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Since @greyenlightenment suggested a list of topics that weren't getting enough attention in the previous CWR thread, I decided to write a bit about Russia-Ukraine situation.
The summer campaign has ended, and Ukraine has found itself in an unenviable situation. The much-hyped counteroffensive has achieved only marginal gains, but the EU has exhausted its disposable stocks of arms and armor and the US, which has enough disposable firepower to zone rouge a medium-sized country, is a) not a charity and b) kinda getting busy with other stuff.
All this means Ukraine knows it won't be able to conduct further offensive operations and its most important medium-term goal is to not lose. There are multiple ways it can lose:
Having so many ways to lose means the time is ripe for a ceasefire or even peace negotiations, but when your adversary smells blood they won't be satisfied with just what they have. So Ukraine either:
I think you are overestimating Russia's ability to do get anything done on the offensive; which is at least as bad as Ukraines; and that the time limit goes both ways. Maybe Ukraine looses big daddy MICs black card and needs to go back to moletoves and prayers; maybe someone who has a whole new fleet of shiny f-35s coming in sends their old f16 block 40's to Ukrain and suddenly they have a platform that can fire air launched cruismissles well behind the lines; and can be refit to fire the shit that they aren't forbiden from WAY behind the lines.
Basically, I think Ukraine only gets knocked out of the fiight through wearieness, and the Ukrainians are still all about this shit; mainly because they can all speak russian and can watch russian TV. They know if they give up; they are not in for an easy ocupation.
Those air-launched cruise missiles are not available in large numbers (total number built <2000) and allegedly not that impervious to Russian air defences either.
F-16 aren't magic either. Since NATO is all about lean logistics, no one is going to shift enough AIM-120 missiles to Ukraine. These aren't actually better at all than the long-range missiles Russians are using to keep Ukraine air force down, but they'd help. Except each one costs a million $, and there aren't enough of them.
Russians are currently trying to put rocket motors onto their now ubiquitous sat-guided glide bomb kits, which is going to extend range to 200 km. Currently it's 50 km. Sure, they're not as pin-point accurate as JDAMs, but if you're talking 500 kg bomb, unless the target is a reinforced concrete bunker, missing by 20m is irrelevant.
If Ukraine runs out of theater-level air defense, they're just going to get everything major behind the lines blown up into tiny pieces, and their front line positions deprived of ammunition. With molotovs, you are just dead against modern armor. Molotovs don't really cut it, they weren't really cutting it in late WW2 either.
Ukrainians aren't Japanese. At some point they're just going to stop resisting for lack of ammunition and command.
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Ukraine can already launch cruise missiles from behind the lines. They just don't have enough of them. The main purpose of F-16s is threatening Russian warplanes. Ukrainian armor is beaten by Russian helicopters. Ukrainian fighters could keep the helicopters on the ground, but they are kept on the ground by Russian fighters.
If Ukraine gets enough F-16s they can attack the helis from a safe distance or force Russian fighters into dogfights, thus enabling greater use of armor.
That also, I don't know why I was focused on cruiss missles. 18th century brain. Of cource the main thing is to have an AA missle that doesn;t need pavel to jimmy rig it with bailing wire and a prayer.
Remember though that all the cruiss missiles Ukrain has are either subject to US targeting restrictions or rely on nato platform sauce to work; so having a native NATO platofrm to launch them from will provide a decent increase in their capacity to strike deep.
Even their limited number of ATACMS were of great effect;
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