@voltronic I believe that the initial hold up was two fold.
The first HIMARS vehicles delivered did not have ATACMS capability (at the request of the original purchasing nation). Later HIMARS vehicle deliveries did have that capability and are what led me to consider ATACMS as a possibility for the first Kerch bridge attack.
I suspect that the later hold up was more about US ATACMS inventory being low than about Ukraine attacking Russia (which it has done several times since the war started).
@Render
Yes, I know there have been small incursions / attacks by UKR forces. But have any of those been carried out with long-range precision munitions? Because I get the sense that the US is trying to characterize that as something on another level that might trigger a worse response from Putin.
What I'm saying if he's going to continually commit war crimes on a daily if not hourly basis, it might be effective to have a more direct threat closer to home as deterrent.
@Render
In other words, I'm agreeing with you that supposed a red line doesn't seem to exist or at least we haven't seen one yet. So if it's not a supply issue, then why not give UKR the capability to hit harder and farther?
The only thing Putin can do that's worse than what he's doing is nuclear, chemical, or biological. And he knows that NATO will become directly involved if he goes there.