While losing Pesky is significant.. UKRAINE will not lose Donetsk in a few weeks.. In fact it will take a few months for Ukraine to lose all of Donetsk, unless Russia significantly steps up the number of troops....
This is true..Unlike the US military at the end of the cold war, US military and more importantly US military industrial complex today is not geared towards high intensity conflict. If you remember even until a year ago, the idea of prolonged high intensity conflict between near peer nuclear rivals was considered to be impossible by western think tankers.. US military industrial base atrophied over the past 30 years through lack of orders, relentles consolidation and embrace of Just in time mentality, which removed surge capacity.. While Russia is not as formidable as the Soviet Union, and Russia lost a lot of military industrial capacity after the collapse of Soviet Union, it has rebuilt capacities in some sectors over the past couple of decades..
Now the war in Ukraine has woken up US to the prospect of industrial high intensity warfare with near peer nuclear powers. And there is nothing better than war, to bring out deficiencies in US production capabilities of 20th century mainstay weapons like Artillery, Rocket launchers and associated ammunition..
So, US in the coming years will reorient its own and those of its allies' Industries towards industrial warfare. But, that will be too late for Ukraine..
US has a far bigger problem, much like the west : It cannot sustain the SOCIAL COST of high intensity warfare. Its just that simple.
Why is the nearly 1 trillion dollar budget military, with the budget of the next 6 nations combined, lacking in surge capacity and high intensity warfare ? Not because it was deemed unnecessary. But because US went through a severe social turmoil due to body bag syndrome of vietnam war - something that has plagued them in gulf war part-2 & afghan war.
How do you ensure your body bags are minimal ? By investing in high precision equipment. Which cost mucho dinero. Which means, you cannot have a stockpile of 1 million ATACAMs.
The main hurdle for US and the west, has always been that, for the last 50 years : they cannot sustain high intensity war's social cost. Just flip the situation around. Say Ukraine is Russia and Russia is USA. Say all the numbers are true - Ukraine ( Russia in our argument) has lost 200K troops and Russia( USA in our argument) has lost 50K troops inside six months.
Do you seriously see US continuing said war ?
The answer is no.
This is why the west is geared towards low intensity, high pecision war or window-dressing show of force vs a vastly inferior side like Iraq or Afghanistan : too much of a pooh-c socially to deal with mass bodybags, which cannot be avoided in high intensity conflict.