Let this be a lesson to other European nations afraid of Russia or other foreign militaries attempting a ground invasion, you don’t need to turn your country into a fascist police state that is paranoid of the immigrants that make your country vibrant, diverse and fun. That will lose the war far before it has even begun.
You need the ability to crank out 155mm self propelled artillery and a fuck ton of 155mm shells, and a society that can resist the urge to become fascists who suck at fighting war.
I mean I also imagine the drone tactics of Ukraine have kept innovating and increasing in effectiveness, I don’t think an authoritarian dictatorship is ever going to be able to treat its young bored creative people kindly enough to see what they are capable of when they want to fight for you so Russia just is never going to win that competition in its current state.
However, that advantage could never be capitalized on decisively without distributed, organic 155mm artillery support able to provide an existential threat to any condensed, heavily entrenched or concentrated mechanized forces attempting to launch an offensive operation or cover an existentially threatening breakthrough in Russian frontlines by the Ukranians that puts Russian supply lines in a “check” (to use a chess term) and forces them to respond to Ukraine instead of the other way around.
If you don’t understand why I posted a 155mm SPG and not drone weapons, it is that these artillery pieces place Russian mobile SAM assets in uneasy danger even when they are ~50 miles from the front, this fundamentally changes how Russia can deploy decisive anti-air cover in critical corridors of manuever which although these large SAM vehicles are focused on taking out manned fighter aircraft, the presence of them of course allows other anti-aircraft assets to operate in the area and deny Ukraine full exploitation of its advantage in drone tactics.
It is crucial to understand that just the plausible threat that these Bohdanas are lurking not far behind Ukranian frontlines utterly changes the strategic calculus even in places Ukraine doesn’t have a Bohdana anywhere in the area because maybe they do and the artillery shells just haven’t landed on your head yet… losing your SAM cover and the loss of operational confidence can be nearly strategic loss given the extreme value of them to protecting the rest of a concentrated mechanized force facing another mechanized force because it places ALL of those other forces in danger of a strategic defeat from an air counter attack that exploits a temporary window so long as Ukraine can field even a single battle ready fighter bomber (prime example being a mechanized armor force attempting a river crossing in an area that is under threat of 155mm artillery threat vs not under realistic threat of it).
also, while it has been proven that making a drone into a peer-to-peer battlefield weapon is effective, it is never going to be as effective as using that drone to spot for mobile 155mm artillery if it is available for fire support, which underlines how the role of 155mm SPG is so strategically decisive in the favor of Ukraine
The Wall (domestically produced in Ukraine with initial help of Denmark)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2S22_Bohdana
Let this be a lesson to other European nations afraid of Russia or other foreign militaries attempting a ground invasion, you don’t need to turn your country into a fascist police state that is paranoid of the immigrants that make your country vibrant, diverse and fun. That will lose the war far before it has even begun.
You need the ability to crank out 155mm self propelled artillery and a fuck ton of 155mm shells, and a society that can resist the urge to become fascists who suck at fighting war.
I mean I also imagine the drone tactics of Ukraine have kept innovating and increasing in effectiveness, I don’t think an authoritarian dictatorship is ever going to be able to treat its young bored creative people kindly enough to see what they are capable of when they want to fight for you so Russia just is never going to win that competition in its current state.
However, that advantage could never be capitalized on decisively without distributed, organic 155mm artillery support able to provide an existential threat to any condensed, heavily entrenched or concentrated mechanized forces attempting to launch an offensive operation or cover an existentially threatening breakthrough in Russian frontlines by the Ukranians that puts Russian supply lines in a “check” (to use a chess term) and forces them to respond to Ukraine instead of the other way around.
If you don’t understand why I posted a 155mm SPG and not drone weapons, it is that these artillery pieces place Russian mobile SAM assets in uneasy danger even when they are ~50 miles from the front, this fundamentally changes how Russia can deploy decisive anti-air cover in critical corridors of manuever which although these large SAM vehicles are focused on taking out manned fighter aircraft, the presence of them of course allows other anti-aircraft assets to operate in the area and deny Ukraine full exploitation of its advantage in drone tactics.
It is crucial to understand that just the plausible threat that these Bohdanas are lurking not far behind Ukranian frontlines utterly changes the strategic calculus even in places Ukraine doesn’t have a Bohdana anywhere in the area because maybe they do and the artillery shells just haven’t landed on your head yet… losing your SAM cover and the loss of operational confidence can be nearly strategic loss given the extreme value of them to protecting the rest of a concentrated mechanized force facing another mechanized force because it places ALL of those other forces in danger of a strategic defeat from an air counter attack that exploits a temporary window so long as Ukraine can field even a single battle ready fighter bomber (prime example being a mechanized armor force attempting a river crossing in an area that is under threat of 155mm artillery threat vs not under realistic threat of it).
also, while it has been proven that making a drone into a peer-to-peer battlefield weapon is effective, it is never going to be as effective as using that drone to spot for mobile 155mm artillery if it is available for fire support, which underlines how the role of 155mm SPG is so strategically decisive in the favor of Ukraine