Somewhere behind the Novodarivka breach point in June 2023, Ukrainian armored formations sat staged and ready. The ammunition was there. The fuel was there. The original concept of operations called for 12 brigades to push through roughly 30 kilometers of frontage, isolate Tokmak within days, and drive south before Russian forces could consolidate. They never moved. The engineers could not open the lane. Without the lane, none of the rest of it mattered.Against prepared defenses, breaching and gap-crossing capacity can decide whether a land force ever gets to test the rest of its campaign design. Much of the serious workThe post The Campaign Ends at the Breach: Lessons from Ukraine on Why Armies Fail appeared first on War on the Rocks.