looks like they drained the drunk tank when they signed up these croots. "alright men, put your teeth back in, we're about to take some propaganda photos"
I find it very odd they refer to the HIMARS as a “guided” multiple rocket launcher, cuz in my bailiwick the difference between an MLRS and a theater ballistic missile is the “guided” aspect, as rockets are unguided and missiles are guided.
Is part of the plan from the west to let Russia bleed out their army? Be it in terms of soldiers and equipment? Don’t quite fully understand the strategy that slowly arms Ukraine in this fight. They could fully arm them which would Ukraine to properly defend and retake their own territory.
the first phase of the war failed because Russia couldn’t supply soldiers fighting in a war it planned for and started at its border and you’re wondering why there are logistical challenges associated with NATO supplying Ukraine?
The problem is the West's industrial capacity to continuously supply ammo to fight against the Russian Army in a major war isn't there, not because the West doesn't want to. Countries like the UK and France would exhaust their own artillery shell supply in 5 days at the rate Ukraine is using rounds. The US is better, but not much. Add to this Ukraine uses mostly Warsaw Pact arms (calibers), so they have to rely on stock and factories in former Warsaw Pact countries (poorer countries with limited industrial capacity and outdated CNC machines and such) for artillery shell and small arms (rifle, mortar rounds, etc.) supply.
Edit: original tweet deleted. It was an interview with an aide to a Ukrainian MP who was defending Azov and their work ( not just their fighting efforts"
Like, to expand on this, NATO doctrine just isn't based on fighting a conventional war on a static - World War 1 style - front line for months. Basically 2 armies in a basic war of attrition. Some military guys can probably jump in here, because I don't want to start talking bullshit, but the US military is based around winning air supremacy (or at least local superiority), bombing the fuck out of the enemy at key points, and bewildering mobility. Every war the US has fought since Korea has been basically an anti-insurgency or a blitzkrieg style mobile assault (both Iraq wars) followed by an anti-insurgency. You better believe there's military strategy and tactics people in NATO scrambling to re-think decades of doctrine based on what's going on in Ukraine. For the Russian's part, they clearly didn't plan for this type of war either, but since their grand invasion plans got destroyed north of Kyiv in March, they've gone back to eighty year old tactics based on shelling the shit out of the Ukrainian army with their vast stock of artillery shells, even if they're being fired through worn out tubes, and throwing shitty mothballed 50 year old tanks at them. They've obviously had some limited success with this, but it remains to be seen if they can maintain momentum. Long term a lot of this depends on what happens politically in the West. Inflation is bogging down everyone's economies. The US is an absolute political garbage fire right now with the Biden and a completely divided populace -- only Zeus knows what happens if Trump returns to power in 2.5 years. UK is a similar disaster. Germany and Italy are close to having to ration electricity because the Russians are shutting off the natural gas. I said at the beginning of this war that Russia's larger aim was to destroy NATO and the liberal social democracies of western Europe. That's still quite attainable if the West can't hold it together and help Ukraine win this fucking war.
Doesn’t having significant air and navy make what’s going on in Ukraine an outlier? I mean I guess if NATO thinks they’ll need to supply more Non-NATO members to fight Russia it’s a problem to solve
NATO doctrine is basically “fight a slow retreat across Germany, bleeding the Russians as much as possible, until the US can mobilize and get the troop train and, more importantly, the logistics train, going across the Atlantic via ship.” And yes, that relies heavily on air superiority. The issue (in my view anyway) in Ukraine is that a NATO/Warsaw war had NATO countries all-in. What’s happening here is more like being on the opposite side of Vietnam, where we want to be involved, but not enough to escalate things, but enough so Ukraine doesn’t lose, but not so much that we deplete our own reserves. And clearly not everyone is fully on board; Germany is tepid at best, France talks a lot but is more focused on domestic issues, Poland is all in but doesn’t have much, and the US is sending big ticket items and Intel (which helps, don’t get me wrong) but can’t provide enough small arms of ammo without depleting our own stuff. As as you said, so much of our doctrine calls for complete air superiority where if anyone gets in a firefight, they just have to hole up until an F15E strike Eagle handles the problem for them.
I think those are the wheels of an MB GLS. Not an insubstantial vehicle. Also, responding to other posts this page: I feel like we should all be grateful (in a perverse way) for this conflict. It's exposed the West's naivety about where things are. Let's not pretend that, if China did this to us in 10 years and UKR/RUS war hadn't happened, that we wouldn't be short on almost everything. The fact that their use of Stingers and Javelins is bleeding us dry is...insane. We've got to stop funding garbage like the Zumwalts and do useful things.
It’s not a new phenomenon. The general rule is “whatever you think you’re going to expend, double it, then double it again, then you’ll only be a little below what you’re actually going to use”
100% there are a lot of wake up calls happening in alot of different areas right now. Some pretty damning reports recently about our design/development/procurement process vs China and it isn’t pretty. China developing and fielding new technologies at a far faster pace and at 1/30th the cost of us. We still hold technological edge but not for long at current pace. the redesign of the entire USMC has been interesting as well. I’m all for the new direction of the corps but it is getting tons of hate from a lot of folks.
I've read that between intelligence on the ground and satellite imagery, the Russians will not be able to hide where they stash their weapons/supplies. They will just have to stash them out of firing range of missiles which will make for a logistics nightmare for them getting supplies to the frontline.
We need to stop letting companies build shit in china where invariably all the tech will be stolen. Easy to produce shit at 1/10th the price when you just steal all the engineering.
Combine that with the thread on Russias supply lines/trucks and you can see this is a major concern for them.
How much of that has to do with defense companies robbing taxpayers blind by over inflating the cost of everything they do
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...five-times-faster-than-u-s-warns-top-official https://www.thedrive.com/search/Marine corps