Ukraine isn't doomed because it is outnumbered and smaller than Russia. Can Ukraine beat Russia with frontline drones? If so, the drones are only successful because Ukraine's ground forces hold Russia's ground forces in place to be hammered from the skies.
Ukraine speaks of building a Drone Wall that creates an expanded No-Man's land on the front to stop the Russians. Could Ukraine beat Russia despite Russia's population and economic advantage by killing enough Russian soldiers?
Can Ukraine pull this off? Brovdi, thinks so. He points to the Ukrainians’ four drone brigades.
“The solution is mathematically simple,” he writes. “More drone pilots, more drone brigades … Absent more drones and more operators, the alternative is to make the existing ones more efficient. By Brovdi’s calculation, if the drone units in the field now increase kill rates by 15 percent across the board, by whatever means, then in four months a critical mass of Russian casualties would be reached.”
The weakness of the size advantage argument is something I pointed out early in the war. I cited the Iran-Iraq war on population. And I noted that you have to put a value on Western military and economic aid when comparing Ukraine to Russia on the GDP part of the equation.
Can the drones kill enough? If Ukraine reaches its goal, don't simply give the drones the praise. Without ground maneuver units holding the line and keeping the Russians on a static front where Ukraine's superior drone force can pound the Russians, that killing rate could not happen. A static front is a major factor in small drone dominance. Would air power of the kind NATO has break that shooting gallery feature of the Winter War of 2022?
But more basically, the idea that the war is a mechanical casualty body count problem is wrong. The Iran-Iraq War also shows that wars can simply pause for a while as each side builds up the capability to attack. If Ukraine reaches its killing goal, the Russians could ease off on their attacks to reduce casualties. Russia hasn't been forced to stop attacking, but I recently heard that Russia's casualty rate was down in May as Russia attacked with fewer troops. How Russia's new offensive in the Sumy region will affect that is unclear.
Russia retains the ability to cope with Ukraine's drones getting more effective at killing Russian troops crossing the much wider No-Man's land that exists now.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
