Many of the towns and cities Russia is sacrificing thousands to capture now were occupied by DPR forces in 2014 without firing a shot (or very few shots in any case)- Ukrops were a spent force, Amerika was in the midst of the Obama live-in and the EU was too preoccupied with the Eurozone clusterfuck and, in 2015, the migrant crisis to really care. The average Ukrop was in the early stages of zombification and Putin was still very popular in the Russophone East and South of the country. It was a massive missed opportunity for Russia to capture most useful bits of Ukropia with the minimal use of force.
Still you need overlapping coverage to ensure no gap exists.
Ka-27M radar can identify a tank 50-70kms away, the coverage is there so I am assuming the new radar for the Ka-52M will be better for the helicopters to coordinate the Hermes missiles.
It would be great to know the exact number of losses by both sides. Maybe they should go all out, but who knows, if Russia has a 7 to 1 kill ratio, or even closer to a 10 to1, this strategy might be the best. At this point I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to Russia, because they have the true numbers.
Fake news .. only long range drone strike have been disabled after chemical attack even that too looks like just posturing , nothing else.
Russian economy would have been toast had they done that. Their economy simply did not have the ability to withstand sanctions back then which is why Putin backed out.
I think the problem was that they were not flexible. There's a really great book called "Maneuver Warfare Handbook" that goes into the details of this - but the main things that I feel really bogged the Russians down was the poor command, control & comms, poor logistics deep into enemy territory.
Which is kind of ironic actually, since the entire reason for the BTG concept was to increase flexibility. However the Russian doctrine doesn't really allow that, which to my knowledge still has an immense amount of rigidity in command. Self-initiative is frowned upon and you are expected to follow everything your command says without chanding anything in the plan, etc.
but now, situation is quite different, world envies strength, which Russia indeed showed ( though even being portrayed as an aggressor), infact Russia successfully did gave a jolt to US led world order really bad.
Not too bad but will take at least a month to repair if not more, that is if Russians don't retarget it.
IDN why they both target the the deck always!!! while a direct attack on pier/s can make the truss bridge permanently inoperable !! 1 blow sufficient enough and 2 years again backtrack!!
attack against piers using the unmanned drones doesn't always work successfull it requires a lot of ordinance to blow it up. that is why during this sabotage missions they always targets the spans it is easy and disrupts the traffic for weeks.
