American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine
wsj.comNo one weapon system will change the tide. Ukraine plans for 2M fpv drones in 2024 alone. We are in a war of production and attrition now, but it seems only one side is willing to acknowledge and act accordingly. (Though it does seem this last point is changing in Europe)
Has been underway for a while. Look at the dates here, for example: https://www.google.com/search?q=rheinmetall+joint+venture+uk...
The business pages in the newspapers have published significant small stories in the past year. A small factory somewhere "plans an expansion" last year, "expands by 5×" or "switches to … round-the-clock production" this year.
Right. And that's why "don't attack Russia because you might provoke them" is Russian propaganda. We're not degrading their ability to maintain their war effort, and that means we will lose given enough time.
We should be bombing Russia's infrastructure. Interestingly that seems to be changing - it seems for the past couple of months I've been seeing increased news of Russia refinery explosions etc. I wonder what took Ukraine so long to go for it.
>I wonder what took Ukraine so long to go for it.
All of their weapons were coming from America and its allies, and the Americans were somewhat concerned about escalation. The Americans set limits, which the Ukrainians didn't want to violate for fear of fewer weapons in the future, but now that those weapon shipments have slowed, and victory seems almost impossible, they are disregarding the old American prohibitions.
I think a second aspect is developing local capabilities to reach far into Russia, i.e. the long-range, one-way drones (and now Cessnas)
>I wonder what took Ukraine so long to go for it.
Yeah and then they lost 10 GW of electricity generation capacity in a week. More today, more to come. Maybe that was it. The Americans seemed to think so.