Posted on 06/16/2023 4:17:30 PM PDT by Kazan
Ukraine’s faltering offensive is completely lost on General Milley and Secretary of Defense Austin. Milley and Austin, put that face on full display Thursday as they briefed reporters on the results of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels.
The problem with the NATO plan for Ukraine’s faltering offensive is encapsulated in the following quote (it starts at the 8:51 mark in the video at link):
More than six thousand Ukrainians are being trained right now at 40 different locations (sic) training locations in 65 courses in 33 Nations on three continents. That is all happening right now today
Let me give you some facts. If you join the U.S. Army and want to learn to crew a M1 Abram tank, you are looking at a minimum of 6 months training. And that is just learning how drive the tank and fire shells. But that is only the beginning. Soldiers are not given their own personal tank to tool around the base. Once a soldier and his crew learn how to start, steer, shoot and stop, the team must then learn how to operate in a coordinated fashion with a company (150 soldiers ), a battalion (800 to 1000 soldiers), a brigade (5000 soldiers) and a Division (10,000 to 15,000 soldiers).
Instruction starts with the simple and proceeds to the complex. Effectively operating a tank as part of a Division is the most complicated task and mission. Guess what? To learn to do this requires at least two years of training. There are no shortcuts. I spoke the other day with a young Army Captain who remarked how difficult it was to train U.S. troops to carry out brigade level tank maneuvers even after two years of training.
With that as background do you now appreciate the stupidity of Milley’s comment? The Ukrainians are not being taken to one location in one country and asked to master two or three courses of instruction. Nope. They are in 40 different locations in 33 different countries and 6000 Ukrainian troops are being fed a firehose of 65 courses. Do the math. That works out to about 93 soldiers per course. And the instructors most likely do not speak Ukrainian, so the soldiers are getting translated lessons in English, French, German, Polish and Italian. This is a veritable tower of Babel.
So let’s entertain the assumption that these 6000 souls are really fast learners and magically complete the training. How do you integrate 6000 soldiers that have been in 33 countries and being trained to different standards? Short answer — you don’t. It is impossible.
But then consider this. During just one week of combat against Russian forces, the Ukrainians lost 7500 men (killed and wounded). All of those trained soldiers erased in the flash of an artillery shell, a mortar or a glide bomb. Again, do the math. If Ukraine is losing 6000 men a week, then the training pipeline better have at least 80,000 Ukrainians attending these courses. Otherwise, NATO training cannot keep pace with Ukrainian casualties.
What we are witnessing is military malpractice on a colossal scale. I find it hard to believe that Milley, Austin and their NATO compatriots are really this stupid in touting this training regimen as something responsible and wise. It is madness. The cynical part of me believes that Ukraine is just being used as a pretext to juice the Western defense industries. After years of neglect and outsourcing, the U.S. and its NATO partners have discovered that they no longer have the factories and materials necessary to supply an industrial scale war.
The hard truth it this — Ukraine does not have the manpower and NATO does not have the luxury of time required to ensure the Ukrainian soldiers have minimal levels of competence in the military arts they are trying to learn in a veritable crash course. Keep this in mind as Russian grinds the Ukrainian Army into dust. All of that money for training men whose life expectancy is counted in weeks, if not days. Who will be held accountable?
No, Putin’s plan for conquering Ukraine is the worst ever.
Training doesn't mean crap when you're fed into an area against entrenched artillery with air support.
At least they'll know the correct pronouns they should be using on the battlefield.
Ping. This is a good one.
Milley and Austin remind men of the Vindman brothers.
The more desperate imbecilic leaders are, the more likely they’ll resort to insane tactics. Like using nukes.
Maybe NATO shouldn't have instigated this with the potato we currently have as president.
The counter offensive hasn’t even start yet!
What the Ukrainians are doing right now is “terrain shaping”.
They are just scratching the Russians a bit in multiple areas to see how poorly they react. Where the Russians are reacting the most poorly, THAT would become one of the counter offensive points.
We are not there at all.
If Russia considers these little scratches as a FULL Ukrainian counter offensive… they will be shocked when it all truly starts.
We have squandered so much US treasure and wreaked so much havoc and devastation in Ukraine that a loss at this point would be a total loss of face for all involved and for America in general. These loathsome losers know the have screwed the pooch in nearly the most epic fashion possible - even if they still have room to screw up a lot more. They are terrified of what is going to happen when the dust settles and they are held to account for their profoundly destructive actions regarding the Ukraine. They are rats who have backed themselves into a very tenuous corner. There is very little evil they are not capable of perpetrating to try to salvage their positions. The only question left is how much more pain and destruction will be allowed to inflict before the end game plays itself out. Right now, I’m just contemplating the proper venue for their war crimes trials.
Don’t fall for the propaganda. Pooty knows he could never hold Kiev. He and his successors would rather play the patient game and hang on to Donbas and Crimea while the US / EU waste trillions propping up a dysfunctional failed state for a decade or more. Just like Afghanistan.
did you know
during wwII
the ussr
replicated a b - 29 bomber
just for the fun of it
These two clowns are Marxist Dems.
First it was easy more than 6000 total.
And second, what a blabbering nothing article.
It took that one quote and then ran with silliness about why the offensive can’t work.
NOTHING about the actual offensive, pure opinion.
Except .. . the offensive is succeeding and Ukraine hasn’t yet committed its main forces.
You can all blabber with your emotional responses to this, but a recently retired officer who commanded tanks in Europe and in every conflict for the past 40 years, said the mechanized forces being trained for the Ukrainians could reverse the war and lead to the expulsion of the Russians. He estimated that would take about 2 years total.
But then again this brilliant article said it’s impossible.
"The Big Guy."
Ever hear about what Michael Wittman did at Villers-Bocage on 13 June 1944? Did it alter the result of the war?
“He (Putin) and his successors would rather play the patient game and hang on to Donbas and Crimea....”
Except Ukraine is exactly in the process of separating Russia from Crimea.
And wow Putin is so smart according to you he brilliantly opted for a forever war that will still be fought by his “successors”.
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