Throughout the history of warfare, the balance of power between the offensive and the defensive oscillated back and forth, as technology and tactics have each advanced to make one more powerful than the other. The Greek hoplites were an excellent defensive tactical formation, difficult to defeat until the Roman legion, with its superior mobility and command and control, allowed them to outmaneuver the clumsy phalanxes. Eastern horse-borne archers swept into Europe and couldn’t be stopped for generations. Fortified walls forced medieval armies to settle for raids, destroying the land instead of taking the cities. Most notably, the superiority of defensive firepower (machineguns, artillery, and trenchworks) led to the bloody stalemate that was WWI, while armor, mobility, and airpower (all products of WWI) gave the offensive supremacy in WWII.
We may be back to a WWI-like situation, with defensive firepower reigning supreme over the offensive. The mantra “If you can see it, you can kill it” may be truer than ever, and thanks to drones, the combatants can see a lot more of the battlefield. Anti-tank guided missiles are powerful and accurate enough now that tanks can no longer dominate the battlefield. Drones are giving artillery near-instantaneous intelligence on the location of enemy forces — especially their own artillery — and destructive fire missions can be called in seconds.
Maneuver and mobile attacks were somewhat successful in the first couple weeks of the war, but once the Ukrainian forces were able to blunt the attacks (sometimes with as few as two men and an anti-tank missile), the war has regressed into a battle of attrition.
I really don’t know what the future holds for this war. The Russians have been fighting for a month to take Bakhmut, a relatively unimportant city, but the focus of the current fighting. But even if the Russians take Bakhmut, they will have achieved very little, as they do not have the forces or ability to exploit any victories into anything more than an attack on the next town in the Donbas.
Western countries have pledged lots of aid to Ukraine, including a lot of relatively modern tanks. It will take months and months to get these forces to Ukraine, the crews trained, and the logistical tail in place. The Western tanks may prove decisive if this is a 3-year war, but this is really a war of attrition and a war of will. Neither side seems to be making real inroads into either.
Chirrut