I am not laying out a complete strategy here and eliding very, very, very much, but the Russian army could be substantially defeated with a few weeks of AGM-88 HARMs to take out air defense radars and then 100 A-10s tearing up shit. The Russians just don’t have that many Verba (and similar) MANPADs and those won’t even take out an A-10 most of the time. The Ukrainians will never advance much in de facto drone-constrained trench warfare without CAS. And they aren’t going to get that, sadly.

Also sadly, I believe this is a deliberate but cynical strategy on the part of the US and other Ukrainian “allies.” They correctly ascertain that tying Russia down indefinitely in Ukraine with a trickle of just enough equipment and ammo will weaken Russia while preventing it from attacking the Baltic states and Poland.

As such, it’s working. But it’s not what we should be doing.