Seriously?
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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Yes, but this isn't news. Poland is in the process of acquiring customized HIMARS systems (most important change the integration on Polish made trucks instead of the standard US model) since 2017, originally they wanted about 160 units. Two months ago they announced they will be acquiring "up to 500" systems. This would give Poland the numerically strongest rocket artillery in NATO and looking at how effective the HIMARS systems are compared to the smaller Russian models maybe effectively, but not in numbers, even in the world
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Hope voters in the US come to realise which country the Republicans really want to "make great again".
Zero surprises here.
In addition to what others have pointed out in differences of military doctrine, many nations use different size shells so they didn’t have stockpiles of ammo to send and some of those that did could not be arsed to help. So now we’re replacing their artillery with whole new systems which is an order of magnitude more complicated.
You could still criticize the US for dragging its feet in giving out the real good stuff, but we’re sort of rebuilding an army with updated equipment on the fly which is quite a task. Funnily enough one of the best examples of such a feat would be the Soviets rebuilding much of their army while holding the line against the Nazis with some help from, naturally, the US.
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If ukraine starts taking land back, how long before putin uses bigger weapons? Surely he won't just lose, right?
Bigger weapons like what?
Big bombs, wmd's.
Or a false flag chemical weapons attack, which is something I’ve seen people worried about.
But yeah, that’s the billion-dollar question right now.
It would be "mobilization " first, forcing millions to join the armed forces, before risking more controversial options, I would think. Overwhelm them with ground forces.
When the Russians first started talking about nukes at the start of the invasion the US said they would respond proportionally, though most likely not with a nuclear response, as the US has many more options, and they don't want to escalate. So that's good, it makes the move one that won't help Russia on the ground.
Russia would only potentially be using small tactical nukes as a desperate last measure, and even then I think it's unlikely, because the world would surely condemn them on mass and isolate them as completely as possible.
Is there any analysis or news on local collaboration with the Russians in Kherson?
don't think russia is losing the war. might see ebbs and flows but ukraine isn't winning.
https://cis.mit.edu/publications/analysis-opinion/2022/ukraine’s-implausible-theories-victory
article goes on but point is that analysis and commentary in the west has bordered between fantasy and farce. all i've seen to suggest anything other than russia taking lots of ukrainian land but with lots of casualties, though with these casualties being overestimated by western propaganda, is western propaganda. or people who are hopeful of ukrainian victory and so project things that don't exist.
media interest in the war has died down enormously as many predicted months ago. public interest has died too. the two are obviously related. so now you just see it as clickbait for twitter trolls on either side. the substantial news could probably be summed up in one article every two weeks.
Interesting indeed given that Wlad was actually quite friendly with Putin at one point.
Putin himself acted quite friendly to Europe/"the West" in earlier years...Interesting indeed given that Wlad was actually quite friendly with Putin at one point.
The way Russia had conducted this war is a rather old fashioned-obsolete way. First of all they haven't dominated the sky which has been a key feature in winning wars since at least Gulf War 1. That meant that their army and tanks were very vulnerable to anti tank missiles especially the queen of anti tank missiles aka the Javelin. After losing ridiculous amount of tanks and officers they switched on an over reliance on artillery that allowed the Russians to hit from a very long distance without being hit in response. We're talking the use of 20k artillery round per day here. Such tactic would never work against NATO who would claim air superiority and is not a very attractive way of conducted war as it cause huge devastation especially the old artillery systems being used by Russia.
Russia had inherited a huge stock of such artillery rounds from the Soviet Union. Artillery rounds tend to be quite robust which means that they resisted the dubious storage methods used by a cash strapped Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. On top of that most European countries had slashed their military budget substantially in the past few years which means their stockpile is somehow low. Sure they had reversed the tendency but rounds tend to need time to be stockpiled especially at a time when the global supply line is being strained by Covid and war.
I think they'd be better off systematically taking out Russian weapon storage depots with HIMARS to choke off their supplies.
You could go even further back a few decades to WWII, when aircraft carriers made the revered giant battleship more or less obsolete which even further reinforces your point.
On a related note I’ve also heard some of this combat compared to being more akin to WWI than recent wars.
Well... technically HIMARS is an artillery system. So in a way you could say Ukraine is getting an artillery advantage, though not in numbers (which wouldn't be possible for the western countries to provide) but in quality.
Well its not exactly WW1 trench/chemical weapons warfare. However it is an old fashioned type of war were the air is being mostly ignored. Another key issue is that Ukraine uses soviet-Russian weaponry that is usually not compatible to Western weaponry. That means that those helping Ukraine must foot the huge bill of buying them the system and the ammunition + they have to train them on how to use it as well.
Same impression for me. Coordination of air superiority with quick advances at ground/sea level has been a feature of most wars since the introduction of blitzkrieg and then the Japanese expansion onto European/American colonies in Asia.
The Russians aren't capable of Suppressing/Destroying Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD/DEAD) on the level that the US, British, and Israelis are able to do. They don't have the technology nor the experience to do it effectively. As a result, they've had to launch tons of standoff missiles that they can do from Russian controlled airspace without exposing themselves to Ukrainian air defenses. Even those standoff "precision" missiles are so bad that they have to launch volleys of them and hope one hits the target, leading to lots of civilian casualties.
I.judt don't see how 16-20 himars can make that much of a difference in a war involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Those soldiers need feeding, fuel and ammo. There are not hundreds of thousands of supply depots or trucks available.
Disagree, you tend to need both.
You need a good number of howitzers near the front lines to pummel enemy infantry and tank positions with large volumes of (relatively) inexpensive 155m shells. This is for preventing enemy advances and forcing retreats. You can’t pepper spray guided rockets costing millions per round, it's a waste of resources. But you do of course need these long range GMLRS guided rockets to strike deep into enemy territory and take out high value targets like radars, command posts, ammunition dumps etc.
Each part of the artillery plays a different and equally important role. And like Gehrman said, we have hundreds if not thousands of old M109 artillery pieces in NATO, which are near obsolete and are rusting away in storage. These might be useless to most NATO nations but are no older than what the Russians are using. They would be valuable to the Ukrainian artillery divisions. I feel more effort should be made to supply those to Ukraine.
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There will be a lot of older equipment in storage that will need to make way for all of this.
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Germany, the German government and the German political parties should be embarassed, when looking at the contributions of Poland to the security of Europe, the EU and NATO.
With half the population and and a GDP per capita half of Germany they will have in the future roughly 4-5 times as much MBTs as Germany. They will also have much more IFV. That means they will field much more panzer and mechanized infantry divisions than any of its rich and more populous european western allies
Poland will be the backbone of land based European defense and security.
While Germany hast as much panzer divisions as Switzerland available...
With half the population and and a GDP per capita half of Germany they will have in the future roughly 4-5 times as much MBTs as Germany. They will also have much more IFV. That means they will field much more panzer and mechanized infantry divisions than any of its rich and more populous european western allies
Poland will be the backbone of land based European defense and security.
While Germany hast as much panzer divisions as Switzerland available...
Perhaps Russia needs invading?
Poland is investing heavily in ground forces. With the coming f35s the air force is also going to be capable, but still the western european countries have considersbly larger air forces, and of course navies. That state actually would be very beneficial for nato since air assets can be moved quickly , and there will be no need to deploy US troops early on in large numbers, because Poland would have the best equipped army in Europe.
Even without nukes its extremely difficult to achieve. It can get bombed into the ground though.
They deserve some backlash at home but it will only work in favour mobilisation of the military.
At least the Poles have the experience of having conquered Moscow before, thats always something.
I believe that just an ultimatum from NATO that Russia has 48 hours to remove all their forces from Ukraine (including Crimea) or these forces will be bombed without mercy inside Ukraine, would end this war today.
I think this is the easiest way out for Putin, too. He would announce that the denazification has finished, or that the west has too many planes and they are evil, or whatever, I am sure he will find something to say to avoid a war against NATO.
The problem is that NATO should be unified in their response, and should really mean it, which is quite hard to achieve with Biden, Scholtz and all... there are no Churchills around.
Is @harms still around ?
I've got into an accident 4 weeks ago which affected my schedule significantly. Don't really have the time to check this thread but if you have any questions feel free to tag me here.
Hope its not too serious mate. Anyhow, since you are replying you are probably not in a gulag.
Sadly it was quite serious, but yeah, at least I'm not imprisoned.