So all of a sudden we see a massive uptick in secondary and tertiary hops in the ammunition supply chain. What I am more curious about isnt the how/what they are targeting but the "why".
This is a major change in tactics and a much more visible approach than targeting long-range aircraft and various rail hubs. If we are looking at this strategically then, what does this do that is different that their prior approaches? Is Ukraine trying to bleed out the front-line troops of ammo to essentially starve off the current counterattacks in Kursk? Are we seeing a preemptive strike to look to limit the Russian stockpiles before winter to keep them from using the cruise missiles to target power infrastructure this winter? Are they trying to force Russia to be reactive and move their supply depots farther east? Is this more of a psychological set of targets to now sow fear in the Russian populace overall?
Generally, when you look to cripple major hubs in the supply chain, the point is to create downstream disruptions to then force scarcity within the combat units to degrade their combat effectiveness. The problem with this approach is that it is time dependent. At some point, the enemy creates a workaround for those shortages. The other obvious reasoning is that these are targets that Ukraine just now has the ability to attack and they have decided to hit their highest value targets with this new weaponry while Russia has not yet developed a sufficient counter or changed their directives regarding munitions handling and storage. Some targets are just too juicy to pass up and when you have the means to reach them you do.
So, my learned scholars, what does this mean? What is the goal here? With us still being in autumn in Ukraine, does the time dependent nature of this have any larger meaning?