Reply to post: Re: Old hat?

Re: Old hat?

What in the last 10 months of clusterfuck convinces you that Russia is going to win the war in Ukraine?

Evidence? Problem we have is a media that either hasn't got a clue, or is deliberately pushing propaganda. It says Russia is losing because it hasn't captured Kiev yet. But Russia isn't fighting a war for territory. It said at the outset that it's objective was to destroy Ukraine's miltary capability.

And being able to outlast Ukraine is clearly the thing Russia are trying - after the failure of multiple offensives and destruction of a large part of their peacetime army.

It only committed a small fraction of it's peacetime army. It's only mobilised a fraction of it's potential reserves. It, unlike Ukraine hasn't even started any serious conscription.

But Ukraine aren't going to run out of ammo, unless the Western powers abandon them. Which, again, is possible but looks unlikely. Ukraine aren't even out of Soviet calibre artillery ammo, because having exhausted their own, and Eastern Europe's stocks there are factories in Poland and elsewhere churning out new shells. Plus countries like Britain have been buying old stock from all sorts of places (like Pakistan) and shipping them in.

So why is Zelensky on TV every day demanding more ammunition, more weapons, more money? Ukraine is running out of ammunition. It doesn't have much, if any remaining ammunition production capacity. It's firing around 600 rounds a day. Poland's and other ex-Warsaw Pact converted to NATO, so switched from 152mm to 155mm. The US can produce around 30,000 rounds a year, and hopes to increase production some time in the next few years. Other countries are looking at this conflict, their neighbours and thinking maybe they need to increase their own stocks, not deplete them. Meanwhile, Russia kept it's arms industries mostly state-owned, and is churning out ammunition 24x7.

But running out of ammunition isn't really the problem for Ukraine, it's running out of people. There have been reports that Ukraine's losing the equivalent of a battalion a day. It can't sustain that, especially as Russia's also hitting Ukraine's energy and logistics infrastructure hard.

The two big worries I think are tank shells, and air defence. I don't know if we can start building Soviet era tank ammo for Ukraine or if the long-term answer will be to re-equip them with Leopard or the US Marine Corps' old Abrams. Leopard would be better (it's lighter) but Germany are a porblem.

We've been going around museums scraping together T-55s to donate. Sure, maybe they could get some Leopards, Challengers or Abrams, But they have to be able to operate and maintain them. It's a long rail trip from the front back to Poland for repairs as well. Plus there's a small challenge with fuel. Tanks use a lot of that. Diesel's in increasingly short supply, especially if Ukraine's having to dust off old diesel locomotives, and use generators for electricity. Plus of course Russia's been striking Ukraine's POL depots, and Russia isn't exactly short of fuel or energy.

Air defence is the opposite problem. We're now equipping Ukraine with NASAMS and IRIS-T which use exisiting air-to-air missiles as ammo, of which NATO has large stocks. But we don't have many launchers to give - and are having to resort to buying new ones and shipping them to Ukraine off the production lines. Which is slow. A stop-gap might be to dump old stuff from storage on them, like Hawk.

The problem is we're shooting $1m+ missiles at $20k drones. Or there was the recent story of 'nuclear capable' missiles with concrete warheads being used. That, of course was spun as Russia running out of missiles again. Not Russia doing what we did during the opening rounds of GW1 and using decoys to locate GBAD, measure response/cycle time and just get your enemy to waste missiles. And we're so short on air defences that we have been offering pre-loved stuff like Hawks.. But only after it's been refurbished. Assuming 1970's tech can be refurbished given parts and skills availability.

Which is why I think billion dollar boondoggles like the B-21 are a bit pointless, assuming it actually exists and isn't just a PR stunt to try and get Russia to the table for arms control talks. Or Russia may just shrug, and order a thousand more S-500 missiles to deal with the <=100 B-21s that may or may not be ordered, or just intercept any stand-off missiles they fire.

It would seem far more sensible to me to correct the deficiencies this peer-level conflict has highlighted. As someone once said, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We de-industrialised, Russia didn't. We were the 'Arsenal of Democracy', now we're obsessed by the correct use of pronouns and how mean Musk is being. Especially given Iran and China are still seemingly on our to-do list. We're going to invade them.. with what? Unsuprisingly, we've pushed Russia, Iran and China closer together, and they have far more resources and capacity than we do, especially as we continue to draw down war stocks to donate to Ukraine.