The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
Yeah, Ukraine is hella closer to a peer enemy than any war fought by major nations since Korea.
Another analogy would be USA vs Iran. 1/12th gdp, 1/4th population. America always avoided direct invasion or even strikes within Iran. Back when Trump seemingly geared up for an invasion, critics were widely saying that Iran would be the graveyard of America if they tried to invade.
Yet another reason why half assing the war and thinking it can be won with minimal loss tactics shows a failure of leadership to understand the situation. At least when America invaded Vietnam, a far smaller country but one that had full backing from the communist world, they were smart enough to widely use strategic bombing and to institute a general draft.
Russia has a certain level of tactical failure that would be unacceptable among the 2 strongest militaries in the world. But I don't see tactical problems as the major reason for a shaky front and bad progress. It is rather strategical failure.
The comparison with Indonesia is not that great because China would have to conduct a naval invasion which is orders of magnitutde harder than the land invasion that Russia is doing. Plus, China does not border Indonesia, it would take sizeable amount of time to get there, while Russia is directly at Ukrainian borders with their population centers not that far away. Moreover, most of the borders between Russia & Ukraine are flat, i.e. there are no easily defendable chokepoints like in e.g. China-India land border.
How can Ukraine be a near peer with those stats (far smaller population, economy, territory, military budget, etc.) and what should have been inferior & less numerous military equipment? Plus it is only the second largest country by territory, not other more meaningful stats. In my view, near peer situation would have been if Russia invaded Germany - yes, the latter has almost x2 smaller population but it is compensated by stronger economy. Ukraine by all means should not have been a near peer to Russia.
About himars you have sadly fallen to propaganda. Ukraine made by far its biggest gains back when it had fully USSR equipment but in the hands of well trained troops, during the battle of Kiev, where a level of success achieved is what they're trying to get in Kherson for last few months but failing to replicate it even at far greater losses.
The single weapon that did change the battlefield was men. A lot of people including me had a dismissive attitude to 6 rounds of conscription, believing such soldiers would easily break and run, but fact is, they proved to be courageous fighters overall, and lacking Russian tactical fire once the Ukrainians numbers swelled did the rest in making these conscripts viable.
I think many have been subconsciously brainwashed by both NATO and PLA ideas since they're both full volunteer armies, both believe that conscription is an outdated method that cannot produce good armies and both have strong faith in their own full spectrum tech supremacy. But actually evaluating recent historical conflicts, the battlefield has in fact not advanced so far that numbers are meaningless compared to tech.
I think at this point most of the open stationary fuel depots are out of commission, but that doesn't stop mobile fuel trucks from acting as mobile depots from warehouses filled with fuel tanks. This limits Ukrainian movements somewhat which we see from their low tank and APC numbers, and using technicals instead. There's also the fact that Ukraine has rationed fuel from civilians. The military uses alot less fuel than the civilian economy.
Remember that Russian ISR, due to lack of satellite numbers (only 3) in SSO, only has local revisit times of ~10 days (40 days per satellite) or so in terms of strategic coverage, and their large Tu-214MR and Tu-22MR recon aircraft only can see a few hundred km into Ukraine from the Russian border, but with low patrol times due to limited numbers: they only have 2 Tu-214MR and 12 Tu-22MR with 1 of the Tu-214MRs sitting in Syria right now. That means that a large tanker truck driving even a few km just once per day is almost impossible for them to track.
Because of this intel limitation on rear strategic targets, what they actually need is more strategic recon capabilities, from people on the ground radioing targets in either with their eyes or DJI drones, deploy their Tu-214MR sitting in Syria doing nothing back to Russia, getting more Orlans.
near peer is more like order of magnitude. Imperial Japan had only 1/2 the population and 1/5 the GDP of US in the 1940's. They didn't have several critical technologies like radar and fire control computers directly controlling guns until later in the war. Yet WW2 wasn't exactly easy for the US.
I just checked deeer your equations, and sorry, mate, but you would fail in any Mechanical test at any university.
What the arrows would represent ?
Force ? can't be, the bridge has distributed vertical load.
Torque ? out of question, the torque after removal of the Column 3 will be the highest at the Column 2.
Stress? that will follow the torque.
Shear force? that will be constand across the bridge.
Considering that ,the bridge was railed sideways onto the pillars it would stand if if cut at the column - that would be the same like during building.
The final tally amount the territory / political infulence over ukraine will be decided by the ratio of forces on the LAST day of the war, not the ratio of AREAS at the middle of the war.
If Russia grinding the equipment and humans of the NATO more faster than his forces destroyed then the area occupied at any given momen irrelevant.
Soldiers generating occupied land,not occupied land generating soldiers.
Means if Russia loosing less resources than the NATO AND increasing the available resources then easy to forecat the end game.
I think many consider it as a strategical game on the phone, where one party needs to control more area, to control and generate more resoruces to make bigger army and defeat the enemy.
But it is real life. Occupy a land doesn't increase the stregth of the army.
Well, I think near peer should have a reasonable chance to defeat and occupy the other country. Ukraine would not be able to do so against Russia (at least I think so but then again, I thought that Ukraine would fall soon when Russian forces were massing near Kyiv), same with Imperial Japan vs the USA. Order of magnitude weaker is just a weaker country imo.
I guess I just think of it differently, as a country with less than 1 order of magnitude difference between all of population, GDP and military spending which will require significant dedication of national resources to defeat, if defeat is even possible. So examples include US vs Imperial Japan, US vs. China, China vs. Japan (both ROC vs Imperial and PRC vs modern), Russia vs Ukraine, etc.
Notably, at this point Russia can be considered less than a near peer of the US and hasn't been for about 5-10 years as it now less than 1/10 US GDP and military spending. That is to say, Russia's position vs the US could be understood to be more like "big Iran" rather than "small USSR".