Isos wrote:The air force is the best advantage they have and they will use it as the first weapon with coordinated missiles strikes.
The air force allows to attack all the targets they want in all Ulraine and moving targets.
If they don't send troops and use just drones and missiles that can push NATO to send forces and then Russia can't risk to attack them directly. If they attack they will go in with everything.
You are thinking about the operation in the wrong way, as a tactical exercise.
The military world and his brother know full well that a combined arms Russian operation would crush Ukraine in a max of probably a week. They know because that would be a type of warfare that many of them would be very familiar with, many in senior positions because they have been in similar themselves in say Iraq.
As such Russia would have won but it would not surprise anyone in US/NATO. It would have been a wasted opportunity. Russia needs to achieve much more than that. Just as the US with the F-117 shocked the World over Baghdad helping to boost the aura of invincibility of the US then, Russia can play the same card now.
Since WW2 the Russian Army has been quietly honing the power, accuracy and effectiveness of its artillery forces. Whilst it can be simulated in a war game it is nothing like seeing the real thing in action and no-one has seen that. Just as the RuAF deployment to Syria in 2015 surprised the West, I suspect that watching the ferocity of an unmanned assault, as I described above, would send shivers down military spines round the World. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Do you think that Gerasimov would pass up the opportunity to go down in history?
The strategic effect would be significant. Suddenly much of the West's gear and plans would be scrap. Big changes in spending would be needed to catch up. This would be Russia in role reversal bankrupting the West.
So, the two options are the 'yup of course they won, a couple of days early' or the 'holy shit, wtf happened?' strategies. Which would you take if you were in the Kremlin and pissed off to the back teeth with the US?