Posted on 01/31/2023 4:51:46 PM PST by ransomnote
WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - The United States is readying more than $2 billion worth of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons, two U.S. officials briefed on the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
The weapons aid is expected to be announced as soon as this week, the officials said. It is also expected to include support equipment for Patriot air defense systems, precision guided munitions and Javelin anti-tank weapons, they added.
One of the officials said a portion of the package, expected to be $1.725 billion, would come from a fund known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which allows President Joe Biden's administration to get weapons from industry rather than from existing U.S. weapons stocks.
The USAI funds would go toward the purchase of a new weapon, the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) made by Boeing Co (BA.N), which have a range of 94 miles (150 km). The United States has rebuffed Ukraine's requests for the 185-mile (297-km) range ATACMS missile.
The longer range of the GLSDB glide bomb could allow Ukraine to hit targets that have been out of reach and help it continue pressing its counterattacks by disrupting Russia further behind its lines.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Why aren’t we shipping them electric vehicles for troop transports and bugs for humanitarian aid? Asking for the climate cultists.
Hunter's cousin Caroline was b*tching about being offered a job that paid $80k, with all kinds of bennies - "because California".
Effing grifters.
Putin’s back is against the Wall and he will react accordingly. Biden’s push to crush energy production here and give Russia the option to service energy to Europe gave Putin one billion per day to finance the Ukraine War and will eventually come to a halt and Putin will move fast.
And dangerous
Fools & psychos.
Granted, proxy wars do not always unfold and progress neatly to an anticipated conclusion because proxies may have goals and purposes that conflict with ours. Yet Ukraine is culturally European and, fighting for its survival, is deeply reliant on NATO and US support. Moreover, NATO member Poland is all in on helping Ukraine and is a de facto guarantor of Ukraine's good conduct.
The developing combination of modern main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and long-range strike capability are likely to give Ukraine the combat power needed to defeat Russia this year. Retaking or at least investing Crimea would almost certainly prompt Putin's ouster and collapse the Russian military as an effective combat force.
The risk of a direct conflict between Russia and the US and NATO is less than it may seem. Putin and his circle know that Russia would not survive such a clash, whether nuclear or conventional. And over three quarters of a century of armed and tense peace, the US and Russia have avoided direct conflict even when proxy wars raged on.
“Putin and his circle know that Russia would not survive such a clash, whether nuclear or conventional.”
And they won’t survive NATO either.
So they will take as many of us down as they can on the way out.
This could all be over if Putin would get the hell out of Ukraine. He has no business being there.
There is a better alternative for Putin and his loyalists: a ceasefire in Ukraine and their retirement from power, with their personal security guaranteed and much of their wealth restored. Putin could settle in his Black Sea palace, in Switzerland, Cyprus, or elsewhere, as could his cronies. A successor regime would then dicker with Ukraine and the West for sanctions relief in return for withdrawal from Ukrainian territory and compensation to Ukraine. Various deals like that have been proposed but Putin has declined — so far.
Seriously, you make a lot of assumptions about what Putin would or wouldn’t risk nuclear war over. This very way of thinking is a prime example of the adults having left the room and being one mistake away from a catastrophe. You assume a lot about Putin and worse you make a lot of assumptions about your CNC BiteMe and those damned fools in the US intel agencies who can’t seem to get anything right and really don’t care if they do or not as long as they keep their jobs and are in control of the country. Throw in the woke military and the compromised chief of staff and your assumptions can get us into a nuclear exchange just as easy with one of our dunderheads starting it as the thug Putin.
It appears you are more than willing to risk all of our lives for the corrupt crap hole that is the Ukraine. And China has to love this proxy war. They have the potential to drain US and Russia dry of munitions and equipment leaving them the strongest military standing. Or even better they get a full scale nuclear exchange and Russia, Europe and the US are eliminated by their own hands and stupidity as rivals.
And regardless of what might seem to be an overtly aggressive act (though the failed Minsk Agreements indicate that this was not unexpected or sudden), our almost fanatical support of Ukraine is a little odd. Through in the Trump impeachment and the Hunter-Burisma connection and it all seems like there's a lot going on there that we don't know about.
There's something really stinky about the whole course of events, and considering how deeply our government has invested in this, the chance it could veer out of control does not seem far-fetched at all.
(2) History aside, Ukraine is now strongly inclined not toward Russia but toward western and central Europe and their greater freedom, rule of law, democratic accountability, and higher standards of living. Moreover, a decade of aggression and now a general invasion make for great hostility by Ukrainians toward Russia and all things Russian.
(3) Russian tanks are markedly inferior to the US and NATO models of main battle tanks now beginning to flow into Ukraine. Moreover, Russian military organization, training, and doctrine are obsolete, reliant on brute force, rigid plans, numerical superiority, and on Soviet experience in WW II.
In contrast, Ukraine has adopted the US and NATO combined arms approach, which emphasizes speed, flexibility, and the coordination and application of military force from different combat arms toward decisive common objectives. For examples of how that works, review Germany’s invasion of France in 1940 and the US invasion of Saddam’s Iraq in the Gulf War in 1990-91. In both instances, combined arms tactics beat numerically superior forces, with small, fast, and smart beating big, slow, and stupid.
For Ukraine, the best approach to retaking Crimea is to destroy the Kerch bridge and the rail lines and roads that supply Crimea and to cut off the Russian water and electric supply there. The new extended range missiles approve for Ukraine will do that with relative ease. As the Russians try to use their best armor and mechanized units to relieve Crimea, they will be wrecked by a relative handful of Western model main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and well-directed artillery and missile fire of various types.
As with other autocracies, Russian history provides examples when economic distress and military defeat led to regime change, such as in 1905, 1917, and 1989. For Putin, the greatest risk comes from the oligarchs and from the Russian military and security services. Defeat in Crimea would almost certainly prompt Putin's ouster and collapse the Russian military as an effective combat force.
Similarly, we helped Britain in WW II on terms that guaranteed America would displace Britain as the dominant world power after the war. There are Brits who still grumble over that, complaining that it was like taking all the cash from the pockets of a drowning man and demanding his bank accounts before we would haul him out of the ocean and agree to convey him to safety.
As for the effect on China of the Ukraine war, China's leadership was shocked and unsettled by the effectiveness of American and NATO weapons and the poor performance of the Russian military. Since China's military is modeled on Russia's, that does not token well for its performance against Taiwan. That has also encouraged Taiwan to take hope in its prospects for maintaining its independence -- with American help.
I grew up in the depths of the Cold War as well and the Soviets were clearly our enemies and had to be confronted. But the Ukraine? I have two military age sons and sorry they are not going to die for your war over that crap hole the Ukraine. It’s not a vital US security interest. For the defense of the USA-or a treaty obligation yes they would fight, but not another blundering Vietnam/Afghanistan bloodbath.
Again this is not WWII. Munich was a blunder but should have never come to that. If you want to talk WWII Hitler should have been confronted when he reoccupied the Rhineland. You can’t force every foreign policy situation into a WWII based solution in doing so you narrow your response options.
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