Thunder Runs: Analyzing Ukraine’s Devastating New Tactic

At the moment that this video is being prepared, watchers of the Russia-Ukraine conflict are in shock.

On the weekend of September the 10th to the 11th, Ukraine’s forces smashed through Russian lines in the Kharkiv region.

But rather than gain a handful of villages or strategic points, they kept right on rolling across towns, across hamlets, through cities.

By the time this breakthrough force came to a halt, the entire Russian line had collapsed.

An area larger than Delaware had been liberated in what has been called the worst Russian defeat since 1943.

Now, since our production process takes time, we’ll refrain from giving you our hot take.

By the time you watch this, the dust will have already settled.

Rather, we want to use this video to highlight one key tactic the Ukrainians used.

A tactic borrowed from American victory, nearly as audacious as the liberation of Kharkiv.

A blast: the Thunder Run.

First used to stunning effect in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Thunder runs are both high-risk and capable of generating insanely high rewards.

Today, we’re analyzing the history of this powerful tactic and how it may affect the future of the Ukraine war.

News of Ukraine’s breakthrough began to spread on social media.

Many journalists turned to a famous Hemingway quote to describe how the tide of war turned slowly and then all at once.

The quote, originally used to describe the process of bankruptcy, today is almost a cliché.

Yet, watching real-time maps update to show the steady spread of Ukraine’s gains after months of stalemate, it was impossible to feel that this time, well, the cliché was more than apt.

Russia’s defenses in Kharkiv had gone from slow erosion to utter collapse in just a matter of days.

On September the 8th, 2022, the day Ukraine broke through the front lines, it had seemed almost static.

Russia controlled the east and north of the oblast, sitting within easy firing range of Kyiv itself.

In fact, the line of conflict was so settled that news of Ukraine’s advance was initially treated as a welcome but extremely localized victory.

Some voices even suggested that they should turn back before they got surrounded.

But that, as you already know, did not happen.

Instead, Kyiv’s counter-offensive just kept right on rolling.

By September the 10th, Ukrainian forces had punched 80 kilometers beyond the Russian lines, clear through the vital city of Izium.

By September the 12th, they’d gotten to the Russian border and then come right up to Luhansk oblast.

At the time of writing this video, they got on to recapture a town there too.

No mean feat in a region completely surrounded by Russia.

Since the summer, when the forward thrust at last slowed, the amount of territory retaken had grown to eye-watering size.

Around Kharkiv alone, more than 8,000 square kilometers were liberated.

Equivalent to over 3,000 square miles.

An area nearly three times the size of Rhode Island.

As for the Russians, well, to call their performance disastrous would do a disservice to, well, disasters.

The implosion of the Russian lines was a rout.

A moment in battle when all discipline breaks down.

Panic sets in, and everyone’s sole focus is just trying to escape the onslaught.

Hundreds of battle tanks were abandoned.

Entire ammunition stores were just left for Ukrainians to claim.

Infantry vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and piles of equipment were all just left in place.

A melee of Russian soldiers, chainring in civilian clothes, and running for the border.

Scores upon scores of them were captured.

By most reckonings, this was the biggest Russian military defeat since 1943.

Eerily, that disaster also took place in the same area around Izium.

So how did plucky underdog Ukraine pull off something no one had done in nearly 80 years? How did they manage to bloody the nose of the Russian bear so badly? Well, part of it was misdirection and good logistics.

While Russia was focused on the southern front in Kherson, Kyiv managed to move about four brigades of nearly 10,000 troops into the Kharkiv area.

All part of a well-integrated command.

Unlike the Russians, Ukraine managed to get all of its artillery, aviation, air defense, and infantry working in harmony, exerting unstoppable pressure.

But a third overlooked part was the use of Thunder runs.

A form of reconnaissance.

By far, the textbook Thunder Run involves getting in a highly armored, extremely fast-moving vehicle and then charging hell-for-leather into enemy areas.

At its least spectacular, it should have two major effects.

One, you could test the enemy’s strength before you retreat, figuring out what he’s got and where.

And two, you can use that to cause some chaos and shake up a stalemate.

The equivalent of casually tossing a live grenade into a chessboard.

At its best, though, a Thunder Run can take you further.

Way further.

In Iraq in 2003, there was a Thunder Run to Saddam’s palace that precipitated Baghdad’s fall.

The psychological impact of US forces pushing to the heart of the capital completely demoralized the city’s defenders.

It was the sort of impact the Ukrainians were seeking to recreate.

But even they couldn’t have realized how successful they were going to be.

While the Americans in the Iraq War had used armored infantry carriers known as Bradleys, backed by tanks, the Ukrainians had used civilian 4x4s as their spearhead.

The advantage of that was, when the Russian lines broke, Ukraine’s Toyotas could absolutely bomb it along the roads, advancing at breakneck speed.

Whenever they encountered an enemy formation, anti-tank teams would immediately dismount and engage before leaping back in and zooming on.

Leaving the armor and Ukrainian tanks following in their wake just to mop up.

There are even reports they deliberately avoided settlements, preferring to penetrate deeper and cause more chaos before doubling back later.

It was this pressure that shattered the Russian’s morale.

Not just the initial lightning-fast assault, but also the confusion and panic it sowed.

To quote Ukrainians: “Ahead of me, Ukrainians behind me, and here I am about to die in the middle.

” Unsurprisingly, most chose to simply run.

Good and Thunder runs were the best tactic to use at this time.

And the Ukrainians used them brilliantly.

But they are far from a Ukrainian invention.

To fully understand where this sudden counter-attack came from, we need to go back a few years to a vastly alien time.

A time when the US was desperately looking for new methods of warfare.

A time when Ukraine had only just voted to leave the Russian-dominated union known as the USSR.

The modern history of Thunder runs begins not with victorious Ukrainian units sweeping across their Kharkiv countryside, but a lot of America’s most stinging peacetime defeats.

In October of 1993, in an attempt to capture targets from the dense urban environment of Mogadishu, Somalia, spiraled into catastrophe.

When two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, surrounded by hostile forces, the survivors of the crashes were forced to jerry-rig defensive areas and fight with their lives.

While many were ultimately saved by a rescue team, the rescue effort itself generated more bloodshed.

Popularly known as Black Hawk Down after the book and movie of the same name, it was America’s bloodiest battle since Vietnam.

18 US troops were killed, 73 were injured.

Some of the bodies left behind were desecrated by local militia.

It was also a gargantuan PR disaster.

The public backlash toward the botched mission was so angry, so indignant, that it upended military thinking in the White House.

The Clinton Administration would spend the next few years terrified of committing troops overseas.

But the impact, it would arguably be greater in the Army, faced with the country in uproar over less than two dozen deaths.

Military planners were forced to face a fact that they’d been dimly aware of for some time: current practice for urban operations was in desperate need of change.

As the battle in Mogadishu had shown, fighting in urban environments is always tricky.

It’s always bloody.

While Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both happily fed men into the meat grinder of urban combat, it was now painfully clear that a democracy could never accept so many casualties.

Street-by-street fighting in a future conflict would just be politically impossible.

No, something new was needed.

A way to avoid getting bogged down in urban fighting.

A way to avoid large death tolls.

It was from these worries that the modern Thunder Run would be born.

Although they are credited to American forces fighting in Iraq, various forms of Thunder runs have been around for decades.

The origin of the term actually dates to Vietnam, where they debated something very different.

Faced with the Viet Cong that was laying prodigious amounts of landmines across roads, US forces came up with a simple way to clear them.

Since standard mine-sweeping operations took hours, creating traffic jams and men and equipment that could be ambushed, the Americans instead chose to just trigger the devices using M48 pattern tanks.

Then these early Thunder runs, two tanks drove side by side at high speed along roads suspected of being mined.

Sturdy enough to absorb blasts and just keep on rolling, they could quickly clear an area, allowing less densely armored vehicles to zip on through.

While this is mostly unlike the tactic we’re discussing today, aside from the name, it did have two aspects that would survive into modern Thunder runs: speed and aggression.

Speed because the tanks would go hell for leather, trying to trigger everything, and aggression because they would light up all guns at once as they did so, trying to draw out any possible ambush.

Now compare this to the tactics of the modern Thunder Run.

Armor up, driving fast, all guns blazing, and test the enemy’s weak spots before getting out again without engaging.

You can kind of see the basic similar polarities, right?

Of course, high-speed reconnaissance by fire has been used in many wars, but what would set the Thunder runs apart was their emphasis on good logistics, a managed risk.

After all, everyone in the mid-1990s had already witnessed an extremely good example of a high-speed assault gone wrong.

The date was New Year’s Eve 1994.

The place was Grozny.

The context: the first Chechen War.

Prior to the attack, the Russian army had assured Moscow it could subdue the Chechen capital within hours.

Their plan: a lightning run into the city center, where the overwhelming display of might would cause the defenders’ morale to crumble.

Instead, it led to one of the biggest Russian military disasters this side of Ukraine.

By January the 2nd, 1995, Russia’s 331st separate motor rifle brigade that led the attack effectively wiped out.

80% of its troops were killed or captured, 20 main battle tanks were destroyed, and all but 18 of its 120 armored vehicles went up in smoke.

A remake of urban combat, the assault on Grozny was not rather.

It was a humiliation, and an extremely costly one of that.

The American military planners who monitored the disaster didn’t merely gloat.

They took the lessons on board.

They tried to understand where the Russians went wrong.

As a result, by the time 2003 rolled around, they’d be more than ready.

An example of a fast assault gone wrong, the real-life equivalent of Judge a rabbit blowing himself up with a grenade while the instructor tells the students: “Don’t do that.

”

Then the April 2003 run into Baghdad is probably about as close to the platonic ideal as a Thunder Run can get.

In a lightning-paced attack, 975 soldiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division would blast through from the outskirts to the very heart of Baghdad, a heavily defended city with a population of over 5 million.

Utilizing just 44 Bradleys and 88 Abrams tanks, they would capture Saddam’s palace, three key interchanges, and a road to the airport for resupply.

And they did it all in just three days.