The_MonkeyKing

And the third assumption is that key decisions on Ukraine aid keep being made on time. Also stated in the article.

IMO most important parts: "This has led to significant increases in production output. For example, Russia is delivering approximately 1,500 tanks to its forces per year along with approximately 3,000 armoured fighting vehicles of various types. Russian missile production has similarly increased. At the beginning of 2023, for instance, Russian production of Iskandr 9M723 ballistic missiles was six per month, with available missile stocks of 50 munitions." "Of the tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, for example, approximately 80% are not new production but are instead refurbished and modernised from Russian war stocks. The number of systems held in storage means that while Russia can maintain a consistent output through 2024, it will begin to find that vehicles require deeper refurbishment through 2025, and by 2026 it will have exhausted most of the available stocks." "Perhaps the most serious limitation for Russia, however, is ammunition manufacture. In order to achieve its aspiration to make significant territorial gains in 2025, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has assessed an industrial requirement to manufacture or source approximately 4 million 152mm and 1.6 million 122mm artillery shells in 2024. Russian industry has reported to the MoD that it expects to increase 152mm production from around 1 million rounds in 2023 to 1.3 million rounds over the course of 2024, and to only produce 800,000 122mm rounds over the same period. Moreover, the Russian MoD does not believe it can significantly raise production in subsequent years," "This means that to properly resource the armed forces, Russia must – in the short term – further draw down its remaining 3 million rounds of stored ammunition, though much of this is in poor condition. To further compensate for shortages, Russia has signed supply and production contracts with Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Syria, with the latter only able to provide forged shell casings rather than complete shells. Although the injection of around 2 million 122mm rounds from North Korea will help Russia in 2024, it will not compensate for a significant shortfall in available 152mm" "The Russian theory of victory is plausible if Ukraine's international partners fail to properly resource the AFU. However, if Ukraine's partners continue to provide sufficient ammunition and training support to the AFU to enable the blunting of Russian attacks in 2024, then Russia is unlikely to achieve significant gains in 2025. If Russia lacks the prospect of gains in 2025, given its inability to improve force quality for offensive operations, then it follows that it will struggle to force Kyiv to capitulate by 2026. Beyond 2026, attrition of systems will begin to materially degrade Russian combat power, while Russian industry could be disrupted sufficiently by that point, making Russia's prospects decline over time."

republican house already telling us how they going to smash the bill

3rd assault going to "save" Adviivka? To me this is smelling like the unfortunate end of Bakhmut all over again. In Finnish military thinking defense is supposed to be flexible and bend, like we saw at the start of the Ukrainian war. No point in "no step back" orders, when the situation is not advantageous in the current positions anymore. Then the ground is returned with a counterattack after the attacker has culminated.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/02/10/syrskyi-in-zaluzhnyi-out-what-to-expect-from-ukraines-army-reshuffle/

Mixed opinions on him

Loong road ahead for that bill. More senate votes coming and the real hard one is going to be the congress

I see this as Ukraine restructuring and adopting. That is clearly needed in the light of the last years events. Change is best done by changing the people on the top. In commercial sector and militaries. In addition in democracy the elected officials cannot be changed outside elections.

About now would be a good time to get a data dump on this new man.

It is official, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi dismissed from his current duties

There are some key systems that are only available from the USA. Some of these are: HIMARS/M270 munitions, Patrioit intercepters, AMRAAM/AIM-9(airToAir&GroundToAir) ... Even if Europe made the decisions to invest in own production it could take a decade and would in many cases make very little sense. Of course it is important for Europe to raise its production capacity and it is already doing it, but there is the transitional period with the long "lead times" and some systems will never be made in Europe. Lets make the hypothetical example that Europe had weapons available 5% of Ukraines needs and USA had 1000% available of Ukraines needs. Would it not make sense for the weapons come from the USA with cost split fairly between Europe and the USA?

With the US aid deadlock continuing European countries must start funding US arms for Ukraine. It is surprising to me this is not already happening. European countries are moaning about insuffient production capasity and empty stockpiles... How about purchasing the weapons from where there are plenty (USA, Asia...)?

Here are the latest episodes of "The Russia Contingency with Michael Kofman" (paywall) A New Strategic Vision for Ukraine, part 1&2 Mike sat down with his two co-authors, Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and Dara Massicot, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The three discussed their recent War on the Rocks article, "Hold, Build, and Strike: A Vision for Rebuilding Ukraine's Advantage in 2024," which was published on Jan. 26, 2024. the article: https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/hold-build-and-strike-a-vision-for-rebuilding-ukraines-advantage-in-2024/ A New Strategic Vision for Ukraine, Part 2.mp3 A New Strategic Vision for Ukraine, Part 1.mp3

https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/on-the-brink-examining-ammo-shortages?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1565454&post_id=141397066&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=22ez99&utm_medium=email "For several months, our team avoided discussing publicly internal issues to prevent potential Russian exploitation for propaganda. However, as these problems become increasingly visible and publicly acknowledged, we've chosen to openly discuss them." "As Russian forces persist in pressuring Ukrainian troops in Avdiivka, it is becoming evident that the fall of Avdiivka is not a matter of if, but when. " "The suggested plan for Ukraine in 2024 is to dig in and construct fortifications to minimize territorial and human losses. Unfortunately, this appears to be the only viable, albeit "forced," plan for Ukraine in 2024 unless substantial foreign aid is received and radical mobilization measures are implemented. While this plan is logical, it is not an ideal option." "The problem of adequately staffing military units has existed for a long period. Most individuals have been engaged in combat for nearly two years, undergoing rare and non-systematic, short rotations that are insufficient for a full restoration of their physical and, more importantly, mental well-being." "Although Ukraine urgently needs mobilization efforts to not only replace hundreds of thousands of individuals engaged in combat but also to establish new offensive capabilities, multiple problems are undermining these efforts that many media outlets and analysts prefer to avoid discussing." "The reputation of certain Ukrainian generals has plummeted to the point where they are now likened to Russian counterparts known for deploying careless frontal assaults. This situation is exacerbated by the lack of accountability for such failures or misguided approaches." "Our team has been informed about escalating tension between the Presidential office and the Commander-in-Chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, for over a year, although it has only recently come to public attention."

Looking though Oryx data over time again: https://github.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine Keeping up suprisingly steady phase

"We want Russia to be faced with a decision by the end of 2024: either they have to sit down at the negotiating table on terms acceptable to Ukraine which means sovereignty and territorial integrity for all of Ukraine, or they will face a stronger Ukraine, which is backed by defense industrial base of the US and Europe. For Russia, this will be a difficult strategic choice." US gameplan. Sounds good to me

Exactly. This realization(and many others) would have landed a lot sooner if the West had a better situational picture of what was going on on the ground. And then iterated the strategy accordingly in cooperation with the now better-understood Ukrainian side. Here I am referring to the recent Washington Post article. Sure, there must be a footprint but telling by the results is not enough and in historical comparison, the scale is smaller by orders of magnitude. Also seemed the intelligence community that has the "boots on the ground" had the better situational understanding. Not the Pentagon that doesn't have its guys on the ground on the scale it is used to with partner forces. Britain has a bigger footprint than US in Ukraine and that is also a small presence Here I am referring to the War on the Rocks crews reports; Kofman, Lee

Getting the information flowing, institutionalizing the lessons learned, getting accurate understanding of the situation on the ground. Effects: Pentagon would have not have such false hopes for the offensive and it would have been adjusted, NATO training would match the realities of the war especially when done in-country, less friction between west-ukraine officials when the situational picture would match between them. Example companies would not even dream about running billion dollar operations abroad without significant boots on the ground. For any activity you need a effective feedback loop. We being human it means people of "our" organization being on site and involved directly. This became specially critical now that the West wanted to try something new that requested Ukraine to change and adopt significantly in it's tactics and force.

To me this article confirms the biggest single mistake is the absolute "no boots on the ground" approach of the USA. That is something that has huge first and second order effect on pretty much everything. This article confirms with all the person friction and differences in the situational picture that both sides were in the dark without even realising it. Interestingly the intelligence community had the better picture this time than the Pentagon. The largest "proxy war" in recent history demands the largest in-country liaison officer and monitoring mission in recent history. And no, the couple of CIA guys and British spec-ops do not cut it at all. Much of this could have been prevented and rethought with working information flow. The Pentagon did not understand the Russians or the Ukrainians or the nature of warfare there.

Protip, no paywall if you just register. I think you get like 5 free articles a month

A very familiar problem for Finnish artillery that is mostly towed. We have special tools and explosives that are used to create the anchoring points for the gun. Fast enough to be comparable to doing it in the summer.

I think that article is about what you can expect when you get opinions of a single company co.

Finland practically closes Russian border because of hybrid migrant operation: https://yle.fi/a/74-20060587 A car trip that used to take a couple of hours from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki now will take over 20h. International media is not really picking this up because it is not "total closure" but in practise it is.

https://warontherocks.com/2023/11/some-preliminary-thoughts-on-ukraines-position-in-the-war/ - The Ukrainian offensive has culminated - The last high-risk attempt to cross the river in Kherson to achieve results. - Next year will be a year of static warfare - The coming year will be more difficult than this year. Less resources and the change to balance ongoing military operations and the accumulation of new capacity. - It is important how the West commits to strengthening Ukraine's power. War economy and training** - It is important what Russia does, hopefully it will continue to attack by force in the same style, and will not start to accumulating new power. If there is no change in diplomacy and politics, militarily next year will be an intermediate year that will allow for solutions in 2025 onwards

U.S., European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-european-officials-broach-topic-peace-negotiations-ukraine-sources-rcna123628 Exhausted and disappointed with allies, Ukraine’s president and military chief warn of long attritional war https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/03/world/ukraine-president-warns-long-attritional-war/index.html