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24 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

I think this ignores his domestic politics and anti-militarism in Germany post WWII. I think Germany has to drag its feet regarding build up or escalation 

This is bullshit that German leaders continue to tell foreigners and their own population to duck out of first— pulling their weight in NATO and later to appease Russia. Just like their habit of equating the USSR and what they did there with Russia and never acknowledging that they did plenty of their killing in Ukraine. 
 

Supplying arms (or allowing Poland to supply German made arms) to a nation that’s being invaded is absolutely in keeping with their responsibilities following WWII.  In fact, I’d make the argument that they have more of a responsibility to stand aside for Poland, which they carved up in tandem with the USSR. 

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AUS-97HORN
AUS-97HORN

For the love of Christ woman,  stop posting the same fucking thing every 20 mins just to make your neurotic self feel better.     Bring something useful to the thread other than your inane babbli

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InkaUtexas
InkaUtexas

I volunteered today. Log/Admin role to replace people for 30-60 days. The operation is in the west, or should the Orcs win will be pulled back behind the NATO wall. Either way the humanitarian effort

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Brisketexan

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3 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This is bullshit that German leaders continue to tell foreigners and their own population to duck out of first— pulling their weight in NATO and later to appease Russia. Just like their habit of equating the USSR and what they did there with Russia and never acknowledging that they did plenty of their killing in Ukraine. 
 

Supplying arms (or allowing Poland to supply German made arms) to a nation that’s being invaded is absolutely in keeping with their responsibilities following WWII.  In fact, I’d make the argument that they have more of a responsibility to stand aside for Poland, which they carved up in tandem with the USSR. 

Yep.  "We're anti-militarism....but super-cool with sucking up to Russia and its corrupt and violent regime".....doesn't really play.  Now Germany has been exposed, and they can't credibly claim that fig leaf anymore.

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Parliament

Parliament 14372

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1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

It’s the logistical tail that comes with the Abrams specifically, and that is a U.S. only concern. The U.S. and others have or are providing plenty of T-72s from various stocks.  
 

It’s a Germany specific hang-up about being the first to provide “Western” MBTs.  The main concern over the Abrams is its turbine maintenance, the Leopards are diesel just like the T-72.

The Abrams is the Ford Raptor of MBT's.  Incredibly capable but expensive to run and maintain.  Ukraine needs a Hilux MBT. 

So we have plenty of T72's for them, but what about ammo?  Is there enough production in friendly countries?  Any talk of making ammo in the US?

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atomheartbevo

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https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/russian-artillery-fire-down-75-percent-ukraine/index.html

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As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its 11th month, US and Ukrainian officials tell CNN that Russia’s artillery fire is down dramatically from its wartime high, in some places by as much as 75 percent.

US and Ukrainian officials don’t yet have a clear or singular explanation. Russia may be rationing artillery rounds due to low supplies, or it could be part of a broader reassessment of tactics in the face of successful Ukrainian offenses. 

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Either way, the striking decline in artillery fire is further evidence of Russia’s increasingly weak position on the battlefield nearly a year into its invasion, US and Ukrainian officials told CNN. It also comes as Ukraine is enjoying increased military support from its western allies, with the US and Germany announcing last week that they will be providing Ukrainian forces for the first time with armored fighting vehicles, as well as another Patriot Defense missile battery that will help protect its skies.

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US officials believe the 36-hour ceasefire Putin ordered in Ukraine last week to allow for the observance of Orthodox Christmas was an attempt to pander to Russia’s extensive Christian population, two people familiar with the intelligence told CNN, as well as an opportunity for Putin to blame Ukrainians for breaking it and paint them as heretical heathens. 

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Much of the domestic opposition Putin and his generals have faced over the handling of the war has come from one of the Russian leader’s closest allies: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary organization Wagner Group. Prigozhin has complained that the Russian Ministry of Defense has botched the war effort, and that Wagner Group should be given more equipment, authority and autonomy to carry out operations in Ukraine.

But Wagner Group has lost thousands of fighters in Ukraine the last two months alone, a senior US official said.

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Last month, a senior US military official said that Russia has had to resort to 40-year-old artillery shells as their supply of new ammo dwindled. To the US, the use of degraded ammunition, as well as the Kremlin’s outreach to countries like North Korea and Iran, was a sign of Russia’s diminished stocks of weaponry.

The rationing of ammunition and lower rate of fire appears to be a departure from Russian military doctrine, which traditionally calls for the heavy bombardment of a target area with massive artillery fire and rocket fire. That strategy played out in cities like Mariupol and Melitopol as Russian forces used the punishing strikes to drive slow, brutal advances in Ukraine. 

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Officials said the strategy shift could be the doing of the recently installed Russian theater commander, General Sergey Surovikin, who the US believes is more competent than his predecessors. 

Ukraine has had little choice but to ration its ammunition since the beginning of the war. Ukrainian troops rapidly burned through their own supply of Soviet-era 152 mm ammunition when the conflict erupted, and while the US and its allies have provided hundreds of thousands of rounds of Western 155 mm ammunition, even this supply has had its limits.  As a result, Ukraine has averaged firing around 4,000-7,000 artillery rounds per day – far fewer than Russia.

 

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AUS-97HORN

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26 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/russian-artillery-fire-down-75-percent-ukraine/index.html

 

Russia as a country (& military & leadership) isnt smart enough to hold off and do "new" tactics with artillery shells. 

They are like the US Marines of old "hey diddle diddle, attack up the middle"

individual sectors might be trying a new tactic, but the entire front line throwing out fewer shells is

1) They are out of the shells

2) out of the barrels

or 3) a combo of the two.

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Bateshorn

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32 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/russian-artillery-fire-down-75-percent-ukraine/index.html

 

Worn out artillery barrels if I had to guess, in addition to low ammunition stocks. Feels like German in late 1917.  Just running out of gas.  No wonder everyone is leaning on the German's so hard to release MBTs for re export.  A break through is there for the taking. 

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Pescado_Rojo

Pescado_Rojo 19453

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

We have over 2,000 Bradleys just sitting in long-term storage, thanks to the drawdown after the first Gulf War when we had a much larger military, as well as a change to more wheeled vehicles in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And we are replacing some of the ones we have in active service with an upgraded Bradley as well as some other systems.  So yeah, we have them in spades.

And Ukrainian mechanics are already getting experience with the Bradley thanks to the M109s they are currently field.

And they can be reloaded in the field - the video below mentions it.

This is taken out of the documentary about the full battle of 73 Easting in '91, and focuses on the Bradleys vs T-72s.

 

The Army's APS2 Strategic reserve in Germany supposedly has 2 Brigade Combat teams worth of gear. A Brigade Combat Team consists of 87 Abrams, 152 Bradleys, 18 Paladins, and 45 M113s. Seems like you could release one Brigade's worth of kit to Ukraine ASAP while you work on pulling more out of storage and getting it shipped over. If you don't think they're ready for the Abrams, at least give them the Bradleys, Paladins, and M113s. 

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Bateshorn

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8 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

The Army's APS2 Strategic reserve in Germany supposedly has 2 Brigade Combat teams worth of gear. A Brigade Combat Team consists of 87 Abrams, 152 Bradleys, 18 Paladins, and 45 M113s. Seems like you could release one Brigade's worth of kit to Ukraine ASAP while you work on pulling more out of storage and getting it shipped over. If you don't think they're ready for the Abrams, at least give them the Bradleys, Paladins, and M113s. 

The problem with the Abrams is always going to be fuel consumption.  

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3 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

great way to hype your company without actually doing anything.

 

its gonna take 6 months to ship FOUR units?

Our industrial base for arms is set up to sustain and to fulfill large procurements years in advance.  We can’t convert a Ford line to build this stuff like we did in World War II. The U.S. hasn’t funded latent capacity and these companies have to make money. They have staff and capital equipment in place for projected orders that never included a major war against Russia. 
 

Ukraine is teaching us, our Allies, and China how difficult it is to sustain a modern high intensity war. 

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Gatorubet

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12 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Our industrial base for arms is set up to sustain and to fulfill large procurements years in advance.  We can’t convert a Ford line to build this stuff like we did in World War II. The U.S. hasn’t funded latent capacity and these companies have to make money. They have staff and capital equipment in place for projected orders that never included a major war against Russia. 
 

Ukraine is teaching us, our Allies, and China how difficult it is to sustain a modern high intensity war. 

it is rather fascinating. Countries can either have a ton of spare kit that is well-maintained in the event of a future sustained war, or they can have a manufacturing base that is capable of replacing destroyed kit quickly.  So I guess some combination of that is what is optimal. One more reason that Russia is fucked is that they have gone through their stock of weapons, and seem totally in capable of replacing their armor and artillery and missile stock piles. 

So long as we aren’t in some sort of Vietnam quagmire with unfriendly locals and difficult local environments friendly for guerrilla warfare, it looks like success in war will still belong to the rich “have” countries. Russia, no longer belongs to that club, and it will be decades, if ever until they can re-join.

The latest round of fighting seems like when Lee went to Pennsylvania. The Confederates did not have the troop strength or industrial power to hang on much longer, so Lee needed a victory in the north to force the Union to end the war before the power and population of the industrialized North wore them down.   Putin needs to win soon before a cornucopia of NATO weapons arrives.  All Ukraine needs to do is keep making Russia expend troops and equipment while giving up ground slowly.   

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KYHorn

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7 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Some chatter that the Brits are weighing sending some Challenger 2 MBTs to Ukraine. They don’t have a lot of them and so it would be mostly symbolic— part of a deal cooked up with us and the Poles and the French to prod Germany into signing off on Polish Leopards as a donation in bigger numbers. Take away the German “we won’t go first” talking point. 
 

Scholz keeps walking into this, footdragging and then doing the thing he didn’t want to do anyway with none of the benefits of being a leader. 

 

 Potential alternative option:

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atomheartbevo

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I don't think the Russians have the actual numbers needed to attack - even if the Ukrainians only had 2,000 troops there, that would probably mean the Russians would need 6,000-8,000 infantry alone, not to mention logistics and artillery.

And Ukraine has drones and artillery that acts as a force multiplier of sorts, making it difficult for the Russians to put together any large troop concentrations.

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7 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

The problem with the Abrams is always going to be fuel consumption.  

That and the fact that is a gas turbine engine (Jet engine) versus internal combustion engine, which none of the Ukrainian tank mechanics are trained on for repair, maintenance etc.

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KYHorn

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I found this article by David French to be a helpful big-picture analysis of the future of this war in the context of the last century of war. Would be interested in others' thoughts. One particularly insightful point he made was that a stalemate strategy by the West that results in an ongoing WWI-like slugfest (scenario 2), makes the eventual total loss of Western support and overall Russian victory more likely (scenario 1). 

Thinking Through the Remainder of the Ukraine War

Of pyrrhic victories, material advantage, and the steeliness of Western resolve.

Spoiler

Thinking Through the Remainder of the Ukraine War

Of pyrrhic victories, material advantage, and the steeliness of Western resolve.

David French

 Jan 10, 2023

As we’re approaching the one-year mark in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s clear that we’re witnessing something the world hasn’t seen in generations—a protracted all-out battlefield struggle between two large nations. The Vietnam War was certainly a major conflict and a protracted struggle, but it didn’t quite match what we’re watching play out in Eastern Ukraine. 

The first Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 lasted a few weeks. The Six-Day War in 1967 lasted, well, six days. The second Indo-Pakistan War in 1971 lasted roughly two weeks. The Yom Kippur War was 19 days long. The major combat phase of Operation Desert Storm was less than two months, and the ground war lasted a mere 100 hours. 

The long fights we’ve experienced are the insurgencies or the guerilla wars, where big armies don’t clash in the field, where advanced weapons aren’t deployed by both sides. Our long wars are low-intensity compared to the warfare we see in Eastern Ukraine.

The closest post–World War II comparison might be to Korea, where the U.S., South Korea, and their U.N. allies fielded huge armies in a brutal contest with North Korea and China that raged up and down the Korean peninsula for three long years. The Iran/Iraq war was also a brutal war of attrition, but it was fought by nations that lacked the military capacity of Russia or Ukraine. We’ve forgotten what that’s like. In fights between powerful nation-states we’ve become accustomed to quick victories or quick defeats, and we lack the frame for thinking through long slogs. 

There’s a reason why I’m writing this piece today. Russia is threatening to seize a Ukrainian city, but without much more information we can’t truly understand the implications of Russian victory or defeat. Both sides can potentially lose by winning, if the cost of victory is too great. The real contest in Ukraine isn’t over real estate but over resources, and expending too many resources to take (or hold) too little ground is a net loss for either side. 

Ukraine and Russia are locked in an all-out slugfest over the city of Bakhmut. For the Ukrainians, the city has become, as The New York Times described it, “a national symbol of defiance.” Russia—and the Wagner Group mercenary force that’s led much of the fight for the city—are as committed to taking the city as the Ukrainians are to defending it. 

Both sides have taken horrific losses, but there are signs the Russians are making progress. Here’s NBC News: 

Russian forces appear close to capturing a small but strategically important town on the front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine.

Russian soldiers and the Wagner group's mercenary fighters were engaged in bitter fighting for the mining town of Soledar, officials in Kyiv and its Western allies said Tuesday, control of which could finally hand them a breakthrough in their bid to seize the key nearby city of Bakhmut.

I’m not predicting that Bakhmut will fall. I hope it will hold. But the plight of the city helps frame our thinking about what’s happened so far and what may happen in the months (or, God forbid, years) ahead.

One way to think about modern warfare between nation-states is through the prism of gathering and spending. When two advanced powers enter into protracted conflict, warfare can start to seem somewhat cyclical. One side gathers its strength, builds up its forces, and then—at the time and place of its choosing—pours out that strength and delivers its blow.

The other side gathers up its strength to receive the blow while preserving and/or obtaining the resources to deliver a counter-attack. Over time, the growing (or waning) ability to absorb and deliver blows can dictate the outcome of the war. 

A paradigmatic example of this cycle took place on World War I’s Western Front. France and Germany traded offensives for year after year until the German capacity to strike bled away in its offensives of Spring 1918.

Operation Michael was the first and most potent of Germany’s spring attacks. At first, it looked like a German victory. It produced some of the largest gains since the onset of trench warfare in 1914, and it inflicted immense losses on allied forces. But the cost for Germany was too high. Tens of thousands of Germany’s best remaining troops were dead on the field of battle. It lacked the time and resources to fully reconstitute its forces. Meanwhile, American troops were pouring into France. Over the summer, the Allied material advantage became overwhelming, and they delivered a string of decisive blows in the fall.

A similar dynamic took place in World War II and, on a smaller scale, in Korea. Giant armies gathered their resources, delivered immense blows, took terrifying casualties, and then braced themselves for the coming counterattack. If they’d expended too much or moved too far, the offensive was a mere prelude to a defeat, as the opposing force took advantage of over-extended lines and/or thinned-out ranks. 

Now let’s think through the cycles of the war in Ukraine. In the opening phase, Russia gathered its forces, then spent the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of advanced vehicles in the initial reckless attack on Kyiv.

Ukraine, in its turn, absorbed the blow and gathered (or maintained) sufficient force to expend a portion in its own counterattacks that ultimately drove Russian forces from the outskirts of Kyiv.

Russia then tried again. It gathered forces in the Donbas and again expended thousands of lives and hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition to make incremental gains in the Donbas. At the time, it seemed as if the battlefield momentum had shifted back to Russia. But as the Times notes, it appears that the Russians had once again gathered too little and expended too much, leaving their lines vulnerable to the Ukrainian attacks that cleared Russians from Kharkiv and retook much of Kherson. 

The upshot is that, while the territorial map obviously matters, it mainly matters when considered over a period of time rather than at any given moment (unless there’s a decisive breakthrough). What really matters is that awful calculus of resource and expense. That’s how Russia could take Bakhmut and still suffer a defeat if the cost is too high. That’s how Ukraine could hold Bakhmut and endure a net loss for the same reason. If the cost is too high, it alters the balance of power.

This is why Ukrainians, for example, are rightly alarmed by Russian mobilization. Even if Russian troops are untested and poorly trained, to quote Joseph Stalin, “Quantity has a quality all its own.” And now Vladimir Putin is poised to call up as many as 500,000 additional conscripts to add to the 300,000 called up this fall. Russia can’t rapidly replace its advanced weapons, but it can pour new men into the fight. 

That’s why Volodymyr Zelensky would fly to the United States for his first trip outside Ukraine since the war started. In the gather/spend cycle, Russia can resource itself for a years-long struggle. Ukraine cannot. It simply doesn’t possess the manpower or industrial capacity to compete with Russia over the long term. Absent massive amounts of outside help, eventually Ukraine will run out of resources to gather, and it may well spend down its army to the point of collapse. 

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news. So long as American (and, to a lesser extent, British) support remains solid, Russia doesn’t possess the industrial or technological capacity to overcome Ukraine. And if America and its NATO allies start to supply Ukraine with Western armor, then Ukraine may be able to gather forces that Russia cannot withstand. 

We can therefore consider three scenarios for a potential endgame in Ukraine. 

1. Russian resolve hardens and Western support fades. If American aid doesn’t keep pace with battlefield demand, then Ukraine will find itself constantly withdrawing from a diminishing bank account. Each cycle of attack and counterattack will leave Ukraine weaker, and there will be peace on Russian terms.

2. Western support remains, but it merely matches Russian resolve. Under this scenario, the United States and its allies supply Ukraine with enough military aid to maintain the fight but not enough to win. Under this scenario, the West provides Ukraine with its defensive needs but not the offensive capacity that could allow it to punch through Russian lines and drive the invaders from Ukrainian territory. 

3. Western support and Ukrainian valor overcome Russian resolve. This is the decision to go for broke, to provide the kinds of weapons (main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, ATACMS missiles) that would permit Ukraine to gain a decisive battlefield advantage. This is the scenario that enables Ukraine to strike deep into Russia to degrade Russian striking power and to achieve a material edge that can overcome Russia’s manpower advantage.

I’m concerned that Western caution might take the third scenario off the table. Fear of Russian escalation in the face of total battlefield defeat would mean that Western powers won’t give Ukraine the tools to win. Yet making a strategic choice to settle for a stalemate could not only yield even greater bloodshed, over time it could diminish support for the substantial aid that’s still necessary to merely stop Russia, much less throw it back to its borders. 

In other words, choosing to settle for scenario 2 might both extend the war and make scenario 1 more likely. Asking populations to sacrifice for a stalemate hardly inspires as much as victory. The instant you make stalemate your goal is the instant that the Western will to support starts leaking away. 

You’ll note that I didn’t list a fourth factor for an endgame in Ukraine—Russia losing resolve. That certainly a possibility, and if it continues to expend too much blood and treasure, the possibilities increase. But breaking Russian will is a hope. Breaking the Russian line is a plan.

I know all of this is simplistic. I know that there is room for battlefield brilliance to alter the grim arithmetic of total war. I know there is at least a theoretical risk of Russian escalation if it faces complete defeat. But we’ve seen this scenario before, and in a catastrophic contest between two great nations, the nation that can gather the most resources is quite often the nation that wins. 

We have the capacity to help Ukraine gather superior resources, to force Russia to spend too much, and to help Ukraine force an end to this war. The question is whether we have the intention or the will. That’s exactly the question that the Biden administration and Congress have to answer this year and (perhaps) for years to come.

 

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