Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "John Lough - Four Possible Outcomes to Russia's War in Ukraine and its Ambitions to Target Europe" video.

What Britian and Europe can have been doing since the invasion is a steady buildup of the Ukrainian Air Force. This is necessary because the structure of NATO relies upon air forces to deter Russian aggression. NATO was never going to be able to replace air power with 600,000 artillery shells per month. The NATO method is precision strike, which includes a large percentage of munitions, not all, delivered by air power. If this air power building effort has been underway since 2022, then we should start to see some serious fruition of capability in 2025. Certainly US and other armed forces put even more time into training combat pilots than three years. But three years of training can get a pilot prepared for a small set of mission types. Serious Ukrainian air power, in the form of adding a wing (say 72 aircraft with aircrews and all support) per year starting in 2025, can tilt the war into a set of circumstances that motivate Putin to cut a deal. Putin's MIC has its limits, and those limits have required the depletion of stored armor and artillery that to date have allowed Russia to fight with a tempo it is losing the ability to sustain. Russia can probably sustain some tempo for many years. But a larger and well-equipped Ukrainian air force can concentrate combat power on vital locations that will put Russia in a much more defensive position and subject to loss of those vital locations. Ukraine can only do this with significant European assistance, and as much as it can get from the Trump administration. I can see the rhetoric teeing up Trump to look weak if he does not continue significant assistance to Ukraine.
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@timthetiny7538 If they don't, then it is unlikely they can maintain their country.
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@stevealba56 And airports and hangars, like railways, can be repaired after strikes. How much does an Iskander cost compared to the typical airport damage it causes? And the Iskander DSMAC can probably be fooled by F-16 mock-ups. As demonstrated by Israeli and US naval air power during the Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel, aircraft, like the F-16, can act in a defensive role to thin the effect of drone attacks. Nice try with the fatalism, but non-Russians are capable of stubborn resistance. I suggest you go to church this coming week and think about what crushing the human spirit does to an economy.
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@stevealba56 And the West has more financial depth than Russia with which to replace military assets. Russia likes to broadcast a sense of fatalism about their victory and a mythical infinite capacity to achieve it. It's the same kind of hubris the Soviets had. Sounds like Russia is going to fight its way to a zero bank balance.
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