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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Which is not a reflection of how ratios have changed since the war began, when the ratios were significantly more in the Russian favor.

We can test that theory trivially with tanks. Russia went in with 1700 and now as 3,500; Ukraine then had 1,000ish(?) and earlier this year was reported to have managed to maintain the number it had when the war began.

If light weapons (drones) are more important, Russia currently has a drone overmatch and it isn't drawing those down from Soviet stockpiles. (From what I can tell both sides are largely just buying from China, which is funny.)

So both in light and heavy weapons it appears Russia still has a 3:1 edge. If I had to guess their edge is much less extreme, possibly even negative, in frontline soldiers, but that hasn't stopped the Russian offensive. I'd be happy to see hard numbers on this, or contrarian takes. But from what I can tell the main Ukrainian advantage over time has been fielding (piecemeal) new Western systems like Storm Shadow, which are often effective (at least for at time) but are also limited in number.

For the purpose of attrition- which is the strategy of both sides- the 'lighter' armaments are considerably more important, particularly as the Russian strategy militarily relies on offensive victory, but the Ukrainian strategy relies on defensive attrition until Russia's production / refurbishment rates burn through the stockpiles.

Well, let's keep in mind that the Ukrainian's stated war aim is to regain Crimea. To achieve their war goal, they will need to constitute a very powerful offensive force. Which cuts back around to your overall point (which is well-taken) that Russia needs to maintain not just parity+ but an overmatch of capability in order to continue its offensive. And if that's true, it implies now that Ukraine needs a 3 - 1 advantage in order to win the war (as per their stated war aims.)

It's not even a long-term advantage, as the western coalition still has many resources it hasn't even begun to meaningfully tap but which it has access to, such as the American boneyards, the pre-position stocks around the war, the South Korean ammo stockpiles, and so on.

We tapped the South Korean stockpiles last year (.3 or .5 million rounds out of an estimated 3.4 million.) I agree that South Korea has a lot more, but I think that counts as a meaningful tap.

I don't understand US thinking on our boneyards, but as near as I can figure for some reason we don't want to tap them. Otherwise we would have sent more M1s.

Ukraine doesn't need military parity with Russia in the near or medium term to win the war.

I agree that this is true if "win the war" is taken to mean "preserving some degree of Ukrainian sovereignty or territory." As per your own statements above, though, I do think they need something like military parity at a minimum to achieve their stated war aims.

Now, I think it's easy to discount Ukrainian stated war aims as something they're never going to get – and that's fair enough! I also think it's quite plausible that (Trump or no Trump, NATO support or no NATO support, however you slice it) that Russia does not achieve all of its war aims. It's fairly typical in war for neither side to "win" to the degree that they wanted to.