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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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On the other side Ukraine's warfighting potential has trended upward since '22.

What? The Ukrainian air force is reduced to flinging Storm Shadows and similar at extreme range. They cannot even defend their capital against constant bombing. There's not much reason to think F-16s will change that, they're not stealth aircraft that can penetrate Russian air defences and they lack secure airbases to operate from. The Ukrainian power grid is in a complete shambles, their domestic military industry has been heavily degraded. The Ukrainian navy consists of some kamikaze drones which cannot really contest Russia in the Black Sea, even if they sink a few ships. Ukraine has been drafting extensively for the army, dragging men kicking and screaming into vans. Forty year olds and the disabled do not make for great assault infantry.

Russia has a land bridge to Crimea, a highway, a rail line and the bridge. Their position there is in no way untenable. It's really easy for them to hold and resupply it. The small initial Russian invasion force has been replaced by a much larger army. Apparently they can produce more shells than the US and EU. They've had much more materiel throughout the whole war, including artillery.

At the end of the day, this is a conventional war. The side with more soldiers and more equipment is going to win.

I'm not expecting F-16s to change a whole lot, but longer range munitions like AMRAAMs should at very least prove useful for intercepting cruise missiles, which improves their air defence picture as a whole. I mention them because they are a recent, high profile, example of the overall trend thus far.

Sea drones don't need to be able to 'seriously contest' the black sea fleet to be useful strategically. They make it harder for ships to resupply Crimea, force the black sea fleet to operate further away from Ukraine's coast and have likely been critical in preventing the fleet from blockading shipments of grain.

They've had much more materiel throughout the whole war, including artillery.

Something that I tried to stress in my previous comment was that this advantage is a one-time bonus that is running its course.

I think the F-16s will be better against Russian aircraft than the MiG-29s and maybe the Su-27s (if Ukraine has any left) because AMRAAMs but I don't expect that to make a difference in the overall posture of the war. I'm not even sure if Ukraine intends to use them in the counter-air role instead of just replacing the Su-24s in the "Storm Shadow launch platform" role.