That's the assumption:
Senior U.S. Army officials on Monday mapped out a plan to dramatically increase the range of the service's artillery and missile systems to counter a Russian threat that would leave ground forces without air support in the "first few weeks" of a war in Europe.
That's the bad news. So the Army wants better artillery to counter the Russians in the absence of air support.
The Russians already plan on operating in an environment of mutual air support denial, gaining an edge from their own artillery edge.
The good news is that by implication we expect to gain air superiority in a matter of weeks.
Of course, other bad news is that Russian ground forces will have an advantage for perhaps months in any war on the eastern edge of NATO in the Baltic states region.
Which of course gives the Russians weeks to take the ground they want, dig in; and hope to deter a NATO counterattack to liberate whatever the Russians take with their initial military advantage before NATO can mobilize and gather forces in the east after months of effort.
The other good news is that eventually NATO can gather enough ground forces to win because overall it has more military power than Russia.
Poland's nearly $5 billion purchase of Patriot air defense missiles will, when emplaced, go a long way to keeping Poland open to receive reinforcements from the rest of NATO to change the balance of forces in the east while holding the line at the Suwalki Gap.
Russia would of course hope that nuclear threats will allow them to keep the fruits of their short-term advantages by scaring NATO from using their long-term edge to take the ground back.
