Posted on 04/19/2023 4:04:14 AM PDT by FarCenter
This story is about the imminent – early to mid-May – Ukraine conflict escalation that we have forecast over the past six months.
Let me start with a story that’s neither a leak sprung by the Massachusetts Air National Guard nor a White House lie nor the product of the febrile fantasy of a US State Department neocon loony – the principal story sources of the Western press these days.
Visiting Berlin on Tuesday (April 18), Swiss President Alain Berset made it clear to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – with Swiss precision – that Germany will not be permitted to pass on Swiss-made ammunition for the German Gepard (“Cheetah”) armored air-defense vehicles now used by Ukraine and fitted with 2 Swiss-made Oerlikon 35-mm autocannons. “No one can demand that we break our own [neutrality ]laws,” Berset said.
Well, now! Did Berset just dare throw US neocon and US vassal “rule-based” babble back at Herrn Scholz?
But leave that be.
The Gepard, with two Leopard 1 tank-chassis mounted Oerlikon (now Rheinmetall Air Defense) guns, is an outdated self-propelled anti-aircraft gun system (SPAAG), discontinued in Germany in 2010. But it’s effective against drones and slow-flying cruise missiles – provided it has ammunition – and at massively lower cost than, for example, a Patriot system.
Thirty-seven Gepards are deployed in Ukraine. Each one has a fire rate of 1100 rounds per minute and empties its ammo in 35 seconds. And then what? There’s some Norwegian-made ammo that fits, but there’s not anywhere near enough of it. And that’s the overall Ukrainian and NATO predicament, by way of context for the Massachusetts leaks.
No one aside from the most naively gullible or apologists for demented, mendacious Joe believes that a 21-year old kid PFC could have selected and copied 300 top-classified documents and put them into circulation. My own experience at NATO HQ in the 1980s tells me that. This is utter nonsense. The only serious questions are
Are the leaked documents for real? and
If so, who gave them to the kid?
Given what we know otherwise, the documents are real, in my professional judgment. Ukrainian air defense, as noted above, is full of holes. Ukrainian artillery is low on ammunition. Ukrainian casualties, even if not substantially higher than Russian ones, are certainly on a par with the Russians’ – and that, given the 4:1 population difference, is, of course, not sustainable.
So, who leaked, and why?
The documents came from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff level. It’s been pretty well known, ever since late last year when JCS chairman General Mark A Milley told the New York Economics Club that no side could win this war and a negotiated settlement should be sought, that the highest levels of the US military are skeptical of the neocon State Department’s war with a goal of regime change
The objectively ascertainable conditions supporting Milley’s view, never mind the leaks, are more compelling today than late last year.
Where, then, do we stand and where does this go?
The writer acts as though this is new, but Switzerland has said this all along, Switzerland won’t allow its ammo to be involved.
Apr, 2022
EXPLAINED: Why Switzerland rejected a German arms delivery to Ukraine
https://www.thelocal.de/20220427/explained-why-switzerland-rejected-a-german-arms-delivery-to-ukraine
November 3, 2022
Swiss again reject German request to re-export Swiss ammunition to Ukraine
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swiss-government-rejects-german-request-re-export-swiss-ammunition-ukraine-2022-11-03/
more ChicCom propaganda
next time, do us all a favor, don’t bother posting these lies
like you usually do
No, please keep posting them. It is only by comparing the lies from all directions can we ever hope to discern the truth.
Isn’t it about time Canada declared war on Russia and China?
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