I do have to admit that the reams of armchair general “experts” who don’t even appear to be affiliated with the military most of the time seem to be growing in number lately, and they all seem to share a fundamental lack of understanding about how two countries with rough parity between their conventional abilities would conduct a conventional military engagement that isn’t simply an insurgency suppression.
Grinding military conflict is, has been, and for a long time into the future will be the norm. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the American military playbook wherein you just rapidly and completely steamroll an opponent with like… everything short of nukes is very much not the norm of how military campaigns are generally conducted. The US is still, for now, a true superpower; the way we are able to execute effective unilateral military action is the exception, not the rule.
All things considered - especially the geopolitical complexity of the situation - Ukraine seems to be doing surprisingly well with the resources they’ve been afforded by their allies in the west, and the counteroffensive seems to be actually picking up steam in the last few days.
Sounds like a boomer stuck in the cold war era. There can be a world without the military industrial complex controlling narratives. This defeatist “it’s the way it is” attitude is exactly why democracy has failed and we’re in a military / tech oligarchy, with increasing anxiety and poverty being inflicted on the wider population. You are in good company, at least you have that.
Also that’s like… not at all, in any way, what I was expressing. I was saying that for entities who either can’t or don’t want to utterly annihilate each other, in a tactical and strategic context, grinding conflicts will NEVER go out of style.
The truth of the matter is that combined arms offensives are really hard, even for countries like the USA. It’s doubly hard to do it without air superiority, since the Russian air force has considerably more aircraft flying than the Ukrainian one. They also have incredible air defense. There’s also a massive defensive line in Zapporizhia, where the offensive is apparently happening.
Desert Storm was after a massive air campaign destroying logistics and communication, but the Russians have a whole year of learning to disburse their logistics, making it that much harder too
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