The fact that both sides have been so convinced of the need to grind up against each other for Bakhmut (and waaay beyond "well, we thought we could prevail, once, and now we're sinking more good effort after bad) highly suggests a couple of main possibilities (and a few possible alternatives) to me about all sides' future aims on the front. I know what I think is most likely, but I'm not going to say it out loud. (Probably plain wrong. Or, worse, I'd be far too right for comfort.) But it's perhaps born of too much tabletop-campaigning, when I was young. Which I was never actually all that successful in, even if I apparently had the right sort of strategy on occasion.
Heavy as Ukrainian casualties have been in Bakhmut, everything we know suggests that Russia's are far heavier. Whatever the state of Russian
manpower, all evidence is that Russia has far less ability to replace equipment than Ukraine does due to Western aid. Not to mention that the Russians have expended (and Ukraine has bombed) a massive amount of increasingly priceless ammunition here. This war, like many wars, is likely to come down to a battle of attrition. And in a battle of attrition, you have to actually atrit the enemy.
Pinning down so much Russian combat power in one spot has also greatly relieved pressure on other parts of the front and allowed localized probes/assaults elsewhere to succeed, which is valuable in and of itself.
(Isn't the Storm Shadow an air-launched system? That implies... something. Well, one of several possible somethings, but probably not the naively obvious ones.)
The most obvious would be that they managed to integrate the missile onto existing Ukrainian Migs, the same way that HARM and JDAM have been kludged on. The other possibility is that they've adapted the naval version that the French use on ships and submarines for a ground launch vehicle. Any other option would have to be provided in advance of the missiles, and the sources say that the UK
has supplied, not
will supply. This strongly suggests that they're either in transit or already in-country. So there has to be an ability to launch them now, not in some nebulous future.
Storm Shadow is a nasty, nasty weapon. A combination of terrain following with outright stealth technology will make it extremely difficult to intercept, it not only has the now-standard GPS guidance but an onboard camera for even greater accuracy, and an extremely powerful two-stage warhead (there's a shaped charge in front of the main warhead, which clears away any debris and opens an initial hole for the main one to detonate in, dramatically increasing penetration and damage) will obliterate the majority of possible targets. It also has either a 250km range (export version) or a nearly 600km range (for the version used by the UK's military). Supply will be a problem (there's only been a few thousand made if they're being supplied from stocks, and if they're being delivered straight from the factory production rate is likely low), but even the short-legged version will be able to hit just about anywhere in Crimea. If these sources are correct (and there's lots of reason to think it is), a lot of very bad people just got a lot less safe.
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Topic: Emotional Responses to War in Ukraine - Trollbait 2.0 (Read 238853 times)