Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[shavenferret]

Ryuu96 said:

SecondWar said:

Hasn't the recent strike achieved Ukraine's objective anyway though?
Whilst it certainly would have been beneficial to destroy all the fighter craft, it was a never likely to be achieved in a single strike even using ATACMS and Russia would always have been likely to relocated the jets after the first strike highlighted the vulnerability. Maybe they could have launched a mass attack at all airfields in a single night, but again, that could have been done on the night of the drone strike.
Moving the jets hundreds of miles away restricts their effective range and the number of sorties they can carry out - what was previously touted as a benefit of pressuring the airfields with the missiles. Yes, they can still operate but less effectively. Not to say they couldn't move them back later, but then they're vulnerable to drone strikes again.

The recent strike only destroyed one plane and damaged another.

Issue is that drones are far easier to intercept, far less likely to destroy a plan, they've been multiple drone strikes on Russian airfields that have resulted in no aircraft destroyed using dozens of drones. ATACMS Cluster would have been far more likely to wipe out a bunch of jets before Russia could have moved them back and while Russia being forced to move them back is beneficial to Ukraine in a few ways, it would have been way more preferable if more jets could have been destroyed, now it's too late.

What should have happened is Ukraine, America and allies come to an agreement in private that Ukraine can use missiles on Russia, Ukraine then surprise attacks Russian airfields with ATACMS Cluster + Storm Shadow and then after that Russia is forced to move back their jets. Dozen long-range missiles could have wiped out far more jets than 100+ drones.

I agree. Russia may also be wasting missles against the drones, I just don't know though. Or perhaps Russia is using its old Soviet gun based anti aircraft. Politically, I don't think that Trump would ever lift the ban on attacking anything inside Russia and harris will always want to play things by the book, meaning that nothing will change next year. However, Ukraine is making more and more long range range drones. This month has had a tremendous amount of attacks inside Russia already. Ukraine may have to just use cheap drones to win this war and it will be quite interesting if they can pull it off.