I bet that most of the world wishes this was an accurate statement.
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We were trying to contain China back in the 1950-1960s just as we are trying to contain Russia today. That was the primary objective of our Asian foreign policy back then.
Was it really ârabid hysteriaâ? Mao took over China in the 1950s and supported Kim il Sungâs drive into South Korea and Ho Chi Minhâs insurrection against the French in Vietnam. If Korea and Vietnam had both become communist early on without US opposition that would have been a lot of momentum for Mao. Itâs not hard to imagine that Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc would have been next in line. Where would it stop?
There does seem to be obvious parallels with the situation in Asia back then and what is happening in Ukraine today. If Ukraine had fallen a year ago one suspects Russia would be a lot more aggressive with its neighbors today.
Delaying the communist takeover of Vietnam for 10 years may have mattered. Perhaps all our casualties there werenât in vain.
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Glitch in tank delivery.
https://archive.is/EcPo7
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius indicated that western allies are struggling to put together two full battalions of Leopard 2 tanks to send to Ukraine as promised.
Germany and Portugal are the only two nations to commit to sending the A6 version of the Leopard 2, with 14 pledged by the government in Berlin and three from the Portuguese, Pistorius told reporters Wednesday after meeting NATO counterparts in Brussels. âWe will not reach the size of a battalion,â he said.
Poland has assembled about 30 units of the older A4 version of the Leopard 2, which is almost enough for the standard Ukrainian battalion of 31, but many of them are in poor condition and need repairs before they can be deployed, Pistorius said. Those tanks will only get to Ukraine at the end of April, he added.
Seems like the Ukrainians need them now.
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I can imagine the pain of an American soldier who knows heâs going to die in the next few seconds in a country like Afghanistan/Irak/etc, far from his loved ones.
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This comes after Zelensky himself said heâs not ready to order a continued defense of the city at all costs. By all accounts both sides are suffering huge casualties, but Russia has the superior artillery fire, which has been sustained around the clock, also as Kremlin forces have the city almost completely surrounded. According to The Hill
President Zelensky has also admitted defense of the town has proven âmost difficultâ for his forces.
The average lifespan on the frontline of the fierce fighting in the city of Bakhmut is âfour hours,â according to an American fighting side by side with the Ukrainian army against Russian forces in the Donbas.
Former U.S. Marine Troy Offenbecker, of Michigan, told ABC News that the situation in the city, which has seen some of the deadliest fighting since Russiaâs full-scale invasion, is âchaoticâ and has been dubbed âthe meat grinder.â
âItâs been pretty bad on the ground,â he told ABC News. âA lot of casualties. The life expectancy is around four hours on the frontline.â
The 2023 death toll will exceed 2022 I believe.
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The EU is seeking countries outside the bloc to join its efforts to collectively provide ammunition, with at least Norway already expressing interest, according to one EU official and two diplomats.
duh. The EU should have been pursuing this plan last summer when they saw how much ammunition Ukraine was expending.
Also the USA & the EU were slow in ramping up production of munitions. My cynicism has influenced my opinion that the West was surprised Ukraine has survived. And the West did not wish to expend any expensive wasted effort. And the delay in tanks from the West is due to the fact the West is afraid that the Ukrainians could possibly, though a low probability, push to the Russian border which might result in a Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Unless an emergency is declared government is slow to respond. Little used capacity has been ignored. Mothballed. Not kept up to date. Little maintained. Ancient equipment.
Now they decide it needs attention. But a series of contracts are probably involved. First to decide what is needed. Then to design, install and begin production. Each bid has be advertised in advance. Then applications date and award. Then contracts.
You are not surprised at two or three year lead time for military equipment. Peace time bidding is slow (but that is needed to allow fair competition for the contracts).
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Most of us probably recall the scandals and corruption that were unleashed by âno bidâ contracts in Iraq.
Steve
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Yes, there is potential for corruption everywhere in government. Giving no bid contracts to insiders or campaign contributors is certainly one way.
That is the reason for all the time consuming procedures. But they do delay the process unless someone is willing to declare an emergency and streamline some of it. But it will probably still take months.
Imagine a surplus ammunition plant that was built in say 1940 for WWII. Everything is out of date. Parts may not be available. Instrumentation ancient. Safety? Waste disposal? Remember the days when tanks were made of wood and lined with lead sheets by a tinner?
Some such plants can probably be renovated but some are better demolished. Start with new construction.
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Remember the fun with Covid? Massive capacity added.
Covid essentially âoverâânot really, but people treating it that way.
Now, tell us what happens to all the production eqpt that will now NOT be used? Not only the eqpt, but also the large volumes of feed stock materials that are NOT going to be used by that eqpt any more. Tell us how fast that eqpt will âdisappearâ, and what is being done to keep those capacities available for when then are needed again?
Or not?
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Simple fact is you cannot keep equipment and factories online forever âjust in case.â There are a few things that are vital strategic necessities, certainly, and the government stockpiles many of them. (So do factories and materials producers, for that matter.) But not every Alaskan miner can have 14 conveyor belts, 3 motors and 5 water pumps sitting around âin case one breaks.â You do the best you can and predict the future as best you know how, which is in any event, impossible.
Just think, if they were sitting around with âmask making machinesâ so there would be enough at the start of the pandemic, those machines would have been sitting there, idle, for over 100 years! What kind of shape would they be in?
As it turns out it took a few months to gin up supplies, to repurpose other factories to produce, and within a reasonable period the world was flooded with the things.
If more ammo is needed I am fairly sure it will be made, and hopefully timely. I also hope the military keeps an adequate stockpile for foreseeable events, but not so much as to fuel a 20 years war out of the back room âjust in case.â
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âWe are seeking over a couple of years to nearly triple our production of 155 [mm shells],â Bush said on Wednesday. Congress has been supportive; we have funding; we are executing and making that happen. We are also, through support from Congress, working to dramatically increase our production rate for GLMRS missiles â Guided MLRS [Multiple Launch Rocket System], HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems] launchers â in most cases doubling or more than doubling current production rates.â
It took til September to push through a buy order. It will take a while to build up production capacity. And it will take years until stocks are replenished. The Ukrainians are still burning through massive amounts of munitions.
National defense might be an exception to âjust in caseâ potential situation. At least I hope so.
June story. Yet it took 3 months for the West to respond. Well I guess it ainât an emergency if your people arenât endangered.
The Financial Times writes that Ukraine appealed to the EU to send Kyiv 250,000 artillery shells a month to ease a critical shortage that is limiting its progress on the battlefield.
Reznikov wrote that artillery plays a âcrucial role in eliminating the enemyâs military powerâ. On average, Ukraine was firing 110,000 155mm-calibre shells a month, he said â a quarter of the amount used by Russia.
âIf we were not limited by the amount of available artillery shells, we could use the full ammunition set, which is 594,000 shells per month,â he said, referring to the capacity of the artillery systems available to Ukraine.
âAccording to our estimates, for the successful execution of battlefield tasks, the minimum need is at least 60 per cent of the full ammunition set, or 356,400 shells per month.â
The request far exceeds the help the EU is discussing sending, underlining the size of the task facing Kyiv as its war with Russia enters a second year.
Hm Ukraineâs munition shortage mean more close combat in which advantages larger troop concentration of the Russians.
Well mebbe the Westâs goal is just to degrade the Russian military by just sending enough to keep Ukraine in the game but not enough so Ukraine is incapable of mounting a effective offensive that might penetrate Russian soil & result in a use of nuclear weapons. Of course thatâs just my cynicism talking.
Seems to me that has been the wide takeaway from western, particularly, US actions: give Ukraine enough to hang on, but not enough to really take the fight to the Russians, because, must not upset the Russians.
Steve
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A lot of this talk is goading the Russians into battle. The talk may be setting up ambushes. The NYT will play ball with misinformation. Planting it as far back as page 35 on a Sunday where it is read by the enemy so it seems.
Is the west non stopped called upon to send more shells? Absolutely of course endlessly. Giving the effort headlines is the goading part.
Everything is a shortage when a shortage is useful.
You will never see a headline, âthe US is over supplying Ukraine with armsâ. Meanwhile the west is spending more than Russia on this war and sending better equipment.
Yes, but what capacity? Military capacity? I donât think so. Mostly they did vaccine production capacity. That is in multipurpose equipment. They can easily switch to make other vaccines in the same equipment.
There might be a problem with the added facemask capacity. If they are cost effective they should be able to compete with the Chinese. Maybe displace imports.
Also China is on the horizon.
Letâs hope shortage stories are a mirage because the US is on the path of a China confrontation.
the forceful statements of Biden and Xi have been working their way down the chain of command in both countries. In January, a four-star U.S. Air Force general, Mike Minihan, sent a formal memo to his massive Air Mobility Command of 500 aircraft and 50,000 troops, ordering them to ramp up their training for war with China. âMy gut tells me,â he concluded, that âwe will fight in 2025.â Instead of repudiating the generalâs statement, a Pentagon spokesman simply added, âThe National Defense Strategy makes clear that China is the pacing challenge for the Department of Defense.â
Nor is General Minihan even the first senior officer to have made such foreboding statements. As early as March 2021, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, warned Congress that China was planning to invade the island by 2027: âTaiwan is clearly one of their ambitions⌠And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.â
Unlike their American opposites, Chinaâs service chiefs have been publicly silent on the subject, but their aircraft have been eloquent indeed. After President Biden signed a defense appropriation bill last December with $10 billion in military aid for Taiwan, an unprecedented armada of 71 Chinese aircraft and many more military drones swarmed that islandâs air defenses in a single 24-hour period.
Meanwhile bought congresscritters pass a give away to defense contractors.
defense industry spent the majority of 2022 exploiting inflation as a justification for more military spending. It succeeded when Congress delivered a budget $45 billion higher than the president requested, but lesser known is how Congress quietly slipped contractors another form of so-called inflation relief in the annual defense policy bill.
Lawmakers authorized potential sweeping price increases to Pentagon contracts in response to any cost growth companies experience âdue solely to economic inflation.â But there are no requirements for military contractors to prove their costs increased because of inflation alone.
Facemasks. PPE. And so on.
EXTRA capacity added, usedâand then no longer needed after two years.
I posted the above on this thread on February 15th.
There now is a plethora of articles about a Russian shortage of artillery ammunition.
This war like WW2 is an industrial base war.
The Russian shortage explains why it has gone to China for supplies.
The US has warned China not to provide arms & ammunition to Russia.
But the US-China tensions are at a high level.
China does not have its own oil supply. And conflict could break out with the USA. Xi now has an opportunity to obtain a sweet deal with Russia overcharging for arms & munitions & demand a bigger price break on oil to fill up oil storage facilities for the potential war with the US. Methinks the deal will be done. Capitalism is about profit not morality and the Chinese are capitalists.
In related news, Russia not only appears to be running out of ammunition, the UK Ministry of Defence Intellegences assesses that Russia is running out of armor, and is pulling tanks and APCs out of storage that are 50 to nearly 70 years old. Better than no armor, but no match against modern weapons.
The ISWâs latest assessment is that Russia has lost so much combat power in Bakhmut that regardless of the outcome, Russia will be unable to launch a meaningful offensive for months. And in fact, might not even be able to play defense (emphasis original).
The likely imminent culmination of the Russian offensive around Bakhmut, the already culminated Russian offensive around Vuhledar, and the stalling Russian offensive in Luhansk Oblast are likely setting robust conditions for Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.
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