I wanted this to be a comment on Carlos’ post about the French Army in 1914 and his conversation with ChatGPT, but I haven’t figured out the best plugin to allow commenters to post images. I’ll get on that. In the meantime, below are a couple of images I think help the discussion.
The link for the above population pyramid is Demographics of Ukraine – Wikipedia
The image below is evidently from Ukraine Pravda by way of tweeter @KhersonFrom by way of the Military Summary Channel.
The link for the above image is The Russians Assembled An Army Of 200 Thousand For The Spring Offensive. Military Summary 2024.02.19 (youtube.com)
So ultimately this is a troops to task analysis….so what are the bounding functions?
I’ll throw some out to the group….
For starters, I think the WWII mobilization rules were that the culmination point of mobilization is 10% of the population. After that, the economic viability of the nation is at risk. Sustainable rates are closer to 5%.
Combat support and combat service support troops to combat troops is about 6 to 1 in a pretty lean organization.
Ten percent of Ukrainian military intake to date is unavailable due to death, wounds, being POWs or under treatment. That is a total guess with a number chosen as I am bad at ciphering.
Ten percent of the intake will be draft ineligible due to their current employment.
I think that will get us to a round number that represents the upper bound of Ukrainian combat power. After that, we have the speed at which said force can be built for operations, and the costs and ability to sustain the force.