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Analysis of the Overall Strategic Position in Ukraine - 31st October 2023

Not looking great, tbh:

Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight | TIME

Ukraine short of ammo and even shorter on manpower.  It was a bold move to try a counter-offensive without air support and it seems the gamble hasn't really paid off. Russians proving much more adept at defence than they are at offence, and significantly upping their drone game.  Meanwhile the interest of the US and its allies wanes and wanders elsewhere.

I wouldn't put terribly much weight on Simon Shuster - he has form for being on the wrong side of analysis and given his background is an odd choice.  And certainly not to his paragraph by paragraph unattributed asides.  The Ukrainian armed forces will start getting better air resources shortly. And the new manufacturing is kicking in. 

You're right in that Russian armed forces are modelled on a defensive rollback and hard stop strategy (bad NATO was supposed to launch a tank assault) but this article does not account for the significant large grey pachyderm in the room of the Russian human wave assaults. Or that the tank/armour and artillery losses are truly significant. 

Ukraine is a vote winner in the US with an approval rating of over 65 to 75%. A few voices from the cheap seats in the House may be amplified for now but the Senate red races next year will be red in tooth and claw where Republicans try to flip. 

Yup, we fvcked them hard. Gave them enough kit to give them hope they could do it but not enough to actually do it before getting bored and wandering off. 

Only real choice for them now is to dig in on existing lines, keep trying to kill Russians and hope that the Russian oligarchs get fed up enough of sanctions to turn on Putin. 

We should all hang our heads in shame and realise we just handed round 1 of the new cold war to the other team.  China will have no doubt of our utter lack of resolve even when we aren't being asked to do the dying. Absolute fvcking idiots. For a moment there it actually looked like we might have a spine. 

are we watching the same war? the great Russian bear that could drop paratroopers into every european capital and simultaneously invade the US..... has gotten halfway across two Ukrainian counties..... and the analysis is that Ukraine is losing? 

I'd compare the russian assault on Bakhmut with the Ukrainian assault in Zaporizhzhia, yeah, they haven't done some mad tank charge across the plains but they've pushed well into a massively over fortified line and are threatening the key towns that hold the whole line together

short of ammo? yeah probably, but Russia isn't exactly rolling in it if it has to beg north korea for 50 year old shells 

Sumo - the Ukrainians have done amazingly well but they are stuck now. The problem is that time is on the side of the Russians. The sanctions are hurting but fundamentally they have a functioning economy and production capability. Ukraine (independently) don’t and western willingness to keep supporting them is failing. 

Donny Darko's Soundrack31 Oct 23 07:21

Sumo - the Ukrainians have done amazingly well but they are stuck now. The problem is that time is on the side of the Russians. The sanctions are hurting but fundamentally they have a functioning economy and production capability. Ukraine (independently) don’t and western willingness to keep supporting them is failing.

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I don't buy this, the Russian economy was weak before the invasion and it is under the stress of funding alone a years long war it needed to win in 3 days. Production capability in Russia is a joke and mostly concentrate in petrochemicals, brain drain and the mafia state of Putin's system has robbed them on innovation and they are stuck selling crude oil at a discount to China (who they are basically in a cold war with) and India which likes russia but wants to refine value added mineral/oil imports in india. 

Ukraine, is not a massive industrial power but it has some of the biggest iron mines and pellets industries in the world, massive argiculture and IT sectors and it has a lot of smart people in a way russia does not. It also has the richest countries in the world supporting it and at some point the republican US, if it does come to power is going to struggle to explain to its voter base why it has pivoted away from standing up for the little guy to outright licking the boots of russia and china 

Ukraine's doing ok.  Disappointing that they failed to press their 'offensive' after the Russians wrong-footed them by blowing the Nova Kakhovka dam, but they have blooded all their new western-trained units, in particular their command and control elements in multi-brigade level operations, and are in a good position to mount an actual offensive in 2024.  The promised F-16's can only help, though they aren't likely to achieve air superiority or anything like it.    

Warren31 Oct 23 10:09

The promised F-16's can only help, though they aren't likely to achieve air superiority or anything like it.    

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I'm genuinely interested to see what a modern airwar looks like and if it will change public perception away from WW2 style dogfights.

I suspect air combat looks a lot more like early 1900s naval warfare, with pilots watching screens and performing over the horizon attacks before the enemy detects them (stealth features being more important these days)

It is going to be interesting, though without stealth aircraft on both sides it might not be a true picture of what ultra-modern air combat is going to look like in future.  It does raise the question of how F-16's are going to deal with SU-57 stealth fighters.

 

Hotblack/ Warren if the Republicans stop / block funding / munitions now would that be fatal for Ukraine?

You've asked this before I think.  As before I expect it will hurt them a lot, but they will muddle through with European support as Europe, especially Eastern Europe really can't afford for them to lose.  Ironically it will probably galvanise them to get the job done, regardless of the human cost. 

I doubt there will be many, if any airframe battles featuring the F16s. I would expect them to be lobbing cruise missiles from a safe distance and taking out air defence with HARM. If they can make the skies safer for the rotaryframes to operate in close air support it will help a lot. 

Do the russians have enough su57s and are they even good enough to challenge? Their on-paper stealth characteristics are great, but in reality?

I hope I'm not too naive in thinking that the situation in the Middle East may actually make it HARDER to block funding for Ukraine. If Ukraine funding is the only item on the table it's easy for the hartd-right MAGA Republicans to stymie the process, but I would like to think that if funding for Israel has to get through, then there's more a chance to make Ukraine part of the same package. But I admit to not knowing the first thing as to how the process works.

How many F16s are Ukraine actually going to receive? Isn't it like 10 or or something in the next 12 months? That is really not going to make much difference; as Rof Royalty says in reality they will just be a cruise missile launch platform but how many more cruise missiles will Ukraine be given 

PP - I hope you are right but I doubt you are to be honest. At this stage it is less about funding and more about actual available kit that can be donated before western stocks are regarded as dangerously low. Israel is already being prioritised for that and if the US starts launching missiles in the middle east itself the level of stock deemed adequate is bound to increase. No doubt Putin is desperately trying to find a way to get Hezbollah to properly kick off in the hope the Americans will start actually firing at them. 

I think Ukraine are producing home brew cruise missiles now. Not sure if they are any good or what scale, but they have a strong history of miltech production and should be scaling up massively.

How many F16s are Ukraine actually going to receive? Isn't it like 10 or or something in the next 12 months? 

Having trained pilots & engineers is the constraining element, and you can't re-train their whole air force in one go. 

It's only really providing a means of replacing losses of Russian-made aircraft, for which there's obviously a finite supply of replacement parts.  Whilst they'll also be better aircraft, and capable of using more advanced/longer range missiles/JDAM etc, it's hardly going to be a huge step change in practice (at least in the short/medium term). 

Might make it easier to take out Ka52s and loitering drones but - and it's a significant but - unless & until Russian air defences are materially degraded, they're just expensive targets for S300/S400 so will be used as sparingly as the current fleet.

Belgium, Poland & Romania have some.  Turkey has loads, but I doubt they will want to get involved.  South Korea has quite a few so maybe some from them.  Obviously the US has about a million 

The F16s Ukraine is getting are mostly ancient 1980s models.  Upgraded, yes, but still very old. Due to the position of its air intake the F16 struggles on bombed or rough airstrips, and the F16 never had long legs. Still, if the documentary I saw last year is any guide, a 1970s vintage F14 can easily beat a number of Su-57s so they should do ok. 

A bigger issue than equipment and ammo for Ukraine is manpower. The country is in demographic collapse with many families and young women having left.  They weren't in a particularly great place to begin with:

Population of Ukraine 2023 - PopulationPyramid.net

 

 

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