Those are regular items used by industry and the medical community all the time. Yes, they built additional capacity. Newer, more efficient equipment can still be used.
Note that much reserve equipment had been purchased and put in storage from the SARs epidemic, which proved not too severe in the US.
They failed to rotate the inventory with the result masks especially were beyond their expiration date and couldn’t be used.
Let’s hope authorities learn to manage the inventory better for next time.
Stock rotation is very possible. It requires common sense attention to detail.
Military hospitals and Veterans hospitals can probably use most of the inventory and keep it fresh.
Other thread here South Korea is back filling armor and Howitzers for Europe. This means US supplies and NATO supplies can go directly to Ukraine. US and others are ramping up more production. Some SK equipment is showing up in Ukraine. SK has signed agreements the equipment wont show up in Ukraine but who is going to enforce that?
We have crazy low numbers of Russian casualties from all quarters. The losses are far higher. Just no way to know how much higher.
The press in the US as of today is almost edging into cockiness over Ukraine’s position in Bakhmut. Ukraine wont back down. I do not know if that will hold but the battle is being milked.
A few thoughts on the battle in Bakhmut, taking all war “news” with a high degree of skepticism.
The Ukrainians have not been fools, so there must be a reason the continue to fight in Bakhmut, unless they’ve recently become fools (which I highly doubt).
Maybe they’re hoping for a symbolic victory, but I don’t think so. Nor do they need one at the moment. At least not a high priced one.
Maybe the Ukrainians are having an incredibly high kill-loss ratio. Could be, given Russia’s history of treating their soldiers as canon fodder.
And the Ukrainians are not fighting the Russian military here, they’re fighting the Wagner Group. Big difference.
Now Mr. Prigozhin is complaining about lack of supplies. There is no love lost between the Russian military and Mr. Prigozhin. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the Russian military is dragging their feet, or even working behind the scenes to undermine the Wagner Group.
And there have rumors of Mr. Prigozhin wanting to take power after Putin. Now, if I’ve heard those rumors, you can bet your life savings Bad Vlad has heard them. Could Putin have deliberately sent Prigozhin to the frontline? Where have I heard that story before? Oh, ya. The Bible (think David and Uriah).
Anyway, there must be a good reason the Ukrainians are still hanging around a non-strategic city. Unabashedly pulling for the Ukrainians.
NATO intelligence estimates that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russian forces have lost at least five, a military official with the North Atlantic alliance told CNN on Monday.
The official cautioned the five to one ratio was an informed estimate based on intelligence.
…The Battle of Bakhmut may, in fact, severely degrade the Wagner Group’s best forces, depriving Russia of some of its most effective and most difficult-to-replace shock troops. The Wagner attacks already culminated once, causing the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to commit some of its elite airborne troops to the fight. It may well culminate again before taking the city, once more forcing the Russian military to choose between abandoning the effort or throwing more high-quality troops into the battle. The opportunity to damage the Wagner Group’s elite elements, along with other elite units if they are committed, in a defensive urban warfare setting where the attrition gradient strongly favors Ukraine is an attractive one.
To put it another way, while Ukraine is taking heavy losses, it seems that the Ukrainians believe Russia is taking even heavier losses, in both equipment and troops.
And rising. “Conflict and confrontation” So far just nasty words being exchanged. But that could change if the Chinese are not bluffing. And the US is in a precarious equipment and munition position. To say nothing of the poor state of some US weapon platforms [Ford class aircraft carrier, F-35, Littoral Combat Ship, & Zumwalt class ship]
There are limits to US power. We discovered in 1968-1972 that we could not fight poverty, pursue a space program & fight a war in SE Asia and succeed. Hubris.
Let’s hope this time isn’t a repeat of 100 years ago.[1]
The U.S. had been engaging in suppression and containment of China rather than engaging in fair, rule-based competition, Foreign Minister Qin Gang told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual parliament meeting in Beijing.
The U.S. says it is establishing guardrails for relations and is not seeking conflict but Qin said what that meant in practice was that China was not supposed to respond with words or action when slandered or attacked.
“If the United States does not hit the brakes, and continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailment, which will become conflict and confrontation, and who will bear the catastrophic consequences?”
[1]Interview: Christopher Clark, Author Of 'The Sleepwalkers' : NPR One hundred years ago, European statesmen — emperors, prime ministers, diplomats, generals — were in the process of stumbling, or as Christopher Clark would say, “sleepwalking,” into a gigantic war. The Sleepwalkers:How Europe Went to War in 1914 is Clark’s history of Europe in the years leading up to World War I — a war that claimed 20 million lives, injured even more than that and destroyed three of the empires that fought it. Clark joins NPR’s Robert Siegel to talk about the book.
I think the news is telling us something. The Wagner Group is wasting a lot of men on battles the regular Russian troops wont fight. When the convicts are used up the regular Russian troops have to take positions in the field they do not want.
Bakhmut is well fortified. Meaning the regular Russian troops do not want to charge those fortified positions. They know they will die.
When Bakhmut finally falls the Russian military may have little to no offensive force left.
I do like Zeihan especially in regard to demographic issues.
And I do agree that a China conflict would largely be naval.
However methinks he has been listening to US defense officials saying there is no problem in regard to ground equipment. Generals have complained about artillery ammunition shortages. Also replacing javelin anti tanks weapons will take 2 years. We may be producing 5 times the amount of munitions but it still ain’t enough. Even with NATO it ain’t enough. And the Taiwanese have been waiting on purchased military equipment for years. So the story that equipment being sent is old stuff methinks is BS. The US cannot supply current weaponry.
Zeihan doesn’t believe the ballon will go up in regard to China. What if he is wrong? I question how closely he is following the US-China rising tension. He is busy rushing city to city making a living giving talks. Or he could be purposely ignoring that ramp of tensions. Bringing up that subject leads to questioning US policy makers. Doing that means he loses his government contacts as they no longer wish to speak with him.
China now has nukes that will reach the USA. Hopefully that fact enters someone’s calculations on how far we can push the Chinese.
Is this something new? Did we not already know they had missiles able to reach the US? Did we not already know they had MIRVs? This is so silly as to be beyond comprehension. Next you are going to tell me they have a lot of soldiers. What other new insights do you have? Horrors, they speak a different language.
The Russian nukes & possibility of WW 3 are why we are not actively engaged in the Ukraine War. Do we fear the Russians more than the Chinese? Yep something silly is going on.
If I interpreted the first article correctly, the main obstacles are bureaucratic, not lack of industrial capacity. In other words, the article didn’t say “cannot supply” as in missing delivery dates. Mostly just that the bureaucratic process takes a long time.
Congress gave the president the power to bypass the normal bureaucratic process in regards to Ukraine. So thinks like HIMARS, Javelins etc. get send right away as soon as the president decides to send them.
Some equipment is coming directly out of inventory, like the HIMARS and M777s, etc. And some stuff is being built directly for the conflict, like the Abrams that were recently announced.
I think Zeihan is pretty much correct. Lots of equipment like Humvees, M113s, and Bradleys are scheduled to be phased out and replaced anyway. So it doesn’t really cost us very much. Plus that equipment was designed and built in part to counter Russian aggression. It fills that role much better in Ukraine’s inventory than in ours.
There is an argument that might be reasonable. For me, it would boil down to comparing the sanity of those country’s leaders. Putin seems to be losing some of his grip on reality. Xi is not. Crazy people are more dangerous than saner people.
They are both isolated autocrats. By isolated I mean anyone that brings up unpleasant news is shuffled off and no longer has access the “fearless” leader.
Both can make utterance & see the impact ripple throughout their respective nations. The feeling of power must be immense!
But what happens when things go sour. How does that affect leaders who always before had absolute control. They either deal with it & appear weak to their nation & potential successors or they strike out & go in a blaze of glory.
I suppose Xi might wish/daydream Putin will let loose the nuclear missiles. Russia would be ended, the EU severely devastated & the US damaged-how severely I don’t know. But the world would still exist and most importantly the balance of power would have shifted toward China.
How could a sane human being wish for that? Those that seek power & recognition are different from most human beings. Personally I believe them largely devoid of empathy.
Putting a sharper edge on this that matters more. Putin can not challenge us much. He can lob nukes. Xi can challenge us and maybe win after massive casualties on both sides.
I do not think Putin or Xi are fit for office. I think both men have to hold office through illegitimate means because both are unfit. Crazy…unfit…terrible humans. Horrible men with no decency. No regard for life, freedom and happiness. No honesty. No thought when killing their own citizens. Criminals. Worthless evil men.
Musk won great praise early last year for sending Starlink terminals to Ukraine and providing secure network access to a nation battling for its right to exist. But while public relations efforts from Starlink implied that these were provided by the company as a charitable venture, the truth was more complicated – the U.S. government paid millions for a significant portion of the equipment as well as its transportation costs to Ukraine.
By October, following an online spat with a Ukrainian government official over an online poll that Musk initiated regarding settling the war on Russia’s terms, he threatened to shut off access to the system upon which the Ukrainian people, their government and military depended upon – unless the U.S. military started footing the bill.
Last month, Musk’s organization banned Ukrainian forces from operating drones using the Starlink network, with Starlink COO Gwynne Shotwell arguing that the network was “never meant to be weaponized,” despite broad awareness that the Ukrainian military had used the network for communications and drone operations for nearly a year.
On Twitter, Musk called criticism of the Starlink decision “media & other propaganda bs” and claimed that “we will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.”
For the sake of “avoiding escalation,” Musk is effectively reducing Ukraine’s ability to oppose Russian forces’ attempted conquest of Ukraine, and he is doing it on Washington’s dime and counter to Washington’s interests.
We can not go after free speech. But he is wearing out his welcome with most people.
In ten years the competition will eat him alive. In twenty years I will be watching for people enjoying the demise of all of his corporate interests. He is destroying his future mixing politics with business.
Of course “refurb” implies removal of technologies US does not want to fall into Russian hands.
Like battleships, the steel of a tank is forever and its primary defense. But of course all sorts of weapons systems and defenses can be added to that steel to keep them up to date. Which ones will be shared with Ukraine?
Those are the questions everyone has. Two things we know almost for certain is the M1A1s destined for Ukraine are likely former US Marine tanks, so their armor will replaced/modified to meet export requirements. There is only one factory that does that, so it will take a certain amount of time.
Speaking of refurbs, credible open sources have reported Russia is mobilizing T-54 tanks, which have not been used by Russia since the early 1980s.
