The_Capt

And here we need to get into some staff tables and medical modeling. The answer is always "depends". The old metric, was the whole thirds thing. One third out of battle permanently, one third out for something like weeks and then one third minor injuries and rotated back in less than 72-95 hours. Time frames shift and there are some pretty complicated models out there. Further, modern battlefield medicine has also thrown those ratios around a lot. For example in Afghanistan we were seeing 1:10, one death for every 10 wounded because we could get medical care forward much faster and we also had a lot more medical training in the forward units (e.g. half my guys were TCCC). However, we sent a lot more people home out of excess caution too, so our "going home" ratio was likely higher. So what? Well the Russians are probably in and around WW2 (or maybe worse) so if they are showing 9k dead, then we can extrapolate that another 27k-ish have been hit in some shape or size. About a third to half of those should be out for good and the rest come back in at some time frame. Here is another good one that shows the stats for WW 2 on page 339: https://learning-media.allogy.com/api/v1/pdf/59ca4340-e2f2-4a1d-92d9-ee0398092628/contents In WW2 for example about 83 percent of those that were hit either died or were so badly hurt they had to be pulled out. Were as in Iraq and Afghanistan that number was down to 52 percent. Bottom line, is that of the say 40k who got hit, maybe 1/3 get rotated back in after a set period of time...theoretically.

He is being generous. Based on probable losses, my bet is that is closer to 80% or lower at this point, and that is just on equipment losses, not soft factors like loss of C2 and logistical support. (e.g. Oryx is showing 27 BTGs worth of tanks lost). As to personnel, that one is all over the place. The middle estimate seems to be the US one of 9k but at 1:3, we are heading towards 40k out of battle in some way or another, if the initial build up was 190k troops , this also matches a 20% loss in combat effectiveness. What is not known is how many reinforcements have been pushed in, lots of speculation. However, you cannot simply take a battalion/Bde and drop it in country, there is an entire RSOMI process (or should be) to get them integrated into the overall operational fight. If the Russian's just crammed them forward then you really have reinforced with a disorientated armed mob that is waiting to die. As to Steve's point, the tipping point for most modern militaries is 70% but who knows in this case.

Have to disagree with you there Steve, they don't have our secret weapon: Rooaaawwr!! Get those engines running ladies....

Well despite the evidence of the time we spend here, I think we all have day jobs that keep getting in the way. At least Steve has the excuse that the Russian's blew up his release schedule.

Only way the Russians could pull off traps based on how the Ukrainians have been fighting is to 1) out manoeuvre them and 2) out-C4ISR them. And right now I am pretty sure that particular option set has left the building with no intention of returning. More likely the Russian defenses will be identified, isolated and cut up piece-meal until they break at the rate things appear to be going.

Respected experts would be all over finding out why their assumptions that led to their conclusions turned out to be so far off base. I don't see a lot of these YouTube types doing that but am happy to be surprised. Next war I say we stand up a BFC/CM analysis channel and bury these guys....

Hey now, Col Macgregor said the Ukrainians were on their last legs, cut off and only capable of "pin pricks". Then that slick haired SF fella, the one with the assault rifle said the Russians were only doing a "pause" to build up logistical hubs so they could resume the offensive....I am so confused!

Is this not also the "best-case" for Russia as well? I have no doubt that there are those in the power streams that are thinking exactly this right now. Questions is, what will it take them to act? Putin does not have a coherent ideology behind him. He has patriotism, "Russia world power" and the ideology of "Putin Stay in Power". This makes him a lot more vulnerable when compared to other autocrats who successfully built a cohesive ideology around them (e.g. communism, fascism, Nazis, whatever is going on in NK). Further, if he is failing in the first two planks of his platform, "patriotism" vs "dragging the country into a useless war", and "Russia as world Power" vs "losing said useless war", then we are down to "Putin Stay in Power". It is becoming in the best interest of a lot of powerful people that he is 1) removed and 2) blamed while they were "just following orders" as it creates a viable exit scenario from this mess. But we will have to see.

Said it before, time is not on Russia’s side on this one. They cannot afford a long drawn out war on pretty much every level except Putin’s brain.

I think we described this way back, I referred to it as the Nagasaki strategy. A lot of problems with this: - First, I am not sure it would work. Say the tac nuke Mariupol and "demand surrender, or else". Well I am not sure at this point if the UKR PM stood up and declared "unconditional surrender" that the Ukrainian people or the UA would even listen. At best, Russia is now looking at a very long term resistance and occupation it cannot afford. - Blow back from Ukraine may include asymmetric actions within Russia from domestic insurgency/mutiny that may be western backed. Might work, might, not but even the Russian people have a breaking point and this might be near it. It may also result in his military finally bucking or those in power deciding that their interests are better served with Putin in a hole in the ground. - It gives the West permission. By using nuclear weapons Putin throws one of his last cards on western restraint. I am not sure if it leads to a no-fly zone but it does create a forcing function for western leaning in. I am not sure we have a red line in Ukraine but a tac nuke might just do it. I know a lot of people are frustrated by the response from the West ("why aren't we doing X"), that is because the ultimate risks of where this might lead far outweigh any direct actions we might take. A thermonuclear war with Russia is a civilization re-set event, hundreds of millions die immediately, billions on what follows. You can downplay it (it will never happen), or sidestep it (Russian capability is a lie) but the facts are the west will do everything it can to avoid that escalation...unless Russia moves first, then the calculus changes. I am pretty sure that "first strike" options are out there and they won't be theoretical if Putin starts playing fast and loose with nuclear weapons. - Zero chance of normalization with the west, may even alienate the Chinese. Those sanctions will become a new Iron Curtain, which may happen anyway but China is not some rabid dog nation. They are rational in their objectives and strategies, even if we disagree with them. Dropping tactical nuclear weapons is so disruptive and bad for business that it may spoil China's game and they will draw back. - Misunderstanding signals. Lot of fingers on nuclear buttons right now and Putin knows it, because he started it. A nuclear detonation in Ukraine could be how it all starts up, and by "it" I mean the real deal. Putin has to be wondering what the US did with all that SDI technology over the last 30 years and if the nuclear deterrence equation doesn't have his back anymore. He talks tough but that usually points to what he is really afraid of, so employment of nuclear weapons is a really big step. So, no, the nuclear button is not the "easy button" by a long shot, or he already would have pushed it.

I have been thinking a lot about the defensives and this war. The UA has conducted what looks like a very dynamic and mobile hybrid-based defence that essentially has brought the Russians to a strategic standstill. They did so through an apparent combination of active resistance in depth, deep raids/strikes, greatly increased reach and lethality and highly empowered C4ISR that spanned well into the public resistance movements. The sense I am getting is that the UA was able to determine where the Russians were and were going fast enough to either pre-position or hand-off to a self synchronizing tactical defence that cut them to pieces. What is really interesting, and resonates, is that like most innovations in warfare it appears emergent. Not to short-change the commanders in the UA, it likely helped the UA was not dug into static positions everywhere because that would have played to Russian mass. By not having a UKR Maginot Line the UA appears to have been able to keep its combat power far more dispersed until they needed to pull it back together. So what? Well at the tactical level the Russian challenge is significant in the defence. The standard approach is to dig in along key/vital terrain in interlocking unit/sub-unit groups. You then secure a rear area for logistical support, the most dangerous threat here is airpower and deep artillery strikes. However, normally those rear areas are outside of ISR (or at least harder for the enemy) and as such artillery leaned towards mass fires for interdiction and then attrition for the attacking force. The defender then employs ISR to try and spot an attacker early and do the same, while enjoying the position of being dug in and well sighted, with AD, obstacles and all the trimmings. Problem here at the tactical level for the Russians are rear-area security is much harder. Even if they remove the local populations, or at least take away their ability to communicate, the UA still has UAVs everywhere and so far the Russians have not demonstrated much in the way of C-UAV, particularly the smaller ISR sets. Add to this the entry of loitering munitions and now the Russians have a real problem trying to create a secure rear area. They could try the US Army Winning the West approach of forts and strongpoints, but these are now vulnerable to UA artillery, and they are easier to find. Could the Russians try the same game as the UA did in the opening phase of this thing? Well technically yes, but I don't get the sense they are set up for it C4ISR-wise, nor training or doctrine. In the UA defence, I am seeing a gold standard of junior officer and NCO performance, and you absolutely need this in order to make this approach work. The Russian reliance on mass does not appear to have the same quality, so trying to do a Russian form of distributed defence is a long shot. This entire thing creates a deeper dilemma for the Russians at the tactical level - how do you take and hold ground when the act of doing so makes you more vulnerable to your opponent than they become to you? I expect the Russians will "dig in" and pound civilian centers, when the the act of doing so makes them very vulnerable to UA c-atks particularly in depth. The Russians brought a machine gun to a swarm fight and I am not sure if they dig that MG into a bunker it gets much better for them

Well from the same production house the Russo-Japanese War has to also rank up there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War

"But Capt, we didn't control the entire route up to Bagdad..." True but two very different things at play. First off we adopted the Combat Logistics Patrol (CLIP) which is basically a fighting logistical unit that can push through attacks. And second, we are talking about an entirely different level of opposition. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we had an insurgency, which by definition is a marginalized group of sub-society who decide armed violence is a means to a political end. They are in the minority, often working in lose networks and cells with limited support. In Iraq, that band of disgruntled ex Iraqi military were still able to make life a living hell for logistical resupply in the early days of the insurgency. In Afghanistan, the Taliban did it for 20 years despite everything we could throw at them...the Ukrainians are not even in the same league, in fact they are a different species entirely. The UA's hybrid approach is built on a foundation of widespread resistance, which is not normally in the minority nor is it marginal. Further, they are able to project hybrid forces behind those lines, armed with next-gen weaponry. So a Russian CLIP is just going to get cut to pieces at range and we are back to "controlling corridors" where as has been mentioned the math does not add up. And here I do express frustration with the endless stream of "experts" because they are either using the wrong math metrics (force sizes) or simply missing the math that matters. [aside: When I see a "bro" with either ballcap/slick backed hair and their SF T-shirts on, I immediately stop listening because this is war college level stuff. The US has an entire sub trade(s) quals that are groomed to do this sort of planning]. The Russian math hasn't really added up since day 1 in my book, but they might have another shoe to drop...you know so now both feet are naked.

Not sure if someone already posted this but this is the first video of CMCW that has crossed the 1M views line.

So I think we are at the point that we can call it, I think the Russian strategic Offensive Phase of this war is pretty much at an end. We went from Quick War, to Siege/Grinding War, to what is looking more like Balkan War as Russian forces appear to be 1) pulling back and consolidating and, 2) trying to assert control in the areas they do "control". This does not mean we won't see offensive action at the tactical scale, in fact I suspect the Russians will burn assets and troops trying to take Mariupole and any other hub they can; however, the big red sweeps are likely over, at least for now. So what happens next? Or maybe what could happen next? - Strategic Pause. The Russians almost look like they are trying to conduct a strategic pause, which is in effect and attempt to re-mobilize within political constraints/restraints. Stories of troops being pulled in from the east and weird "contracts" are a possible sign that Russia is trying for a major re-org/re-boot before they would likely double down on Plan A. Given how badly they have been chewed up this theory is not too far out there. If Russia goes this way, it means they think they can sustain the war for months into the summer and make another run at Putin's Dream. They will need to re-stock a lot of equipment and ammunition so there should be signals in strategic Russian production and pulling out of war stocks. On the pers side we might see some sort of rumors of a Russian version of "stop-loss" as they start playing fast and loose with military contracts. I don't think Putin has the backing to go full national mobilization (or he would have likely already done it), so this will be "as much as we can and still be able to call this a 'special operation' nonsense". - Grab, Hold, Bargain. More likely, but not exclusive of the Strategic Pause theory is that Russians are going to try to dig in and hold onto as much leverage as they can in order to shore up their position at the negotiating table. This will likely see lots of medieval stuff to terrorize the UKR government into concessions. We saw exactly the same ploys in the Bosnian War with Sarajevo (and Mariupole is starting to look worse than that). The question will be how long this takes but it cedes the pressure back onto the UKR government in a typical extortionist/domestic abusers argument of "it is your own fault that I have to beat you". - Last Gasp. Another option, and one I know favored by Steve, is that this is the beginning of the end for the Russian military in Ukraine. What we are seeing is a lot of "scrambling for success" a the lower levels so that they can say "we did our part" while the higher levels are no doubt thinking about "alternative options". The test as whether this is collapse or simply digging in will be how well the Russians can hold up to inevitable UA counter attacks. So Whats? First off the Russian military has an enormous defensive problem, entirely of their own making. By my rough measurements, by attacking along 4-5 separate operational axis of advance in an attempt to take the whole eastern part of the country, they now have a frontage of roughly 1400km+ to try and "defend". That is roughly three times as long as the entire Western Front in WW1. To make any areas they control even close to airtight, they are going to need hundreds of thousands of troops to do it. Troops I am not sure they have, nor can equip, let alone conduct C2 for at this point. If Russia is serious about Grab, Hold Bargain, they may have to simply wholesale abandon some axis and gains likely in the East in order to be able to create credible defensives and pressures. We do know the UA has troops all along those 1300km frontage, they are either regular, hybrid, or resistance/territorial defence. They know the ground intimately and are continuing to see a steady flow of weapons in from the west. How the UA counter-offensive goes will be key to determining the actual situation of Russian forces. Second, without making the areas they defend "airtight" they will continue to be plagued by attacks along their LOCs. The Russians might try to make ironclad support corridors but given the ranges of the UKR weapons systems this is a huge undertaking of interlinked strong points just to get the supplies to some sort of front. This will make the logistics problem worse. That, and defence still puts a lot of strain on logistical systems, but in different ways. Ammunition, not gas becomes the central issue. Field defence stores and landmines take a lot of truck space, so we should be seeing more of that, along with of course artillery and other ammunition. That and now Russia needs a lot more manpower, which all need a lot more pers-based supplies such as food, water, clothing, sanitation (unless you want General Disease getting into the game) and medical. Third, C4ISR in the defensive is a bit of a nightmare. Whereas in the offence you can prioritize your main efforts, in the defence you have to be able to see and coordinate fires everywhere at the same time. Doing that along a 1300km frontage is...well, simply insane but hey here we are. The UA, did a pretty good job of it but it was their ground, they had the HUMINT going their way, and very likely buckets of ISR feeds from the west. The Russian architecture has not demonstrated they are set up for this. Further, this is contested airspace so one cannot simply dig in and sit, they are going to have to keep high value assets moving, like artillery, all the time or it will get tagged and hit quickly. This will mean that Russians will need to employ a dynamic manoeuvre defence, much like the UA did, and I am not seeing that within the Russian repertoire. The UA counter-offensive will be key. I suspect they will stick with the game that has carried them this far and simply cut up Russian rear areas to isolate and then chop up slices piecemeal to keep making gains. Their hybrid "sharp mass" has been extremely effective in the defence, we will see how it does in the offense but I give them good odds to be honest. If the Russians can do a full Strategic re-set, a big ask, then we could see a Round 2 Offensive Phase of this thing but the odds of it success get worse everyday as the UA "beginners" are becoming veterans very widely. Further they are likely refining C4ISR building on their successes and more and more lethal aid is pouring in from the west. If the Russians cannot get back up and moving before that $800M from the US shows up, well they too deserve what happens next. To be honest, if someone tasked me with shooting for a Russian Strategic re-set, I would tell them it is going to take years because whatever they came with in this "come as you are war" was a failure and we are talking about deep military reforms and training in order to re-build a force that could actually pull off what the aspiration of this thing. In fact you might need to invent a military that does not exist on this planet. In '03 the US had to advance roughly 500kms to Bagdad and they owned the sky and the sea, had set operational pre-conditions, massive C4ISR overmatch, and have some of the best military logistical systems on the planet. It took the US 3 weeks to take Bagdad and they were fighting a eroded and beaten Iraqi military that had zero outside support. The US did not try a 4-5 axis grab along a 1300km frontage because the military planners knew it was impossible with what they had, which was 2-3 times what the Russians brought to this fight (466K, over 500k with allies). And, politics completely aside, Iraq '03 was not well thought of and still is not well thought of in professional military circles as it failed to secure the gains and led to a multi-year insurgency. So as we proceed on this journey, I am wracking my brain to make a list of the "Dumbest Wars in History" but this one has to be on it and moving upwards rapidly.

So if Russia had set the pre-conditions I suspect thing could have gone differently, to a point. I still think it likely the quick war would have failed but Russia may have circled and even taken Kyiv. I think we will be seeing debates on how this war could have gone years. However, what is more important is the technology that the UA was able to exploit to do what they did. The trends on that technology are accelerating not plateauing. Now how fast defensive/counter tech will be developed is going to be interesting. I ask myself, what is the UA had unmanned ground vehicles? What if they had field networks that were impossible to destroy. What if they had fully autonomous UAVs, flying minefields? None of that is sci-fi, it is doable right now. Anyway, it has got everyone’s attention that’s for sure.

Didn't we have some expert way back outline how the Russian plan of attack as all a clever ploy to use railways? So here is the problem with using railways for operational logistics. And that wipe out of the Russian airbase near Kherson the reason air basing is also a "challenging" idea.

Simplest answer could be that they were not ready. Lobbing a next-gen hypersonic missile (a strategic weapon) at a warehouse makes absolutely no sense otherwise. Even if Russian has completely fires off all its conventional cruise missiles, what was in that warehouse that was so important to fire from what is no doubt a much smaller hypersonic missile inventory? The effect of the entire hypersonic cruise missile is intended to reinforce strategic deterrence - “look American dogs we have super missile from mother Russia that you cannot shoot down with your Stars War technology”. And based on the rattling going on back here at home, looks like the message was received. But hey, been a lot of crazy-dumb goings on the Russian side in this one, so I guess we cannot totally rule out option B.

I think Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) may be appropriate here. It is a term that had cache back in the late 90s/early 00's and then lost it because it never really showed up, or at least we could not see it as we got bogged down in one COIN action after another. But RMAs rarely happen overnight, we might realize them overnight, but they take decades to build up to. Take WW1, which is an easy example, the hints of what that conflict was likely to turn into go back as far as the US Civil War (entrenching, tunneling around Richmond). The impact of a group of technologies - long range smoke-less rifles, the machine gun, rapid indirect fire artillery, naval gunnery, info-over-wire, railway technology and canning/food preservation - all took decades to create but when pulled together led to a complete breakdown of military doctrine of the day. In the modern era, it has been information and AI. These technologies have been rapidly evolving over the last 20 years into modern C4ISR, long range and highly lethal smart-munitions, unmanned and what looks like crowd-sourced warfare. We are seeing them being all pulled together in Ukraine and the result has been jarring, especially for the Russians. I think the term "sharp smart mass" may best describe what the UA has managed to do. They have highlighted a method, again that we will be studying for years, that looks like a digital jump but is in fact been on a long journey since about 1991. I mean the fact that we have Haiduk, in Kyiv right now, able to push us information directly from the field through social media, is mind blowing. One way or another, this will be a "Moneyball moment" for military affairs as we all try and figure out what just happened. Because by any traditional metric the Russian military should have sliced through the UA and be smashing Kyiv to bits by now instead of bordering on collapse. We can (and will) put a lot of this on the Russian doorstep; however, we should also be thinking how the UA approach would have faired against western military doctrine and how we might have to adapt our own methods.

I honestly think in the case of this conflict another key factor is the side that is better connected and integrated. I think the old force ratios doctrine was in trouble before this war, as we unpack what actually happened in the coming years I think we will be in for some significant surprises. For example, I want to see what the data/information ratio was between the UA and Russian forces, I suspect it was significantly in favor of the UA. From what I can see the Russians went into this thing thinking that "dim mass" would carry it for them. Based on what we saw in 2014, they had effectively linked UAVs and massed fires to tactical command to startling effect. That got everyone's attention, and then we saw it again in the Nagoro-Karabahk. But the UA has built something very different here I suspect, more in line with "smart hybrid". As Haiduk mentions, this does not mean "all light" it means a nuanced implementation an mix of "special" light and heavy. The only place I have seen this type before was during Mosul, when backed by western SOF, the Iraqi Security Forces kind of took a similar approach. In Ukraine it looks like it was successfully upscaled to an operational level. So I suspect "dim mass" met "smart hybrid" and we are seeing the result, well that plus "vegetative state" operational and "delusional" strategic. Of course this raises more questions than answers...

I am betting on “a”, that demonstration wasn’t for the Ukrainians it was for us. Lead story from news back here this morning:https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/north-america-vulnerable-to-russian-and-chinese-hypersonic-weapons-norad-commander-1.5825995

Oryx is up to 500 Russian logistical vehicles as photographed/filmed as lost. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html That is a full third of Russian overall recorded losses. That is also coming up on 2 x CAAs worth.

I will leave it to Steve and BFCElvis to determine what is, or is not, acceptable on their own forum. I can only judge Col (or is it LCol?) Macgregor on what he presented, which was "different" to say the least. His assessment that "Russia has already won" is definitely contrary to most mainstream military assessment, or media for that matter. However, Col M argues that Ukrainians are "cut off" and "in cauldrons", near a total collapse tipping point. Further he argues that the Ukrainians are only capable of "pin pricks" against the Russian offensive. His noted reason for the slow Russian advance is based on strict ROEs from Putin to "avoid/limit damaging Ukraine" as much as possible, so humanitarian bascially . So, ok, that is one point of view. I am left wondering where Col M is getting his information to build this picture because it clearly does not match what we have been seeing - the "so what?" here is that clearly either he is very wrong or mainstream analysis/assessment is very wrong, not a lot of middle ground here. Thoughts: - We have a very bad habit of "lack of accountability" for what gets said on the internet. Once the smoke clears on all this I can only hope that credibility of sources are held to account (faint hope). We have politicians who have said things, pundits who have said things and that needs to be remembered and assessed after this is over. If Col M is correct, or even just mostly correct, then we clearly missed some big signs or were totally taken astray, and by "we" I mean just about every mainstream venue. - Based on what we have seen on social media, a steady stream of open source information, Col M's thesis appears the total opposite to observation. If this is all "fake news", then it merits as one of the largest and most thorough disinformation campaigns in human history. If the Ukrainians, who are according to Col M on their last legs, have managed to create enough "fakes" to show over 1500 lost Russian vehicles, and Russian damage to civilian centers rivalling the invasion of Poland, this is an incredible feat of information warfare and I am talking one that dwarfs Chinese capability. There is "fake news" and then there is mountains of "fake news". - If Col Ms assessment of Russians adhering to strict ROEs to the point that they have delayed operational advances to the amount we have seen, then the Russian military is likely be best disciplined military force in human history. They have literally violated almost every doctrinal principle of warfare in order to meet the demands of the political level. For a professional military, in the middle of a major invasion, to delay offensive action - particularly against an opponent on their last legs - is one of the most breathtaking displays of military discipline I have ever heard of. The military risks associated with doing this are extreme, not the least of which is allowing time and space for a western-backed resistance to arm and organize. Many Russian soldiers will die because of this "restraint". Problem here is that the Russian military does not appear well disciplined; egregious attacks on civilians, videos of looting, abandoned vehicles, radio intercepts and "lost" PWs point the exact opposite way - unless of course this is also "fake news", and we are back to "how the hell did the Ukrainians pull that off?!". So these are just a few of Col Ms points that I walked away with and I gotta say that if he is correct well we know that this has been a war changing use of information warfare on the part of the Ukrainians, and the Russian military is nearing Spartan levels of control and discipline. However, I have to quote Carl Sagan here "the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness" and one retired Col's "say so" is not enough to go on. Finally as to "why Ukraine matters?" Well I am not going to get drawn into a country-specific political debate; however, the simple reasons are 1) it is inhumane; however that is a little to "hippy dippy" for some, 2) there is no more "over there" in a globalized world and 3) Russia has fundamentally challenged the global system that has made all of us in the west, rich, powerful, entitled and frankly "dumb and lazy". Let's explore that last one. The global system that our grandparents/great-grandparents fought and died for and despite all its inequities -there are many- it resulted in massive and persistent stability (crazy but true) and economic, population and technological growth orders of magnitude higher and faster than any point in human history. This did not happen because a god(s) in heaven ordained it, or weird racial theories that still float out there, it happened because we built it and defended it. Russia's actions in Ukraine are a threat to security because they challenge that system, they got out of line and they are (or at least were) a global power. Such actions do nothing for all that stability I mentioned, in fact they act as a global disruptor, and that is definitely a threat to us all. If anyone is too ignorant or thinks this is some sort of political leverage issue, they frankly deserve what happens next if we let this slide. And what happens next is a new global order being written by someone else while we most likely stand around and blame each other for it.

If those are the 600 series Switchblade, they are terrifyingly nasty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade , up to 80km range!

Oh real conclusions are really hard to come by. I mean we can say the last three weeks have not gone well for Russia and there is a lot of evidence as to why that is (some of it baffling, frankly). I think in terms of options spaces some things are “over”, like a short war. As to when it ends well I would argue that it is more than “when Putin decides”, although that is definitely one way. The others: - Will to fight gives out on one side or the other. If either the Ukrainians or Russians give up, then it is over. What that will take is speculation but there is a collective human limit (aside: you clearly think political warfare is off the table for the West and I have to ask why as it is in Russian Will that this may yield options?). I suspect the Russians are in a weaker position than Ukrainians but we will see. - Capability to fight fails. I think this is Steve’s angle that the Russians are closer on this one than most understand. My answer is “depends”, if Russia digs in and tries to hold onto what they have they could sustain that for awhile. Ukrainians would need to be cut off from the west and ground down but honestly, I do not think the Russians have the horsepower for that kind of offensive action without full on mobilization, and that takes us back to Will. - Power to fight. Again, without being cut off from western support Ukraine has an edge here. Clock is ticking on Russian economic power, it will not break overnight but time is not on their side. I am still trying to figure out what to look for, let alone predict what will or will not happen.