CDR Salamander - R-280 From Rostov to Simferopol: SLOC from San Diego to WESTPAC

With so much else going on, it is easy to forget that the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 is still ongoing.

It has always been true that if you want to better prepare your nation for its next war, watch closely what works or does not work in other people’s wars.

We’ve seen a cottage industry build around this concept when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine. Some of it gets rather tiresome as people try to directly translate what works on the Ukrainian steppe to a potential Taiwan conflict, for just one example. Much of this pontificating and projecting is firmly where most people are comfortable, the Tactical level. We’re not going to do that today.

Recently, breaking above the background noise is a development at the Operational and Strategic level that keeps tapping me on the shoulder. We’ll return to that in a bit, but for those who have been focused on DC-centric issues, Venezuela or Iran, let’s catch up.

In case you were not tracking, Putin’s “72-hour War” that he started on February 24, 2022 has been going on longer than the Soviet Union fought Nazi Germany in WWII.

That war lasted 1,418 days, from the invasion on June 22, 1941, to Victory Day on May 9, 1945. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 surpassed that 1,418-day mark in January 2026.

Yes, this war is longer than WWII for the Russians and Ukrainians.

At the end of February 2022, if you showed anyone this graph, they would not have believed you.

For Russia alone: 1.3 million+ casualties, almost 12,000 tanks, and double that number in AFVs, etc…yet here we are, and more importantly, plucky Ukraine is still standing—even with the often miserly, occasionally intermittent, yet growing support from Europe and North America.

It seems each month, another drip to help Ukraine from the West gets added. JDAM-ER is just the latest. The ghost of McNamara’s incrementalism still haunts us all.

If you need to catch up in more detail, as always there are two sources that consistently produce quality products. Both of them underscored to me that something new and important is happening as summer arrives. There is a lesson here, one that I am sure the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is noting.

First, Cappy’s videos are prime.

If you are more of a text guy, the Institute for the Study of War.

Ukraine is actively challenging the positional character of the war that has dominated the battlefield since 2023. Russian battlefield gains are approaching net zero, while Ukrainian forces are setting conditions potentially to break out of positional warfare by reintroducing limited elements of mechanized maneuver at the tactical level. Ukraine has re-secured an overall drone advantage and fielded systems capable of disrupting Russian forces throughout their operational depth in support of planned Ukrainian offensive or defensive ground operations. Neither Russia nor Ukraine can conduct operational maneuvers yet, however. Ukraine’s success in blunting Russian advances and reversing Russian gains in some sectors of the line, in tandem with Ukraine’s limited reintroduction of elements of tactical mechanized maneuver, may nevertheless mark the beginning of a new phase of the war. Combat in Ukraine will likely become less positional and feature more tactical maneuver until Russia’s innovation cycle renders Ukraine’s current operational concepts ineffective. Ukraine likely has a unique and time-constrained opportunity to exploit its current initiative while Russian forces remain vulnerable.

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Russia is losing more soldiers to make fewer gains, with monthly Russian casualty rates reportedly outpacing monthly recruitment since December 2025.

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Ukraine is starting to regain more ground than it is losing for the first time since 2023.

Perhaps the Russians may have culminated…again…but more cards need to come out through the summer to make that call. Perhaps.

The restructuring to align more closely with NATO standards is great; continued modernization and scale of production are superb, but this is what keeps tapping me on the shoulder.

Ukraine significantly intensified its intermediate-range strike campaign against dynamic targets in Spring 2026 in order to degrade Russian logistics at operational depths ahead of a planned Ukrainian maneuver.

Logistics. Logistics. Logistics.

You cannot conduct offensive operations without robust logistics.

None of this is new. The pilots of P-47s who haunted the roads and rails of Western Europe in WWII could tell you the story. Our pilots who targeted the Ho Chi Minh Trail knew exactly what their mission was.

The key is if you have the weapons, intel, and mass to do it with a scale of effect to make a difference to the front-line effort.

What is the Achilles Heel of the U.S. military in any conflict west of the International Date Line? It is our undercapitalized sealift, our forward repair and rearming capability, and our ability to replace losses in the strategic sealift and airlift we possess.

Don’t forget: we may couch any conflict against the PRC as ‘defending our allies’, but our operations will be offensive in nature. We will have extended exterior lines of communication far from our homeland. Our enemy will have short, interior lines of communication from their homeland.

What is the Pacific Sea-Lines-of-Communication (SLOC) for the U.S. that is comparable to Russia’s Ground-Lines-of-Communication (GLOC)? Simple: the SLOC west from Guam, north from Australia, and southwest from Japan.

The deep fight is everything east of there.

When you look at what the PRC has built up, specifically in their rocket forces, over the last two decades, it is clear they already know this. What they are seeing in Ukraine will only tell them that they are on the right track.

Do they have the weapons, intel, and mass to make our sustainment, repair, and rearmament west of Guam untenable?

So, what are we doing to counter it?

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