Z has a Plan.
And that plan is going to kick Russian ass.
Medium is a wonderful place to get information. To listen to people who have the expertise and the experience (and the contacts) to be able to get the kind of information the press is apparently unable to obtain — or at least to publish.
There are a couple of folks who I rely on, and I’ve constantly been recommending and quoting Dylan Combellick because of that expertise and experience. There are others.
Shankar Narayan is another one. His articles have good information, and he cites international sources for some of his data.
There are a couple more I see occasionally, but I cannot find their names right now. One of those wrote an article about the US ramping up its artillery shell production I read yesterday, which I’ll talk about both here and a bit later.
But it’s that article that got me thinking. Zelensky visited the US and met with a whole slew of people, including Biden and Trump recently (no, I’m not gonna talk about that shit storm), but one of the places Z visited while here was an artillery ammo production facility in, I think, Pennsylvania.
That article talked about the US ramping its production capability upwards towards, I think around 80,000 annually, and still working to ramp it up beyond that. That got me to thinking. I’ve seen a few folks saying that the visit was in part to push Biden towards sending aid faster. While, yes, that can be argued, I’ve got another option I’ve heard nobody else talk about.
I’m not going to sit here and denigrate anyone for any past things they’ve said. But what I do want to do is present a different possible scenario, and I’m going to bring in a lot of things together to make my case, so sit back and put on yer thinkin cap.
Another recent article I read also helped with this. It included information to support his point about how Ukraine has been hitting multiple targets inside Russia, both shorter and mid-range facilities.
First, they started hitting oil export facilities.
Second, they started hitting the production and storage facilities.
Third, they began hitting the airfields and destroying aircraft and repair facilities.
Fourth, they began hitting the ammunition storage facilities just recently.
Now. Before you respond to this in yer head, take a moment. Ukraine has been very good at one thing during this war, and that is taking their time and using their heads in working out how to fight this war. A lot of that has been upgrading their efforts with drones. BIG advance there, right?
But what if that was just part of a plan?
Put yourself in the place of Z and his military leadership. They’re facing a much bigger opponent, yes. But what you and I (and probably a lot of other Western folks) fail to take into consideration is that they know the Russians better than we do! So they know the corruption exists, and in fact, probably know how it works, again, better than us.
Plus, since their military folks started learning Western military tactics and strategy not terribly long after 2014, it makes sense that we see them going after Russian logistics first, right?
But again, what if that’s just part of a plan?
It makes sense that their miltary would have such a plan, after all, ours does that for every possibly imaginable scenario, so why wouldn’t Ukraine’s folks do that for scenarios they KNOW they’re going to face? After all, as early as 2014, it was at least to them, patently obvious that Russia was going to invade. And it’s to their credit that they’d hide their newly advanced capabilities from everyone, so the Russians wouldn’t see it coming.
But back to the plan.
Knowing that they couldn’t manufacture all the various things they were going to need in such a war, as soon as things went to shit in 2022 and the Western allies started talking to Ukraine about supplies, that’s when I think this started. Over time, they got in touch with the military folks and began to work out what each allied country could and would, politically, provide. Of course, not everyone would have the amounts needed at first, and in almost every case (because nobody in the West was really supplying a war), that would mean production rates would need to be ramped up above the levels needed to maintain stored supplies as the older stuff gets bad. Like, for instance, those artillery shells, because while not at war, the US does use those in training, testing, etc., and thus the system does move a certain number of shells through the system, but not at the rates needed in the Ukrainian war right now, obviously.
So that needs to be ramped up, and I’d bet you dollars to donuts that Z’s plans include the rate at which those shells are getting produced at higher numbers and when that number will be sufficient for further and stronger efforts by his military.
So, just think about it.
While Z might prefer to get the longer-ranged missiles from the US earlier, other considerations with other types of supplies (or in training their pilots to use F-16s adequately) may have made an earlier use of those missiles unnecessary. And maybe it's even better to wait so they’d not be inside Ukraine and vulnerable to Russian attack.
So they’ve made a plan. A plan consistent with the known issues regarding the rate of how the differing NATO and other allied countries would be able and willing to provide different types of weapons and supplies so their military wouldn’t be caught short at a critical time. That the supplies and equipment needed would be there and their military would be ready to use it all when and where needed — both so they wouldn’t be unduly delayed and so the new stuff wouldn’t be taking up warehouse or storage space for longer than needed and be more vulnerable to attack.
And that plan would enable them to plan their strategy for the long term so that they could gradually ramp up the types and ranges of the more remote locations in Russia they’d have to attack and when, so the attacks would not give Russia time to FIX much of that before Ukraine could move on to their next stage. So each stage would affect the next stage, and so forth.
A logical progression, if you will.
The second stages were to hit the production facilities for oil, as the first one backed up the storage facilities, as they couldn’t export it fast enough. Then the third phase hit the aircraft and such that were big users of the productions they didn’t hit — aircraft fuel production. Then they started hitting the storage facilities where all that backup was being stored, destroying months of buildup, now that the production facilities couldn’t replace it fast enough.
And now they’re hitting the ammo storage, which will limit the Russian forces’ ability to fire 10,000 shells a day. This will enable Ukraine to equal and surpass Russia’s firing rates as the Ukrainians' capabilities increase with higher rates of supply from us.
And let’s not forget that Ukraine has already been hitting the Russian rail system’s electrical system that’s screwing up their ability to even move stuff by rail inside of Russian itself, from I might add, those farther off facilities the lack of long range missiles prevents them from hitting.
Yet.
So, you can see how all that fits together.
And, of course, how the Ukrainians’ ability to create and use drones in both their active front lines and in the logistical side of their strategy, which again, is teaching US how warfare continues to mutate and develop.
That, my friends, is the short course in how the United States’ military has upgraded and developed military strategies, tactics, and warfare conduct since WWII, and how Ukraine is also teaching us through their active and continuing activities against Russian forces.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t to excuse the US or any other ally from not providing weapons or supplies in a timely fashion. But it does and can explain how the Ukrainians are reacting to that in an intelligent and actionable fashion to reduce the negative effects of those slower rates of supply and how they’ve truly got a good chance to win this thing.
Because, you see, it’s the Russians reacting to THEM, and not Ukraine reacting to the Russians. That alone is significant.
And, of course, how all that back and forth between Biden and the press and others about those delays could have been in accordance with a plan, and there to make the Russians think they had a chance and would affect how they react and how they’d conduct themselves, even internally.
Hell, Biden and the West may not know how the Russians think, but Z?
Yes, he knows, and his people know and he and his people have vowed to win this thing.
Humans can be sneaky as hell.
So, hey, you do know that as a Medium reader and/or writer, when you read an article and like it, you CAN clap up to fifty times, right? You can come up with a system, like fifty claps for a really great article (mine!) and perhaps thirty or thirty-five for a good one, and perhaps twenty for one that’s ok, and perhaps a single clap for one you read but weren’t at all impressed with but didn’t want to just walk away from. (Same with the comments, also.) Don’t feel too bad, it was almost two weeks before I got told about it. Additionally, if you’re a newbie, and a human and not a damn troll, unless you want to be mistaken for one, do two things. First, write a story. Anything, just something you care about, even if it’s just an introduction. Second, you know that profile blurb? You know, that short thing like I have that talks about “money is truthful”? Yeah, that. Create one for yourself, because the trolls DON’T. I block profiles that come here and clap once and haven’t written a story or created a profile description. Those with fewer than twenty or so followers and often less than a hundred they’re following. So, a word to the wise. Write, and give us that profile description.
