The U.S. Army has been called (is it still?) The Green Machine. But while the Army understands that friendly casualties are part of war, the Army does not treat its troops as cannon fodder. Just because Russia treats its troops as cannon fodder doesn't mean Russia's high command wields a machine that it alone controls.
This assessment is on the surface appealing int the terms of the debate: Can Russia recruit enough to make up for losses:
Russian forces have thus suffered an estimated 125,800 casualties during a period of intensified offensive operations in September, October, and November 2024 in exchange for 2,356 square kilometers of gains. (Or approximately 53 Russian casualties per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory seized.)
Russia's constrained labor pool is likely unable to sustain this increased casualty rate in the medium-term, and continued Western military support for Ukraine remains vital to Ukraine's ability to inflict losses at this rate. US officials reportedly estimated in late October 2024 that Russia's current recruitment rate was between 25,000 and 30,000 new soldiers per month.[3] Ukrainian military observer Petro Chernyk stated on December 3 that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) would have to increase its monthly recruitment rates from 40,000-42,000 recruits to 50,000 recruits in order to seize the remainder of Donetsk Oblast while maintaining their current casualty rate.
The calculations seem very precise. Russia doesn't have a problem.
But Russia's ground forces are not a machine. War is ultimately a human endeavor that relies on people to wage it. And troops are not mere cogs with defined tolerances for how much they can take.
But so far, the Russian and Ukrainian war machines keep functioning.
And moving beyond a figurative description, a view of the machine to come:
Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted their first attack solely using unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and first-person view (FPV) drones, highlighting Ukraine's ongoing efforts to leverage technological innovation into ground operations. The spokesperson of a Ukrainian brigade operating in the Kharkiv direction reported on December 20 that Ukrainian forces conducted their first ground attack exclusively using robotic systems instead of infantry on an unspecified date near Lyptsi (north of Kharkiv City) and successfully destroyed unspecified Russian positions during the attack. The spokesperson stated that Ukrainian forces conducted the attack with dozens of UGVs equipped with machine guns and also used the UGVs to lay and clear mines in unspecified positions in the area.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War and the related Syria events in this post.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
