Perhaps provide some air superiority to back up those suggestions of force concentration?
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Release the F16s!
they are now on it. It just takes over a year to train pilots, sadly
From scratch, sure, but surely am already trained pilot would take significantly less time to learn a new airframe?
It isn’t just about flying a plane.
You’ve got to be certified in each weapon the planes are supplied with. You’ve got to learn the doctrines, then shift to the doctrines, that the planes were built for.
Then you’ve got to resupply the planes. Maintain them. Fix them. Service them. Store them. Debug them. Keep them in the air.
There’s a massive logistical challenge to integrating F-16s into Ukraine.
Not so much. The doctrine won't be that different. The most pressing matters are air superiority and bombardment. Bombardment they can already do it actually. They can train for the new air superiority tech and see for the rest later.
The mechanics are probably the hardest to train.
Who knew it would be so difficult and time consuming to learn how to fly around and do a bit of pew-pew. I thought it was more like getting in the car and driving to the shop, but with bombs.
From scratch it would take several years. At least in my country, to train a pilot you have to go to the Military Air Force School to complete an 8 semester long career that won't necessarily grant you a position as a pilot. Of course, with constrained times of war, this can be achieved in less than 4 years, but 1 year seems like a stretch. Now, if you have a vast disposal of trained pilots, I guess you can make it in one year or even less, depending on several factors. The problem is I don't find stats about this case, and even if there are a lot of Ukrainian pilots ready to fly, they are probably not seasoned in combat.
Which is why it's shameful that they didn't start training programs last year.
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Training is needed
Tell them behind closed doors not us, shithead!
I'm going to go off on a limb and say they wouldn't be if it weren't already well known by the enemy
For those who have only seen the headline:
Nearly three months into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians may be taking the advice to heart, especially as casualties continue to mount and Russia still holds an edge in troops and equipment.
U.S. assessed Ukraine's counteroffensive strategy and made recommendations, and now Ukraine is adjusting its strategy accordingly. The headline makes it sound like an endemic issue. Some analysts think it's too little too late, but I wish them the best.
So 'Bahmut holds' wasn't a viable strategy after all???
I think its definitely too early to say whether or not any particular element of either Russia or Ukraine's strategy in the war has been 'viable' at this point in time. The ultimate long-term effects of either side's major strategic decisions are probably difficult to understand right now even for the ones who have been making them, let alone for outside observers such as ourselves.
We can at least acknowledge that Bakhmut was the culminating point of Russian offensive operations in the Donbas. Would it have been the culminating point of their offensive if Ukrainians didn't defend it so fiercely? Who can say. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces were heavily attrited in the battle there - will this benefit Russia or Ukraine more? Who can say. There are 'conventional wisdom' answers to both of these questions, but the nature of the fog of war is such that even small, seemingly unrelated developments can drastically alter the valence of what was previously established as strategically advantageous for one side or vice versa.
Even when institutions dedicated to the study of warfare attempt to analyze utilized strategy X versus counterfactual strategy Y from some episode of military history, the debates are often unending. So can't you see how cringe it is to claim as a layman that it should've been obvious to a given commander (and at runtime, too, despite the fact that you're making the criticism with the benefit of hindsight) that strategy Z would have been clearly superior to whatever it was they thought was best, back then?
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