I actually referenced two articles on Ukraine’s military: one at ISW and one at DID. If your issue is with the latter, note that it refers to the full report in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies that is behind a USD $45 per article paywall. Did you think the article would reveal the recipe to the secret sauce without a credit card?

No disputes here with respect to U.S. ground forces training and equipping since U.S. doctrine became “Iraq First”. The very fact that high-end F-22 production was drastically curtailed in favor of low-end MRAP vehicles during this same period, is very, very telling. Our issues with Obama aside, he does deserve credit for steering the military back toward high-end warfighting against peer and near-peer competitors despite harsh budget cuts, and for appointing officials such as Carter, Work and Roper to the DOD, who were focused on the next (3rd) qualitative offset.

However, the Army is part of the Joint Force. Whatever its organic weaknesses, it is backed by the best air and sea-based precision-strike power in the world. The Army is now promoting "Multi-Domain Battle" and attempting to take the lead in deterring Russian aggression against NATO’s eastern flank, both in order to preserve its access to funding and influence, despite being the biggest pig at the trough from 2001-on.

I read the RAND study on Russia occupying the Baltic republics within 36-60 hours, and it made the fatal error of ignoring those U.S. assets outside EUCOM. Assuming only 40% of naval and strategic bomber assets facing the Atlantic (due to the Pacific Pivot), assuming current readiness levels, and assuming the seven-day notice from the original RAND scenario, the U.S. should be able to utterly saturate Russian A2/AD assets in the Baltic region with cruise missiles from a standoff range, even before engaging with B-2s or calling in other NATO assets. Yet, the U.S. Army would have us believe that it needs armored divisions in Eastern Europe to defend NATO.

It must be said that wherever American strategic bombers, attack submarines or cruise missile submarines can get within 1,000 km of in under seven days, there already exists an A2/AD zone in being, to paraphrase Lord Torrington. It must be further said, that despite the consternation that Desert Storm provoked in Moscow and Beijing, every aspect of that campaign’s execution should have indicated that it was not a model to be applied to Russia or China. Why? Because of the sheer scale of the commitment despite Iraq's weaknesses, and fear of failure. Yet despite Sino-Russian efforts over the past twenty years to counter American warfighting, neither would be able to “bite and hold” a piece of territory nominally defended by the U.S. without relying upon forces operating within their own borders. Again, we return to the Cold War maxim that a limited war cannot be assumed.

As I recall, it was mainly the volunteer battalions that overcame the insurgents in the Summer of 2014, who were beginning to lay siege to the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, and who were driven back by regular Russian forces at Ilovaisk and other points. Many volunteer battalion commanders heaped scorn on Kiev for not supporting their battalions when they were encircled at Ilovaisk. The struggle for Donetsk Airport may have lasted longer than Stalingrad, but then again Operation Enduring Freedom has lasted longer than World Wars I and II combined, and American involvement in the Vietnam War lasted more than twenty years...

As for the U.S. military, it is being trained to fight blind and deaf, but still as a Joint Force. The fighting in Donbas is a very unique way of war, given that Ukraine has no combined-arms capabilities and that Russia wants to maintain as much plausible deniability as possible. I highly doubt that if U.S. soldiers without insignia appeared in South Ossetia, the Russians would not engage them in full-scale and combined-arms fighting. To regard the Donbas War as a model to follow would be sheer folly, and play into Russian tactical and operational unpredictability. However, there are lessons to be learned, such as how to survive massive bombardment without communications and therefore fire support.

Lastly, the term “Spetsnaz” is not necessarily a mark of quality, given that most units with that designation are nowhere near “Tier One” or the “Special Mission Units” of the U.S.