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To add an actual thesis to Mushroom’s unhinged screed, I would steelman it as:
Ukraine has a decent chance of continuing attritional warfare until Russia gives up.
Even if part or all of Ukraine falls, it performed a valuable service in keeping Russia from advancing further into Eastern Europe.
I don’t think either of those theses are inherently ridiculous (especially not the second one), but they both rely on Russia really being as banged up as Mushroom thinks they are. Which who knows. I know for a fact that previous popular estimates of vast Russian men and vehicle losses were quietly and sheepishly exposed as bullshit by all the actual intelligence agencies that were keeping track (CIA, SIS, Mossad). I am really looking forward to reading some assessments of the war 20 years from now when it’s not a live political issue.
I also suspect that China has a much stronger interest in keeping Russia whole and threatening Eastern Europe than they publicly let on. That threat is what’s keeping a lot of US attention and resources flowing to places other than the countries of the South China Sea.
Its pretty clear from satellite imagery that Russian vehicle parks were drawing down rapidly, but the pace of drawdown slowing is largely to do with tactical evolutions. Russias strategy of infiltrate and airstrike identified strongpoints has no place for armor partially because armor has many more limitations but simply because there isnt anything useful available to call up: vehicle parks are dry, the vehicle operators suck shit, and generals cant coordinate for fuck.
I am curious as to what the CIA Mossad SIS info you cite is, because all evidence shows that Russia has lost the thousands of vehicles cited byOryx and has not meaningfully replenished their TOE, and there is no statement from any of those entities to the contrary. If the claim is that Russia has a strong reserve that it can spring forth when the moment is right, there us no evidence for that still: the 1st Guards Tank Army and 4th Guards Tank Division (fuck Russia for their inconsistent nomenclature) are not on the front and are still functionally degraded, sitting pretty in the LMD for propaganda purposes. Russian C2 is degraded by institutional incapacity and the adhoc nature of any push being scraped from whatever is present. There is no actual reconstituted Russian Bear waiting to roll over once Pokrovsk breaks.
Chinas support of Russia seems the most hilarious part to me. China is buying up Russian oil continually, but it is RMB-effected (nominally presented in USD terms) so the actual levers of international finance to punish either China or Russia are limited. Yet China does not provide explicit military equipment to Russia, instead selling dual use components and forcibly adapted shitty golf carts or ebikes for Russia to get blown up. If China was kinetically supporting Russia like North Korea did, Russia would get its thousand tank fleet immediately: there are about 2000 type 96 idling in mongolia visible from Russia, pristine tanks preserved in sandy but dry terrain, needing less to reup than even tanks atmosphere protected facilities.
Instead Russia gets alibaba Desertcross jeeps and suicide tier dirt bikes. If Russia had better frontline electrification they would get the fields of Light Electric Vehicles with 40 mile range that China produced in the hundreds of thousands back in the 2010s. I don't doubt that China is happy to see western treasure expended on internal conflicts far from its border, but China didn't need to start this fight. Its not like the US seems to care about China given that the US is busy preparing for a Venezuela regime overthrow (Monroe is BACK baby!) while China is gearing up for a new Sino Japan war.
Drones have made armored assaults extremely difficult. It's just too hard to amass a strike force without being spotted, much less crossing the killzone. That's why they switched to light 'vehicles' like golf carts and whatnot - the best survivability is speed and concealment. The idea behind "Line of Drones" was to remove the need for frontline infantry - it hasn't lived up to those goals, but it's the reason they haven't collapsed when they have such a manpower crisis.
I honestly think that excuse from Russians (and Ukrainians) about not massing armor due to drones is just cope. They aren't massing vehicles tread to tread, mobility kills on vehicles are still overwhelmingly mines and artillery is for (great) effect. No, the slavs just suck at coordinating multi prong advances whether it is armored or unarmored, and doing ATV spam is proof of incapability not prudence. Russians certainly effected multi prong armored pushes in Kursk when the ground wasnt mined and torn to shit, and any massing being within artillery range is fucking criminal since you shouldn't be massing within 5km of a first line of contact and if you're rushing to wait under an enemys artillery range then you're fucked whether you're sitting in an ATV or a BMP.
I believe this, but I also believe that drone ISR and resulting drone directed fires (to say nothing of drone strikes themselves) have made armored assaults, and worse breaching a minefield (already one of the hardest ops) an order of magnitude harder.
I am confident that in some sort of US Army vs Russian Army showdown, while the US Army would probably eventually prevail, as they are much better at independence and adaption (and importantly, course use more smoke and EW due to less micro from generals in the back). But they would get fucking SHELLACKED in the process.
Now of course they wouldn't breach the minefield without first airstriking everything remotely enemy shaped within 100km, and then go on to airstrike anything remotely shaped within 1,000km before they even contemplated the breach.
So the real lesson here is that if you don't have air superiority, offense is really really fucking hard. Defense was always powerful in the modern era, but with drones it got even better
Russia lacks the force projection ability to really pose a threat to the US, but I don't think the US would be capable of invading Russia and winning in a conventional military engagement. Their supply chains and logistics would be far too vulnerable in any kind of protracted conflict, and I don't think the US can actually stop the newest hypersonics. That said I think the only thing I can say with real confidence is that no matter what happens the US would have lost a lot more money than Russia did. And of course this assumes that nuclear weapons have been disabled by a kindly wizard too, otherwise the conflict only ever ends in "everybody loses".
Hypersonics dont do shit. SSM intercept rates are low enough to begin with, yet they fail to consistently degrade tactical level CNC nodes meaningfully, let alone operational. The idea that Russian hypersonics will lock down the backline is entirely out of step with platform count and magazine depth. What is a hypersonic supposed to cripple, an airfield? A big tent labelled "HQ"? A carrier battle group? Russia throwing Shahed (I know they have a local name I refuse to use it because these worthless copycats need to be continually reminded that they prostrated before Iran to get ANFO tipped glorified microlights) is proof of total incapability, not genius adaptation.
Wunderwaffen don't matter. If Russia wants to really cripple the USA now, investing in flashy hypersonic shit that pops off a few times and then gasses out isn't worth it. That Poseidon thing sounds much better, since you can annihilate US/Western economic overmatch by choking off Panama, Suez or North Sea, not to mention cutting underwater cables or pipes. Pity that stuff is not sexy enough for the retards staffing the Russian MOD. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is my wunderwaffen!
Are you sure?
I don't think we're really going to have a productive discussion here because we disagree on some of the basic assumptions about reality. I think that hypersonic missiles ignore a lot of existing missile interception technology and will have a huge impact in any kind of fight with the western powers. At the same time, I think Russia is far better and more experienced at using drones in warfare than the US - how long has it been since the US military actually fought a near-peer competitor?
Poseidon is an extremely interesting weapon system, but I didn't bring it up because as a nuclear weapon it once again just ends the debate and replaces it with a showing of Threads.
You're right that we both perceive reality differently. I live in a different information space that prioritizes different facts than even the me of yesteryear, so there is no point in considering value matrices. We do however live in common physical reality, and that is where the subject of wunderwaffen often breakss.
Existing ordinance is already hypersonic at terminal phase and interception is at this end phase because thats where the targets and thus the defenses are. Intercepting at glide isn't done even for normal long range missiles because no one knows what the target is at that point and detection out that far is spotty.
The objective of a weapon is to destroy a target. To do that you must hit a target. but also do enough damage. There simply aren't enough Russian hypersonics to actually make a difference against static targets. Again, what are we trying to destroy? An airfield? That gets repaired 30 minutes after a barrage ends, and you need dozens if not hundreds to kill the field. A HQ? We don't live in command and conquer where you have a big juicy target known in advance. Something moving? Not happening. Hypersonics materially change the theoretical interception calculus at the phase where interception doesn't happen anyways, so in the end what matters is your magazine depth. That is what Russia lacks and why I dismiss Russias hypersonic arsenal as wunderwaffen.
And Russian drones are good as terror weapons and ambushes. Not as peer conflict combined arms enablers. We aren't going to see Russia sniping individual vehicles or soldiers marching openly in contested territory. because NATO simply does not fight that way. Russian drone support at the squad level is definitely operationally tighter than NATO doctrine with the combination of organic support at squad level upwards, but drone grenade droppers or fpv ambushers simply aren't relevant against a competent force (which the Ukrainians are not). If drone spam was easy against competents then Hamas would have spammed drones against IDF. Iran did the thousand black shahed drones of allah spam against Israel for limited effect.
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