[Goose]

Goose, this part of your response suggests that Ukraine simply lacks the combat power to push Russian troops off of a well-fortified position.  The battle lines in the south of Ukraine are nothing if not well-fortified, so this seems ominous.  I don't think Ukraine can say that it lacks decent equipment anymore either since Ukraine now has a decent amount of tanks, de-mining equipment, APCs, ATACMS, Patriots, etc.  This leads me to some questions:

Have the deliveries of equipment and munitions from the West been so small in number as to prevent the Ukrainians from showing proof of concept on putting together a strike force?

The first problem is that the West could not and did not supply  Ukraine with anywhere near enough de-mining equipment. We simply don't have it and weren't willing to part with the totality of what we have. The US and NATO aren't structured to directly attack heavily fortified positions. We are a "mobility warfare" force. There is good reason for that. We aren't intending to attack North Korea frontally, and nowhere else in the world do we see an enemy that defends with massive minefields and fortifications. There is no Surovikin Line protecting the Russian border, for example. If we were confronted with that, we would expect the USAF to blow a very wide lane through such fortifications. They can do that, and we pay lots of money to ensure they can. Ukraine didn't have that option.

Second, it takes more than a few months of training to generate an effective combined arms force. This is doubly true in Ukraine which has no tradition of fighting that way. They aren't good at it yet, especially in the higher command levels. As was reported in the beginning of the offensive units would often show up "late", after the initial area clearance had taken place and the Russians had time to recover. The US has plenty of examples of this too over the years, but our units are better trained and know how to improvise and deal with these problems. Ukraine isn't there yet.

A few years ago I spoke with a former commander of 11 ACR. He said commanding the unit was the highlight of his life and that it had the resources, training, and capability to overcome any opposition bar none. He also said it was unfortunately one of the most expensive military formations in the world to sustain and operate. Their training and manpower requirements were at best prodigious. The equipment maintenance alone cost as much as a typical infantry division. That doesn't sound like Ukraine to me, so there is an inherent problem with using NATO methods there.

Despite all this, after falling back to strictly infantry tactics, Ukraine manage to penetrate the Russian defenses. Unfortunately, the cost was so high Ukraine wasn't well equipped to exploit success. They didn't have the troop strength. On top of that, Russia started deploying air power to prevent Ukraine from exploiting local breakthroughs. Ukraine realized they had no answer for this air interdiction. The more they tried to advance, the worse it would get. Thus F-16s became the "big issue". It is IMO absolutely amazing that the West didn't anticipate this problem. Maybe we thought the Russian air force was a "spent force". Why, I don't know. Unfortunately, this pause is allowing Russia to fortify cities in Zaporizhzhia Oblast that Ukraine is going to need to capture. Very bad, repeating a mistake made last year. The price will be paid in blood.

Is there a view that further training on the equipment the West is shipping will fundamentally alter Ukraine's ability to dislodge Russian troops from well-fortified positions?

Yes, but not directly. They will be more capable. They do however need a way to avoid beating their head against well dug in Russians with artillery parity. Hopefully the Ukrainians will be better prepared to exploit a breach if they create one. The Russians aren't know as quick reactors. You can certainly get inside their decision cycle, but you have to be ready to act quickly.

If these aren't the key, then the only remaining piece of the puzzle is the fighter jets.  Will the modest number of jets that the West has committed be enough to change anything or will they simply replace the Soviet era jets that the Russians have been trying to shoot down for the last 2 years?

Ukraine is counting on it. They "sold" the idea as air defense, to keep the Russian air off their advancing formations. That was very "reasonably" arguable. It also appeared to be basically "defensive" in character, making it a bit more politically correct. I am however virtually certain they intend to use the F-16s to defeat Russian fortifications by dropping JDAMs and possibly other longer range air-to-surface weapons (JASSM). Makes sense. That is what we would do, but first we would obtain air superiority. Ukraine possibly can accomplish that locally. If they can, this approach can work well. If they can't, aircraft losses will become a significant problem. To what extent the US "powers that be" are aware of this intent is unknown to me. Hopefully it won't come as a surprise to them. If we ship JASSMs to Ukraine, we know it isn't a "surprise".

In most cases, Ukraine will be dropping JDAMs from inside their own territory. That is usually pretty safe, but as Russia found out recently, that isn't always true. Ukraine is (at least eventually) going to need some SEAD and a Mig Cap. That requires quite a few aircraft. They best be well enough trained to do these things. They have no "senior" leaders who have been there and done that with an F-16. I have no idea how through the F-16 training in the US will be. How much actual gunnery and weapons delivery will be included? How much air-to-air? It ain't simple, and just because you did it once in "real life" at a range or did it on a on a simulator doesn't mean you are operationally ready. In war, compromises are often necessary, but they cost lives. There aren't many "extra" F-16 pilots in Ukraine's air force. They need to have a low attrition rate.

We won't even talk about whether Ukraine will start using the IFF capability on the F-16s. Do the NATO supplied SAMs still have their IFF interrogators? Do the F-16s? We also won't talk about how all Ukrainian soviet-era aircraft will appear as threats on the F-16 RWR. I can see all kinds of "yellow on yellow" problems arising. We also won't talk about what ECM capability will be provided with the F-16s. I can just see somebody in the USAF shipping RWRs with no libraries for "security reasons". Ditto the jammer techniques generators.

I previously held the view that this war is "stalemated," and that Russia would settle for making this another one of its "frozen conflicts," but it sounds like you think that's a temporary equilibrium that will change as Ukraine's economy continues to falter and as Russia re-generates its forces.  I don't have enough information to provide a counterbalance to your ominous outlook, but I remain hopeful that Ukraine will muster the strength to continue its defense and that the West will be able to stay sufficiently united to fund and supply that effort.

Obviously I can't "prove" my assertion that Ukraine will be unable to continue after about another year either. I too hope that Ukraine will muster the strength to achieve it's ends in the South. Take Melitopol' and destroy the Kerch bridge. If Ukraine can, IMO Russia falls apart quickly, at least militarily. Once all those Russians in Crimea, South Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia realize the situation, they will head for the exits. They will know they can't be supplied with enough bread and bullets to retain their positions. Even if they tried to stay and fight, their supplies wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks in most cases. They also aren't motorized (in general) and can't really run away fast. Even when they are, they need fuel.

If, OTOH, Ukraine doesn't at least make substantial progress towards this outcome, IMO the bulk of population will look at the war as unwinnable. They need a plausible "end game" to keep fighting. Without one, they are only waiting on the inevitable. If there were reason to believe Russia was nearing the end of it's capabilities, that too would keep Ukraine in the fight. So far, we don't see that. I hope those F-16 pilots are good.

[Goose]

Goose, this part of your response suggests that Ukraine simply lacks the combat power to push Russian troops off of a well-fortified position.  The battle lines in the south of Ukraine are nothing if not well-fortified, so this seems ominous.  I don't think Ukraine can say that it lacks decent equipment anymore either since Ukraine now has a decent amount of tanks, de-mining equipment, APCs, ATACMS, Patriots, etc.  This leads me to some questions:

Have the deliveries of equipment and munitions from the West been so small in number as to prevent the Ukrainians from showing proof of concept on putting together a strike force?

The first problem is that the West could not and did not supply  Ukraine with anywhere near enough de-mining equipment. We simply don't have it and weren't willing to part with the totality of what we have. The US and NATO aren't structured to directly attack heavily fortified positions. We are a "mobility warfare" force. There is good reason for that. We aren't intending to attack North Korea frontally, and nowhere else in the world do we see an enemy that defends with massive minefields and fortifications. There is no Surovikin Line protecting the Russian border, for example. If we were confronted with that, we would expect the USAF to blow a very wide lane through such fortifications. They can do that, and we pay lots of money to ensure they can. Ukraine didn't have that option.

Second, it takes more than a few months of training to generate an effective combined arms force. This is doubly true in Ukraine which has no tradition of fighting that way. They aren't good at it yet, especially in the higher command levels. As was reported in the beginning of the offensive units would often show up "late", after the initial area clearance had taken place and the Russians had time to recover. The US has plenty of examples of this too over the years, but our units are better trained and know how to improvise and deal with these problems. Ukraine isn't there yet.

A few years ago I spoke with a former commander of 11 ACR. He said commanding the unit was the highlight of his life and that it had the resources, training, and capability to overcome any opposition bar none. He also said it was unfortunately one of the most expensive military formations in the world to sustain and operate. Their training and manpower requirements were at best prodigious. The equipment maintenance alone cost as much as a typical infantry division. That doesn't sound like Ukraine to me, so there is an inherent problem with using NATO methods there.

Despite all this, after falling back to strictly infantry tactics, Ukraine manage to penetrate the Russian defenses. Unfortunately, the cost was so high Ukraine wasn't well equipped to exploit success. They didn't have the troop strength. On top of that, Russia started deploying air power to prevent Ukraine from exploiting local breakthroughs. Ukraine realized they had no answer for this air interdiction. The more they tried to advance, the worse it would get. Thus F-16s became the "big issue". It is IMO absolutely amazing that the West didn't anticipate this problem. Maybe we thought the Russian air force was a "spent force". Why, I don't know. Unfortunately, this pause is allowing Russia to fortify cities in Zaporizhzhia Oblast that Ukraine is going to need to capture. Very bad, repeating a mistake made last year. The price will be paid in blood.

Is there a view that further training on the equipment the West is shipping will fundamentally alter Ukraine's ability to dislodge Russian troops from well-fortified positions?

Yes, but not directly. They will be more capable. They do however need a way to avoid beating their head against well dug in Russians with artillery parity. Hopefully the Ukrainians will be better prepared to exploit a breach if they create one. The Russians aren't know as quick reactors. You can certainly get inside their decision cycle, but you have to be ready to act quickly.

If these aren't the key, then the only remaining piece of the puzzle is the fighter jets.  Will the modest number of jets that the West has committed be enough to change anything or will they simply replace the Soviet era jets that the Russians have been trying to shoot down for the last 2 years?

Ukraine is counting on it. They "sold" the idea as air defense, to keep the Russian air off their advancing formations. That was very "reasonably" arguable. It also appeared to be basically "defensive" in character, making it a bit more politically correct. I am however virtually certain they intend to use the F-16s to defeat Russian fortifications by dropping JDAMs and possibly other longer range air-to-surface weapons (JASSM). Makes sense. That is what we would do, but first we would obtain air superiority. Ukraine possibly can accomplish that locally. If they can, this approach can work well. If they can't, aircraft losses will become a significant problem. To what extent the US "powers that be" are aware of this intent is unknown to me. Hopefully it won't come as a surprise to them. If we ship JASSMs to Ukraine, we know it isn't a "surprise".

In most cases, Ukraine will be dropping JDAMs from inside their own territory. That is usually pretty safe, but as Russia found out recently, that isn't always true. Ukraine is (at least eventually) going to need some SEAD and a Mig Cap. That requires quite a few aircraft. They best be well enough trained to do these things. They have no "senior" leaders who have been there and done that with an F-16. I have no idea how through the F-16 training in the US will be. How much actual gunnery and weapons delivery will be included? How much air-to-air? It ain't simple, and just because you did it once in "real life" at a range or did it on a on a simulator doesn't mean you are operationally ready. In war, compromises are often necessary, but they cost lives. There aren't many "extra" F-16 pilots in Ukraine's air force. They need to have a low attrition rate.

We won't even talk about whether Ukraine will start using the IFF capability on the F-16s. Do the NATO supplied SAMs still have their IFF interrogators? Do the F-16s? We also won't talk about how all Ukrainian soviet-era aircraft will appear as threats on the F-16 RWR. I can see all kinds of "yellow on yellow" problems arising. We also won't talk about what ECM capability will be provided with the F-16s. I can just see somebody in the USAF shipping RWRs with no libraries for "security reasons". Ditto the jammer techniques generators.

I previously held the view that this war is "stalemated," and that Russia would settle for making this another one of its "frozen conflicts," but it sounds like you think that's a temporary equilibrium that will change as Ukraine's economy continues to falter and as Russia re-generates its forces.  I don't have enough information to provide a counterbalance to your ominous outlook, but I remain hopeful that Ukraine will muster the strength to continue its defense and that the West will be able to stay sufficiently united to fund and supply that effort.

Obviously I can't "prove" my assertion that Ukraine will be unable to continue after about another year either. I too hope that Ukraine will muster the strength to achieve it's ends in the South. Take Melitopol' and destroy the Kerch bridge. If Ukraine can, IMO Russia falls apart quickly, at least militarily. Once all those Russians in Crimea, South Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia realize the situation, they will head for the exits. They will know they can't be supplied with enough bread and bullets to retain their positions. Even if they tried to stay and fight, their supplies wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks in most cases. They also aren't motorized (in general) and can't really run away fast. Even when they are, they need fuel.

If, OTOH, Ukraine doesn't at least make substantial progress towards this outcome, IMO the bulk of population will look at the war as unwinnable. They need a plausible "end game" to keep fighting. Without one, they are only waiting on the inevitable. If there were reason to believe Russia was nearing the end of it's capabilities, that too would keep Ukraine in the fight. So far, we don't see that. I hope those F-16 pilots are good.