Good god, the US has had all the technological dominance in the world for more than 50 years; and that has not translated into an understanding of what winning a war entails.
The weapons obsessed, battle centric notion of war has caused huge problems.
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If Putin isn’t crazy, he will be looking for a way out of this disaster as quickly as possible (delay just means more damage for him as well as Ukraine). He can’t magically make a war winnable, just because he wants to.
The thing that must be concentrating his mind now is Kyiv. He has two choices. The first is to try and level one of the most important cities in history, with huge emotional importance to Russians as well as Ukrainians.
While at the same time basically wrecking his army by sending it into a large city of millions of people. And guaranteeing permanent sanctions for the rest of his life. OR, cutting some kind of deal. The second has to be more rational.
A thread on issues for which I would like data, and which might reveal how the war will develop. Will summarise in a tweet each. Any help appreciated.
1) Are there signs of the Russians sending large reinforcements from outside of the theatre to support the invasion? The invading forces should be worn out in 2 weeks to a month. Without significant aid, that is a sign that the war might level off.
2) Is there good data of the operating tempo and mission types of Russian fixed wing aircraft over Ukraine? Looking at this we can see how successfully or not the Ukrainians are in denying the Russians air superiority.
Just one excerpt that stands out (and there are many others in the piece). The view that Russia can’t fight a protracted war (in other words China will not be bailing Putin out as the Russian economy collapses). Coming from a senior voice in China, it’s revealing.
Logistics Rule--look at the map. You might be wondering why the Russian invasion of Ukraine looks like a group of almost equidistant road-linked thrusts stretching from Russian and Belarus into Ukraine. (thanks to @Nrg8000 for this)
Turning to this War on the Rocks piece, it is said that the average Russian unit has a truck lift to take it to 90 miles (140km) from the closest large supply dump (see below). You would have to double the trucks on hand to get to 180 miles. warontherocks.com/2021/11/feedin…
Here is the map with a 140km/90mile line (handdrawn, apologies) in black in the middle. What you can see is that there have hardly been any Russian thrusts that have exceeded the natural limit set by their truck lift.
I wonder if these two tweets are related. Biden saying that the USA will not directly fight for Ukraine while ramping up deliveries of more effective systems. We are watching the formation of new red-lines throughout this conflict.
The uncrossable ones are no ground-forces in Ukraine or aircraft in the skies--no direct exchange of fire. What the US has done, however, is constantly test the red-line of what military systems they can deliver to the Ukrainians.
Otoh, the Russians are trying to push red lines in the other direction. This is quite an audacious claim. THough I dont think they would dare do it, as it would also involve a potential direct exchange with NATO.
There has been an change in the discussion of a possible Russian success (victory doesnt seem to be used so much these days) in the war against Ukraine, saying that because the Russian Army is still advancing in places, the situation is better for them.
Indeed that article talks about using some battlefield victories (taking of Kyiv) as a means of leveraging greater concessions from Ukraine in negotiations.
This is an entirely different concept of victory than that which was talked about earlier a complete abandonment of maximalist aims.