8 Weeks into that Artillery/UAV War, and is the Ukrainian strategy showing results?
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Hi Everyone,
Its now been about 8 weeks since the Ukrainian Army changed its strategy for the counteroffensive, and we might be seeing some real evidence that what its doing is working. Remember this is not easy, its still going to be a long slog, but the Ukrainians are at least giving themselves the best chance for success going forward.
If you cast your minds back to late June, there was a change in Ukrainian strategy. The counteroffensive began around June 6 or so with an attempt by Ukraine to make advances with armored vehicles following NATO tactics. Though the size of these attacks was overstated at the time (they were Company sized) the results were underwhelming. Russian defenses were too layered and armored vehicles are simply too vulnerable—and the results were clear. Assaults on the prepared positions could not succeed.
At that point, Ukraine shifted tactics to what seemed to be an artillery/MLRS/UAV war with light infantry (see substack July 2). A few days later the ‘seem’ I thought could be dispensed with and in a 7 July Substack, I wrote that the Ukrainians had embarked on a distinct Artillery destruction phase of the counteroffensive.
We are in a Distinct Phase of the Ukrainian Counteroffensive
After a brief and nonsensical flurry of articles and claims that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was failing, things seem to have settled down. That is good, as people have recalibrated their expectations of where the Ukrainians are in their counteroffensive and, just as important, how long it might take until their present operations moves from the destruction phase to once again attempt some operational maneuver. To understand that, its probably best to talk about what phase we are in now.
That phase was revealed by three steps that the Ukrainian military seemed to be concentrating on, which were:
Ukrainians are putting in far more effort to destroy Russian artillery systems
They are targeting Russian ammunition depots/warehouses which story artillery/MLRS ammunition
They are targeting complementary systems which aid or protect Russian artillery such as counterbattery radars and EW capabilities.
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