The U.S. and Ukraine knew of the shortfalls, but Kyiv still launched its offensive.
www.wsj.com
Some highlights:
- Many in Washington believe concerns in the White House about the war’s impact on the campaign are prompting growing caution on the amount of support
- American hesitation contrasts with shifting views in Europe, where more leaders over recent months have come to believe that Ukraine must prevail in the conflict—and Russia must lose—to ensure the continent’s security.
- Criticizes UKR tactics
- Russian drones and attack helicopters, particularly Kamov Ka-52 “Alligator” gunships, have proven particularly dangerous
- U.S. Defense Department analysts knew early this year that Ukraine’s front-line troops would struggle against RU air attacks
Biden's reticence (probably his influential staff) to provide aircraft and long range missiles are key reasons why the offensive will ultimately stall and fail.
As others have pointed out, I think the WSJ has gone downhill since the Murdochs bought it. While long range missiles and western aircraft would have helped Ukraine, they aren't a magic bullet.
Perun talks about a country builds their military for the kind of fight they expect. The US has built out the best logistics network any military power has ever had because the US knows any fight it gets into is going to be a long ways from home. Finland has built a large army that can be mobilized quickly, but it is mostly infantry and is built to defend the home territory of Finland.
The equipment of the NATO armies is designed to be part of an integrated force with the US as the backbone. When some NATO countries wanted to use military action to remove Kadafi, the US had to be involved because it was the only country that had the command and control apparatus to run the operation.
NATO doctrine is built around overwhelming air power. And not just air power, but air power that can operate at incredibly long ranges from safe bases well out of enemy range. Air power is the core force, with land forces there to secure land the air power opens up. The land phase of the first Gulf War was like cracking an egg with a sledge hammer in part because the allies over estimated Iraqi strength, but what strength they had was crippled by air power before the first tank moved in.
The weapons being given to Ukraine were designed to work within the NATO world and individually they have limits. Most western jets are intended to be launched well out of the range of enemy weapons and then aerial tankers will fuel them on their way in if the range is too long. Considerations for field denial attacks is not part of the calculus because the idea is that the air fields will be out of enemy range. Historically they have been.
Ukraine is going to have to operate these planes in country within range of Russian weapons. Russia will be able to damage the airfields and keep Ukrainian aircraft grounded some of the time. Russia's planes are not as capable as NATO aircraft, but they were designed to operate in an environment that would be within the range of enemy attacks and the fields would probably be getting chewed up by the enemy.
NATO design has not taken into consideration a war in which NATO forces did not have at least air superiority within a short time of the opening of hostilities. There are air defense systems, but NATO has lagged behind Russia in the numbers and the long range capabilities. NATO never developed a long range AD system because it had plenty of F-15s and F-14s (now F/A-18s) that could do that job just fine. AD in NATO doctrine is there to catch anything that slips through the usually thick CAP provided by fighters. There isn't a big need for a lot of them.
I have seen speculation that the US has been reluctant to provide ATACMS largely because the US doesn't have many of them, they are out of production, and the replacement isn't in production yet. The US has a relative few of them to fill gaps that might be left from aircraft doing ground attack. There was never a plan to use many of them, so only a few were built.
The US just did a successful test of a stop gap ATACMS replacement. They adapted the Tomahawk cruise missile to be launched from a ground based system. The USN has lots of Tomahawks, so if the Army can make the Tomahawk adaption easily, that may free up a lot of long range missiles to give to Ukraine.
The Storm Shadows have been provided in numbers because they are an air launched weapon and the British and French have a lot of them.
Western fighters will provide an easy launch platform for a wide array of western missiles and bombs, which is a good thing, but keeping them in the air is going to be difficult in the current climate in Ukraine. The Russians will identify where these planes are coming from and will be doing all they can to keep the runways shut down. Western planes being more prone to injecting debris on the ground makes this easier for the Russians.
There is also an element here of the Russians doing things the west didn't expect. The willingness of the Russians to throw away lives is one factor. Another is the number of mines the Russians decided to sow. The density and scope of the mine fields is something nobody has seen in 80 years. The US has provided M58 MICLICs, but it will need to provide more. The US may not have enough because again, it never expected to face this level of mining.
Talk of the massive scope of these minefields is something that I've been seeing a lot of lately from war analysts. A NATO force might get bogged down dealing with these sorts of fortifications.
The focus of taking out artillery as well as strangling Russian supply might give the Ukrainian combat engineers the opening they need to start clearing paths through the minefields, but it's going to be slow going to get through the fields. Clearing all the mines after the war is going to be a major headache and a big opportunity for the creative tech people.
Once again, Zeihan claims the rail was never returned to full capacity, only one line running and capable of passenger or light cargo only.
This is one thing I'm not sure he is right about. I recall the Russians replacing the damaged section of the rail bridge from the first attack and re-opening it.
The second attack has had a knock on effect on Russian supply. Russia has pressed most of the over the road trucks in the country into service driving supply out of Donbas into the south of the country. The Ukrainians have been able to keep the main rail link in the south under enough threat that a lot of supply has moved to the road. A few months ago someone driving the coast road into Mariupol posted a video of the road going the other way and it was wall to wall semis. It's a small 2 lane road that is taking a lot more traffic than it was designed for.
All those tourists who were trapped in Crimea fled through the occupied territory causing massive traffic jams that those trucks returning from their deliveries got stuck in. As a result, supply has slowed to a crawl in the area causing the supply problems the Russians had already to get a lot worse.
