use obstacles in engagement area development as part of a defense. An obstacle that's not observed isn't valuable because it's easy to circumvent. You can probably use a bulldozer (guessing, I was light infantry, not a tanker) to breach the dragon's teeth relatively quickly so the obstacle doesn't have the intended effect. However, it's much harder to breach the dragon's teeth if someone is shooting at you. Now you need an armored bulldozer, or enough suppressing fire to cover the breach.

The way Russians teach it, obstacles and mine fields just buys you some time. Crucial time to put your pull your reserves to the critical areas, sight in your artillery or call in air support. Even worse, it buys you very little combat time for a lot of preparation time.

However, on top of the shame for what Russians are doing in Ukraine, the shame for how they are doing it is almost as disgracing.

Sounds like a job for something like Python if they are unanchored. Or an AVRE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_Minefield_Breaching_Sys...

You do have to be careful with these systems, they like to go boom:

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1590087764070268928

Video description: Drone video of a Russian armored column advancing when a mine-clearing vehicle gets hit, suffers earth shattering kaboom when the mine-clearing charge goes up.

Got another link? This seems to have been deleted

Where is Marvin Heemeyer when you need him.

Or a remote-controlled bulldozer. (Though that could be jammed...)

The idea is that for every 20 tanks the enemy has there's probably one RC bulldozer. Without the obstacles they would quickly advance over few hundred meters, now they are forced into a bottleneck, perhaps giving you just enough time to bring in the ATGM team.

I bet those autonomous programable excavators and bulldozers are right now making a killing in UA.

By fire do you mean weapon fire? Sorry, maybe it's obvious but my brain keeps jumping to literal fire.

Yea, either direct (person with a rifle) or indirect (artillery/mortars). Ultimately obstacles slow, not prevent.

This wiki article provides good clarity, especially the "obstacle negotiation" part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstacles_to_troop_movement

Correct, weapon’s fire.

Quoted from the article

> One of the best methods of overcoming these obstacles was by bulldozing soil over them.

I also thought about it before that point. But

> However, in many situations this was much easier said than done while under fire.

I didn't consider this. I'm only a keyboard tactician.

Based on what we've seen in Ukraine so far, I have absolutely no expectations.

I saw a video of a Russian tank approaching an anti-tank mine sitting in the middle of the road, and they just... drove over it, causing detonation. It wasn't camouflaged at all, it was just sitting there.

I'm not sure what the soldiers in the tank expected. Maybe they missed the "don't drive over obvious mines" day in tank school.

Tanks don't have all that great visibility, soldiers sleep a little in bad conditions, often eat a little + crappy food and are under high stress. Triple so in Russian army by all accounts I read.

Drivers in cars in best conditions fail to notice things, so it is not all that surprising that Russian army soldier would not notice things.

Probably thought it was the run over and blow up kind not the kind with a magnet.

I wonder how many fake mines had also been placed on the roads.

I really don’t like talking about it but 22+ years of doing things for show (and stealing budget money) resulted in exactly this.

Gotta show the grandpa the pretty picture. Grandpa loves war movies.