The Pentagon with one eye on Ukraine and the other on China: 2022 in Review
The war in Ukraine (and subsequent delivery of billions of dollars in air defense equipment, munitions, drones, guns and other weaponry) also prompted a major realization: The Pentagon and defense industry’s ability to rapidly mobilize to produce munitions at the pace that would be needed during a full-scale war has atrophied.
By VALERIE INSINNA
on December 22, 2022 at 2:30 PM
WASHINGTON — As 2022 started, the Western defense establishment was focused on a singular question: Would Russia go through with its planned invasion of Ukraine, a scenario that US intelligence officials had warned could occur in the early months of the year?
The answer, as the world tragically found out on Feb. 24, was that Russian President Vladimir Putin was wholly willing to risk thousands of lives — both Russian and Ukrainian — in the hopes of overthrowing a sovereign nation, decapitating its leadership and turning it into a puppet state.
But while analysts predicted that the Ukrainian government would crumble in weeks, or even days, when faced with Russia’s much larger and more advanced military, what followed was a series of events that seemed out of a Hollywood script. It turns out that Russia’s military was far less capable than anyone had imagined, with the combination of inexperienced troops, poor command decisions and shoddy logistics leading to a string of embarrassing losses on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, under the leadership of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian people seemed to show an almost inhuman level of resolve. On social media, people shared videos of old women angrily berating Russian soldiers and spread the word about acts of heroism by Ukrainian troops, like the guards at Snake Island who famously told a Russian warship to “go bleep yourself” rather than surrender.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/12/the-pentagon-with-one-eye-on-ukraine-and-the-other-on-china-2022-in-review/
