Generation Kill's Brad Colbert: Ukraine Just Changed Warfare Forever

[00:00:00]Improvise, adapt, and overcome.

[00:00:05]>> Ukraine may have just crossed another line in the evolution of modern warfare.

[00:00:10]Not with a new missile, not with a fighter jet, and not with a battalion storming a beach. They sent a machine across the water carrying another machine. An uncrrewed surface vessel approached the Russian-held Kinburn Spit, delivered an armed ground robot onto the beach, and that robot moved inland and engaged a Russian position while Ukrainian personnel remained outside the immediate fight.

[00:00:41]No crew in the boat. No infantry in the first wave. No marine standing on a ramp waiting for it to drop. Just a machine carrying another machine into contested terrain. Now, before we start calling this the robotic D-Day, pump the brakes.

[00:00:59]There is still no independently confirmed evidence that the operation killed Russian troops, destroyed a position, captured terrain, or established anything resembling a beach head. The available footage shows deployment. It shows movement, shows weapons fire. What it does not show is decisive tactical effect.

[00:01:25]And that distinction matters because militaries do not win wars by producing impressive footage. They win by generating repeatable effects against an enemy who is actively trying to stop them.

[00:01:39]Uh but do not make the opposite mistake and dismiss this as a stunt because the real story is not whether that machine gun hit its target. The real story is that Ukraine successfully connected three separate unmanned systems into one combat architecture.

[00:02:01]A drone in the air watching the battlefield, a robotic vessel moving across the water, and an armed ground vehicle deploying onto enemy held territory, air, sea, land, connected by remote operators and a communications network. That is not science fiction.

[00:02:20]That is the early formation of robotic combined arms.

[00:02:26]And once that architecture becomes reliable, scalable and survivable under electronic warfare, battlefield changes.

[00:02:36]For generations, amphibious warfare has followed a brutal equation. To control a beach, somebody has to go first.

[00:02:45]Somebody has to cross the water.

[00:02:47]Somebody has to enter the kill zone.

[00:02:50]Somebody has to absorb the defender's first response at Guad Canal, Tarawa, Eoima, Inchan, Normandy, and countless operations since that somebody was a human being. The Kinburn operation suggests that in the future, the first wave may not be human. It may be robotic. Machines may probe the shoreline. Machines may locate mines.

[00:03:21]Machines may draw fire. Machines may carry sensors, uh, electronic warfare systems, ammunition, demolition charges, or weapons. Machines may force the enemy to reveal defensive positions before a single infantry man or woman steps onto the beach. That does not make Marines obsolete.

[00:03:44]It changes the order in which risk is accepted. And for Ukraine, risk matters.

[00:03:51]Every Ukrainian soldier is difficult to replace. Every trained operator, infantryman, engineer, and small unit leader represents time, experience, and institutional knowledge that cannot be manufactured as quickly as a machine.

[00:04:07]So Ukraine is trying to push robots into the most dangerous parts of the fight.

[00:04:12]Not because robots are better soldiers, because robots are replaceable. People with experience are absolutely not. And that is the strategic logic behind what happened on the Kinberg Spit. The location matters. Kinburn sits near the entrance to the uh Dinapro Buu Esttoary.

[00:04:34]It affects the approaches toward Miklav and Keran. It provides observation and firing opportunities across important areas of the northwestern Black Sea.

[00:04:47]Russia has held it since the early stages of the invasion, but holding terrain is not the same as controlling it. If Ukraine can continually strike Russian logistics, monitor movement, insert robotic systems, and threaten coastal positions without placing large numbers of troops ashore. It may not need to capture every meter immediately. It may only need to make the position too expensive to occupy.

[00:05:17]That right there is the difference between occupation and denial. and robotics may allow a smaller force to contest terrain without assuming the full cost of holding it. Think about what happens next here. A Russian coastal observer sees a small unmanned boat approaching.

[00:05:39]Is it carrying explosives? Is it a reconnaissance system? Is it a decoy? Is it delivering mines? Is it carrying drones?

[00:05:48]Or is there an armed ground robot sitting inside? A boat is no longer the weapon. The boat is now the truck. The payload becomes the threat. that forces Russia to defend more coastline, maintain more surveillance, deploy more electronic warfare, place more obstacles, assign more troops, and spend more ammunition responding to systems that may cost far less than the defense required to stop them. That, ladies and gentlemen, is asymmetric warfare. Make the enemy spend more to defend than you spend to attack.

[00:06:30]But there is a vulnerability and it may be the most important part of the entire operation.

[00:06:37]Communications.

[00:06:39]The machine has to cross the water, find the shoreline, deploy the ground vehicle, maintain navigation, transmit video, coordinate with aerial surveillance, and receive commands. Oh, and continuing to operate while the enemy is actively attempting to jam, disrupt, locate, and destroy the network that connects all of this together. The machine gun is not the center of gravity. The network is. You break the network and the robot may become nothing more than expensive equipment sitting on a beach.

[00:07:15]protect the network, introduce resilient navigation, improve autonomy, and the system becomes significantly more dangerous.

[00:07:25]That is where this competition is going.

[00:07:29]Not towards machines making every decision independently towards systems capable of continuing the mission when communications are degraded, delayed, or denied.

[00:07:43]navigation without constant input, obstacle avoidance, automatic route planning, oh, returning to a rally point, uh, reconnecting after signal loss. That kind of autonomy may matter more in the near term than artificial intelligence deciding who to shoot. And the United States military should be paying attention because Ukraine is demonstrating something we repeatedly struggle with. Speed.

[00:08:17]They identify a battlefield problem, build a system, test it, deploy it, learn from failure, modify it, then return it to combat. Meanwhile, Western acquisition systems can spend years debating requirements for technology that may become obsolete even before it reaches the field.

[00:08:40]The lesson is not that every military should copy this exact boat or ground robot. The lesson is that future advantage may belong to the force that adapts fastest. Not the force with the most expensive platform, not the force with the longest procurement document.

[00:09:03]The force that can connect available systems, generate battlefield effects, learn under pressure, and improve faster than the enemy can respond.

[00:09:14]One robotic landing does not constitute a revolution. One mission does not prove the concept is scalable.

[00:09:22]And admittedly, one video does not tell us whether the operation produced meaningful combat results. But it establishes a precedent. A machine crossed the water, delivered another machine, and projected combat power onto enemy held terrain without placing personnel in the immediate assault zone.

[00:09:50]The tactical result may have been quite small, but the implication is huge by comparison. The future of amphibious warfare may begin before the first human reaches the beach. It may begin when the machines arrive.

[00:10:09]Welcome to the Carry On podcast for the week of July 18th. I will be your guide to the world melting down. Brad Colbert, the Iceman.

[00:10:19]So, is everyone sick of talking about Iran?

[00:10:23]Yeah, good. Me, too. So, let's leave that alone for a while and chat about um Oh, I don't know. Ukraine.

[00:10:32]That's right. It's either one or the other. Or the other or the other or the other. Uh because that's the beauty of the world we live in. There is always something melting down to give us things to talk about. But tonight, we're going to focus exclusively on Ukraine. And of course, I came dressed for the occasion.

[00:10:52]I did not however stock up on vodka. I will be drinking Angel's Envy this evening. You of course are free to pick and choose your own libation, but it will make the episode go smoother.

[00:11:05]Just a general thank you to all of you who support the show around the world and here at home. So this evening we are going to look at a few facets of Ukraine including a thought experiment on how they could potentially win against Russia. All right, if everyone has their beverages, let's dive in.

[00:11:31][sighs] I want to give a few more salient details on the autonomous landing and assault we talked about in the opening monologue.

[00:11:40]The technological achievement is currently more significant than the demonstrated tactical result. Ukraine proved that an unmanned maritime platform could carry an armed ground system across contested water, place it into Russian held terrain, and generate combat effects while Ukrainian personnel remained outside the immediate landing zone. Now, if you haven't seen the video, definitely give a search for it.

[00:12:06]It is fantastic to see. Almost as fantastic as the runaway gun that the Russians were shooting. If you haven't seen that one, that is also hilarious.

[00:12:17]Um, a Russian ground unit took a hind basically a m a minigun off of a hind helicopter and ground mounted. It didn't end well. It's pretty cool. Um, but the Ukrainian footage, the released footage anyways, it shows deployment, maneuver, aerial overwatch, and weapons fire. It does not independently demonstrate that Russian personnel were killed, though, or any equipment was destroyed or even a position neutralized, [clears throat] frankly, or if any terrain was seized either. Subsequent reporting has materially refined the technical assessment. The UGV is what we're going to call it. It carried a Dev Droid Woolly 7.62 remotely operated weapon station. Now, that's built around a PKM pattern 762 machine gun. Dev Droid describes the system as remotely controlled with artificial intelligence assistance for target acquisition, not as an autonomous lethal system. There were personnel in the loop. When we talk about systems like this, we have in the previous episodes, I'm sure we will in the future. My only reservation on any of these is not that they're being designed, tested, and fielded, but that there needs to be a human being in the kill chain somewhere providing some type of shoot no shoot authority.

[00:13:52]So in this case the tactical result it remains unknown but the architecture is very real and the architecture as I said may matter far beyond the Kinburn spit.

[00:14:03]The Institute for the Study of War acknowledged the employment of the USV UGV combination but noted the immediate purpose and degree of tactical success remained unclear. ISW also continued to assess that Russian forces likely retained some presence in the broader Kinburn area despite earlier reports of withdrawals from individual positions. Now this matters because military innovation is frequently distorted in either one of two directions. So the first is hype.

[00:14:39]One successful deployment becomes evidence that autonomous armies have arrived.

[00:14:45]No. The second is dismissal. An operation without confirmed casualties becomes a publicity stunt. Um both conclusions in this case I feel are premature. A new operational method can be consequential before it becomes tactically decisive. The first aircraft did not need to destroy an enemy formation to demonstrate that aviation would change warfare. The Kinburn operation validated an architecture.

[00:15:15]Now, whether that architecture can survive enemy adaptation remains unanswered, but regardless, this is inching closer to a level of autonomous warfare, and I really cannot predict where the ceiling is.

[00:15:32]We will continue to follow this. I think this is incredibly fascinating and horribly dangerous all at once. Um, I don't know what this is going to manifest for ground warfare in the future, but we're going to find out. I'm sure we've all been watching the news and seen a uptick in attacks by Ukraine against Russian manufacturing and resource nodes in Russia as well as Crimea. Crimea is home to a lot of Russian resource nodes.

[00:16:05]Um, their Black Sea fleet is ported there. They have oil refineries. They have logistics hubs. And it's a god a tourist location for a lot of Russian citizens. Um they are very strategic in nature. These attacks.

[00:16:20]Ukraine's campaign against Crimea I think has entered a completely new phase. What began as a series of precision strikes against airfields, naval facilities, fuel depots, and military infrastructure really has evolved into a theaterwide interdiction campaign targeting logistical, energy, maritime, and economic systems that sustain Russia's occupation of Crimea and its military operations across, you know, the larger southern Ukraine area.

[00:16:55]Um, the campaign's objective is no longer to simply destroy Russian military assets, as it was for quite some time. But now its objective seems to be shifting to this to increasing the cost of occupying Crimea faster than Russia can absorb, repair, reroute, and replace those losses. And this distinction is very important because it says that Ukraine is not attempting to physically isolate Crimea overnight. It is attempting to make Crimea progressively less valuable as a military platform by attacking all of these interconnected systems that sustain it. Um, Russian developments suggest this campaign is beginning to generate secondord strategic effects extending beyond Crimea itself. Russia has acknowledged uh for example that prolonged fuel shortages on the peninsula imposed rolling electricity restrictions, accepted major disruptions to the sea of Azov shipping and perhaps most significantly um is now seeking imported gasoline from India despite being one of the world's largest petroleum exporters. Russia, I'm not talking about India. Um, Ukrainian attacks have also contributed to interruptions in grain shipping that have begun influencing global wheat markets. So these developments, they don't demonstrate that Crimea has been operationally isolated or that Russian combat power has been decisively degraded. But they do demonstrate that Ukraine has forced Russia into progressively more expensive logistical adaptations whose costs now extend beyond military sustainment into national energy management um maritime commerce and really economic policy.

[00:18:53]So the campaign's center of gravity has therefore shifted from destroying infrastructure to forcing Russia into this permanent cycle of adaptation.

[00:19:06]I think the campaign can now be understood as progressing through three distinct phases. So phase one is what I call tactical attrition. This is during the 202425 period. And in that period, Ukraine forces focused on Black Sea fleet facilities, um S300 and 400 air defenses, military airfields, command facilities, ammunition depots, and fuel storage. And in that block, the objective was very straightforward.

[00:19:40]Destroy Russian military capability.

[00:19:42]Pure and simple. The cumulative effect forced much of the Black Sea fleet away from Sevastapole and demonstrated that Crimea could no longer be treated as an untouchable sanctuary.

[00:19:57]Phase two, I call this operational interdiction.

[00:20:01]Um during recent months, Ukraine expanded its targeting to include Kirch logistics, rail networks, road distribution, fuel distribution, electrical infrastructure, maritime fuel delivery, occupied land corridors, and of course oil refineries, which are great for pictures when they burn because it's pretty brutal.

[00:20:28]uh the objective changed. Rather than destroying isolated targets, Ukraine began attacking the logistics network itself. So instead of asking um what military target can we destroy today, Ukraine increasingly asks or asked what system does Russia depend upon? And this is the phase that has dominated the past several weeks. And that sort of brings us to phase three, which is the current phase, this strategic adaptation.

[00:21:02]The newest developments indicate Russia is beginning to alter national logistics rather than merely repairing local damage. Reuters reports that um Ross Nef, Gasprom, Neft and Ly have approached Indian refiners seeking gasoline after Ukrainian strikes left a significant portion of Russia's refueling capacity unavailable.

[00:21:28]Um at least one cargo of Indian gasoline has already been transferred for shipment to Russia. Um, and for one of the world's largest petroleum exporters, importing finished gasoline represents a pretty unusual reversal.

[00:21:44]Now, it's not evidence that Russia is running out of fuel. That's not what I'm saying. But it is evidence that Ukraine strikes this uh campaign. It's beginning to reshape Russia's national energy posture. And that's a pretty important strategic threshold. I think military campaigns become strategically significant when they force an opponent to modify national policy, not merely local tactics as here to for was the case.

[00:22:16]The Ukrainians are really attacking this operational ecosystem and it's the current campaign is best understood as a really a network interdiction operation.

[00:22:26]So rather than focusing exclusively on Crimea, Ukraine is attacking the broader ecosystem supporting Russian military operations. Um, and that's a couple of different layers. So inside Crimea, your targets will include fuel depots, electrical substations, communications, radar, and ports. Um, also airfield nodes.

[00:22:50]Um, airfield Yeah. airfields command and control naval facilities. Each strike seeking to reduce military efficiency rather than producing immediate battlefield collapse. Um middle layer approaches to Crimea. Uh Ukraine continues to pressure the Kurt Strait logistics, ferry operations, highways, rail lines, occupied land corridor and maritime fuel routes. Now the objective is not necessarily permanent closure. It is to make every movement the Russians do slower, more predictable, more expensive, more vulnerable, and much more resource inensive. And then there's the outer layer. Um, Ukraine has recently expanded deep strikes against a lot of Russian targets. Things like oil refineries, petroleum storage, um, fuel distribution, maritime transport and logistics hubs and commercial shipping supporting Russian sustainment as well in some cases. And the interaction between these layers, it creates this compounding effect.

[00:24:11]Damaged refineries increased dependence on transportation and then attack to transportation increases demand on storage. Electrical outages increase fuel consumption. Each disruption amplifies the next. And that's how these layers are interacting.

[00:24:32]By doing so, Ukraine is not trying to create a single catastrophic failure. It is attempting to create continuous cumulative friction.

[00:24:42]Fuel is really the clearest [snorts] measurable indicator. And we've kind of reached in this campaign a new stage, the the fuel campaign, if you will.

[00:24:56]Russian installed authorities in Crimea have themselves acknowledged prolonged shortages, emergency allocations, and periodic suspension of public fuel sales. Now, these shortages coincide with a much broader nationwide refining crisis. According to Reuters, Russia's gasoline production has fallen sharply following sustained Ukrainian attacks on refineries, which forced Moscow to seek imported gasoline while prioritizing domestic distribution.

[00:25:29]And the strategic significance is not that Crimea lacks fuel, rather that Crimea has become one manifestation of a much wider Russian petroleum distribution problem. So the causal chain kind of looks like this. If we were to start and then see what the second order, third order, fourth order effects are. Ukrainian refinery strikes leads to reduced refining capacity which begets distribution bottlenecks.

[00:26:02]Then that leads to military prioritization which triggers civilian shortages which leads to Crimean rationing triggering gasoline imports which causes higher national logistics costs leading to reduced strategic flexibility.

[00:26:24]And this represents a much more consequential development than fuel cues alone really.

[00:26:31]Um you can see how it all ties together.

[00:26:36]The other uh effect is electrical infrastructure. So Ukraine has increasingly targeted electrical infrastructure alongside fuel. You've had a lot of rolling outages across occupied Crimea, which increase dependencies on backup generators, which run, of course, on diesel. So now you're linking electricity directly to fuel consumption. And this interaction creates this reinforcing cycle.

[00:27:10]You damage the electrical grid which leads to increased generator demand which leads to increased fuel demand.

[00:27:20]And then you attack the fuel logistics which brings us back to that initial chain. And this is characteristic of system level operational design rather than isolated tactical strikes.

[00:27:34][clears throat] They're also expanding their maritime campaign. And perhaps the most important operational development has in fact occurred at sea. Initially, Ukraine concentrated on fuel tankers supplying Crimea. Recent reporting indicates that Ukraine operations have now expanded to include oil tankers, gas carriers, dry cargo vessels, tugboats, interesting. And maritime support craft.

[00:28:03]Um, now Ukraine claims to have struck additional vessels across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov during the latest operations.

[00:28:12]Those figures remain Ukrainian claims. I cannot verify those independently yet.

[00:28:18]But if this pattern continues, it represents an evolution in operational thinking. The objective is no longer merely restricting fuel. The objective increasingly appears to be restricting transport capacity itself.

[00:28:39]Um destroying fuel affects one commodity, right? fuel, but reducing transport capacity affects every commodity.

[00:28:50]Now, how is Russia adapting to this strategically? Well, they've responded across a couple different levels. So, operationally, they're dispersing storage. They're expanding convoy protection. They're increasing electronic warfare, reinforcing air defenses, and rerouting transportation.

[00:29:11]economically fuel pri uh prioritization, emergency imports, export restrictions, refinery repair, and um expanded logistical management.

[00:29:24]Now, strategically, Russia continues attacking Ukrainian ports, their maritime infrastructure, and Black Sea shipping while attempting to preserve grain exports and maritime commerce. Uh recent reciprocal strikes by both sides have contributed to higher wheat prices and continuing disruption across the Black Sea grain corridor. So the conflict is really no longer confined to Crimea. I mean, not that it ever was, but it is increasingly becoming a contest over logistics, energy, shipping, um, excuse me, food exports, industrial resilience.

[00:30:09]Now, here's what hasn't yet been demonstrated.

[00:30:16]The campaign has unquestionably produced fuel shortages, electrical disruption, shipping delays, higher insurance risk, um commercial adaptation, and of course, a lot of increased Russian defensive requirements. But what has not yet been publicly demonstrated is measurable degradation of Russian combat effectiveness.

[00:30:45]There remains no verified evidence of sustained reductions in aircraft sorty rates, um, missile launch frequency, uh, Black Sea fleet combat capability, frontline fuel availability, Russian operational tempo in any of the southern Ukraine areas. And I think this distinction remains essential in the discussion because economic disruption does not automatically equal military paralysis.

[00:31:15]If you look at the larger strategic logic um the most important analytical conclusion in this is Ukraine is not attempting to destroy Russian Russian logistics. Um Ukraine is attempting to destroy Russian efficiency.

[00:31:34]Russian logistics are simply they're too large to eliminate outright. Instead, Ukraine is forcing Russia into an expanding series of inefficiencies. You have longer supply routes, um dispersed storage, additional escorts, emergency repairs, of course, refinery reconstruction, air defense redeployment, um generator dependence, international fuel purchases, and increased insurance costs.

[00:32:04]Um they're also you know taking steps to reroute shipping u which leads to higher transportation expenses. Now none of these individual burdens is decisive but collectively they generate what military theory describes as cumulative operational friction.

[00:32:26]This resembles historical campaigns aimed less at destroying enemy forces than at exhausting the system that sustain them.

[00:32:37]The strategic implications for Russia.

[00:32:41]Um I think Crimea is becoming increasingly expensive to defend.

[00:32:50]Moscow is no longer protecting only the peninsula. It is protecting an expanding logistical web stretching from inland refineries to Black Sea ports, occupied transport corridors, maritime shipping routes, and now international fuel procurement networks.

[00:33:09]Russia retains um some considerable adaptive capacity. I mean, don't rule it out, but adaptation itself consumes resources.

[00:33:21]Now on the Ukrainian side, um I think Ukraine has identified Crimea's principal vulnerability, which is it is geographically defensible. It is logistically dependent.

[00:33:35]So by attacking these interconnected sustainment systems rather than what they were doing before, which was isolated military targets, Ukraine has really created a campaign that can impose strategic costs disproportionate to the cost of the weapons employed. Now whether those costs ultimately translate into reduce Russian combat power, well that remains the critical unanswered question.

[00:34:03]Now, [clears throat] what are the implications for NATO?

[00:34:06]Well, the campaign may become one of the defining case studies in modern operational warfare because Ukraine is demonstrating how relatively inexpensive unmanned systems can challenge logistics, maritime commerce, national energy systems, strategic transportation, as well as operational endurance. all without achieving traditional air or naval superiority.

[00:34:33]So, I hope people are taking notes because future military planners are likely to study this campaign as an example of system warfare rather than platform warfare.

[00:34:48]Um, final assessment on this. Uh Ukraine's campaign against Crimea is increasingly less about recapturing territory and increasingly more about reshaping Russia's strategic calculus.

[00:35:03]Every refinery strike increases dependence on imports. Every maritime attack raises shipping costs and every electrical strike increases fuel demand.

[00:35:16]Every convoy attack will require additional escorts. Every bridge repair diverts engineering assets. Every intercepted drone, it consumes air defense resources. The campaign's strength doesn't lie in any single explosion. It lies in the interactions between hundreds of disruptions across fuel, power, transportation, communications, ports, and commerce. Now, Russia still possesses significant industrial depth as well as military capacity and the ability to adapt. There is no compelling evidence that Crimea is close to military collapse or that Russian combat power has been decisively impaired. But the burden of adaptation is steadily increasing. The decisive question is no longer whether Ukraine can destroy Crimea's infrastructure.

[00:36:15]The decisive question is whether Ukraine can impose systemic costs faster than Russia can regenerate combat power. Now, if that balance continues shifting towards Ukraine, Crimea's military value will decline.

[00:36:33]Not because it has been physically isolated, but because it becomes progressively more expensive to sustain than the operational advantage it provides.

[00:36:47]All right. Interesting.

[00:36:53]Yeah, that's good. That's drinkable.

[00:36:56]It's bar bar none not my favorite bourbon, but um it's up there.

[00:37:03]Okay, let's we'll keep the Ukraine theme alive and [clears throat] uh we're going to kind of close it out with a look at what a Ukrainian victory would look like. Um how is it achieved?

[00:37:17]What would the world look like after and uh what lessons would be learned? So, this is going to be kind of a deep dive.

[00:37:24]I would take a moment and recharge your glass and then come and join me. Excuse [cough] [clears throat] me. Okay.

[00:37:35]So, I wanted to sort of think about the conditions under which Ukraine may win. What does victory look like? What does it mean when we say that they won? Um because, you know, history records the victor, but it takes a while for history to make that assessment. In the moment, what does it look like?

[00:37:59]And I've come up with a couple things.

[00:38:01]Uh for to start with, Ukraine does not defeat Russia by conquering any Russian territory or marching on Moscow or destroying the Russian state or compelling an unconditional surrender. I mean, because none of those things are ever going to happen.

[00:38:19]Ukraine defeats Russia when Moscow permanently loses the ability to achieve the political purpose for which it initiated the war in the first place, which is the subordination of Ukraine, uh the limitation of Ukrainian sovereignty, the reversal of Ukraine's western alignment, and the restoration of Russian strategic dominance over Kiev. I mean, that's ostensively why this whole thing started because Ukraine was seeking NATO inclusion.

[00:38:51]I don't buy that, but that was the reason they gave. Um, that distinction matters because military victory and political victory, they're not identical.

[00:39:03]Ukraine could recover territory yet remain vulnerable to another invasion.

[00:39:10]Ukraine could also fail to recover every occupied territory in the near term while becoming a sovereign, heavily armed European state beyond Russia's power to control.

[00:39:25]The most plausible Ukrainian victory is therefore not a 1945 style capitulation.

[00:39:32]It is a strategic defeat of Russian coercive power produced through battlefield denial, selective territorial recovery, military industrial endurance, political cohesion, European integration, and a post-war deterrence system capable of making renewed Russian aggression prohibitively costly. They're well on their way to doing that now. But survival alone is not victory. A ceasefire that leaves Russia occupying substantial Ukrainian territory.

[00:40:09]Well, that just allows Moscow to re rebuild its forces. It restricts Ukraine's military relationships or merely delays another invasion and would constitute an armed pause really. Um, not any type of Russian defeat.

[00:40:26]The decisive question here is not simply how much territory does Ukraine control when the shooting stops. Instead, it really should be which side emerges with the stronger future strategic position, uh the greater freedom of political action and the more um credible ability to shape what happens next.

[00:40:52]So I want to define um defeat precisely.

[00:41:00]The original assessment placed several uh substantially different outcomes under the umbrella of Ukrainian victory and I think they should be separated.

[00:41:12]So there's a couple of different outcomes.

[00:41:16]Outcome one, Ukrainian survival completely, right? um Ukraine remains independent, retains a functioning government and military and prevents Russia from conquering the country. So this right there would outcome number one would represent the failure of Russia's maximal war aims.

[00:41:38]But as we've seen in Iran, um may not be the best comparison, but survival is not necessarily victory. If Ukraine emerges territorially reduced, economically damaged, demographically depleted, outside any kind of binding security structure and vulnerable to renewed invasion, then Moscow may still believe that continued pressure will eventually achieve Russian objectives. So in that context, survival is the foundation of victory, not victory itself.

[00:42:15]Okay. The outcome two, we'll call this strategic Ukrainian victory.

[00:42:22]Ukraine remains sovereign and politically independent, retains a powerful military. They enter a durable European political and security structure. They prevent Russia from controlling its foreign policy and establish a military balance that makes renewed invasion um unlikely to succeed.

[00:42:45]In that scenario, some occupied territory could remain unresolved temporarily um without being legally surrendered. This is the most, I'd say, realistic form of Ukrainian victory. At this point, Russia would have failed in its central political purpose even if every territorial dispute had not yet been resolved.

[00:43:11]Uh there's a third one, outcome three.

[00:43:16]This we'll call operational Ukrainian victory.

[00:43:21]Ukraine substantially degrades Russian forces, restores maneuver capability, isolates major Russian force groupings, and recovers significant occupied territory. No, an outcome like that would materially strengthen Kiev's negotiating position and could force Russia to reassess the cost of continued occupation.

[00:43:48]This is possible but significantly more difficult because modern surveillance, mines, drones, electronic warfare, precision fires, and uh fortified defense systems strongly constrain large-scale offensive maneuver. As we've seen, current battlefield assessments indicate that the defensive advantage has restricted both sides. uh Russian advances. I'm talking about Ukrainian counter offenses.

[00:44:23]How many did I say? I think there was four or maybe three. Well, there's outcome four.

[00:44:31]So, I added one. Uh we'll call this maximal Ukrainian victory. This is pie in the sky, but Ukraine restores its internationally recognized 1991 borders, including Crimea.

[00:44:45]while securing long-term protection against renewed Russian aggression. This right there would represent the clearest Russian military defeat. It is also the least attainable outcome without one or more extraordinary developments. for example, a major Russian military collapse, um, a rupture with the Russian political system, uh, a severe failure of Russian force regeneration.

[00:45:15]I don't see that one happening anytime soon. Substantially greater Western military involvement. I mean, you'd have to put Western military troops on the ground in the fight. um or a negotiated Russian withdrawal following profound changes in the strategic balance.

[00:45:36]It should remain Ukraine's legal and political objective. I mean, ideally, that's what they're all fighting for, but I don't want it treated as the only outcome that could constitute strategic success. So there's four uh one most likely, one most unlikely u and I leave it up to you as to which one you'd root for or feel that it would be successful. So right now as of July of this month, the strategic baseline is pretty much like this. Neither inevitable Russian victory nor imminent Russian collapse is supported by any evidence. Now, Russia has suffered enormous military costs while generating very limited territorial returns. Um, as of this month, a CSIS assessment estimated approximately 1.4 million Russian battlefield casualties since February of 22.

[00:46:40]And they have concluded that Russian controlled territory contracted by approximately 400 square kilometers during April and May of this year.

[00:46:49]Now those figures are analytical estimates rather than independently verifiable totals and treat them with a little caution. More important than the exact numbers is that demonstrate a gap between the scale of Russian expenditure and the limited operational value produced.

[00:47:09]Yet the opposite conclusion that Russia is approaching defeat is also premature.

[00:47:15]The Russian state has completely reorganized significant portions of its economy around military production um as well as protected priority defense sectors, redirected labor and industrial capacity.

[00:47:31]And they've also developed alternative supply networks. So economic deterioration alone has not deprived Moscow of the ability to continue fighting.

[00:47:42]Russia is also not operating in strategic isolation.

[00:47:46]NATO has identified China, North Korea, Iran, and Bellarus as important enablers of the Russian war effort. [ __ ] um with North Korea supplying troops, weapons, and ammunition, and Iran supporting Russia with a boatload of unmanned systems and missiles.

[00:48:10]At the same time, Ukraine's external support structure is becoming a lot more European and more institutionalized.

[00:48:20]NATO members pledged 70 billion euros in equipment, assistance, and training for Ukraine during the 2026 year and expressed commitments to maintain at least equivalent support during 2027. I mean, that's huge.

[00:48:37]The European Union has also finalized 90 billion euros in Ukrainian support loans for this year and next year with approximately 60 billion indicatively directed toward defense capacity and military procurement. Again, those are those are big numbers. Um Keel Institute tracking indicates that expanded European support uh largely compensated let's say for the sharp decline in new US assistance during 25 and that European military support remained comparatively strong during the early parts of this year uh particularly in unmanned systems. But [clears throat] I mean money is not the same as military capability.

[00:49:27]um aggregate European funding cannot instantly replace every American contribution in intelligence, air defense, strategistic uh strategic logistics, advanced munitions, satellite support and uh command integration. So the current war is therefore balanced between two competing trajectories. You have Russia is attempting to slowly exhaust Ukraine faster than Western assistance and Ukrainian innovation can regenerate it.

[00:50:03]On the other side, Ukraine is attempting to degrade Russian military power faster than Russia can regenerate forces um or maintain domestic tolerance um and fracture the supporting coalition.

[00:50:19]The side that wins is likely to be the side that changes the direction of time.

[00:50:27]Um, hard to predict.

[00:50:30]The center of gravities as they currently are my assessment. Um, I think the central weakness in many analysis is the assumption that Russian it's the Russian army itself is the sole center of gravity. And and I argue it is not.

[00:50:48]that is not Russia can suffer enormous military losses and still continue fighting. Ukraine can destroy thousands of Russian systems without necessarily changing the Kremlin's political decision. Um the war operates through interconnected political, military, economic and psychological systems.

[00:51:14]Russia's strategic center of gravity is the Kremlin's confidence that Russian endurance, military mass, coercive power, and Western political fatigue will eventually produce Ukrainian exhaustion or um political capitulation.

[00:51:38]that that confidence is sustained by several critical [snorts] capabilities.

[00:51:45]Um continued force generation, they have a boatload. Sustained military industrial production, they have that as well. Energy revenue and war financing, so far so good.

[00:52:00]External military and technological support. Thanks, Iran. long range attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure and the Kremlin's control over domestic political narratives.

[00:52:15]Um, and then also I would also like to add the expectation that um, democratic coalitions are less patient than authoritarian systems. I'd like to put that one to the test.

[00:52:30]Um, yeah. So Russia does not need spectacular battlefield victories if this gradual pressure continually weakens Ukraine's future options. It's strategically increasing well Russia's strategy increasingly resembles um slow strategic compression rather than a lot of rapid conquest as they started to in the first two years of the campaign.

[00:53:02]Um, R USI has characterized Russia's evolving approach as the gradual esphyxiation of Ukraine's armed forces through persistent attrition rather than dramatic operational breakthroughs.

[00:53:18]So let's go to the other side and let's look at Ukraine's strategic center of gravity. Now, their center of gravity is the continuing cohesion of the Ukrainian state, their armed forces, society, economy, and external coalition, which is large. Um, Ukraine's greatest danger is therefore not necessarily a single Russian armored breakthrough. It's also cumulative.

[00:53:47]It's a cumulative fragmentation, exhausted military personnel, unequal or politically corrosive mobilization, demographic depletion, infrastructure destruction, economic dependency, um corruption flat out, and there's been some of it.

[00:54:08]uh declining civilian confidence and then weakening relations between political and military institutions.

[00:54:18][clears throat] I would also throw in a declining foreign support. So far, we haven't seen it, but that's the culmination of things that would need to erode.

[00:54:29]Russia wins if it separates Ukrainian society from the government. It's exactly what they did in 2014.

[00:54:38]the military from the mobilization system or Ukraine from Europe. Uh Ukraine wins by keeping those systems integrated while steadily reducing Russia's confidence that the continued war will improve Moscow's uh position.

[00:55:00]Now, there's a couple of different theories of victory.

[00:55:04]The Ukrainian theory of victory.

[00:55:08]Ukraine requires six mutually supporting campaigns.

[00:55:12]None is sufficient independently.

[00:55:14]Victory only occurs if they operate together. Uh first campaign, preserve the Ukrainian nation before maximizing territorial recovery.

[00:55:26]The preservation of Ukrainian combat power is more important than the political appearance of constant offensive action. Ukraine possesses less democratic demographic depth than Russia. It cannot sustainably fight a symmetrical manpower war in which territorial gains are purchased through equivalent losses.

[00:55:52]They just don't have the manpower for it.

[00:55:56]So the central military metric should therefore not be how many Russian soldiers were killed. It should be um how much Russian combat effectiveness was destroyed relative to the Ukrainian manpower, equipment, and institutional competence expended. You with me?

[00:56:19]Ukraine must maximize military output per mobilized citizen and that requires transparent mobilization standards. Um predictable service expectations, reliable rotation, uh stronger training systems and improved medical evacuation. Um right now that's hard.

[00:56:45]There also should be some kind of a system for rehabilitation and reintegration, right? You want protection for those experienced leaders and technical specialists to be able to be rehabilitated and placed back into, you know, the front lines or in some form of supporting um role.

[00:57:04]Obviously, an expansion of autonomous and remotely operated systems. We've seen that across the board, and I think they're doing that quite well. Um and then a credible long-term support for military families and veterans.

[00:57:15]They have done very well on that front.

[00:57:18]I feel um a mobilization system that is perceived as arbitrary or corrupt or socially unequal. It's not merely a political problem. It is a strategic vulnerability. So the state has to convince citizens that sacrifice is distributed fairly, leadership is accountable, and military service contributes to an achievable national instate.

[00:57:45]Ukraine can't defeat Russia by preserving territory while consuming the social foundations of the country it is defending. Okay, I told you this was going to be deep and I didn't lie.

[00:57:58]That's why you you should have had a healthy poor. We're going to get through this.

[00:58:05][sighs] I'm going to get through it. Um so second thing campaign two you have to build a defense dominant military that is able to seize the initiative selectively.

[00:58:19]Ukraine should not define military initiative as permanent offensive movement. Initiative means forcing Russia to respond to Ukrainian choices.

[00:58:29]So the most rational near-term military posture is a defense dominant strategy which combines layered fortifications, resilient comms, distributed command and control, extensive unmanned surveillance, EW uh counter unmanned systems and uh mobile air defense.

[00:58:51]I'd also throw in local reserves to that as well.

[00:58:56]um limited counterattacks against vulnerable Russian positions. That's [snorts] force preservation.

[00:59:05]The objective on this is really to make Russian offensive action disproportionately expensive while you yourself, Ukraine, avoid the loss of scarce Ukrainian forces and politically driven offensives. and they have really changed the paradigm I would say in the last 18 months. So yeah, I mean good on them. Russia [clears throat] should not be compelled to expend manpower, engineering assets, ammunition vehicles, and specialized personnel for increasingly marginal gains. Well, we want them to.

[00:59:42]They don't, right? Um and so that's not passive defense. That is active attritional denial. And the distinction between the two is very critical.

[00:59:52]Passive defense absorbs pressure.

[00:59:56]Active defense shapes where Russia attacks, exposes attacking forces, disrupts their supporting systems, and creates limited opportunities for counterattack.

[01:00:08]Ukraine should conduct major ground offenses only when identifiable operational conditions exist. For example, Russian reserves are insufficient or poorly positioned. Russian logistics have been persistently degraded. Um, Ukrainian air defenses and electronic warfare can protect maneuver forces.

[01:00:35]Ukrainian units possess adequate combat power and rotation cap capacity.

[01:00:43]um or where a successful advance would produce operational consequences greater than the cost of taking territory.

[01:00:56]The objective should not be territory for television maps.

[01:01:02]The objective should be the disruption of Russia's ability to operate coherently. Um campaign three [clears throat] you have to defeat Russia's strategy of national exhaustion. So understand that Russia is not attacking only Ukrainian military formations. It is attacking the functioning of the Ukrainian state.

[01:01:32]long range missiles, unmanned systems, attacks against energy infrastructure, economic disruption, civilian casualties, and pressure against urban populations.

[01:01:44]They're intended to increase the political and economic cost of continued resistance.

[01:01:52]Um, United Nations monitoring, for example, documented significant increases in Ukrainian civilian casualties during the late 25 and the first half of this year with a lot of Russian long range missile and drone attacks remaining a major cause. So, Ukraine therefore cannot achieve victory solely by stabilizing the front line. It has to preserve the rear and that means they have to expand air and missile defense.

[01:02:24]Um lowcost interception systems, hardened infrastructure, um energy in this case. Winters are hard, distributed electricity generation, repair capacity and protected telecommunications as well as um redundant transportation and civil defense.

[01:02:47]We would also add municipal recovery to that. Yeah. Um, every successful Russian attack imposes more than just physical damage. It influences migration, investment, public confidence, economic output, military production, and political endurance.

[01:03:09]All of it has an effect. Air defense is therefore not just a defensive military capability.

[01:03:18]It's national force preservation.

[01:03:21]Okay. Campaign four, attack the Russian war system rather than chase attrition statistics.

[01:03:30]And we talked about that a little bit in our last segment. They are pivoting to exactly that. And you good on them. Uh, Ukraine does not need to destroy every single Russian soldier or every Russian military platform. All it really needs to do is reduce the ability of the Russian military system to convert resources into combat power. And the highest value is directed against functions that are difficult, slow, or expensive to replace.

[01:04:03]For example, command integration, specialized personnel, repair capacity, uh transportation reliability, fuel availability, surveillance systems, uh electronic warfare infrastructure, um what else?

[01:04:23]Uh air defense networks, operational headquarters, and aviation support. All of those would be vulnerable, hard to replace, or at least slow to replace. And the objective is systemic degradation.

[01:04:43]A large military can tolerate losses longer than it can tolerate organizational dislocation.

[01:04:52]And that's a concept that Clauswitz identified with long before I said it.

[01:04:57]uh Russian forces may continue occupying territory all while becoming progressively less capable of coordinating movement or sustaining operations or protecting rear areas or concentrating combat power. So Ukraine's expanding long range strike campaign has increasingly pressured Russian logistics, their energy, their military facilities and routes supporting occupied Crimea as we've discovered.

[01:05:25]However, strategic strikes should not be assumed to produce automatic political collapse. Remember, Russia possesses geographic depth. They possess alternative transportation routes and extensive repair capability and experience, a lot of experience operating under degraded conditions.

[01:05:48]They're made to suffer and they are used to it. Um the relevant metric is not the number of explosions recorded. It is whether attacks produce persistent operational effects such as longer supply lines. Um longer supply timelines as well. reduced military output, greater air defense diversion, fuel shortages, degraded sordy generation, slower reinforcement, um or maybe even the abandonment of strategically valuable facilities.

[01:06:28]Any [clears throat] temporary disruption is tactical, but persistent reduction of military capability, that's strategic.

[01:06:39]Okay, we talked a little bit about this in our last segment and this is part of campaign five. You have to devalue Crimea before you attempt to liberate it.

[01:06:53]I don't want to rehash this, so we'll just hit the wave tops. Remember, Crimea occupies an outsized position in Russian military strategy, disproportional. And it's also an it's also a national political symbol. It supports naval, aviation, air defense, logs, C2 surveillance, and Russia sees it as a glaring claim of irreversible territorial expansion. But that military value depends on reliable connectivity and the ability to operate military infrastructure without unacceptable risk. So Ukraine's most plausible approach is not an immediate large-scale assault. It's to devalue it militarily.

[01:07:42]It's transform Crimea from this protected platform for uh Russian power projection and you turn that into, you know, an exposed expensive uh logistically constrained military dependency.

[01:08:02]um the cumulative effects that we've s we've we've seen so far, right? You reduce their maritime freedom um make increasingly vulnerable military infrastructure um increase the pressure on transportation networks as well as um dispersed and less efficient Russian logistics. Logistics, I mean, that's what you should be attacking anyways. wars run on logistics, not ammo. Although ammo is a form of logistics, but you get my point.

[01:08:37]Um, a lot of uncertainty regarding reinforcement. Keep those uncertainties going. And Ukraine has already demonstrated that a state lacking a conventional bluewater fleet can impose significant maritime denial through a lot of these anti-ship weapons, these unmanned systems, and the distributed strike capabilities.

[01:09:02]British maritime doctrine identifies Ukraine's operation against the Black Sea fleet as a major example of asymmetric sea denial.

[01:09:13]They're writing history lessons in real time. I mean, it's it's incredible to watch. But don't romanticize Crimea as an inevitable point of Russian collapse.

[01:09:24]Russia can and has shown they will adapt through dispersion, through redundant transportation, through hardened facilities or additional air defenses and use of occupied land corridors. So Crimea becomes strategically vulnerable only if pressure is sustained across several military systems simultaneously.

[01:09:50]So the ultimate objective is not necessarily to storm Crimea.

[01:09:57]It is to make Russia conclude that um controlling Crimea no longer provides military value um commensurate with the cost and risk of defending it. I think they're learning that right now.

[01:10:14]So any political negotiation may become possible after military military uh utility deteriorates but that outcome is completely conditional. It's not inevitable.

[01:10:28]Okay, campaign six. Um, you have to integrate Ukraine into European military power.

[01:10:39]Ukraine cannot defeat a substantially larger state through national resources alone. It can't.

[01:10:48]Its comparative advantage is the combination of battlefield experience, a lot of accelerated innovation, inexpensive unmanned systems, rapid adaptation, and direct operational feedback.

[01:11:06]So that's Ukraine's advantage. Europe, well, they possess capital and a lot of it. They possess advanced technology, industrial infrastructure, large aggregate economies and access to global supply networks.

[01:11:25]So victory requires combining these these systems um vertically and horizontally.

[01:11:38]Ukraine doesn't need to and shouldn't remain merely an aid recipient at the end of Western production lines. It should become an integrated component of Europe's defense industrial architecture and that's completely possible but it does require a couple of things. Um for starters you need joint manufacturing, you need uh licensed production. You need multi-year procurement contracts.

[01:12:07]You have to have European investment in Ukrainian industry, um, distributed and protected production, uh, which is tricky right now, but it's doable. Um, you also need standardized systems. You need shared research. You need long-term purchase guarantees.

[01:12:29]Um, integration of Ukrainian battlefield lessons into uh European military development.

[01:12:38]And Ukraine has in many ways started to do that. But it needs to be done on at scale. It needs to be done you know in integrated fashion.

[01:12:48]Now, Ukraine's defense sector has expanded dramatically during this war, and European initiatives increasingly seek to connect Ukrainian innovation and production with the broader European industrial defense base. The strategic objective is to reverse Russia's expectation that time favors Moscow, which is what they think right now.

[01:13:13]The Kremlin must confront a future in which Ukraine produces more weapons, European production expands, Ukrainian defense becomes deeper, Ukrainian technology becomes more capable, um, and the cost of occupation rises rather than declines.

[01:13:39]predictable multi-year support is therefore more strategically valuable than intermittent emergency aid, which is what we've seen so far.

[01:13:50]That needs to change. Russia can wait and they have waited for temporary assistance packages to expire, whether it's from the United States or the European Union or other Western countries. Right? It is more difficult to outlast institutions, factories, procurement contracts, and integrated defense industries.

[01:14:12]Okay.

[01:14:14]So, the campaign sequence, the Ukrainian theory of victory needs to be conditionbased rather than calendarbased.

[01:14:25]um setting politically convenient dates for offensive offensives risks coordinating uh military reality to public expectations.

[01:14:38]That's very much a western behavior pattern that can't work here and it shouldn't work here. So the first thing that needs to be done is a national and military stabilization to prevent Russian success while preserving Ukraine's future capacity.

[01:15:02]And that means no major Russian breakthroughs. um improve your troop rotations, sustain your force generation, increase your air defense capacity, your energy resilience, your reserve formations need to be stronger. You need to protect military production and you have to have reliable external assistance. So the objective is to ensure that Ukraine is stronger at the end of the phase than at the beginning.

[01:15:30]Holding territory while degrading military readiness would not constitute stabilization just as a free aside.

[01:15:42]Okay. Um you need strategic denial purpose. You want to demonstrate that continued Russian war expenditure will not produce defensive political gains. So, Ukraine needs to seek to maintain defensive integrity while imposing unfavorable Russian costs and disrupting Russian operational systems, all while reducing Russian confidence in future breakthroughs.

[01:16:14]You also want to increase the durability of European support.

[01:16:20]The psychological target is the Russian assumption that persistence guarantees eventual victory.

[01:16:32]Theater distribution or I would say theater dislocation purpose and that is to reduce Russia's ability to operate the occupied territories that they have now as a unified military system. So pressure would focus on the relationships that are connecting frontline forces to um command structures to transportation, logistics, um fuel as well as um aviation. Sorry, lost my train of thought there for a minute. Um it's also heavily focused on the relationship between air and naval defense uh naval operations and then of course any strategic reserves. Um the desired outcome is not universal destruction.

[01:17:29]It is fragmentation.

[01:17:33]Russian formations become slower to reinforce, harder to sustain, and more vulnerable to isolation, and less able to support one another.

[01:17:49]These are subphases of phase five, uh, selective territorial recovery. So only after Russian systems demonstrate measurable degradation should Ukraine commit any major ground forces to a any broader offensive action. You know 23 24 it was all about regaining territory to show the rest of the world that they could do it that they had the confidence for that. That's yesterday's tactic. It's it's yesterday's doctrine. It's not going to it's not going to win the day. Um the preferred operation would be geographically limited but strategically consequential. Its purposes, you know, could include things like uh forcing withdraw from an exposed area or severing operational connections between Russian force groupings or threatening critical support corridors. Um possibly reducing pressure on, you know, some of the larger Ukrainian cities. Um, but you could also create conditions that have bargaining leverage.

[01:18:55]Any campaign that Ukraine launches should stop before success converts into overextension. And that's that's hard.

[01:19:02]You have to have tremendous discipline and a very skilled commander to understand that. The lesson of modern highintensity warfare is that tactical momentum can become strategic vulnerability when uh advancing forces outrun air defenses or electronic warfare or logistics or engineering support.

[01:19:25]Negotiations become strategically favorable when Russia believes that continued war will not destroy Ukrainian sovereignty.

[01:19:36]that Ukraine's military capacity is improving, that occupation is becoming more expensive, um, and that European assistance will persist or perhaps if they feel that future military conditions may be worse for Moscow than the present conditions. I don't think that one's likely, though.

[01:20:00]And negotiation um [laughter] it's not inherently surrender.

[01:20:07]It becomes surrender when one side enters negotiations because it lacks the ability to continue resisting.

[01:20:16]Um Ukraine's objective is to negotiate because Russia's anticipated future is deteriorating.

[01:20:25]So excuse me.

[01:20:28]What would a durable settlement require [cough] water apparently?

[01:20:41][cough] Wow. [clears throat] Yep.

[01:20:49]What would a durable settlement require?

[01:20:52]Um, so just remember a ceasefire does not automatically create peace.

[01:20:57]uh poorly constructed agreement would become another interwar period in which Russia rebuilds, they reorganize, and then they resume military operations under more favorable conditions. In fact, the Rand Corporation's analysis of potential Ukraine ceasefire emphasizes the importance of monitoring compliance mechanisms, clearly defined responsibilities, third party involvement, and technologies capable of independently documenting violations.

[01:21:29]So, a viable settlement would require several components.

[01:21:35]You'd have to leave Ukraine armed. Any agreement requiring Ukrainian demilitarization completely preserves Russia's ability to resume coercion. Uh Ukraine would require large modern rapidly mobilized forces supported by reserves and domestic protection.

[01:21:58]You would have to have something that has no forced political neutralization.

[01:22:03]So Russia's war aim involve limiting Ukraine's sovereign political choices.

[01:22:09]They wanted Zalinsky gone. They wanted new leadership, new elections. A settlement that grants Moscow veto power over Ukrainian alliances, European integration, defense relationships or domestic political institutions would preserve the central mechanism of Russian control. So it wouldn't work.

[01:22:31]Um, you need ex executable security commitments. Security guarantees have to describe what supporting states will actually do following renewed aggression. So any ambiguous promises, it creates uncertainty. Deterrence on the other hand requires credible consequences. So what would some of those consequences include?

[01:22:55]NATO membership for starters, right? And barring that, a binding bilateral defense agreement with neighboring countries um including European Union, you could have integrated European air defenses, uh permanent training and logistics structures, pre-positioned military equipment, guaranteed resupply, automatic sanctions, um and defined military assistance following violations.

[01:23:24]So both NATO and European governments increasingly describe Ukrainian sovereignty, sovereignty, and future deterrence as connected to wider European security.

[01:23:39]You'd have to have something that states there are no legal recognitions of territorial annexation. So a ceasefire line and a sovereign border, they're not the same things.

[01:23:51]Ukraine may be compelled to tolerate temporary de facto Russian control of territory without legally recognizing Russian sovereignty. Yeah, it's a thing.

[01:24:06]Um I mean they're going to try to push and push and push, but this preserves future diplomatic and legal claims without requiring immediate military recovery at any cost.

[01:24:19]You could also and should also have reconstruction become a security instrument. So reconstruction is not separate from deterrence.

[01:24:28]A prosperous, institutionally stable, economically integrated Ukraine would represent a continuing strategic defeat for Moscow.

[01:24:39]Economic recovery, it affects a lot of different things. It affects um population retention, military funding, um technological development, political stability, industrial production, and public confidence, right? People have to trust their government. They want to live there. So, the stronger Ukraine becomes after the war, the less likely Russia is to believe that renewed coercion can succeed.

[01:25:10]Now, all that being said, and we have said a lot, what is Russia's counter strategy?

[01:25:22]Any credible Ukrainian victory theory, which is all this is, must anticipate Russian adaptation. So, Russia is not going to passively accept strategic decline. It is likely to counter through several mutually reinforcing methods.

[01:25:42]To start with, persistent attrition.

[01:25:45]Russia may just simply continue accepting high casualties if it believes Ukraine's smaller manpower base is deteriorating faster. Absolute losses are less important than relative regeneration.

[01:26:02]There's also infrastructure coercion.

[01:26:05]Um, Russia will continue attempting to increase the economic and psychological costs of I just got bug bombed. Um, psychologically psychological cost of resistance through attacks against energy, transportation, urban infrastructure, and military production.

[01:26:28]They are going to have increasing adaptation against a lot of Ukrainian technology. They're going to improve electronic warfare, counter unmanned systems, camouflage, dispersion, rear area defenses, and tactical procedures.

[01:26:43]Ukraine's technological advantage will decay unless innovation is continuous, and so far so good.

[01:26:51]No battlefield innovation, though remains asymmetric indefinitely. Um, Russia will probably also fight a political warfare against the coalition at large. And they're already attempting in many ways to do that to widen divisions concerning um the cost, financial cost towards um supporting states, escalation, refugees, energy, domestic political priorities, corruption, and the prospects of Ukrainian victory.

[01:27:25]So the political front may become more important in many ways than the territorial front.

[01:27:33][clears throat] Russia, I think in many ways, is going to explore strategic patience. They may accept years of inconclusive warfare. If Moscow believes democratic states will eventually prioritize domestic concerns over Ukrainian security and hell the United States already has we have and that assumption must be defeated institutionally not rhetorically uh the major failure condition. So Ukraine's theory of victory fails if any of the following become dominant.

[01:28:16]If the manpower depletion exceeds military adaptation, uh I I don't know how else to explain it other than that a lot of the unmanned systems can reduce exposure and certainly improve efficiency as we've seen, but they cannot completely replace trained infantry or engineers or leaders or logistics personnel or air defense crews and technical specialists.

[01:28:43]Western assistance is very politically fragile. Large financial pledges create potential capacity. They do not guarantee timely production or delivery or maintenance or battlefield integration.

[01:28:59]Ukraine conducts any premature prestige offensives. They haven't in a while. So, I hope that trend continues. a major offensive launched just to demonstrate progress to foreign supporters.

[01:29:14]It's a bad move. It consumes irreplaceable personnel and equipment without really producing any sustainable military advantage.

[01:29:23]Um, don't mistake Russian economic weakness for imminent collapse. They can experience inflation or lower civilian investment or labor shortages and reduce living standards while continuing to fund military operations. Economic pain for them, it only matters when it reduces military capacity or it changes the political decision-m and I don't see that happening on either one.

[01:29:53]Um, if corruption weakens national legitimacy, now there's been episodes of corruption in Ukraine. They have handled it domestically, but it has on the national scale brought a lot of scrutiny. And corruption becomes strategically dangerous when their own citizens believe political or economic privilege determines who fights, who avoids service, who profits from procurement or receives protection.

[01:30:23]A lot of military legitimacy depends on a perceived fairness.

[01:30:28][sighs] Uh, a ceasefire is confused with war termination. Um, a cessation of combat without deterrence, it's just going to allow Russia to restore combat power. So, the settlement must alter the future military balance, not merely stop current fighting.

[01:30:51]So what would Ukrainian victory imply for Russia?

[01:30:58]What would it mean to the Russian to the domestic front? Well, Russian defeat would not necessarily produce um democratization or uh moderation or geopolitical withdrawal. It it could make Russia become a lot more authoritarian or more militarized or more dependent on China, more re let's say revantist, more active in cyber and covert operations and probably a lot more determined to rebuild its armed forces.

[01:31:36]Um, the mistake that the West makes here is don't assume that battlefield failure produces political liberization because it it won't. A post-war Russia may and most likely will remain dangerous even if it loses the strategic contest over Ukraine.

[01:31:58]What would it mean for Europe? [gasps] Well, a Ukrainian victory supported primarily through expanding European military capacity, which it must, could mark a very historic transition. Europe would move from a security consumer dependent overwhelmingly upon the United States toward a more capable strategic actor.

[01:32:21]Um, Ukraine could become not merely a protected frontier state, but one of Europe's most experienced military powers and an important center of uh, defense innovation.

[01:32:39]What would it mean for China? Well, China would study more than Russian battlefield performance. Beijing will examine things such as western political endurance, uh the speed of industrial mobilization, sanctions enforcement, coalition logistics. They're watching it all.

[01:33:01]Space and intelligence support, unmanned warfare, a lot to look at in that genre. Uh as well as escalation management.

[01:33:12]So two opposing lessons are possible for China. A Russian defeat could demonstrate that conquest against a motivated population supported by a wealthy coalition becomes strategically unsustainable.

[01:33:29]It could also reinforce the belief that any future operation against Taiwan would need to achieve political and military objectives rapidly before an international coalition could mobilize.

[01:33:46]Um the lesson may therefore be deterrent or destabilizing.

[01:33:54]What is the lesson for modern warfare?

[01:33:58]God, like unlimited. But Ukraine has demonstrated that future military advantage will depend increasingly upon production speed, upon software adaptation, um distributed sensors, inexpensive unmanned systems, electronic warfare, and then really integrating those expensive unmanned systems. But you're also considering industrial resilience, secure communications and the rapid integration of battlefield experience which they have done a phenomenal job.

[01:34:37]A lot of the prestige platforms that we have and that our near peer competitors have will remain important. But that I've said this so many times, states unable or unwilling, take your pick, to produce large numbers of affordable, adaptable systems may find themselves operationally overwhelmed regardless of the technological sophistication.

[01:35:03]Lessons learned for nuclear deterrence.

[01:35:05]Um, yeah, a Ukrainian strategic victory would demonstrate that nuclear weapons do not guarantee successful conventional conquest. Now, they can deter direct regimethreatening intervention without ensuring that conventional aggression achieves its political objectives.

[01:35:28]Uh but the war may also encourage other states to conclude that nuclear weapons provide protection against catastrophic retaliation.

[01:35:39]So the conflict could therefore weaken the perceived utility of nuclear coercion while simultaneously strengthening incentives for nuclear proliferation. So, both lessons may emerge at once.

[01:36:00]Final assessment and then I'm going to answer a listener's question. I think um Ukraine defeats Russia when it creates a strategic environment in which Moscow can continue fighting but can no longer improve its political position through war.

[01:36:22]And that outcome requires more than attrition.

[01:36:26]It requires changing Russia's future expectations.

[01:36:33]The decisive formula is [clears throat] Ukrainian national cohesion which means force preservation, defense dominant military effectiveness, persistent degradation of Russian operational systems and as stated European industrial integration, credible post-war deterrence equals strategic defeat of Russian coercion.

[01:37:05]Ukraine's challenge is not to become more powerful than Russia in every category.

[01:37:11]It is to prevent Russia's greater size from producing political control. Now, Russia is betting that Ukrainian manpower, infrastructure, public endurance, uh, and foreign support will weaken before Russian military power and political resolve do.

[01:37:34]Ukraine has to reverse that equation.

[01:37:38]the war will begin moving decisively toward Ukrainian victory when the Kremlin concludes that um additional time will make Ukraine stronger rather than weaker, that continued occupation will become more expensive rather than more secure.

[01:38:01]Um, European support will become more institutional rather than more fragile.

[01:38:09]Ukrainian military technology will improve faster than Russia can adapt.

[01:38:16]So far, and renewed offensives will produce diminishing returns. At that point, Russia's war changes character. It is no longer a campaign capable of delivering strategic expansion. It becomes an increasingly expensive effort to preserve gains already made.

[01:38:42]That is the threshold Ukraine must cross.

[01:38:48]Ukraine does not need to destroy Russia and they won't. It must destroy the strategic proposition upon which Russians entire war depends. That superior mass political endurance and the passage of time will eventually deliver control over Ukraine.

[01:39:11]When that belief becomes untenable and Ukraine emerges sovereign, armed, economically viable, politically free, and securely connected to Europe, Russia has lost the war's central contest. Even if the final map remains unfinished.

[01:39:35]Yeah. So, that was a lot. Um, you may want to listen to it twice.

[01:39:42]If you do, go easy on the drinking on the second goaround because I'm assuming you had a healthy poor in the first one.

[01:39:50]Um, but I wanted to do a deep dive into the Russian and Ukrainian campaigns. I wanted to talk about Crimea. I wanted to talk about a change in tactics and it's remarkable techn uh technological innovation in unmanned systems. They are absolutely on the cutting edge of not just the engineering but the um the battlefield udaloop is incredible. Uh I want to answer a listener's question. Give me one second.

[01:40:19]I have it on the on the mobile for you Europeans and the cell phone on the domestic. So one second. It is it was a decent question. Still is a decent question.

[01:40:32]So, this comes from Maz via YouTube. Um, what are your thoughts on the Colonial Marines from the 1986 classic Aliens? It's a two-part question. I'll answer that part first.

[01:40:48]Uh, I thought it was great. I thought it was fantastic.

[01:40:53]So when I was in uniform, you know, I had my um parachute wings and my dive bubble. And it was not uncommon for somebody far outside of the combat arms MOS to come up on occasion, it didn't happen often, and ask me, "What is that that pin above your the the parachute wings?" I'm like, "Oh, that [snorts] that's a space helmet."

[01:41:20]Yeah, I'm a door gunner in the space shuttle. It's a very little known job, but when the space shuttle takes off, in case it, you know, comes under attack, I I made a weapon, a 50 cal, just just in case. So, yeah, that's what that is.

[01:41:35]Most people bought it. No one ever really called [ __ ] on it. So, why am I saying that? because um how effing cool is it that far in the future we still have good old ground pounding infantry marines.

[01:41:54]I think it was pretty cool. I I I like it. Um it was ridiculous. It was characters. It was way over the top. You No one's going to interact that way amongst themselves. um like there was no intelligence preparation. Ripley stood up in front of the formation and basically gave a quick little story. The lieutenant says, "Yeah, it's all available in your information packets." But that's not how it would be. And I would hope in the future that they would have enough institutional professionalism to I don't know, maybe read the briefing.

[01:42:33]they go down there and um just kind of play fast and loose. But I I liked them. I liked him. So So that was part one. If you were leading those guys into Hadley's Hope, would you have done it differently? I don't know.

[01:42:47]That's That's a tough one. I'd like to think that I would do it differently because as Bill Pton's character stated, um maybe you haven't been paying attention, but we just got our asses handed to us. It's a great movie, full of oneliners, a great cast. Like everybody does such a good job in that film.

[01:43:06]Would I have done it differently?

[01:43:10]Yeah, I think so. I think I would have done things a little bit different. I would have established like here we are far in the future and they have no autonomous systems. We just got done talking about them ad nauseium.

[01:43:26]They have the automatic sentry guns, which are freaking cool, but what are you saying? That there's no drone, there's no ground robot, there's nothing that they do. Each individual has to themselves go forth and sort of probe the enemy lines. Yeah. I would [clears throat] have um done a lot more reconnaissance first. I would have had maps of the installation.

[01:43:54]Yeah.

[01:43:55]I like nuking the planet from orbit though, you know, it's the only way to be sure. Anyways, I digress. Um, thanks for the question. Hope I answered it sufficiently. I'm always willing to ask and answer. Sorry. I'm always willing to be asked and will answer anything.

[01:44:12]That's the end. We have done a massive deep dive on Ukraine. So, we can set that one aside for a while [snorts] and we'll find another part of the world to talk about and another group of technology. And until that happens, I remain your guide to the world melting down, Brad Colbert, the Iceman. I look forward to seeing you all next week. And till then, this is me reminding all of you to stay frosty, >> improvise, adapt, and [clears throat] overcome.