(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Transform Russia's war footing!!! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-07-17 Attacking electrical transformers can help undermine Russia’s war footing. Hmmm… what does war footing mean? Looking at dictionary.com ”the condition or status of a military force or other organization when operating under a state of war or as if a state of war existed.” So basically, whatever is needed to support executing a war versus what is needed in peace time. How about electricity? Arguably the electrical grid, primarily created for civilian use, is vital for modern warfare for supporting industry, powering and recharging communications systems, support for troops in cooking, preparing, planning, and similar. So, attacking the electrical grid can degrade Russian capability to support a wartime economy and potentially in-theater military support operations. Is attacking the electrical grid a worthwhile use of time and munitions, mainly drones? Essentially this requires that it is a longer-term effort and broad enough in order to actually start impacting Russian industrial production as well as in-theater support. Maybe target power distribution transformers? Executing for longer term in order to deplete Russian transformer replenishment rate, including installation effort. Given that the war has been going on for years and could continue for years, there is likely time to implement the strategy as long as a means is available. With ever growing range of suicide drones, arguably Ukraine can target a decent percentage of Russian power distribution transformers. If even can target 5-10%, that could be a lot for an economy to have to replace. If Russia flags in replacing what Ukraine can target, then Ukraine will tip over into impacting in-theater support capabilities, with logistics, staging, communications, and similar in-theater areas losing power, even if just regionally. How hard is it for Russia to replace? A former employee describes manufacturing power distribution transformers (www.reddit.com/...). It sounds very involved, requiring heavy duty industrial facilities with cranes, fabrication shops, and craft specializations. Given that military related industries need the SAME THINGS, ramping up transformer production would likely be a tradeoff of not supporting other war material needs. Just throw money at it and import? Sorry Charlie, as recently as March of 2024, this year, we are in a global transformer shortage March 2024 (pv-magazine-usa.com/....). This is not great news for Ukraine either though Ukraine has a much bigger ally support network they can try to leverage (Europe, USA, Japan, South Korea, other global countries helping Ukraine). Destroy them all but some are more valuable. Pad mount transformers (www.latitudemedia.com/...) are significantly longer to make and thus if a bunch of them are destroyed, create an even longer backlog. Thus, Ukraine could further degrade Russian ability to support a war time economy by sustaining a campaign to destroy power distribution transformers in Russia. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/17/2255025/-Transform-Russia-s-war-footing?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/