Invasion. and they say the air force and navy, despite these air force mishaps lately, these terrible mistakes they ve made, have suffered minimal losses. so, what do you take away from that that there s more russians on the ground now that there were at the beginning? it is not a surprise to me, erin. and, as you remember, we ve talked multiple times about something i call battlefield math about a year ago. and when russia entered this conflict, they had 190,000 soldiers allegedly. that seems like a lot. but for the missions they had, for the various mission sets they were required, that was nowhere near to being enough troop to task requirements for the russian soldiers. they realized that. they ve now reinforced those positions, especially the defensive positions, the cities, the towns. so they have more soldiers there. but i d also remind you, so does ukraine. ukraine has also mobilized literally hundreds of thousands of people. so this clash of an offensive against the defense i
reporter: retired army general michael repass says artillery could blunt the russian offensive. the artillery that we re giving them is a method to counter that artillery fire that the russians are pouring on to the ukrainian troops, and also to the civilian communities. reporter: the russian plan calls for sending some 90,000 troops to encircle the ukrainian army in the east. artillery plus real-time battlefield intelligence provided by the u.s., could give the ukrainians a fighting chance. battlefield math holds that the offense needs a three-to-one advantage over the defense in order to break through. right now, the russians do not have a three-to-one advantage in eastern ukraine. norah. o donnell: that s some significant reporting. david martin, thank you. let s turn now to some breaking news. the department of justice is moving to reinstate the transportation mask mandate at the request of the c.d.c. this is setting the country up for a legal showdown. cbs errol barnett i
Borrow is deja vu all over again. this is what i lived in the 70s and 80s living on the german border, facing off against the soviet dominated pact. it s about battlefield distribution. we provide a very large number of capabilities of systems, and you need to have the right number of systems where the enemy is going to present. the enemy has a vote, and you need to be prepared when you re on the defense, which is where we are with ukraine, to be able to manage what we used to call and now we call again battlefield math. we need to be able to handle the number of targets presented in a manner to defeat them in greater
About 55 to 60% are the logistics forces. so what you re talking about truly is the majority of the casualties are coming in the combat forces. so it s even it s even worse than you would consider when you start doing the battlefield calculus and the battlefield math. seth, in that context, ukraine asks for more weapons from nato and the u.s. obviously has been providing a significant amount of weaponry to ukraine and defensive capabilities as well. but when you look at the incredible losses putin is suffering and then you con textualize it, how does putin see that when it comes to the fundamental choice that he will have to make over what weaponry to use? i m concerned about a couple of different things. one is what we saw in syria with president putin s ally, bashar al assad, which is the use of chemical weapons, to clear