notaterran wrote: ↑Thu, 22. Aug 24, 20:46 I guess we'll know with more certainty after the war is over: Russian losses of men and equipment vs. Ukraine's.
500k Russian losses isn't that much and they could easily take 3-4 times more of this.
However, raw manpower, without equipment and training, is what both Ukrainians and Russians openly call "meat wave".
The problem for Russia is that they already burned through half of their 50 years build-up stash of Soviet Equipment...in two years.
Russian "new" production is a bluff and joke - most what they report as new production is at best restoration of deep storage equipment.
Now here is interesting part, why Putin cannot call general mobilization.
In modern Western army, for each one frontline trooper, you need 8-9 backline logistic personel.
Even for Russian army that is much less advance, the ratio is 1:6.
This means that, if Russia would want to mobilize 1 mil army, they must as well mobilize additional 6 milion personel for logistic and factories - this would completely crash Russian economy (if you stack this with all the people who already died or wounded or escaped from Russia).
Imagine you want to take that old T-62 from Soviet stash, you need to find 4 people who know how to use it, but you need additional 24 people to restore it, keep it fuel and armed and move it from depot to factory and from factory to frontline.
...and once, by sheer miracle, you manage to get it to the frontline, you need someone who can actually command and coordinate this mass of people and equipment to drive in same direction, shoot in the same direction and achive some useful objective while not dying too fast.
I think the most likely scenario is that in the end both side will burn out enough equipment and people that they cannot advance, so it will turn into WW1 stalemate...but with drones.
Both Russia and Ukraine are now seriously going into full scale drone warfare as alternative for classical equipment (e.g. artillery, airforce, recon) and manpower shortages.
It will be easier to build and maintain a few factories, churning standarized drones, than trying to rebuild conventional forces.
That's the worst case scenario, coz with drones losses beign something less horrendous then people losses, this could last for decade (e.g. repeat from strange war 2014-2021, but now with 95% drones).
I hope, some new stuff like cheap lasers will reduce drone advantage, but for now, the mass drone usage is rather grim perspective.
