From your mouth to God's ears, Tangmo.
Yes, and I hope you're sitting down because there's more good stuff. One can leap higher out of a chair than from a standstill eh.
As this war is, and continues to be, it is Putin who must be lying down pale with a cold washcloth on his forehead. And doctors who dare not do anything. Or who might dare to be daring.
Russia has learned on offense in Donbas especially that If there is any lesson to be learned from their offensives so far, it is that the attacker is at a serious disadvantage and suffers disproportionally heavier losses because of drone corrected precision artillery and anti-tank missile fire, perhaps at a proportion of 4 to 1.
Now with the two US rocket attack systems and their extremely accurate and highly lethal firepower the Russian forces need to hold off to find out where the highly mobile rocket vehicles are or will be placed and positioned, and which forces the Ukraine rocketmen are targeting. At what strength, ie, one battery or two.....will all 8 rockets per mobile launcher be fired or half the number, or will two rockets be enough.
Will the incoming from the rockets be its powerful bombs or its massively lethal cluster bombs*. Ukraine is looking at options, yes, one being concentrate the rocket fire to blow a hole in the Russian lines weakest point and counterattack. (I think not yet but the Russians need to factor the possibility.) So the Russians are shatting their pants right now. Kremlin knows they have to attempt to preclude these rockets positioning themselves lethally, accurately, powerfully. And as noted in war scuttlebutt, NATO believes Russia will try to interdict the movement of the rocket systems on NATO territory, or, if not NATO territory, inside Ukraine. Or both. So NATO and Ukraine will take, ahem, preventive measures against this.
Most significant however is the question of where are the Ukrainian reserves? The Ukrainian army spent the first 90 days of this war on defense while arming and training its reserves away from the fighting. NATO believes (with good reason one can suppose) over 100,000 Ukrainian fighters have been grouped into numerous heavy and light mobile brigades of the Army and the Territorial Defense. The Ukrainian General Staff has been hush about their obscure locations and reluctant to introduce them into the fighting before they are ready to play a meaningful role. Stated another way, Ukraine general staff are measuring the Russian forces for their coffin. It's a matter of which ones first depending on a snapshot of the present ongoing developments in the fighting. A critical point. After all, the whole idea and function of a reserve force is to strike at the decisive point of the battle -- or the war itself.
So it's being costly to Ukraine too and, yes, it's a cliche's to say war is hell, but all this time the stout and firm regular and more experienced reserve formations have been steadily degraded by repeated fighting, waiting for the reserves to complete their training and organization. In fact, recent Russian typically small gains are partially due to heavy losses amongst the battalions of the Ukrainian 24th and 30th mechanized heavy infantry brigades who have been fierce and determined to hold the line and that have been subjected to constant artillery bombardment since the beginning of the war. Thanks to these brave warriors better dayze are coming however.
Indeed, it's been said numerous times in scrolling Ukraine has mechanized reserves both heavy and light and that the real dance has yet to begin.
*
Gen. Mattis major thrust while commander of NATO force development was a greatly and successful increased lethality of ordinance and weapons systems. Gen. Milley had this focus when he was Army chief of staff (CSA) and Mattis was SecDef.
www.newsweek.com
