For those of you still watching the war in Ukraine, I think this is something you might find interesting, from Adam Silverman’s post over at Balloon Juice:

There was a question in last night’s comments by Anonymous at Work:

I figured that much but aside from a drop in daily artillery fire, it’s not stopping RU generals from launching human wave attacks UA forces and pushing them back in spots. I’m a worrier, so I am worried that UA’s window to have enough forces left to mount a decent offensive is closing.
Am I wrong?

Yes, you are wrong. Part of the Russian way of war is to use its enormous ability to mobilize bodies and throw them at their enemy. Basically generate a ton of mass and use that quantity to just bury the adversary. The problem with that is you have to have a lot of other stuff going right for it to work. I just so happened to have been emailing one of my former bosses about this the other day. Here’s the part of his response that is relevant:

What separates us from most others is our NCO Corps, corporals with 3 to 4 years of service, sergeants with 5 to 6 years, SSG with 7 to 8 years and on up the line. These personnel train soldiers in the training base as well as in units. The russians have NONE of this, the Ukrainians have some of it and are gaining more as time passes. So, the key isn’t how many men can be thrown in the field but how many well trained and equipped men can be in the fight. Institutionally the russians lost this war before they crossed the L/D and they have no way to recover.

This former boss, a retired Green Beret, was cross trained as an ORSA (military statistician) and assigned to Personnel Command for a broadening assignment. Everything I know about personnel management and force generation I learned from him. I know a lot and it’s still a drop compared to him. Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s re-invasion may not be quick. And it may not be pretty. And it is surely far from over. But I think my former boss has the right take. Even more so when you consider that more and more NATO weaponry, munitions, ordnance, and material will be coming online just as more and more of the Ukrainian NCO Corps comes back from training in Britain and Poland and the US and a few other EU and NATO member states. The Ukrainians may have to stack the Russians like cordwood, and Crimea is going to be an exceedingly hard nut to crack and will likely be the last theater of this war, but overall the Russians invaded with a poorly trained, poorly equipped, poorly led military in pursuit of an objective that was much more delusional that it was strategic.