Interesting way to go about it. I suspect though that if the Russian military confirmed 500 deaths back in early March that the figures are likely much higher. Definitely not 15,000 though.
I think 3-4x higher is probably reasonable, but the disparity between the two armies isn't so bad that high casualties could be avoided. This is still high kinetic warfare. Depending on how many people you are deploying into combat, 1,000 dead a week isn't impossible, and the Russians have actually endured that before.
High Kinetic warfare exhausts armies, logistics, and economies very quickly if they aren't ready for it, and part of that comes from high casualties. Your worst high-kinetic warfare scenario involves losing surface ships, where you start losing hundreds or thousands of sailors from a single exchange of fire.
I don't think the Russians were fully prepared for this war, and they seem to have misunderstood that the Ukranians had better morale than expected, and had already been fighting a very dirty war (partly against them) in the East for several years. The Ukranians did repeatedly lose in their assaults against Russian positions, but it was never obvious to me that the Ukranians couldn't hold ground, which is what they are currently doing.
If the logistical problems with the Russian Army are real (and considering the lack of optics, and damage to vehicles that indicate poor maintenance is anything to go by), Russia may have exhausted it's High Kinetic potential already (with regards to the limited scope of damage they are actually prepared to do).
This could mean that casualties will stabalize as the Russians try to solidify their front and logistics in order to launch a standardized offensive later once they unfuck themselves.
By relatively high casualties considering the disparity, I meant that it is pretty bad for Russia to take so many loses with their superior tech and resources. They should be able to do better.
Interesting way to go about it. I suspect though that if the Russian military confirmed 500 deaths back in early March that the figures are likely much higher. Definitely not 15,000 though.
It'd be easy to believe three or four times this, which would still be relatively high considering the disparty of the two armies.
I think 3-4x higher is probably reasonable, but the disparity between the two armies isn't so bad that high casualties could be avoided. This is still high kinetic warfare. Depending on how many people you are deploying into combat, 1,000 dead a week isn't impossible, and the Russians have actually endured that before.
High Kinetic warfare exhausts armies, logistics, and economies very quickly if they aren't ready for it, and part of that comes from high casualties. Your worst high-kinetic warfare scenario involves losing surface ships, where you start losing hundreds or thousands of sailors from a single exchange of fire.
I don't think the Russians were fully prepared for this war, and they seem to have misunderstood that the Ukranians had better morale than expected, and had already been fighting a very dirty war (partly against them) in the East for several years. The Ukranians did repeatedly lose in their assaults against Russian positions, but it was never obvious to me that the Ukranians couldn't hold ground, which is what they are currently doing.
If the logistical problems with the Russian Army are real (and considering the lack of optics, and damage to vehicles that indicate poor maintenance is anything to go by), Russia may have exhausted it's High Kinetic potential already (with regards to the limited scope of damage they are actually prepared to do).
This could mean that casualties will stabalize as the Russians try to solidify their front and logistics in order to launch a standardized offensive later once they unfuck themselves.
By relatively high casualties considering the disparity, I meant that it is pretty bad for Russia to take so many loses with their superior tech and resources. They should be able to do better.
Agreed, I think the over-estimated themselves and underestimated Ukraine. Which is a hell of a feat considering that they were already fighting them.