Posted on 10/12/2022 8:40:29 AM PDT by Kazan
Not to beat a dead horse, but most of the world has a delusional image in their head of the war in Ukraine. As I have written previously, much of the fault lies with Hollywood, which through a plethora of movies has conditioned the masses to think of war as the conquest of critical territory. But that is a misleading image when it comes to Ukraine. Yes, there are strategically important pieces of territory that must be captured or defended, but there also are vast swaths of plains (we call them prairies here in the United States) that are tactically difficult to control and, if you succeed in capturing an area of land, you create a problem of how to defend it.
Please take a look at the following video with this in mind. Although the video shows how Russia’s Wagner Group is building defensive lines, please focus on the general landscape rather than the work of the engineers: (video at link)
Russia has a decisive advantage over Ukraine when it comes to battling for this territory, even though it ceded some of it a few weeks ago to advancing Ukrainian troops. Why? Because Russia’s air force is still intact and can be used to attack massed Ukrainian units. Ukraine’s air capability has been eviscerated. Russia also enjoys a lopsided advantage in tanks. In case you have any doubts, the video above shows quintessential tank country.
At the beginning of its full-scale invasion in Feb., Russia had around 3,330 operational tanks (2,840 with the ground forces, 330 with its naval infantry, and 160 with its airborne forces), according to the Military Balance 2021 database. . . .
However, Russia still has some 2,000 battle-ready tanks at hand, as well as an enormous amount in storage.
The Military Balance 2021 database says Russian storage facilities have around 10,200 tanks, including various T-72s, 3,000 T-80s, and 200 T-90s.
https://ukrainetoday.org/2022/09/01/how-many-tanks-does-russia-really-have/
Tank battles on rolling plains is great grist for a Hollywood blockbuster, but the real peril for Ukraine has been on display over the last two days–Russia’s hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles and air launched rockets mangling power nodes and military headquarters throughout Ukraine. The Russian strikes in the last two days significantly degraded Ukraine’s ability to supply electricity and critical heat to its major cities. The attacks also are disrupting Ukraine’s cell phone network and its ability to move troops and equipment from the west to the frontlines in the east.
Ukraine does not have a comparable capability to counter the Russian attacks. Moreover, the Russian missile barrage has highlighter the weakness, if not absence, of Ukraine’s anti-missile defense system. It is neither a mistake nor a coincidence that Russia’s strikes in major Ukrainian cities–more than 100 missiles– caused very few human casualties, especially on the civilian side of the ledger. Despite Ukrainian claims that Russia’s strikes killed civilians, the evidence suggests otherwise–Ukraine’s own anti-missile system failed to intercept the Russian targets and then fell to earth and hit apartments and schools.
What is the United States and NATO going to do? Immediately deploy the Iron Dome anti-missile system? Unfortunately, these Western anti-missile systems are not designed to defeat the missiles Russia is launching. Then there is the logistics problem–i.e., getting those systems deployed and training personnel to operate them. This will take weeks, if not months. And Ukraine does not have the luxury of time in this regard. Making matters worse, the United States and NATO do not have the reserves to quickly resupply Ukraine:
The United States will soon be unable to supply Ukraine, as it has up to now, with the sophisticated equipment essential for its defense against Russia as its reserves are reaching their limits, especially in terms of ammunition. . . .
But US stockpiles of certain equipment are “reaching the minimum levels necessary for war and training plans” and getting weapons stockpiles back to pre-invasion levels could take years, Mark Cancian wrote in a recent analysis. of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Washington is “learning lessons” from the conflict about ammunition needs in a very powerful war, and that it is “much larger” than expected, said a US military official who requested anonymity.
https://www.archyde.com/us-army-exhausts-its-ability-to-supply-ammunition-to-ukraine/
Then there is the nightmare scenario for Ukraine and NATO of Russia invoking the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Russia asking Belarus to join the fray. Russian and Belarusian troops already are gathering on Ukraine’s northern border. Whether this is a bluff by Russia or genuine preparation for opening a new front in the north, the massing of forces requires Ukraine to deploy already depleted forces to the northern border. This will weaken Ukraine’s ability to hold off a Russian offensive in Kherson and Zaporhyzhia.
I believe that the events during the next five weeks will create a crisis within NATO and the United States. If Russia seizes the initiative and moves in force against Ukrainian units, NATO will not be in a position to rescue Ukraine from defeat on the battlefield. Any further intervention by NATO will make it, in the eyes of the Russians, a legitimate military target.
Compounding the military challenges confronting the United States and NATO, there are the economic and political headwinds. Joe Biden is likely to lose control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. If this happens, he will no longer have a congressional ally eager to keep shoveling money and weapons into Ukraine. The economic conditions throughout Europe of inflation and shuttering businesses will fuel more domestic unrest and diminish enthusiasm for keeping Ukraine afloat.
When you take all of these factors into consideration, the conclusion is clear–Russia enjoys a strategic and tactical initiative that will be difficult to surmount. Conversely, NATO is in trouble.
“...until the Ukraine will give up because they are losing the worth they have for nothing but dirt in the battlefield”
Ah, but there is where your analysis is foundering, based on a bad assumption. You assume that Ukraine will eventually “give up” if they suffer too many losses, or loss of infrastructure, or if they are not making progress, etc. But that is a miscalculation, because Ukraine is a country in an existential war for survival. Countries in that situation can’t be easily made to “give up” just by hammering them over and over. You’ll no more get them to surrender that way than you would get a father would stop fighting to save their child just because you keep hitting the father in the face. It’s just not likely to work.
And Russia may be making the same miscalculation, but in their case, the results of that miscalculation will not simply be academic.
They were obeying their masters, George Soros and Joe Biden’s orders.
And the chances that Poland is going to wind up divided again, while not high, are certainly no longer zero.
As always, the only important question in Europe is where the border between Germany and Russia lies.
Staingrad is too far East. The Elbe is too far West.
Everything else is up for grabs.
“WWI was a prime example of wasting time money and resources over nothing much worth while.”
Perhaps you should check into history yourself as a lot of countries gained land and resources due to WW I. The aftermath of World War I saw drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change across Eurasia, Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people’s minds. World War I also had the effect of bringing political transformation to most of the principal parties involved in the conflict, transforming them into electoral democracies by bringing near-universal suffrage for the first time in history, as in Germany (1919 German federal election), Great Britain (1918 United Kingdom general election), and Turkey (1923 Turkish general election).
Countries that gained or regained territory or independence after World War I:
Armenia: independence from Russian Empire
Australia: gained control of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru
Austria: gained territories (Őrvidék) from Hungary
Azerbaijan: independence from Russian Empire
Belgium: gained control of Eupen-Malmedy and the African territories of Ruanda-Urundi from the German Empire
Belarusian People’s Republic: gained control of several cities from the Russian Empire
Czechoslovakia: gained territories from the Austrian Empire (Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia) and Hungary (mostly Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia)
Danzig: semi-autonomous free city with independence from the German Empire
Denmark: gained Nordschleswig after the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites from the German Empire
Estonia: independence from the Russian Empire
Finland: independence from the Russian Empire
France: gained Alsace-Lorraine as well as various African colonies from the German Empire, and Middle East territories from the Ottoman Empire. The African and Middle East gains were officially League of Nations Mandates.
Georgia: independence from the Russian Empire
Greece: gained Western Thrace from Bulgaria
Ireland: Irish Free State (approximately five-sixths of the island) gained independence from the United Kingdom (but still part of the British Empire as a Dominion)
Italy: gained South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, and Zadar from the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Japan: gained Jiaozhou Bay and most of the Shandong Peninsula from China and the South Seas Mandate (both controlled by German Empire before the war)
Latvia: independence from the Russian Empire
Lithuania: independence from the Russian Empire
New Zealand: gained control of German Samoa
Poland: recreated and gained parts of the Austrian Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire and Hungary (small northern parts of the former Árva and Szepes counties)
Portugal: gained control of the port of Kionga
Romania: gained Transylvania, parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș from the Kingdom of Hungary, Bukovina from the Austrian Empire, regained Dobruja from Bulgaria, and Bessarabia from the Russian Empire
South Africa: gained control of South West Africa
Turkey: gained control of part of the Armenian Highlands from the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Kars, while losing territory overall
Ukrainian People’s Republic: gained independence from the Russian Empire and recognized by Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
United Kingdom: gained League of Nations Mandates in Africa and the Middle East
Yugoslavia: created from the Kingdom of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and gained parts from Austrian Empire (part of Duchy of Carniola, Kingdom of Dalmatia) and Hungary (Muraköz, Muravidék, parts of Baranya, Bácska and Banat)
All these were related to the ending of WW I and it’s follow on after effects. So there was a lot on the plate to gain and lose. And Putin appears to be willing to gain less to win the conflict.
wy69
He’s one if the worst of the Globalist agents. From day one.
When? In 1949? Or now?
Now, it's for nothing worth the dusty bones of a single Alabamian grenadier, which is why Trump (correctly) wanted out of it.
It is slowly, inexorably, dragging us into a conflict of no importance to our nation with the added frisson of a civilization-ending mistake.
I wish Trump had gotten us out of NATO when he had the chance.
The only question is how large the bill for failing to do so is going to be.
“You assume that Ukraine will eventually “give up” if they suffer too many losses, or loss of infrastructure, or if they are not making progress, etc.”
Now that Putin has decided to open fire behind the lines determining he can’t win fast enough the way he is going, it changes the entire level of the war. When their major cities run out of food, clean water, medical capacity, and the ability to survive you mention, it will end. And that will happen when the Ukraines determine the losses are not worth it when the kids they are trying to give their heritage to are deceased or dying rapidly at a number they understand. Right now they have all those things needed to get by. But that’s the product of war. Time will tell.
wy69
“Sooner or later, probably sooner, the Russians are going to reach the same conclusion about our Ho Chi Minh trail that we reached about theirs a long time ago.”
Desire does not equal ability.
Russian satellites are able to watch the hundreds of trucks per day loading shells from planes at Rzeszow airport. They are able to watch them as they cross the border and trundle through Ukraine itself.
Russia has shown no ability to hit even one of those trucks in the last few months.
Well, the issue of “nothing much worth while” remains on the table.
All the little “captive nations” you mention were, and continue to be, of questionable value (to us) and have cause nearly constant warfare and brigandage since 1919.
All in all, the world has never returned to the glory days of 1914, and it’s a shame.
We let the NVA re-arm unmolested for years out of a foolish amour-propre over the territorial integrity of "nations" which had never possessed anything like that for millennia.
Poland during its brief existence has constantly miscalculated its strength vis-a-vis its more powerful neighbors, and they may be doing it again.
I noticed that. And I notice that there are certain times of day where they seem to coordinate their onslaught of propaganda, making the news feed reek of their copious sewage.
I love to watch them become even more unhinged when we point this out.
Ukraine ping
Bruce Campbells Chin: [Those of us here who did this stuff for a living know the importance of the elss-glamourous side of war. I was in artillery officer, so we had both the tactical stuff and a pretty good view of the logistical end of things. Also spent some time in a combined training company that had tanks, etc., so I learned about the maintainence burden for tracks as well.
You can only throw mass at the enemy for so long in modern warfare before the support system just collapses.
I think one additional problem that is being under-discussed is that the professional supply and logistics people that the Russians had in the active military when the war began likely have suffered significant casualties as well. That’s especially true once HIMARs started hitting logistics/maintenance centers and command posts. So now they’re bringing up new inexperienced troops, issuing them outdated equipments and supplies that may require a different supply chain, and you’ve probably lost a lot of your trained supply/maintenance people. That’s just a recipe for disaster.
On the flip side, the Ukrainian military saved their country post-2014 by recognizing their weaknesses, and beginning the professionalization of their forces with NATO help.]
It just requires mountains of cash. No cash, no logistics. Germany and Russia have spent roughly the same amounts on defense for a couple of decades now. Russia has to maintain a hugely expensive nuclear triad. Russia’s navy is 4x the size of Germany’s. Its cost to simply move troops and equipment around is massive, since Russia is 50x the size of Germany. Russia’s equipment inventory and maintenance cost is gargantuan, compared to Germany’s skeletal TOE.
No one should be surprised that Russia’s logistical capability is non-existent, including Putin. What’s surprising is that Putin planned this war based on a best case scenario, hoping that his nuclear threats would get the West to back off on supplying Ukraine, which would give him the victory he seeks. He obviously underestimated both Ukrainian fighting spirit, and the West’s willingness to do a Lilliputian version of Russia’s fulsome shipments of equipment and money to North Korea and North Vietnam.
However, logistics isn't just cash. It takes a ridiculous amount of coordination to get supplies from where they are produced to where they are needed, because it's not really Point A to Point B. It's basically hundreds of Point A's, transitioning through a series of Point B's, and then finally getting down to the thousands of smaller units that constitute the end users "C". I mean, maybe you're talking about getting a tank transmission from somewhere in storage in Yakutsk to a particular tank unit I the Kherson suburbs. A ton of correct decisions have to be made by the folks transporting it to get it where it is actually needed.
That's not even mentioning the constant juggling of transportation needs as you try to get food, water, supplies, and repair parts to different units, while also perhaps transporting a combat unit, having vehicles in maintenance, all with a limited amount of rolling stock. And then maybe a HIMARs hits your truck park and blows your plan to hell. And that's barely scratching the surface.
Very complex stuff, and if you don't have good people running it, you're screwed.
Trump never said he wanted out. He said he wanted them to pay more of their fair share for their defense.
NATO has been as useless as teats on a boar hog for more than 40 years. Just like the United Nations, the sooner the US stops pouring water into that bottomless pit, the better.
Trump is calling for peace talks. He has mentioned it several times lately, the latest being this statement at his rally in Nevada last weekend.
Trump said: “We must come to immediate negotiations to end the war peacefully or we will come to a third world war.”
I think I said somewhere else that that was a juvenile comment on Trump’s part because of the complete lack of any specifics. I stand by that. Advocating for “negotiations” to solve a problem is one of the all-time great cop-outs.
Bruce Campbell’s Chin: [I generally agree with what you’ve said about budgets, although Western forces have a much larger percentage of their budget wrapped up in personnel because we don’t pay/treat ours like crap.
However, logistics isn’t just cash. It takes a ridiculous amount of coordination to get supplies from where they are produced to where they are needed, because it’s not really Point A to Point B. It’s basically hundreds of Point A’s, transitioning through a series of Point B’s, and then finally getting down to the thousands of smaller units that constitute the end users “C”. I mean, maybe you’re talking about getting a tank transmission from somewhere in storage in Yakutsk to a particular tank unit I the Kherson suburbs. A ton of correct decisions have to be made by the folks transporting it to get it where it is actually needed.
That’s not even mentioning the constant juggling of transportation needs as you try to get food, water, supplies, and repair parts to different units, while also perhaps transporting a combat unit, having vehicles in maintenance, all with a limited amount of rolling stock. And then maybe a HIMARs hits your truck park and blows your plan to hell. And that’s barely scratching the surface.
Very complex stuff, and if you don’t have good people running it, you’re screwed. ]
Today, all the smart people are working in the private sector. The Russian military is getting the dregs. To get better people, they need to pay them. While not up to Western pay standards, they do need to be paying them more than their current levels. That is the real reason why Russian defense development programs are stalled - they used to get the creme de la creme. Now they get the leavings of whatever Russians are left from those in the private sector and the pool that hasn’t left for the West.
Kamil Galeev actually touched on this twice. In his essay on the 3rd day of the war, he pointed out that Russia has been maintaining a 300+ ship navy on a $50b budget, in addition to what it hopes to be a large expeditionary army. You can’t have both - you can only stretch a ruble that far. In a recent essay, he pointed out that one of the defects of this big army, big navy on a shoestring strategy was its essential hollowness, both on land and at sea.
“When their major cities run out of food, clean water, medical capacity, and the ability to survive you mention, it will end.”
Right, like the Russians surrendered in WW2 when their cities were under siege for a year and they were forced to eat rats and indulge in cannibalism. Oh wait, that’s not what happened.
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