First,
@wdolson , I want to say thank you for your very detailed posts regarding the Ukraine situation, I find them very valuable and look forward to reading them and reviewing the links you post.
Second, I'm wondering if Russia is not using it's best equipment (Planes, Missiles, tanks, etc) so they they dont 'show their hand' to the western countries and NATO. But the more I think about it though, I think everyone over estimated Russia's military capability and while they do have nukes, their conventional military is extremely lacking and outdated. It seems like Ukraine keeps finding military vehicles stripped of their important/valuable equipment but I am starting to wonder if they never had much of it in the first place. Maybe AA missile tubes filled 1/3 of the capacity, high tech radar never installed, not using digital encrypted communications, etc.
Did I miss answering this? The Russians did bring their best. They didn't initially deploy their best ground attack aircraft, the Su-34, but their best tank has been often seen on the battlefield (usually disabled or abandoned), they have been using their best ballistic missiles, and pretty much their entire corps of trucks.
The Russians are way behind western militaries in a lot of areas. The Germans inherited a lot of Russian aircraft from East Germany when the two countries recombined and the Germans quickly either sold or put on limited duty all the Russian aircraft. NATO doctrine is to train pilots well and give them a lot of decision making control. Often they are given a task and it's up to the individual pilots or the leader of the mission to come up with the best way to do it. Western aircraft have direct access to a lot of information that might help them.
The Russian doctrine had far more control from their base. A controller would direct everything and all information passed through the ground controller before going to the pilot.
In the west, infantry on the ground can call in air support. Normal operating procedure is to have fighter bombers on call orbiting behind the battle line. When infantry needed air support, they could make a call and they direct the pilot individually to the target. The US started this in WW II, though there was usually a pilot off flying duty embedded with the troops then.
With Russian doctrine, if air support is available at all the call has to go up the chain of command and back down again.
The Germans found the Russian fighters could be modified for some western systems, but not others. As soon as they could, Germany got rid of all their Russian aircraft. Some of those Mig-29s knocking around the eastern European countries may be cast offs from Germany. I'm not sure what happens to the old planes the Germans inherited, I expect some are in museum collections now. About the time the USSR collapsed warbird collectors in the US got a lot of Russian aircraft.
There was a video I think was posted here, or it may have been somewhere else about Russian logistics called "The Failed Logistics of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine". The Russian military is really built around defending Russia. It is very dependent on their rail network, which was a major factor in their victory in WW II. They are fairly efficient at moving troops and supply by rail, but basically it all goes pear shaped as soon as they move away from the rail network.
Russia invested all their money in a strong front and never bothered to complete the back. They have a massive array of tanks, most have been sitting idle in the Siberian winter for 30 years. They are dusting those off and sending them into Ukraine now. It's about as useful as sending tanks to a naval battle though. This is not an armored conflict.
Conquering and holding a country is about how much infantry you put into the fight. The magic ratio is 20 troops per 1000 population. To capture and hold Ukraine the Russians need 800,000 troops, and most of those infantry. And that's if they can overwhelm the Ukrainian defenses quick enough. At this point they need to defeat an army of 700,000 and growing before they get to the occupation phase.
The US made the same mistake in Iraq. When Donald Rumsfeld asked for an estimate for taking and holding Iraq he was given a number around 1 million. He wanted less than 100,000. After arguments with the Pentagon they settled on something like 150,000. In that case there were enough troops to take the country quickly. The Iraqis didn't want to fight. But when the Iraqis didn't like how the US was doing the occupation and the insurgency started, the US was playing whack a mole with a lot of moles and very few hammers. General Shinsecki got forced out for suggesting 1 million troops, but he was right in the end.
[back a long time ago this stuff was my specialist subject, before I came into energy, and the principles have not changed].
Re missiles : Missiles of any type are not a perfect weapon, especially not MANPADS. A lot of MANPAD shots can be defeated by the targeted aircraft. It takes good operators to use MANPADS effectively. MANPADS are most dangerous against low and slow flyers, which is why the Su-25 Frogfoot and the helicopters are getting hit. That in turn is why the Russians are having to turn to the Su-34 Fullback in order to get reasonable accuracy from >1000-feet using dumb bombs, as that is the most viable aircraft with trained crews that the Russians have in their fleet. However the Su-34 cannot fly too high as it then becomes vulnerable to the Ukrainian Bukhs (which though they are the older Bukhs are still obviously capable), or vulnerable to the remnant Ukrainian airforce. It is because of that Ukrainian remnant airforce that the Russians are having to operate their medium/high-level missile systems such as the S-300 / S-400 (and their Bukhs), and there is quite a lot of anecdotal reporting that the Russians are having problems deconflicting their own missiles from their own aircraft. So basically the Russians are trying to attrite the Ukrainian air force enough that they can in time switch off the Russian missile systems, switch to medium-altitude bombing, and get out of range of the MANPAD threat, and accept the bombing accuracy loss, i.e. their tactics in Syria and Chechnya (Grozny). Hence the Ukrainians trying to get their hands on more aircraft - and I hope a way is found to enable that. One needs a heck of a lot of MANPADS to give widespread coverage as the practical engagement ranges/zones are very limited. The Ukrainians are doing a very good job in the circumstances with the resources they have. A very real issue is that the S300/400 and the Russian airbases are physically located in Russia and/or Belarus, so the Russians can big up the Ukrainian attacks on those sites as being aggressive in nature. (the same would be a big issue if NATO were to start dismantling the Russian IADS).
Re Budapest memorandum : Technically the UK and USA are fulfilling their obligations. Obviously the Russians are in breach. Morally the UK and USA (and France) have a duty to do a lot to assist, and one can make a case that just about enough is being done. Opinions on that vary. It is a very fine line.
Re no-fly zones : I perfectly understand why NATO does not wish to declare a no-fly zone, as that would make NATO a party to the conflict. And in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution it is difficult for NATO to act in this way, and of course Russia can (and has) vetoed a UN Secrity Council resolution. It would be possible for (say) UK/FR/USA to declare a no-fly zone but they would need agreement of (say) RO, HU, GR, TK to do so as they would need overfly rights to get their aircraft from their bases to Ukraine. So in practical terms declaring a no-fly zone that way inevitably snowballs and drags in all of NATO. Very difficult - as the Swedes and Fins are rapidly learning you cannot be under the NATO umbrella unless you are actually in NATO. Expect referendums in both those countries fairly soon after the dust settles. The security guarantuees that British politicians were giving to the Swedes a few days ago are of no more use than the Budapest memorandum imho.
Re peace negotiations and cease fires : we must be really careful about letting apparently reasonable demands be put forward that leave the Ukrainians in an untenable situation. And basically any occupation of Crimea, Donbass, etc is untenable, let along more territory. Complete and utter withdrawal is the minimum requirement. Also note that it is not just Ukraine in play here - the Russians have effectively already annexed Belarus, and are very obviously trying to create a situation where they also control Moldova as well as Ukraine.
Nobody has unlimited time and resources here. But be aware that the weather plays a part. From a Ukrainian perspective the worst thing would be for a warm dry Spring that dries the fields out and lets the Russian tracked vehicles cross the fields. At the moment the open landscape war is a tactical fight for - and very much constrained to only be along - the road and rail network. Lots of good soaking rain/sleet/warm-snow is best for the Ukrainians at the moment.
I don't think it will drag on for too long - worth reading this :
Good analysis. You've been inside the beast and know this sort of thing from the inside.
I agree, a long wet spring favors the defender, but there is the other factor that the Russians have a critically poor fuel situation. The Ukrainians are fighting smart and going from Russia's Achilles heel, they are seeking out Russian supply and hitting it hard. Especially fuel trucks. The Russians are running low on fuel trucks and it's getting increasingly difficult to move supply on Ukrainian roads.
A modern army takes a lot of fuel to stay in combat. I had a figure fr a WW II US armored division at one time, but I can't find it now. I did find a requirement for a Gulf War I US armored division (this is per day): 5000 tons of ammunition, 555,000 gallons of fuel, 300,000 gallons of water, and 80,000 meals. I'm sure the supply situation for Russian units is cut to the bone at this point, but they are trying to keep something like 180,000 troops in the field with a dwindling supply of support vehicles. All those main battle tanks are sucking resources without much benefit.
I think by the time the fields dry out most of the Russian army is going to be immobile and starving. This is turning into Guadalcanal with the Japanese played by the Russians without the tropical diseases taking the toll they did.
As for the Russian air defense unable to tell friend from foe. A week ago I would have been surprised, but here is another area where the Russians didn't deal with a real battlefield problem. The US had IFF systems in WW II! The Russians have been unable to tackle a problem the US was addressing almost 80 years ago.
The Russians remind me of the Kzin in Larry Niven's Known Universe books. The Kzin were an alien species of sentient cats that rivaled humans for a while. They were fierce fighters, but dismissed a lot of non-combat related things and they often ended up paying for it.
The Japanese had some of these problems in WW II also. They neglected anti submarine warfare (ASW) until too late in the war because it wasn't a frontline combat kind of job. Their ASW ships tended to have poor quality crews with poor commanders who had essentially washed out of the more glamorous front line navy. They had somewhat shoddy equipment until late 1944. The Japanese finally started putting some effort into ASW when the US subs had sunk enough of their merchant marine to strangle the economy back home.
The British first and the Americans second poured a lot of resources into ASW technology and by 1943 both navies had very lethal ASW capabilities. The US put so much tech into their small ships some got dangerously top heavy by 1944. The destroyers lost in Halsey's Typhoon were among the oldest with the fast carriers and were smaller than the Fletcher class. They were sunk because they had dumped ballast just before the storm to refuel, then they capsized because of all the new equipment topside for air and ASW defense. A couple of the class survived, but were badly damaged.
The Japanese had ship-born radar before the US did, but never expended it to the fleet until late in the war and never got proficient at it. The Japanese didn't think radar was an honorable way to fight. The USN had some resistance to radar initially, but as soon as its effectiveness got proven everyone relied on it. The USN installed it on every ship as radar sets became available.
In Russia it doesn't seem to be about honor or a warrior code, it's more about having a military that looks as fierce as possible, but really has a lot of serious problems that got brushed under the rug because they were not important to the front they were putting up. Now those oversights are coming back to haunt them.