Awesome, thanks. I'll have a look at it.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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These are the main bit of text to focus upon:
Sound familiar to you? This is exactly what the Iraqi's did at battle of Medina Ridge, use the false slope to lure the American Armoured division into an ambush. It worked perfectly to plan...only they got crushed anyway.
I think after reading this, you can conclude Saddam actually followed established Soviet Defensive doctrine to a tee.
To be fair Ukraine had crossed that line some time ago (it took them a long time) — Belgorod (I'm not talking about military/industrial targets) gets shelled daily now, for example, even though not at the scale of, say, Kharkiv. I'm not saying that judgmentally — I'm in no position to judge Ukrainian military policy for obvious reasons. I'm actually positively surprised at the restrain that they've shown in regards to civilian targets up until the last couple of months, even though there's a rational explanation to that as well — it doesn't make a lot of sense to waste limited ammunition on non-military targets.
That's (morbidly) hilarious.It's not just a once off either
Meanwhile, F-35 HUD
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7 patriot systems is a fecking bizarre request.
That's around 15% of all active US Batteries
That's around 15% of all active US Batteries
How long does it take to build / restore one roughly? Seems like they might need more of them the way China and Russia are shaping up.
I belive there are around 30 Patriot Batteries in use with various EU members so it's about 25% of the EU batteries. Italy and France also have 10 SAMP/T batteries which have similar capabilties as the Patriot so around 17% of the total long range air defense batteries in Europe.
I don't get this concern about numbers of certain defense systems or amount of weapons/munitions "if we send a lot to ukraine we may not have enough for ourselves". If the enemy is russia, even from a purely national selfish point of view, is it not better to use all that equipment now, when the war is being fought in another nation's land and with another nation's soldiers dying?
If one truly believes russia won't stop there and there will eventually be a confrontation between nato and russia, why wait for that to happen instead of going all in now, where you won't lose infrastructure, soldiers and population?
If one truly believes russia won't stop there and there will eventually be a confrontation between nato and russia, why wait for that to happen instead of going all in now, where you won't lose infrastructure, soldiers and population?
I think Raytheon last year said that they where looking to boost up their production to 12 systems annually.
Because the long term opposition is not Russia. Russia is a dying state that is giving it one last attempted hurrah before it crumbles into the abyss of mid tier resource state irrelevancy. Nukes are all that keeps it in geopolitical relevance.
One more active Patriot/THAAD wasted on Russia is one less patriot in the Pacific Theatre when China inevitably falls into thucydides trap.
It is funny that with all manufacturing might, it cant be possible to boost the production in to hundreds with a not crazy investment. It might be a state of the art product. Just read 1.1 bn USD
The problem is not with Patriot Batteries or Patriot Launchers, the supply block is with PAC-2's and PAC-3's.
There are 51 active Patriot Battalions in the US Military, up from 48 last year. The problem is, just to keep these active service batteries live, requires 1700 missiles. If Raytheon can build 12 Systems per year, can the MIC really build 408 Pac2's/Pac-3's just for initial volley?
Looking at FY24 and FY23 numbers, potentially could be enough:
3850 PAC-3's for a 4 year Multi-buy contract. Not bad - time will tell if this is enough.
However, this looks like a tail heavy production-purchase after serial production ramp ups because FY23 and FY24 buys haven't been that high - as shown by the huge R&D for manufacturing surge in spend which will yield dividends for production in FY25/FY26
Read above - the problem isn't buying batteries. That's the easy part. The hard part is procuring the thousands and thousands of missiles needed to keep them sustained.
The FY2024 PAC-3 missile R&D costs are the most surprising. Almost 1 billion in R&D, double that of 2023 - I am fairly certain most of that is going into appropriations for serialized production rate increases.
Sounds like a great strategy, saving for a hypothetical war instead of dealing with the active one.
How long will it take for russia to just crumble into the abyss after winning the war in ukraine and getting tons of help from china?
This is fearmongering of the highest order, and there isn't even a political agenda behind it. This is just doomposting.
This is like using all of your rounds of your bear-rifle to shoot at the feral cat picking at your tent scraps and then running out of bullets when the actual bear shows up.
What's Russia going to do? Say, somehow, after 1 million casualties and 5 years of war economy, they somehow annex Eastern Ukraine. How do you think they will have anything left anymore?
How is it fearmongering when we can turn on the tv and see folks being killed every day? It's literally happening. It seems to be your china prediction that's the present fearmongering.
You can't have schrodinger's russia that is at the same time about to crumble under the pressures of a war economy and is also so powerful that would require nato to use all their bullets on them and be left with nothing against china. Which is it? Are they about to go down they just need a little push or are they so powerful nato would need to go all in?
That crumbling is already ongoing. While Russia isn't as isolated as many in the West hoped it still is a fact that Russia stopped existing as a producer of cheap high tech goods in the eyes of the world. While they delivered military equipment to many states who didn't want to pay the premium for Western weaponry those orders and exports now effectively dropped to zero. Russian relations to several states completely turned around. While being supporters of Iran, North Korea and still also China they now rely on weapon imports from those countries. All Russia has to pay for is their resources. That is probably also a sustainable model to exist, but on a lower level than before and already that wasn't great.
nobody has suggested using all their bullets on Russia? It was just an analogy. My ideal solution is to give them NATO Graveyard equipment and let them do what they want with that.
China prediction that's fear mongering? Do you want me to do a full breakdown on why China is exponentially a bigger threat than Russia ever will be?
@AfonsoAlves
Thanks a lot for your posts, you're obviously more knowledgeable than me in military matters, but I still have a few objections and questions. Your posts need a careful read and a bit of time to formulate a proper reply. I'll get back to you once a find the time.
Thanks a lot for your posts, you're obviously more knowledgeable than me in military matters, but I still have a few objections and questions. Your posts need a careful read and a bit of time to formulate a proper reply. I'll get back to you once a find the time.
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Besides 150M people, control of a huge proportion of the world's most demanded resources, a military victory and the certainty of total external and internal impunity?
I mostly agree with your points though, and think that that's the way some political and military analists are seeing it. I just think that historic powers usually don't die easily and Russia itself has managed to revive time and time again after several crisis and beatdowns during the last 250 years. I wouldn't count them out.
Interesting to have someone with a military intelligence background essentially say the quiet part out loud about cold war military-industrial complex bullshit and incompetence. Old news of course, but bleakly depressing that we're getting a second go around with China while the climate dies around us. Neither country has a way of viewing geopolitics that seems capable of avoiding future conflict in this context of environmental degradation.
A lot of people also don't realise what Russia is doing in the Sahel region of Africa which is helping fund their war. I find it quite baffling that it hasn't gotten much media coverage and the US/EU nations seem to just be looking the other way.
I wouldn't say it's "incompetence". It's politics. If we gave a report that said, "Hey Listen, Our military is about 30 years ahead of theirs and if we do nothing but maintain our current forces for 30 years, they'll still only be at the same level of strength as us by then,"
You would see budget cuts that make the peace dividend look like an inflation loss and half of the staffers lose their jobs.
Also, there is intrinsic bias in military intelligence. A lot of the time our assignments were heavily loaded prompts. This is because the political aspect of the Military *wants* a certain conclusion for funding/spotlight.
For example, "Find out how many Kinzhal missiles the Russians are able to produce on a monthly basis," and "We think the Russians are producing 1000 Kinzhals a month, can you verify this please?" are two very different questions trying to get an answer to the same thing. It will result in different methodologies and outcomes; Question A will result in an attempt to calculate a numerical value per month, the second question will result in intelligence officers looking for any kind of evidence to support the theory that there are 1000 Kinzhals a month.
As for China vs USA and the impact on the climate, I'm not going to comment on this because I have very charged opinions on this matter that I know are fully biased, nationalistic in nature (though I'm not American, very Pro West) and partisan towards one side. I won't give you an accurate picture in this when it comes to right vs wrong, who is the worst etc etc.
It's not getting much coverage because frankly, it's not our problem or care.
We have very little geopolitical interest there, it's been a series of failed states in that region and a dodgy Mercenary group supporting the flavor of the week Junta isn't enough to put anyone's attention there.
What this has shown however, is that ECOWAS isn't worth the paper it's written on and it's diplomatic threats have amounted to about as much substance as Shoigu's military career.
I wanted NATO to be involved with troops and weapons from the beginning in this war and still whant that.
Probably more complicated now but it's the right thing to do both for Ukraine and for Europe...
Probably more complicated now but it's the right thing to do both for Ukraine and for Europe...
That's an insane take.
I am insane then too. Maybe not at the beginning as I didn't know the direction of war. But I would like to see that now
Well, not really if the guy lives in UKR witnessing all the atrocities done by the Russians.
I didn't dispute that.
That's a fair point. There were indeed many problems with the aircraft due to its rushed development, but as it often happens, most of the issues, notably the engines were ironed out in the next versions, before being replaced by the MiG-31. It still carried out reconnaissance and interception missions where its primary advantage, its speed, came in handy and while not being an air superiority fighter, its combat history shows it performed well when not fighting against overwhelming odds and a fairly equal opponent. Hence my comment. I agree with the rest.
I honestly don't see how. Iraq bled out during its war against Iran, and was economically crippled.
The Iran-Iraq war already showed an obvious lack of quality in the Iraqi millitary leadership with many high ranking commanding officers promoted because of their allegiance and not their competence. And that's not taking into account the purges during the war. They didn't have the means to properly maintain any of their military equipement nor train the crews or pilots. The T-72M1s fielded by Iraq during the Gulf War were heavily downgraded compared to the Russian counter-part. Without proper night-vision system, no modern fire control system and lesser armor, they didn't stand a chance against the M1A1s, the M1A1HAs or the Challengers. They also had a large number of the so-called "Lions of Babylon", a locally produced T-72 which was even worse. I won't even talk about their T-55s, T-62s and T-69s.
MiG-21s and MiG-23s formed the bulk of the Iraqi Air Force and were no match for the F-15s, F-16s, F-18s and Tornados. The couple of MiG-29s and Mirages weren't enough to make any diference and many were sent to Iran. Aside from the enormous technological edge and a much better trained military personel, the Coalition had absolute air and naval superiority.
The Iraqi ground troops, despite their massive numbers on paper, were equally poorly trained, ill equipped and largely demotivated, aside from few "elite" units.
So yeah, if you go by raw numbers, you can make an argument for Iraq having the 4th largest army in the world at the time, but it's an empty one. Quantity doesn't quality, millenia of warfare proved that and I don't think it didn't dawn on the US or Western Intelligence. Iraq didn't have a single chance against the US alone, even less against 40 countries. I stand by what said, Iraq being the 4th military power at the time was a myth propped up solely for international and domestic propaganda. I'll never consider the Gulf War as a real one, fought on remotely even terms. It was the one-sided destruction of a totally inferior opponent, at every level. My opinion though.
After their initial blunders, the Russians are learning and they're learning fast. They're acquiring an war experience none of the US or NATO ever had or has. And despite the Russian mistakes, Ukraine would've never lasted if not for the Western support.
I stand corrected.
It still doesn't make sense to me because the skies belonged to the Coalition and Iraq's "empty", flat topography heavily played to its strengths. A confrontation on an open terrain was always going to end one way. Regrouping around urban centers would've been a sounder choice, not that it would've changed the outcome, mind.
They do rely on a fundamentally different geography and an air support/ defense to speak of. Which wasn't the case at all in Iraq.
Thanks again for your insight and feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong.
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I am also insane, and I will refer back to my posts on this thread when the war originally broke out such as;
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/rus...more-discussion.468216/page-153#post-28532439
NATO has already dropped the ball on this whole thing. Its easy to say "caution" and delay, delay delay, only to look back a year later and say "Maybe we shouldve done more, but who knew?". The only way to deal with an authoritarian bully like Putin is to meet strength with strength. It is the only thing he understands and respects. Every time a Western politician comes out and says "we arent sending troops to Ukraine" then you can add another tick in Putin's column as a small win.
When the conflict broke out, NATO should have moved to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine (at the Ukrainians invitation - it is their sovereign airspace after all), and given Putin an ultimatum that if he didnt remove all troops from Ukraine within 30 days, NATO peacekeepers would be coming in to remove them. NATO wouldnt be attacking Russia or marching on Moscow, it would be defending Ukraine's sovereign territory, and for all the fearmongering and rhetoric, Putin et al. would understand that.
Unfortunately instead, you simply have the boy who cries Nukes, and a collective West who still believe him.
What? Why?
Are you OK with people in Ukraine dying because what???
What's wrong with you?
So many questions....
- I've noticed that many people are on the insane take. You can all gather and make a collective appointment by the next friendly shrink. You can then discuss about the best way to take Putin down and militarily defeat Russia in your group therapy sessions.
- No, I am not. By far. I'm all for supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion. On the other side, deploying NATO troops on Ukrainian soil is a recipe for a worldwide disaster to which I'm not willing to subscribe. Not that it would happen anyway.
- Nothing. I do have have something against armchair warriors though.
- So few answers...
Don't take this reply too seriously (although you should). It was quite the boozy Friday night.
Peace, mate.
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Congratulations, you are unwittingly helping promote Putins agenda.
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Hopefully more countries will follow this example.
They for sure won't.