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Notes -
100 days to victory; or, will the Ukrainian offensive ever culminate?
If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything will look like a nail, as the old saying goes. As an amateur World War One historian, I've previously mused on this subreddit that the Russian offensive from April through to June was playing out in some ways like the German Spring Offensive of World War One: making some worrying gains on paper and inflicting heavy losses on the enemy, but also eroding some of the attackers' manpower and getting their best troops killed off.
Now that the Ukrainians are on the offensive, I'm starting to see parallels with the Allied 100 Days Offensive of the First World War - lots of offensives up and down the line, attacks behind enemy lines, heavy casualties on both sides, and no obvious culmination point where offensive operations have to cease. I think many of us were expecting the Kherson offensive, when it came, to be a short sharp shock and awe attack - throwing large amounts of resources into a small area of the line with the goal of capturing one specific city. But with the recent attacks at Kharkiv and in the Donbas, and the relatively steady pace of the offensive in Kherson, I'm wondering if the goal is to create a new unrelenting offensive up and down the line.
This would have many goals, most notably keeping the Russians continually on the backfoot. However, if Ukraine is confident in its logistics and supplies, then it might allow them to achieve a kind of "offensive escape velocity", a positive feedback loop where they maintain the initiative, pick their battles, and inflict steady casualties, gradually tipping the war more and more in their favour. This in turn could prevent Russia from regaining the initiative and concentrating new troops for an assault and allow the offensive to gradually sap their resolve and manpower.
Here are some of the indicators that we would expect to see if Ukraine had this strategy in mind and were pursuing it successfully -
Non-culmination. There won't come a distinct day or week where the offensive culminates. Instead, the offensive will be maintained continually, but with increasing emphasis given to one theatre after another.
Taking of prisoners. One distinctive feature of the 100 Days Offensive was that the Allies began to capture increasing numbers of German prisoners. This in turn reflected plunging morale among German troops. If we see the same thing here, it would provide evidence that the war might be coming to a close.
Undoing enemy progress. One painful feature of the 100 Days Offensive for the Germans was that almost all of the gains of the Spring Offensive were undone in fairly rapid order. This in turn further depressed their morale. If Ukraine were to launch successful attacks on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk, this could have a similar effect.
Striking seemingly impregnable strongpoints. Another key feature of the 100 Days Offensive was its successful breaching of the Hindenberg Line like the battle of St Quentin Canal. It's not clear what the equivalent would be in this war - perhaps some successful attacks on the northern tip of Crimea proper.
I'm not saying this is likely per se, and it may be mere hopium, but it's a new hypothesis about Ukraine's broader strategy that's come to mind, one that I'll be updating as news comes in.
My superficial reading is that this offensive seems to lack many of the key features of the 100 Day Offensive. First, there is no reserve of fresh, high-morale troops that Ukraine is bringing to the fight, like the Allies did as the Americans arrived starting in 1917. Second, there seems to be no great tactical advantage that Ukraine has brought forth to help build momentum; no tanks, creeping artillery barrages, all the hard-won experience that the Allies were able to apply after years of warfare. Third, Russia is not in the position of Germany, a nation suffering under years of blockades and steadily eroding material conditions culminating in threatening by revolutions. The key factors that led to the 100 Days Offensive becoming the closing stage of the war aren't exactly in place it seems.
In turn, all your indicators seem to be generic "winning the war" signifiers. Of course, sustaining offensive momentum, taking many prisoners, reversing your enemy's gains, these are all signs that a group is winning a fight in any conflict. What would be interesting is if you could generate insight to tell if these things will happen; when could we expect this turnaround in the war's path? I have heard about many Ukrainian counteroffensives and I have seen many Russian gains reversed, but what makes you think that this time Ukraine will be able to sustain offensive momentum long-term at a critical pace?
I think high-tech weaponry has fundamentally reshaped warfare, though the final word isn't written on this.
"unbounded supply of Javelins, Stingers and Bayraktars" is the new "reserve of fresh, high-morale troops". Maybe.
Why would those be the thing that finally replaces the importance of capable fighting men? Why wasn't it metal weaponry (bronze or iron, your pick), or rideable horses, or heavy plate armor, or munitions armor, or gunpowder weaponry, or rifles over muskets, or fast-firing rifles, or indirect artillery, or mass motorization, or the modern tank, or precision guided weapons? What, fundamentally, has caused the ATGM to surpass all of these other advancements and so many more? Each has transformed warfare, but never to cut out the fighting man.
Materiel != Manpower.
It comes down to relative power. If you can make a weapon that lets any idiot (or, eventually, no idiot) destroy a main battle tank unassisted, then you don't need to worry very much about military training when facing tanks. Repeat mutatis mutandis for infantry, planes, drones, etc.
My take is that the West - including Turkey - is providing weapons to Ukraine that are decisively superior to what Russia is fielding.
Ok, let's take take the example of infantry, as you brought up. We already have a weapon that is so dead simple any idiot can use it, a literal "point and click" weapon that can kill a human out to hundreds of yards. It's called a rifle, they've existed for hundreds of years, and mysteriously every professional army in the world is still spending time training basic infantrymen, practicing everything from marksmanship to tactics. Any idiot can kill an enemy infantryman, but everyone really still seems to worry about training when facing infantry and keeps training their own. Mutatis mutandis...
I don't even think it's right to claim that the Javelin works for any idiot without training. The US Army specifies 80 hours of instruction for using the Javelin. Here is an article about the current conflict, with a few choice quotes: "The bottleneck for this influx of aid is training." "In Western militaries, soldiers who operate these weapons undergo weeks or months of training before firing their first live shot." All of this training for the Javelin alone is in addition to all of their other training, of course. Mutatis mutandis for every other weapon system.
Even the Javelin is not exactly an "unassisted" weapon. The thing weighs about 50 pounds, with one missile! That gets split up, so you need an ammunition bearer if you want to have any other gear... uh oh, looks like you're not "unassisted" anymore. Mutatis mutandis... Are you going to pack a Stinger with them? That's another 35 pounds, probably have to give that to someone else. Maybe you'll need something like a SAW, better bring someone else to haul that around and ammunition for it. Maybe bring a few more people to keep an eye out while you set up your launcher, maybe someone to direct all these people... oh look, we're back to an organized group, better train them all together so that they're more than a gaggle of schoolchildren.
Every step of the way, trained personnel, and plenty of them, are needed. Warfare has not been "fundamentally reshaped," these new high-tech weapons are not a replacement for trained fighting men, even if it alters how the fighting is done, or the side with the better weapons has an advantage, just like every piece of technology before them. It's the same old claims of the past repeated ad nauseum that this time it's different. I'm unimpressed this time too.
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