I will make this real simple. Ukraine does not have the ability to implement the War on the Rocks prescription. First, manpower. Even Ukrainian sources are conceding that Ukraine has suffered more than a million casualties. The average age of the frontline troops is 43. For the math challenged out there (this clearly applies to Kofman, Lee and Massicot), if the average age is 43 that means you have a large number of 50 and 60 year old cannon fodder manning the trenches and bunkers. The under 40 crowd is not flocking to the recruiting office in Kiev to sign up. Just the opposite. They are going to extreme lengths to avoid being dragooned into the army. We’ve seen guys wearing disguises that make them look like 70 year old men and others dressing as women. Not because they are transgender but because the Ukrainian recruiters are not grabbing women off the street and throwing them on to the military bus.
Let’s assume that Ukraine can somehow find an additional 500,000 potential soldiers. (They will need at least that many to keep up with Russia who added that number to their armed forces in 2023 and continue to sign up new recruits at the rate of more than 40,000 a month.) Where are they going to train? Russia’s missile strikes during the past month have hit some major troop locations. For example, the strike in Kharkiv last week wiped out a 200 man contingent of foreign mercenaries. Russia can and will hit every training center in Ukraine, which means the new Ukie recruits will have to be sent to bases in Europe.
We have clear evidence based on the Ukrainian failure in the 2023 counter-offensive of how inadequate that training was. And the training I am talking about is Basic Training. Decent Basic Training takes 13 weeks. Do the math — even if Ukraine can marshall 20,000 new recruits a month and run them through Basic Training, Ukraine would only have 160,000 troops trained in rudimentary skills by the end of the year. Ukraine failed to do that during 2023. What miracle drug will they be taking that allows them to train three to four times the number of troops they assembled for the failed counter offensive? The vast majority of the Ukrainian troops sent to attack the Surovikin lines of defense did not receive Advanced Individual Training nor did they participate in large unit exercises. Knowing how to shoot, clean and maintain a fire arm in combat conditions is a good thing. But that does not automatically translate into how to conduct an assault on heavily defended positions. And don’t tell me the Brits and Germans can handle that training task. Hell, the U.K. cannot even meet its own recruitment needs. The Brits are a puny, inexperienced force lacking in knowledge of how to carry out a combined forces attack against the Russians. Ditto for the Germans. The Wehrmacht is kaput.
The War on the Rocks clown show pays lip service to Ukraine’s need for air defense, artillery, artillery rounds, tanks and armored vehicles, but ignores the real world. No country in the West has the ability to produce these items and send them to Ukraine in the quantities required to sustain a force in the field for the foreseeable future. The authors are particularly lost in La La Land when they talk about Ukraine being able to launch long-range missiles to hit critical infrastructure in Russia. There is no other country in the world with an air defense system like Russia’s. Moreover, if such attacks are launched Russia has the ability to launch successful counter strikes to eliminate those threats.
Where the hell is the West going to come up with a thousand tanks and armored personnel carriers? There are no factories in the West churning these out. To the contrary, the West is struggling to produce 155 mm shells. All of the War on the Rocks “analysis” rests on the assumption that the West’s only concern is Ukraine. That dog won’t hunt anymore. Israel, Yemen, Iran and China are becoming greater priorities than Ukraine.
Finally, let’s assume that Ukraine is able to muster a new army of cannon fodder to attack Russia’s heavily defended lines? Where is the Ukrainian air power? It does not exist and will not exist. If the United States is able to deploy a few F-16s to Ukraine, they will meet the same fate that Ukraine’s now non-existent air force met. They will be shot down.
Thanks for your input, but this thread is about the Russian election.