"In his March 21 press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price told the gathered reporters that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” A reporter asked Price, “What are you saying about your support for a negotiated settlement à la Zelenskyy, but on whose principles?” In what still may be the most remarkable statement of the war, Price responded, “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”

Price, who a month earlier had discouraged talks between Russia and Ukraine, rejected Kiev negotiating an end to the war with Ukraine’s interests addressed because US core interests had not been addressed. "

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider ... t-ukraine/

"If Ukraine is about Russia, Russia is about China. The “Russia Problem” has always been that it is impossible to confront China if China has Russia: it is not desirable to fight both superpowers at once. So, if the long-term goal is to prevent a challenge to the US led unipolar world from China, Russia first needs to be weakened. "

Will Ukraine start up their own Civilian Marksmanship Program? They have plenty of the old Mosin-Nagant rifles for service rifle match. The main thing is to have a population of riflemen.

https://thecmp.org/

A percentage of aging Soviet era missiles are going to malfunction. Poland and other nations in Europe will just have to mobilize their air defenses, which likely means calling up their reservists.

It has been reported by Ukrainian battle medics that only slightly more than 10% wounds are bullet wounds. The rest is shrapnel. This is mainly a heavy artillery/missile/mobile armor/drone total war of attrition and devastation. One "takes the territory" the other side simply leaves no longer willing or able to take more punishment from shelling. I bet most soldiers never see the human opponent in rifle sights other than in drone videos - and skill demand is largest in heavy howitzer, modern AA systems, drone operations than in rifle marksmanship... Some NATO countries are running such training programs for NATO weapon systems on their territories.

This is pretty much the norm in conventional warfare since about 1860. 90% casualties from indirect fire weapons and, later on, close air support. It hasn't been for the U.S. in a long time since few will face off with us conventionally (Saddam Hussein learnt him a lesson).

An argument for western involvement in the war.

"I don't have any love for Ukrainian politics, which are almost as dirty as Joe Biden's. Like most of us, I do have a lot of admiration and liking for Ukraine's heroic popular resistance against a near-genocidal assault, waged against them by Putinist Russia, an assault that almost puts Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong to shame...."

"...But Ukraine is different because Russia's assault breaches the entire status quo in Europe since World War 2 --- 75 years of peace and stability. Today, Vladimir Putin has changed the assumptions of post-war Europe forever, ..."

"...And Ukraine is a real domino, which, if it falls, endangers the entire Eastern European part of the former Soviet Empire... This domino theory is exactly right, because Putin has openly proclaimed a Domino Doctrine: he wants all of the Soviet Empire back, and more..."

"And guess who is looking at the Ukraine invasion as a test case for its own imperial cravings? Yes, it's modern China, now many times as rich and powerful as the Soviet Empire ever was.

What has happened in Ukraine is therefore not just a local or regional matter. It's a proxy war between the West and rising totalitarian powers, in close alliance with each other."

https://www.americanthinker.com/article ... pport.html

We need to invest heavily in weapons manufacturing. Whatever you think of Ukraine two things are true:

1. Modern warfare uses a heck of a lot more artillery and missiles than we expected, and

2. One single proxy war is rapidly depleting the supply we and everyone else has

Even if we stopped fighting in Ukraine tomorrow all of our adversaries just realized we can't really sustain a two front war.

North Korea, Iran and China are all calculating our stock of weapons right now and trying to work out if we can actually respond.

Worst case they're maybe even discussing it with each other. Maybe talking about a combined assault, with Iran, North Korea and China initiating large scale military operations simultaneously.

So far no evidence any of them are gearing up for that (no mobilizations) but if they started mobilizing tomorrow we would not have enough stock of weapons by the time they were ready to respond.

We need to get ready.

From the Internet (Google Translate from Russian)

https://el-murid.livejournal.com/5257286.html

Nine months of any war means a qualitative transition to a new type of conflict: a war of attrition. Blitzkrieg is considered a war for a period of several days to three months. From three to nine - a protracted conflict. Further, the war enters the phase “until exhaustion” of one of the parties, however, both can become exhausted.

The explanation here lies in the economic plane. The first phase - blitzkrieg is always carried out on warehouse stocks. The more intensively they are spent, the more efforts are invested in the first strike, the higher the chance of a military victory. Provided that the enemy will not be able to withstand this first and most powerful onslaught. Then comes the protracted phase, during which there is a competition in the capacities of the military industry - still in the peacetime format. The military-industrial complex, even in peacetime, switches to a three-shift mode of operation and partially makes up for the loss of weapons and ammunition. The alternative is the supply of weapons and military equipment from outside, which we are now seeing in the case of Ukraine.

However, if the war continues even after nine months, it becomes impossible to continue its conduct without transferring to the mobilization regime. By this moment, the regular army ceases to exist as a balanced tool, most of the weapons and equipment, even taking into account partial replenishment, are consumed and also cease to meet the systemic criteria, so the phase of the struggle begins, in which the one who will be less exhausted than his opponent will win. To be more precise, it would be correct to say that the one who will be exhausted more than the opponent will lose, since the criteria for victory may not be determined. As, for example, in the case of Putin's special operation, it is absolutely impossible to understand what victory is. Putin’s personal dislike and hatred for Zelensky, which eventually resulted in the deaths of dozens, and possibly more, of thousands of people, nothing else can be seen behind this event yet.

Nine months behind. The cadre army ceased to exist as a single systemic organism two or three months ago, and therefore the mobilization. “Retribution strikes” are delivered once a week and a half, simply because it is possible to accumulate some small reserve “from the wheels”, which they launch. Mobilized with rusty machine guns and helmets of the late sixties - simply because all the stocks are "eaten", and therefore a good half of the mobilized are equipped at their own expense, while the regions collect money to send people to war. It is not known where the countless trillions of rubles for rearmament went, and it is even ridiculous to ask such a question against the backdrop of gloomy temples with Hitler's caps, air darts and tank biathlons. That's where they go - to nowhere.

The third phase - the war of attrition - has its own logic. It requires the transfer not only of the military-industrial complex, but of the entire industry to a military footing. But the industry is not cut off from the rest of the country, so the transfer to martial law will inevitably affect all other industries. But here the problem is obvious: the transition to a fundamentally new management model will also require a restructuring of the entire management system. Otherwise, chaos is inevitable.

It is here that the first and most serious doubt arises - whether Putin's criminal Mafia State is capable of switching to a mobilization regime of governing the country. The question is not idle, since Putin's vertical was created for completely different tasks - robbery and plunder of the country with the subsequent evacuation of the loot to other jurisdictions. She doesn’t know how to do anything else, and most importantly, she doesn’t want to do anything else. In many cases, she does not even understand how it is possible to live without stealing.

This state of affairs has an important consequence - it is impossible to concentrate resources in any direction, even critically important. The more resources are collected at one point, the higher the kickbacks and the fiercer the fight between those allowed to spend them. An example is the same drones that we allegedly have throughout the entire range and line, as industry generals swear by oath, but we have to use Iranian ones, since there are none of our own in nature, and it is impossible to start production due to its absence.

Therefore, we will most likely see attempts to switch to the logic of mobilization management in the near future, but if we succeed in implementing these measures, it will be chaotic and unsystematic. The main problem is that the regime cannot rebuild its control system for the new tasks arising from this logic. In this case, both the peacetime system and the emerging "embryos" (most likely of an extremely bastard kind) of mobilization management will work simultaneously. Which will inevitably lead to contradictions between them, which will additionally chaoticize the space of decisions and management.

In any case, the further the regime goes on, the more it will enter into contradiction caused by the need to avoid defeat (there is no need to talk about victory here) and the possibilities of its administrative vertical. A war of attrition is a challenge that the regime has not yet faced in all the thirty years of the existence of the "young democratic Russia". Especially in the context of a serious external blockade and the virtual absence of allies - which was quite clearly shown by the last meeting of the CSTO.

Now the regime faces the question: how to avoid defeat. However, around the spring, when the failure of the transition to mobilization management can no longer be hidden, the question will change its wording: a struggle will begin for the price of defeat. The next stage after this is the choice between unconditional surrender or on some conditions. And in the end there will be no choice.

Just based on what I've seen with the fighting, US need to invest heavily in smaller drone platforms. An actual militarized quadcopter setup with decent optics and ordinance dropping capability would be a game changer. Utilizing cheap loitering munitions would also be a huge change for the US warfighter. Reapers and Predators are great for overall observation and coordination but being able to have a small constant flying drone that can kill infantry and armor is going to make things interesting, as we've seen in Ukraine. US really needs to get in on this capability.

Agree. I think this war reminds what a peer modern total warfare may look like. Cheaper, better weapons in great quantities. The US defense industry grew to spend gazillions on sci-fi projects w/o any concerns for war time practicality. It got to the point of insanity when Navy had to scrap Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) from Zumvalts AGS because it couldn't afford it - $1mln for a single 155mm shell (!), leaving new naval gunfire support stealth ship w/o guns and in need of replacement of scrapped gun systems.

War in Ukraine though is a reminder that full scale ground peer war cannot be won with insanely expensive exotic weapons in single quantities , but with mass production of cheap but effective weaponry. I think Boeing and others are getting right ideas now:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/us ... r-AA14F8R3

https://azgeopolitics.com/?p=2466
According to Nigeria, terrorists in the Lake Chad basin are supplied with weapons from Ukraine.

I think we are aware of this need but don't don't have a ready solution as of yet. We were able to address the IED and related issues in GWOT with the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, but they had their own sort of challenges in terms of sustainment that are normally baked in a normal D0D program. We're kind of at where Germany was during WW2, we're pretty good technologically and have some trained manpower, but face some demographic challenges against numerically and technically improving adversaries. We can move pieces around the world pretty good and sustain them, but are weakening due to dollar decline, loss of energy, and our industrial base eroding. We're only as strong as our weakest link in our defense.

Like the Spanish Civil War, the next war will probably be different in some ways and some of the things that worked here may be less effective in the next war. Hard to figure out what is the next game changer.

I think we've been slow on this sort of drone since it's most beneficial to the force on the small end of asymmetrical warfare and the one on defense. The U.S. hasn't been either one of these for a long time. But yes, we're pretty close to seeing a swarm of infrared-seeking hunter/killer self-destroying drones launched without any sort of IFF --- just go that way and kill the first heat signature (human range for antipersonnel and vehicle signatures for antiarmor). Antipersonnel ones could be made pretty cheap. But U.S. brass would see this as a cowardly weapon for sure, a flying tripwire of sorts.

Are you saying flying targeted landmines?

This is a surprisingly good read. Paywalled but on a desktop if you hit ESC fast enough you can defeat that.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/11/30/what-is-the-war-in-ukraine-teaching-western-armies

One of the more interesting bits for those who can't bother ESC-racing the paywall:

Contrary to popular wisdom, Javelin and nlaw anti-tank missiles supplied by America and Britain did not save the day, despite featuring heavily in video footage from the first week of the conflict. Nor did Turkey’s tb2 drones, which struggled to survive after day three. “The propaganda value of Western equipment…was extremely high at the beginning of the war,” noted Jack Watling of rusi, one of the report’s authors, recently on “The Russia Contingency”, a podcast on Russian military issues. “It didn’t really have a substantial material effect on the course of the fighting…until…April.” The decisive factor was more prosaic, he added. “What blunted the Russians north of Kyiv was two brigades of artillery firing all their barrels every day.”

The pivotal role of artillery is a sobering thought for western European armies, whose firepower has dwindled dramatically since the end of the cold war. From 1990 to 2020, the number of artillery pieces among large European armies declined by 57%, according to a tally by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, another think-tank in London. Ukraine’s arsenal was formidable. It started the war with over 1,000 barrel artillery systems (those with long tubes) and 1,680 multiple-rocket launchers—more than Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Poland put together, and the largest artillery force in Europe after Russia. The principal constraint was ammunition.

Ukraine maintained “artillery parity” for around six weeks, far longer than almost any Western army would have managed under the same circumstances. Then it began running out of shells, giving Russia a ten-to-one advantage in the volume of fire by June, an imbalance that persisted until Ukraine received an influx of advanced Western artillery systems, including the American himars. “[C]onsumption rates in high-intensity warfighting remain extraordinarily high,” note the authors. Few Western countries have the capacity to build new weapons, spare parts and ammunition at the rate required. “nato members other than the us are not in a strong position on these fronts.”

Drones have played a vital role, though largely for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance rather than for strike missions. Russian units which had their own drones, rather than relying on those from a higher headquarters, could rain down “highly responsive fires”, says rusi, striking targets within three to five minutes of detecting them—a remarkably speedy sensor-shooter loop by historical standards. The figure for units without their own drones was around half an hour—with lower accuracy.

But a key lesson from Ukraine is that armies need more drones than they think. Around 90% of all drones used by the Ukrainian armed forces between February and July were destroyed, notes rusi. The average life expectancy of a fixed-wing drone was approximately six flights; that of a simpler quadcopter a paltry three. Such attrition would chew up the fleets of European armies in a matter of days.

It puts a premium on cheap and simple systems, which can be treated as near-disposable, rather than tiny fleets of large and expensive drones, with big liquid-fuelled engines, carrying advanced sensors. That, in turn, requires a larger number of trained personnel who can fly them, and a more relaxed attitude towards their use in peacetime. “At present, there are fewer administrative restrictions for [Britain’s] Royal Artillery to fire live 155-mm howitzer munitions over civilian roads,” sniffs rusi, “than for them to fly a [drone] over the same airspace to monitor what they are hitting.”