alt Hacker NewsThere are, sadly, many places of conflicts smoldering for years; not all of them, if any, ended up in production of exportable weapons. E.g. Taiwan is preparing for a PRC invasion for decades; did it produce exportable weapons systems?
So there is an element of surprise. Maybe not as large as North Korea exporting ballistic missiles to Russia [1], but still.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/how-north-kore...
The problem is there's a lot of analysis which does try to apply a generalist template to different parts of the world and it invariably leads to bad conclusions if you don't consider the local differences properly.
Taiwan for example unlike SK has the problem that the entire island is within range of China, so unlike the SK situation where Seoul would have problems but you're still looking at having some meaningful rear areas out of range, Taiwan doesn't have that - the entire strategy ultimately depends on being a tough enough nut to crack for a few weeks that allies can jump in or China gets cold feet about it.
In a protracted conflict there's nowhere you'd be able to build up local replacements - Ukraine is gigantic by comparison.
You see this same planning on many of the Baltics who aren't Poland: the plan isn't to win, it's to hold on long enough that NATO can't credibly decide it's already over and stay out.