Define the War

The other day, Dima (The Military Summary Channel), took a stab at defining the war in Ukraine. He proposed that if we were to label 2023 as the year of the Greatest Ukrainian (failed) Counteroffensive, that maybe 2024 will become known as the year of the F-16, or the year of the Patriot defense system, or maybe the year of F-16 versus Mig 31. He frames the war as having become a competition over air superiority, that air superiority is the defining aspect. Maybe, I dunno. I’m wondering about the maps he and other mappers use. They have a zillion little black lines on them. I haven’t figured out who-all made those lines, but they reflect (with unknown inaccuracy) the locations of field fortifications. Some of the fortifications are visible as trenches in overhead photography, most of are not. Dima very often talks about the process of ‘digging in” and consolidating positions by digging in deeper. All the digging is in response to what-all is flying around above. The ultimate score remains on the ground level, though. Either people can walk around on the surface doing useful things or they cannot. I like my own theorizing; go figure. This war features a lot of aspects into which I invested lots of words in my longer writing. The underground plane of war one of them. “Air superiority” to include drones and helicopters. Large machines. All that. The many aspects are held together by reconsidering risk distances and aggregate tactics on a broad scale. The war in Ukraine highlights incessant localized efforts to outflank and envelope. Observers highlight artillery one day, FPV drones the next, field fortifications the next, prospects of air-to air combat, then the use of larger building-busting munitions, and on. So maybe go back to the maps and look at the little black lines. They seem a bit chaotic. No Maginot Line. But besides vertical depth, they have horizontal depth, at least in eastern Ukraine. They doubtless follow topographic factors, some geologic factors, some past human diggings including urban developments, and other influence we don’t think of, but the web they produce is a huge defensive structure. It has helped the Ukrainians slow down the Russians, just as a similar web helped the Russians defeat the Greatest Ukrainian Counteroffensive in 2023. The Russians enjoy great superiority in materiel of all kinds, but ground is ground and distance is distance. Go look at the ground defenses. The Russians grind on, strategy and tactics, tactics and strategy. They have made those words cooperate, not compete. They are slowly breaching the web of Ukrainian ground fortifications, a web that is not continuous west. When they do breach that complex wall, the little negotiating power Ukrainians have left will go up poof. The best time to negotiate is right now. Which brings me to JD Vance. I’m happy with the selection. He strikes me as a way, way better natural strategist than a Blinken, Noland, Stoltenberg, or…oooof, an Austin. Vance apparently intuits, correctly, that if the “West” would like Ukrainian nationals to have a homeland, it will have to be much smaller than was Soviet Ukraine, or not be at all. There is no need for it join NATO — the need for NATO itself a real question.