The_Capt

Am I reading this right is that pretty much a tank company out of action?

“To a bloody war or sickly season”, I expect promotions have been accelerated somewhat in the RA. LCols likely have a lot less than 15 years experience now.

Gotta be honest, I have had a suspicion that the entire tank thing has not only been a political stunt. It has been about post-war Ukraine security and moving Ukraine westward towards a de facto membership in NATO. Because after the UA uses the tanks it has, I suspect this thing might be over - but we all know how quickly things can change. That said, I find myself agreeing with Kofman again (seriously is this heaven or hell? Maybe purgatory) and we need to make damn sure we get what the UA needs right now, and not sacrifice that chasing tanks. This would be strategic cart-horsing.

On tanks, first really coherent explanation I have heard. Western armor is about longer-term strategic sustainment that allows Ukraine to take operational risks now. I must be dead.

Oh my, well someone circle the calendar and everyone start spending like it is the end of the world - because it must be: I think I entirely agree with Mike Kofman. Maybe I died in my sleep...Bil am I dead now?

I think you just summarized the entire Russian strategic problem of this war.

And I am in the "Russia is Sucking at this War because They Showed Up Dressed for Another One (tm)" camp. Or more to the point "War has Fundamentally Shifted and Russia has Adapted Much More Poorly Than The UA(tm)" camp - they have tents right next to each other. We do have campfire sessions with the "Russia Sucks at War(tm)" camp because I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree on...and then they pull out the smores. Anyway, at the beginning of this war we saw a lot of "macro-masking" in mainstream analysis of what was going on. This is essentially applying macro frameworks built on a lot of assumptions that tell you one thing, when the realities at the micro level are showing something entirely different. This very often creates a false macro picture built on a foundation of bad sand, and when the bottom falls out a lot of finger pointing goes on. We, here on the good ol BFC forum, went the other way. We took a lot of micro-observations and upscaled them to arrive at our macro conclusions, which as is turns out were more accurate than the mainstream assessments. 2.5 million views later and here we are. The trick to micro-upscaling is to use enough samples to avoid the anecdotal-trap (where one small story becomes the entire story), and of course try and filter out confirmation biases as best we can. We also have to be very careful about mis/dis information. But with that in mind we have been seeing a lot on the RA performance Feb-Jul, as I have posted several times we actually have an operational level AAR out of RUSI on this part of the war. We all have been watching social media carefully and seeing all sort of war-porn as Russians get cut to pieces etc and stories of Ukrainian force generation (tank week was a blast). All of this is data has been pointing to a growing sense, in my mind at least, that the RA is continuing to devolve as a fighting force. This does not mean "fall apart", it means that they have rolled back their doctrinal approaches to match the fighting forces that they are able to employ. This post and article (again if confirmed) provides a lot of hints: We suspected the RA had devolved at Severodonetsk as it shifted from manoeuvre to firepower based attacks. This anecdote is from last late-summer, early fall near Kherson. This speaks to a military force that is adapting or being forced to adapt by largely going back in time to earlier forms of warfare in order to marshal and project mass. To my mind the RA is in a serious dilemma. In order for it to make offensives work employing a WW2 style of mass, they need that WW2 mass. And they do not have it. If they concentrate enough mass to create it at any point, they have to rob the front line pretty harshly. So the trick for the RA right now is to rapidly concentrate mass before the UA can react, conduct a rapid breakin, break through and break out battle with enough momentum to "pincer" of whatever, and actually inflict annihilation (not attrition) on the UA at an operational level. This is an very tall order. And based on what we have seen from the RA, maybe an impossible one. The level of formation level coordination to do this when your opponent has a massive ISR advantage is very hard (i.e. the UA can see the RA massing before a major push, and just as importantly they can see where the RA is not, because they have had to rob from other sections of the front.) The level of deception plans required to make this work are intense. Further the Russian plan of attack will need to by dynamic and nearly non-linear. This will require a lot of recon and very flexible C2 and seriously wired communications. From what we have seen these are significant RA weaknesses, not strengths. So what? Well when the attack comes - given that like last summer, we may be seeing "the Attack" already - unless we see RA breakthrough and some exploitation, that does not lead to massive casualties, then the RA advance is doomed to stall - and we have not even talked about logistical issues. This report matches a lot of reports that have come in on how the RA is the side that is suffering visible attrition (the VDV moving from BMD-4Ms to BMD-2s and understrength). So the RA will need to somehow not only fill in those gaps, it will need to do it competitively. So I honestly expect a lot of boom, boom. Cratered fields and all. We will see a lot of noisy attacks, and there will be UA casualties but until we see some sort of actual operational level manoeuvre the RA is stuck in the same box it created for itself last spring.

Ok, ok. Hey look the Balloon Week was a lot of laughs, and frankly I think we should all be very proud that not a single 'boobs joke' was fired off. But I think the issue is kinda moved on. I suspect we will hear something more on this once the SSE is done and the US can make political/diplomatic hay over this thing and China has to wipe egg off its face. FWIW, I have been hearing about gravitational variation since the 90s. Some guys were trying to figure out how to find boomers (the subs, not my mother) in the Pacific using this. Not saying it is not a thing, and maybe we will have to scramble to fill the strategic "Balloon Gap" ( @sburke don't you dare!), but personally I am not going to lose sleep over whatever this was until we get more information.

Haven't we been here before with the Canadian in Ukraine guy? There is a possibility that the "guy" is a fictional character but the "observations" are being pulled from actual sources on the ground. The character construct is simply to get everyone to "like and subscribe" because the idea of a 70 year old "frisky and spry" American jumping from trench to trench kinda resonates with the target audience.

This article (as always…”if legit”) is loaded with hints and signals, and is based on pretty recent action by what we’re supposed to be the best troops the RA had left. Main takeaway on a first pass: Heavy attrition is having an effect on the RA - see BMDs The RA is clearly not employing Mission Command - which is not a deal breaker IF you have a C4ISR architecture where one is set up for Detailed Command. The RA’s C4ISR is largely obsolete for this war, and is rendering their mass disjointed and uncoordinated. The combined arms being employed are straight out of Soviet doctrine, complete with echelons but nowhere near the mass require. As suspected air power is absent and disconnected. Artillery doctrine is straight out of WW2 - and I mean literally. Rigid timetables and indiscriminate rigid fire plans. So what? Well based on this small vignette combined with a lot of corroborating observations the RA is a military trapped between two times. It is built for modern warfare on paper, but is connected for 20th century warfare. It does not have the levels of mass of the 20th century, nor does it have the C4ISR needed to make lower mass effective. Their opponent is built almost the exact opposite. The UA has far better alignment between mass, C4ISR and fires.

I think the speculation on “what Putin was thinking” is a little deliberately obtuse and more often a defensive reflex to re-write some sort of early bad assessments. Russia invaded along 6 major operational axis. Tried a deep snap around Kyiv which looked a lot like a decapitation attempt. And then tried for some pretty obvious deep operational objectives - some of this axis pushed 200kms into Ukraine. All the while firing cruise missiles all over the countryside in some sort of “shock and awe” thing. I mean is if walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is probably a hard snap invasion to setup a proxy power situation. I mean what else was the plan? A brief tour of the countryside followed by a barn dance? Of course we cannot know exactly what the plan was but there isn’t that much doubt based on the execution. One thing we have not talked a lot about, largely because it is kind of insensitive to our Ukrainian members, is what would have happened if Russia pulled it off?

Well that is not a nation about to tap out. Speculate all we want, Ukraine is setting up for a counter-offensive (or maybe just an offensive) this summer by the looks of it. By then some of this western kit will be integrated into their fleets and then we will see how this thing goes. We should see a deep strike campaign first, those new missile systems will get a work out. But first whatever this thing the RA is doing needs to culminate.

Ah, no and if this is what is coming off then it is on me. This is not a "Russia sucks, so we win" argument and in fact even though this board heads that way sometimes we do try and pull back to the center. Russia is sucking, no missing that. But it is why it is sucking that really matters. Russia is built for a different war and that is a fundamental problem. They had a very large and powerful military (note I said "had") but it was built for another type of war, not the one they got. Enter what the UA has been doing and corrosive warfare. So the UA stopped the RA in phase I with three things: light dispersed infantry, fires and C4ISR. I cannot stress how much that should not be possible. This was back when the RA had all the BTGs and initiative. This is not sucking, this is being in a war you are totally not setup to fight. So the RA does not suck in general as much as the UA is making them suck at this war. Corrosive warfare...something you cannot even google but us starting to make some noise. Warfare based on precise, rapid and in depth directed attrition aimed at critical nodes and connectors along the entirety of an opponents operational system, that leads to degradation of that operational system up to the point that it collapses under its own weight. This thing is turning the whole game on its head. Russia is a massed based force. Its BTG massed along axis of advance to overwhelm and quickly. They then massed fires in Phase II. And here in the back end of Phase III they are massing infantry. It is pretty fundamental to their theories of success and frankly has been since WW1. But as we have seen, that system continues to fail. The UA hammers logistics, C4ISR, engineering, EW, and AD...all the enablers. If armor or mech show up, they hit them too. So mass is really in the wind right now. To be honest, this is not about Russian offence, it is about defence. We saw this both at Kharkiv and Kherson. Russia failed to defend in both locations and suffered a thousand cuts in each. At Kharkiv this led to rapid operational collapse. At Kherson it was more deliberate and the RA extracted. What we do not know is if the trend will be Kherson because the RA has adapted, or more Kharkivs because we have continued to arm and enable the UA. So the real question that continues to be out there is "Can Russia hold/freeze this conflict with poor quality mass?" It is the one thing it can push forward...why they are wasting it on offence is beyond me - likely because "the boss" is watching again. If Russian can make itself corrosive-proof then maybe. But I am still not sure how they can do that with all the ISR pointed at them. How does one sustain a mass of troops if your entire logistical system can be seen from space? And then hit 150kms back? How can you avoid isolation and being killed in detail with very low troop densities? (We have done the math and the RA has about 225-250 troops per km, post mobilization, and that is nowhere near enough). There is a test of all this coming, and if the RA say stops the UA at Mariupol, well then negotiation might be in the cards. But until then I really do not think the red flare needs to go up yet. Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, massed precision beats everything.

Ok, last chance and then maybe we put it down? Maybe there is no fundamental common ground. Let's talk about negotiation and positions thereof because before this war is over we may have to swallow some salt. First off the Russians are clearly "occupying the territory that want" - the 900 casualties per day on attacks in Jan kinda suggest that they are not done yet. So Ukraine could sue for peace, I am sure Putin would be an a##hat and drag all sorts of concessions, like formal recognition of annexed territories and neutrality, so Russia could try again in 5 years. The simplest answer is "why should Ukraine negotiate when it can still take back more of what it lost?" Here is where the disagreement lies. Many think this is impossible, clearly Ukraine and the western powers disagree. We are not going to sue for peace until we absolutely have to...and we are not there yet. Awhile back I went on about measuring war by assessing the comparative options each side has in the conflict. I demonstrated how the Russian strategic options space has been compressing, quite dramatically from its start state on 24 Feb. So what has fundamentally changed? Russia has not expanded its options spaces at all - actually not true, it bought a bunch of Iranian drones and did a soft-mobilization, so there is that. Ukraine on the other hand is only going to negotiate when it is out of viable options. This is not a poker game, it is an existential war for this country. I argue pretty vehemently that Ukraine as of 6 Feb 23, is not out of options and all that western hardware says we don't think so either. So they are not going to negotiate, and neither are we because no one has to yet. This is not "bad statesmanship" it is good "warfare". Now let's say Ukraine gets to the doorstep of the Crimea...I know, a really long shot based on your assessment. But if they do, the question will be asked..."is retaking the Crimea a viable 'good' option?" It is that 'good' that is going to stick. It is at those pre-2022 but post 2014 lines that options for Ukraine could take a hit. Ukraine has every right to retake those territories but should they...now? Very tough question, and we discussed it at length - lot of emotion in the question. Not going to open it up here, but as a hypothetical if Ukraine runs out of viable good options for offensive action due to political reasons within the post-2014 areas, well then negotiation will no doubt be discussed. Personally I do not like it and would love to see Russia pushed back to her own borders but there are some pitfalls and serious traps in all this that I cannot un-see. Regardless, until Ukraine and the west are at that point, why would they vie for peace now? Because Russia is big and bad...I think they shot that bolt already. Because Russia may exhaust them...well maybe, maybe not. I come from the school of not tapping out when I think the other guy may win. I am not doing it until they win, and even then reserve the option for low-level insurgency and subversive warfare in the backfield...but that is just me. So yes, we may have to sit down to a negotiation table before this is over. But we want it to be from a position of strength, and last Fall was not strong enough. And we obviously think we can make it stronger.

Ok, so this is pretty much the crux of your entire argument as far as I can tell? I mean if there is more please feel free to post it, again a few references or fact could be helpful. Like for instance how big is Russian military industrial capacity? How does that translate into military production? How does that stack up with Ukraine's? How does it stack up to western industrial production? What is happening to Russian industrial production? Hint, it does not look good: https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/industrial-production#:~:text=Industrial Production in Russia averaged,percent in January of 2009. Ok, back into my wheelhouse, the military situation. "Victories of yore"...? we are talking last Nov. So in 3 months of what has really been leg dry humping in the Donbas, the entire UA war machine, one that was able to conduct two simultaneous operational offensives over 500 kms apart while being hit by Russian operational strikes...is on the verge of being wiped out. Or is in an untenable situation? The UA has lost the initiative and can never get it back? So here is where I won't be snide or take personal shots. Instead I will say up front and simply: you have no idea what you are talking about. Now if you are really interested in exploring and widening you knowledge base, stick around by all means. If you here to promote unfounded points of view and insult everyone...well nature will take its course. I am not sure who you have been reading or listening to but my best advice is to stop because they don't know what they are talking about either. Here is what Russia is not going to do because there is not pocket dimension that they can drive their military into and reform/rebuild it over 10 years - but only a few days in our time - and then drive it back out and actually change the course of this war: - They are not going to solve for the C4ISR asymmetry, which is absolutely killing them (literally). In order to gain a level of parity they need to either expand the conflict dramatically and directly attack US ISR assets, or spend billions, compress time and space and invent a competitive ISR architecture in comparison to the US. That is a tall order China cannot meet but that is what Russia will need to do in this war to turn it around. - They are not going to solve for air superiority. Closely linked to C4ISR, the inability for the Russian Air Force to get in this game and fight the war they need it to is nearly insurmountable. The air denial being exerted in this war is pretty definitive. Add to that the Russians never really had a CAS doctrine to speak of, so there is that. - They are not going to solve for operational pre-conditions. The Russian military has demonstrated again and again a failure to effectively dominate the: information/communications infrastructure of Ukraine (and now it is been hardened and integrated with the west), transportation infrastructure to effectively cut off western support and sustainment, and disrupt the linkages between military strategic and political decision making - i.e. shock. They also have not demonstrated an ability to establish effective levels of force protection - we see that nearly daily. - They are not going to solve for logistics. This has been the major problem for the RA and the UA/Western actions have made it nothing but worse. At this point Russian logistics is functioning but has severely been eroded. They have had to disperse logistical nodes and their losses on logistical equipment is approaching horrendous. More facts: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html...and these are simply insane numbers btw. This is the operational stuff and it does not even begin to address the effects of UA corrosive warfare and precision asymmetry at tactical levels. At the strategic level, as we have gone on at length about, Russia has a lot of larger problems. Force Generation is likely the biggest one. Russia can produce all the hardware it can but it is useless unless they can turn it, and people into functioning fighting units and formations. We have seen indications that Russian FG is occurring, likely in better order than we had hoped, but it is no where near what the west is providing the UA with. We know the RA cannibalized its training schools last spring-summer, which can damage force generation for years. They have been able to turn out massed dismounted infantry but this is 2023, we have gone on at length at the challenges of training mechanized forces, let alone the number of specialist required to fix those four big operational points above. Force Generation-wise the RA will need to demonstrate that it can create divisions that are enabled comparative to the UA, and we have seen no evidence of this. And then we get into the political level, and have gone on at length at Putin's constraints and restraints. I just posted an ISW analysis of his risk calculus which outlines some of this. So against that you have..."well Russia is really big and bad". The first step to getting out of the Dunning-Kruger hole is to recognize that your are in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

First off, I am not saying the 2014-16 Russian financial crisis was not a thing. However, if you actually read some of those links you would see that there was more to it than "western softball sanctions". The price of oil being a major one. What I am saying is that we are only at the start of this thing and the Russian economy is looking like it has been hurt worse than it was by 2015. With all my "vomited graphs and charts" from economic sites, you still have not really answered that point. This is leading me to believe that you really do not want new information or data in creating a better knowledge framework, you instead appear to just want to see and hear what you already believe and then promote that. Oh look another BBC article - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61061619 Sure we had an impact back in 2014 on an already vulnerable economy. And in 2022 we have had a similar impact - numbers show worse impact - on an economy that was much better shored up and prepared...while oil prices are in an entirely different context. I am going to let your source "The Grid" slide: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/25/unusual-origins-news-site-00001776 But if we are going to play "my voodoo economic priests say this" https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/forecast-2023-putins-russia-will-look-more-like-north-korea/ https://www.bofit.fi/en/monitoring/weekly/2023/vw202301_1/ https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-war-costs-changing-russias-economy So here we are, you with some strong opinions, an IMF report that may be right or wrong and an old bbc story. It does not change the facts, something largely absent from your position. Ah, ok I see it now. You "get it" and everyone else does not. Ukraine lost about 10% of it territory in 2014, the entire Crimea being the big one. In that intervening 8 years here are some more "vomited" inconvenient facts: https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/gdp That is the Ukrainian GDP after 2014. Here are the growth rates: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=UA All upward except for 2020 - you know the middle of that pandemic thing. So that is with 10% of "critical economic land in the Donbas) occupied. Ukraine also reformed its military power to the point that is crushed the initial attempts at invasion occupation of a military force (and economic power) that should have crushed it. So no, having an additional 7.5% of one country occupied, on top of the 10% they lost while the west was sleeping is not "taken lightly". However, it is not a sign of "unassailable doom" or that Ukraine is in the middle of crushing defeat. So here I will tell you what. Let's put the economic thing to the side. I will accept that maybe the Russian economy may be more resilient than we thought and can possibly keep its head above water longer than anyone has planned for. It is a possibility and let's not dismiss that. I would also offer that a recognition of the damage already done is worth considering as we continue to ramp up pressure and push-back. In short, as to the economic warfare being waged, the jury is still out. Now as a "studier of warfare", answer my next post down the line. Provide some actual facts that demonstrate how the trajectory the RA is on is going to change. How the course of this war has gone in any direction but horrible for the RA. How the UA has, and has every sign of being able to continue to prosecute this war on the battlefield. And I mean real facts, not stuff you heard in a bar or on Reddit or YouTube. Analysis or assessment by people who know what they are talking about. You came on this thread with a position. One that you clearly are not going to come off. You are essentially promoting "negotiate now" as the only reasonable choice, less Ukraine continue down its doomed path of defeat and drags the west with it. You have not provided one corroborating assessment/analysis nor even your own research - you have indeed mocked the presentation of facts that do not align with your view. I have posted a lengthy analysis and assessment of the war to date, with references and demonstrated that it has been on a trajectory for severe Russian defeat. You disagree, now prove it. Walk us through your analysis framework and how the RA is going to turn this around so definitively that the Ukrainian and western political level needs to seriously rethink their calculus. Do you have a different assessment of the war to date? Let's hear it. Do you have a different assessment of RA capability, force employment and generation? Put it forward, with maybe a few "vomited references" to back it up.

All war is communication and negotiation. Yes, what happens this years is going to shape the end state, possibly dramatically. There is a version of the future where this conflict essentially freezes in location. If for example, the UA completely fails in a drive for Mariupol. That might just trigger a lot of sidebar conversations at the political level where tying this whole thing off starts to make more sense. All sides are communicating through violence right now. Violence is a fundamental form of communication in itself. How that communication translates into reality on the ground - a pliable concept, is going to likely shape the outcome of this war. Kursk was an enormous exchange of violent information that shaped both sides afterwards. It shaped them physically, psychologically and socially/politically. It shaped the negotiated end-state dramatically - if Germany had won, the Soviets may have been down a road to a negotiated end-state. And it was all wrapped up in sacrifice - how righteous the cost was in the face of the certainty of what the desired end state was. And we are right in the middle of the same situation, right now. Different scale, but extremely high stakes. I have been a tactical commander on the ground in two wars, studied war and warfare my entire adult life, and teach it now to the next generation. And this war, unfolding on these 2000 pages has likely taught me more in a year than the 3+ decades before.

On a lot of this: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-update-february-5-2023 Very interesting analysis/assessment and speaks to a dictator that is either very risk adverse after making a big gamble and losing, or is much more politically hemmed in than many think.

Solid points. I think we knew this was going to be a long war about a month in and that has not changed. My guess, and it is a guess: We will see some sort of Russian offensive this winter/spring. Too many things point to Russia making a hard push for March. Brace yourselves because it may even include a Ukrainian setback, they do happen. The problem the RA will have is exploitation. If the UA has truly been badly attritted we will know then. Because a local or even operational collapse will happen if it has. The UA will most likely re-establish the front line. Russia will then “declare Victory”, hold a parade and then blame everything that happens after as defensive against NATO aggression (see we told you so, they want our Borscht). Russia will make weak attempts at renormalization and splitting western unity. UA will then wait until late spring or early summer and bring out the hammer. They will likely try the one-two punch starting on a flank, pulling RA in that direction because the RA does not have enough troop density along the line and will have to relocate. And then they will punch down the middle and split the strategic land bridge, likely at Mariupol. If they can make the coast then the Crimean Bridge is in GLSDB range and we have a new ballgame. At this point things get dicey as Russia is approaching a “put up or shut up” point with its own people. I am betting this takes up through the summer as this long jockeying to end game drags on. Recall that the Allies knew the war was over by about 1943. We all loved Saving Private Ryan but by 43 after Stalingrad the German Army was never coming back, Allied bombing was settling in, North Africa was done and the West was really just staking out its win with Normandy etc. It took two years for everyone to fully see what winning losing looked like. In the PTO some point to Midway, others Guadalcanal, but by mid 44 - definitely after Kohima, Japan was out of gas and going to lose. How much and what end state took another year to figure out. So to my mind, Fall 22 was a critical turning point in this war, and now we are just waiting for the finish. But wars are uncertain affairs. I accept that I am very likely wrong. As I have said repeatedly - it is hard enough trying to understand what is happening right now. Let alone make accurate predictions.

Did you mean "Ukraine can win?" Because I do not think for a second that they "can't". In fact in many ways they already have. Now can Ukraine still lose? Of course this is a war - an enormous collision of peoples. All sides can win or lose depending on how those terms are defined. The issue becomes one of probability. History if full of wars that are over but we still cannot really tell who won or lost. Right now the probability of a Russian loss is very high. The probability of a Ukrainian 'win' - and here we need to carefully define things, is also high. But winning is a spectrum. There is "hey we are still an independent but occupied sovereign nation with a decades worth of western support behind us". There is "we pushed them back to 2022 lines, but still have an open sore to deal with just like post 2014 - but we still have all the western support and pull." And then there is "we drove the damned Russkies all the way back to their own borders, the peoples of Crimea and Donbas have seen the light and rejoined the nation - we are unified, the best armed military in eastern Europe, on our way to entering the EU and NATO." And the spaces in between. For the West there is a different calculus. And then there is Russia. All war is negotiation. Escalation. It probably gets the most traction of any concept out there. Escalation dominance, the ladder, controlled versus uncontrolled, nuclear/WMD escalation. What we are really talking about is escalation deterrence. Can either side deter the other through a threat of escalation? Patience is not an escalation strategy - that is exhaustion but we can come back to this. The escalation calculus in this war is complex - a lot of parties in play. However, my sense is that the West currently has the escalatory high ground in this war - at least as far as hard metrics, soft is another story. In the hard metrics of power, the West has barely taken their wallets out nor have they scratched the surface of what is on the menu. For example, the US has about 365 M142s: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/09/14/us-army-himars-2028/#:~:text=The US Army currently operates,US Marine Corps has 47. And what looks to be about 1000 M270s (the HIMARs was the poor mans M270 remember): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M270_Multiple_Launch_Rocket_System So far as I can tell they have given 20 to Ukraine: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/world/europe/himars-rockets-us-ukraine-war.html#:~:text=The United States has so,are made by Lockheed Martin. And still has the ATACMs option. So that is a LOT of conventional escalation room for a single system. We have not even really started to unpack things like C4ISR, where I have no doubt there is room - like say inside Russia itself. So the West had a significant qualitative and quantitative advantage in a lot of key areas. Now as to Russia. Well lets not get too up in our own supply. Russia does still have a large defence industry, one of the largest in the world. It also has conventional escalation room, but the problem for Russia has been the same one they have had since the start of this - they are tooled for the wrong war. Russian defence, with the exception of some niche high-profile boutique capability, few of which have seen actual battlefield use (T-14 anyone?), is still built for competitive advantage through traditional mass. This has been a fundamental problem for Russia in this war - their mass-advantage is not working. It has continually failed to deliver expected results throughout this entire thing. So the outstanding question remains: can Russia out mass Ukraine and the West? Followed by, can they "out mass" in a way that actually works? Those are huge questions. The second one is the most dangerous. Because if they cannot, then they have to completely reorientate their strategic defence industry in the middle of a war. They already are in many ways with the purchases from Iran. So this would mean that the Russian escalation room in the conventional sphere is in effect rendered neutralized until they can make the shift, or prove that mass still does matter. As far as we can see Russian mobilization of mass, has been pretty much what we thought it was going to be. Large piles of poorly trained troops being thrown at a highly complex problem. The single largest problem Russia has is ISR inferiority compared to the West (US specifically) - turns out the RMA and EBO guys were right after all. And that is not something a military fixes in a year or two. So outside the nuclear equation (and lets not go there again), the escalation calculus is actually pointing the other way. The West can send in more high tech next gen equipment - hell we really sent the Ukraine last gen equipment. The West can outspend Russia if they wish. And we have not even scratched the surface of hard escalation - no fly zones, sea denial and cyber. Let alone NATO troops on the ground. All this for good reasons. They are highly unlikely, in fact my bet is they are our next rungs up the ladder if Russia actually tries tactical WMDs - and Russia knows this. That is escalation deterrence. So it is Russia on the tightrope with respect to hard power, not us. Now as to soft factors like morale, will and fatigue - well that is a different conversation. Toughest thing to do in the post-modern era is to try and convince westerners that something more than 10kms away from where they live, or more than one election cycle out, is important. Second toughest thing is to get at least two highly entitled generations to actually be willing to sacrifice anything. So can Russia out-escalate us on a willpower dimension - well I guess we will see and kind of why we are all talking about it here.

Ok, well you have already been pretty badly beat up on just about all your comments and positions with respect to military assessment. This is not a bar, posting some credible references or something, anything that supports your position may be an idea as we move forward. But it is a free country and that comes with all the good and bad in the end. So lets talk about "Russian Advantage", because that is what this all comes down to in the end. In line with the Russian Economic Advantage, what is the Russian Military Advantage and how does that translate into future outcomes etc? Well the obvious one, from those who deeply study warfare, is capacity. Russia, as has been shown on infographics since day one of this war, has got mountains of steel and an ocean of fighting aged males to throw at a poor huddling Ukraine as it just barely manages to hang on. There is some truth to this although I personally think it has been over emphasized to a large extent as Russian willpower to actually spend all that steel and blood is clearly not a "done deal" with respect to this war. If it was, Putin would have fully mobilized at the terrifying scope and scale the Russian Bear is capable of as demonstrated by so many Hollywood movies and myth. Ok, lets not quibble, the RA is a big ol beast, with a large industry behind it...got it. So does size still matter? Does it matter in this environment? Does it become a liability in this environment? And finally, why has Russia largely failed on the battlefields of Ukraine if size and attrition were the critical factors in this war? Why has Russia largely failed on the battlefields of Ukraine when they also had advantage in manoeuvre? What I do not get from the "Russia is going to win" crowd, is what is their explanation of the exceptionally poor battlefield performance of the RA, which has led Russia into what is now a morass and quagmire (if this was a US war, people would be all over those words)? And Russian performance - outstanding gunners and all - has been abysmal. Pulling from the RUIS preliminary report: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022 Russia had enormous mass advantage in Phase I of this war. 12:1 of mechanized forces north of Ukraine (pg 1). By all traditional military metrics that is an overwhelming force ration advantage. They were stopped cold. Worse, after a month of mooing like cows in column while getting pounded they had to withdraw from 2 out of the 6 major operational axis of advance, many of those units reportedly at 20-30% strength after a month of being cut up and hammered by UA "tiny" artillery. So that was the first really bad sign, again if the US had suffered a similar setback in 2003 south of Bagdad people would have lost their minds - or gleefully celebrated the downfall of US power in the region, whichever their leaning. Ukrainian War Phase I - this is done, it is fact. Then Russia did a political spin in quick order and re-drew the definitions of victory. "The Northern Offensive as a feint" which is brutally laughable at those force ratios pointed at a capital city and seat of political power in nation you are invading. They then re-set the official line as "The Donbas" and began a crushing and grinding assault on the region during Phase II of this war. Recall the cauldrons and pincers with bold red arrows all over maps last Apr-May? "Attrition against Russia will never work!" people cried..."Ukraine cannot win"..."Russia has reframed this war to their strengths." Well turns out they were wrong then too. Russia, at one point at Severodonetsk, has mounted over 900 guns in a density to rival the western front in WWI. They turned entire fields in the Ukraine into moonscapes as they completely abandoned mechanized warfare and did a "blast-advance-repeat" older style of overwhelming firepower. But what actually happened? Well they did not achieve an operational level breakthrough - against a vastly outnumbered and gunned UA. We did not see a single mechanized, or otherwise, break through - let alone break out - in that campaign. We did see some horrific Russian river crossing attempts and casualty rates, but remember "Russian Bear!!" The UA stood back and took it. I recall the rumblings on social media of UA troops, under trained and equipped for this fight...it was only a matter of time. But it went nowhere. Russia managed to take Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk and advance a couple dozen kms towards Slovyanks - which I am sure as a "studier of warfare" you recognize as the obvious operational objective in the region. And then the RA stalled and ran out of gas. No other way to put it. At a strategic level Russia "mobilized" which is never a good sign for how things are going on the ground (see: conscription and Vietnam). Russian attacks and firepower all waned. Phase II was a poor outing that had high costs and yielded very few gains. And then Phase III happened. The UA, who was supposed to be on the ropes and barely hanging on, went on the offensive. We all knew Kherson was an operational objective but conditions were clearly set for Kharkiv as well. My hypothesis is that the RA burned itself out so badly at Severodonetsk that the entire Kharkiv line eroded out. So then we saw this: https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/09/15/a-stunning-counter-offensive-by-ukraines-armed-forces That is what a breakin, breakthrough and breakout battle looks like. It does not look like what we are used to, but the UA managed to make the entire right flank of the RA collapse in about 30 days. And then they were not done yet: https://www.graphicnews.com/en/pages/43152/ukraine-kherson-counteroffensive Now this was not Dunkirk that we wanted, but retaking the capital of a region that Russia just did a big show of annexing is nothing but a win in my books. And so here we are, Winter 2023 and the "Ukraine can't win" crowd - who do have legitimate concerns, I will not take that away - are back. So I am not going to dig into the current state of the RA or an assessment of their actual fighting capacity at this point based on what we are seeing - human wave attacks with weaker artillery is again not a good sign. All the while the UA is getting larger and larger injects of greater capability. Or how fundamental conditions like ISR, air power or sustainment have not actually changed. What I am going to do is make the "Ukraine can't win crowd" do the actual work to prove their point. Based on all of that above, and the progress of this war to date, you have two ways to go. The UA and Ukraine are barely holding on and are going to break any second - lets call this the Macgregor school. Or the "Russia is just getting started and has magic rabbits by the fuzzy buttload in hats". Based on the progress of the war so far you are going to have to provide evidence and facts that support the idea that conditions have fundamentally changed. That those changes will alter the current trajectory of this war. This is something I have not seen one credible coherent argument put forward in this whole thing. In fact, I will give you opportunity to take a shot, and then if I have time I might just try to do it for you, if I can.

If you are going to start throwing statements like these around you need to put out the facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_financial_crisis_(2014–2016) https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-domestic-product GDP contraction in 2015 (post sanctions) was somewhere in neighbourhood of 2-2.5%. It was around 3-3.5% contraction in 2022: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/impact-sanctions-russian-economy/ https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/russias-economy-end-2022-deeper-troubles Inflation. In 2015 inflation increased to about 13% (see Wikipedia page on Russian Financial Crisis 2014-2016). In 2022 annual inflation in Russia - 13.7% https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/russia-inflation-rate/ Russia’s capital market has taken a serious hit, dropping by 1/3 and has not recovered (see Impact-sanctions-Russian-economy on the consilium site). So the reality is that beyond some Ruble propping which comes with some risks as I understand, your central premise is not backed up by facts. The Russian economy, based on some central indicators like GDP growth, inflation and capital markets has take hits equal to or worse than “the immediate shock of 2014”…and this is without the drop in oil prices that occurred then. The entire argument falls apart out of the gate at this point. Ok, another big statement “we all know” without any foundations in facts. First off Russia is currently holding about 87 thousand sq kms of Ukraine right now…about 18%. So on the surface, “oh my that is scary”. Well it skims over the fact that within that 87 thousand sq kms is the original occupied territories in the Donbas and Crimea, which come to about 42 thousand square km…which they have occupied since 2014. So in reality the gains in this war come to about 45 thousand sq kms or roughly 7.5% actual gains within Ukraine that they did not have before this war. Based on 350k dead or wounded, that is about 46k per percentage gained, or 6k sq kms. I do not know where the Russian finish line is but it had better be close at those loss rates. I have posted the economic realities of the Donbas, which was one of the lowest economically performing areas of Ukraine pre-war and realities of the Crimea so many times that you can do the work to go dig them out. But essentially we have debunked the entire “it is all about oil and gas” more than once. Russia did not need those reserves, or in the case of the Black Sea, already had control of them. And the costs of accessing them are going to exceed any gains for a very long time, maybe never at this rate. ”The reality” is a lot of people with a quick finger on their favourite Reddit or wherever get these “facts” and then repeat them so that they become “known”. Few of these people actually put in some time on research and get enough facts to create context. So a lot of your initial premises are in fact flawed, which unfortunately means that your deductions have got some problems too. I would respectfully suggest that you need to revisit some of this and then come back to the discussion.

So Russias economy is airtight and bulletproof, and Putin as glorious leader/dictator for life can demand his people die in the millions for him? I mean that is where this line of thinking is carrying. We as weak western democracies cannot possibly impose enough pressure, nor will our willpower survive as long as a dictatorship because our system is inherently weaker. I am sorry but I am not buying any of these points and nor does history bear them out. Sure Russia has put in fallbacks and economic bastions, but how long can they last? Every dictator you mention had a very different economic system to sustain their society. Russia will need to re-wire theirs (already have) in order to make this work in the long term. We have posted a plethora of charts and graphs on how the Russian economy has taken sever hits and has had to prop up its currency and system in many dangerous ways. Now the IMF makes a two year prediction in the middle of a shooting war and we leap to “negotiate!”…? Economic systems take time to shift - in 2014 it wasn’t like the sanctions were felt over a weekend. In fact it took 2 years to see full effects on GDP, maxed out in 2016. https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp And then recovered but never back to 2014 levels. Yes, let’s look at the long game for a minute. If Russia gets away with this stunt and we blink, then we are back to anarchy of states. China, Russia or whoever is aligned with them are going to be able to fall back on Rule of the Gun. If we didn’t stick it out in Ukraine then why should we in Taiwan? We built the system. If we want to keep it, we have to be willing to fight for it. Russia is not a bunch of extremist yahoos, it is a global power that went “ya, whacha gonna do about it?” So we either push it back in line or the whole drug deal starts to unravel. This is not about national identity, it is about a global order (warts and all) that put us all on top. We defend it or lose it. This war is a test of western will and resolve as much as it is for Ukraine or Russia. Dictatorships are notoriously fragile, normally collapsing with the death of the dictator. A few have bucked the trend - North Korea, but that freaky state is a whole thing on its own. Russia is a modern and developed nation, with a capitalistic economy. It does not get to illegally invade another nation and get away with it. And if we tap out, we’ll what happens next is all on us. Can they be beat? They already have been. Someone (other than Macgregor) paint me a scenario where Russian strategic aims are accomplished. We can construct a new Iron Curtain if we have to, hell we split Germany in half and pulled its western side into NATO. Europe is weaning off Russian energy, that is going to have effects that last a generation. Russia has not regained operational offensive initiative, they are doing the same tactical pecking they have been doing for months. And even if they did retake the initiative, how long can they hold onto it? No, our main threat is western attention spans. We are used to everything being fast, especially our “real” wars - the low level stuff we can always change the channel on. So now that we are in a real test of resolve we either buckle down and finish this thing, or not.

I think we kind of beat the Russian economy to death a few pages back. I am not so confident that they can come out of this better than they went in - the material costs of waging this war alone are significant. And the full effect of sanctions, energy price caps etc have not fully set it. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/01/31/imf-improves-economic-forecast-for-the-eurozone-and-russia-amid-energy-crisis-and-raging-w And as with everything economic, it really depends who you ask. https://www.reuters.com/markets/russias-more-gradual-economic-contraction-extend-into-2023-2022-12-02/ https://blog.oxfordeconomics.com/content/a-darker-economic-scenario-from-russias-war The answer is simply - keep at them, pressure those doing business with Russian anyway we can and make Russia’s economic life as difficult as possible.