Winning Battles and Losing Wars
Sometimes a meat grinder is the most humane way to end things
Writing is tricky work, especially when one is trying to disseminate specialized information to a general audience. Go too basic and people yawn because you aren’t telling them anything new; lean heavily into jargon, data, and industry specifics, and you may look knowledgeable but you may also wind up incomprehensible.
Lately, we have covered Russian geopolitical concerns, the Russian army order of battle, and specific weapons systems. I’ve gotten some excellent feedback from old contacts in Ukraine and intelligent friends here stateside — including the bombshell last week that Russia has not been deploying large numbers of the Armata tank as I assumed they would, but rather relying on a grab-bag of older model T-72 and T-90 tanks, and using them poorly to boot. These are the tanks you keep seeing in large burning piles after getting hit with shaped-charge rockets from the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones.
But today, forgive me, I want to take a step back in a more general direction. I know that *most* people with even a passing interest in history, politics, or the military know the difference between tactics and strategy, but, even so, constant refreshing of the idea is good for the mind. Losing sight of one or the other can be disastrous…
