Kinda like quitting your job, draining your bank account, and mortgaging you house to buy life insurance. Agreements were signed at the end of the cold war. We meddled in Ukraine, broke those agreements, and conducted all manner of corrupt activities in the Ukraine from money laundering to human trafficking to child exploitation. Your strawman argument holds no sway with me.
Meanwhile, back in “Reality Land,” we are running out of everything in the here and now, while we begin to pump billions into the next white elephant MIC grift, which will be obsolete before it flies.
Please read this:
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Will Schryver
@imetatronink
19h
“During intense fighting in the eastern Donbas region this summer, Russia used more ammunition in two days than the British military has in stock.”
In a stunningly unforeseen geopolitical development, Russia has *significantly* demilitarized NATO.
Military briefing: Ukraine war exposes ‘hard reality’ of west’s weapons capacity
Nations have been slow to sign contracts companies need to boost supply to Kyiv
https://www.ft.com/content/a781fb71-49bb-4052-ab05-a87386bf3d5e?shareType=nongift
Nearly 10 months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the allies that have backed Kyiv’s war effort are increasingly concerned by the struggle to increase ammunition production as the conflict chews through their stockpiles.
At stake is not only the west’s ability to continue supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs but also allies’ capacity to show adversaries such as China that they have an industrial base that can produce sufficient weaponry to mount a credible defence against possible attack.
“Ukraine has focused us . . . on what really matters,” William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, told a recent conference at George Mason University. “What matters is production. Production really matters.”
After sending more than $40bn of military support to Ukraine, mostly from existing stocks, Nato members’ defence ministries are discovering that dormant weapons production lines cannot be switched on overnight. Increasing capacity requires investment which, in turn, depends on securing long-term production contracts.
The US has sent about a third of its stock of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine and a third of its stockpile of anti-aircraft Stinger missiles. But it has little prospect of being able to replace these quickly. “There’s no question that . . . [supplying Ukraine] has put pressure on our defence industrial base,” Colin Kahl, US under-secretary of defence for policy, said last month.
The UK has turned to a third party, which it has declined to identify, to restock its depleted stores of NLAW anti-tank missiles. “There are some really hard realities that we have been forced to learn,” James Heappey, armed forces minister, said in October.
[much more at the FT link above.]