A bit of insight into how bad the leadership of the US military is can be had from listening to former Liteutenant General Ben Hodges. He is west point. All the right positions in his career. Brigade Commander in the 101st Airborne when the war was launched against Iraq. Rose to become commander of US forces Europe before retiring.
And he is also really stupid.
In September 2022, he was predicting not only russia losing in Ukraine, but
the distinigration of the entire Russian Federation.
He was interviewed today by the Times which gave him an opprotunity to talk about strategy for Ukraine.
- Crimea is the key to everything for reasons;.
- Ukraine will destroy the Kerch bridge in 2024 because they have "smart people" who will be able to do it.
- If Crimea is isolated and the Ukrainians target Russian logistics, the collapse and retreat of the Russians is inevitable.
- There are too many children of Russians going to school in Europe. They need to be sent home to make Russians feel the consequences of what they are doing.
- Russian's can't fight at night. Even if given night vision equipment, their lack of proper training to fight at night means they cannot fight at night.
- The Russian army is a zombie horde of untrained people who are just sent by Putin to the front line to die in wave after wave.
- The Russians don't have a logistics system to support a long-term war outside of Russia.
- the Russians have a tradition of stealing and selling military equipment. So frontline units would not have have the equipment issued to them.
- Russia doesn't have a logistics system to provide batteries to the frontlines.
- He believes that the Russian Air force could be forced out of Crimea entirely if Ukraine were given enough missiles.
- He talks about hitting targets at 300-400km not seeming to realize that those targets he talks about are deep inside Russia.
- The US isn't committed to Ukraine winning. If US policy was that Ukraine was going to win, the US would provide the air power necessary to win. The US is too concerned about Russia escalating the war.
- He said that Ukraine needs to fix their "manpower system". There are too many fit Ukrainian men and women (inside and outside Ukraine) not fighting at the front lines.
- The Ukrainians are more tech-savvy people than Russians and they will be able to launch a major cyber warfare campaign in Russian next year.
- For the next few months, Ukraine needs to focus on keeping the pressure on the Russians and try to reach out the Russian people with information.
- Ukraine needs to make more of its own ammunition. He talks about how the nazis were able to grow military production during World War II.
- It amazes him that Europe cannot produce a million shells a year. He talks about how they could do it but asks if they have the will to do it.
- Germans are terrified of the return of Donald Trump and what it would mean to Ukraine.
- The Americans need to stop giving advice to Ukrainian generals like they did during the offensive. If this war had been done right, Ukraine would have been provided with air superiority and enough breaking equipment that they could break through the Russian lines. In other words, he is saying that the great counteroffensive failed because of the Americans.
- Ukraine isn't like the desert where there are multiple axes of advance. There was no choice but to concentrate the entire Ukrainian offensive at one point. I guess this is an explanation of the Robotyne strategy.
