Posted on 01/18/2023 9:30:14 PM PST by Zhang Fei
The Biden administration is preparing to announce a roughly $2.5 billion military aid package for Ukraine that is expected to include dozens of Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles, according to two people familiar with the decision, as the Pentagon intensifies its support ahead of an expected counteroffensive against entrenched Russian forces.
The war has entered a phase, U.S. officials have said, that will require Ukrainian units to attack enemy forces in a concerted way, using tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aviation in what is known as combined arms warfare. Bradleys and Strykers would significantly bolster their firepower and allow soldiers to move quickly around the battlefield.
The coming transfer could contain nearly 100 Strykers, one of these people said. It would mark the first time the Pentagon has supplied Ukraine with such vehicles. Those familiar with the plan spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it ahead of a formal announcement.
The Bradley fighting vehicles included in this transfer will be in addition to those announced earlier this month in a separate $3 billion arms package, the people said. The next tranche of aid also will include a substantial restock of ammunition for howitzers and rocket artillery, they said, and more mine-resistant vehicles.
The new vehicles are intended to complement the large-scale, combined arms training that several hundred Ukrainian soldiers are receiving at a U.S. military facility in Germany to help them change the dynamics of the battlefield, U.S. officials have said. As winter has taken hold, the fighting has concentrated in the south and east, degrading into a violent slugfest where both sides are suffering steep losses for modest gains.
“The Russians are really digging in. … They’re digging trenches, they’re putting in these dragon’s teeth, laying mines. They’re really trying to fortify that forward line of troops,”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Washington Post. CIA. Billions to Ukraine. Billions more to Ukraine. CIA Washington Post. Billions to Ukraine. Repeat After Me.
Next to NY Times, WAPO is the most egregious psyop propaganda rag in the world. They publish this nonsense to try to normalize it. It is not normal. This money is going to pay for the Brandon Putin Military Industrial Complex Grifter War On Freedom.
The USA has no strategic interest whatsoever in Ukraine. None.
The US has @500 HIMARS and @1000 M270’s (tracked versions).
I think between the US and the Euros about 35 launcher units have been sent, between HIMARS and M270. The GMLRS missiles are a munition that is in production, and that is ramping up. The US has sent a lot of GMLRS to Ukraine because thats the main tool the Ukrainians have for battlefield interdiction. But that is because they are obliged to do it that way, having nothing better. So they use a lot.
The US has way more, and much better, weapon systems than that for interdiction. The US is not going to be limited to small warheads with a 50 mile range.
[Emmanuel Todd begs to differ:
https://unherd.com/thepost/emmanuel-todd-world-war-iii-has-already-begun/
The neoclowns in DC have blundered into an existential La Brea tar pit in the Ukraine.]
Even in the financial markets, the BRICS countries have been major league underperformers. Markets don’t lie. The companies based there are hamstrung by capricious governments that don’t really give a damn about corporate governance as long as they themselves can stay in power. That is the principal weakness of these countries - they jerk businesses around and have the power to do whatever they want to the private sector. It truly is an indictment of the BRICS economies that China’s is the best-run economy of the bunch, and it’s run no differently from the days when men in funny hats and man dresses ruled the roost - imperial charters for big businesses and routine shakedowns for the rest.
If you want to look for waste, abuse, and corruption in the US Federal budget, there are lots of items orders magnitude larger than aid to Ukraine.
But nobody cares, they are in it for the emotion. Their brains are too small for the big picture. They cannot conceive of the vastness of the whole.
China is in no position to replace the US$, probably ever, as they seem to have hit their demographic-economic limit.
************
I agree with your statement about China.
Your statement also got my mind thinking about this question.
When do we in the United States hit our demographic-economic limit?
>> The GMLRS missiles are a munition that is in production, and that is ramping up. The US has sent a lot of GMLRS to Ukraine because thats the main tool the Ukrainians have for battlefield interdiction. But that is because they are obliged to do it that way, having nothing better. So they use a lot.
Thanks for emphasizing my point. It’s not the launchers, it’s the projectiles that are in short supply. As you acknowledge.
>> But if the US mobilized for this war, it would not be a “no fly zone”, it would be a hundred “highways of death”.
If the US mobilized to fight Ukraine, might some of those hundred “highways of death” you’re so sure about be found within the nuclear weapon blast radius around NYC, DC, Philly, Seattle, San Jose, LA, Houston, Pensacola, Charleston, Chicago, Denver, ... ???
You’re pretty arrogant to believe that Putin would just take a full US mobilization against him in stride, no big deal...
All that wasted money.
I want hardening of the power and water supply grids against sabotage and EMP attacks.
I want reduction of wasteful spending that pushes the national debt ceiling.
I want our money spent for our citizens (not illegals) here.
>> Ultimately, the West makes the machine tools and designs the products that are then assembled by menial workers elsewhere.
You’re expressing a twenty year old world view. Things have changed a great deal.
Ukraine is corruption for Brandon - that is all.
NO
Thanks Zhang Fei. By its own choice, Russia is at war with us, and that's been the case since the Soviet era. Same Russian ****, different day, same type of slow learner at the Russian helm. With little help, Ukraine has kicked the ever-lovin' **** out of our common enemy, and will continue to do so, irrespective of what the Russia-supporting VPN troll brigade continues to spew. Keep up your good work.
$2.5 billion is better than nothinng?? Nothing - as in no more - would be far better for the American people.
[If the US mobilized to fight Ukraine, might some of those hundred “highways of death” you’re so sure about be found within the nuclear weapon blast radius around NYC, DC, Philly, Seattle, San Jose, LA, Houston, Pensacola, Charleston, Chicago, Denver, ... ???
You’re pretty arrogant to believe that Putin would just take a full US mobilization against him in stride, no big deal...]
You’re using this threat in an attempt to win an argument on the internet. Problem is in real life, using nukes loses Putin everything. Apart from zeroing out the prestige he was trying to boost, it wipes out not just his entire family, but everyone in Russia who might have remembered him fondly.
You get pretty emotive about this stuff, but it’s not like you’re about gear up to assassinate anyone, which is what it would take to even slow it down, even though your death wouldn’t be certain. Whereas if Putin launched nukes against us, he would 100% die.
Putin’s like you, he’s OK with killing other people, but he loves his own ass. If he could nuke us without consequence, he would. Thanks to our nuclear arsenal, Putin is *never* going to nuke us unless we nuke him first.
“Putin’s like you, he’s OK with killing other people, but he loves his own ass”
That can be applied to any leader, especially Biden atm.
It's not a coincidence that the intermittent implied threat of nuclear first strike by the Russian dictatorship is regurgitated by its online proxies. Thanks again, Zhang Fei.
Demographic? Long ago.
Economic? Coming soon. US cultural rot is spreading and consuming the piled up cultural and human capital. The US is hanging on only because of the immense reserves of value accumulated by more virtuous generations. It takes time to burn through that.
How much unaccounted for money and weapons are we going to send to Ukraine? The list of some of the things we are funding for that nation reads like a list of funding usually given to democrat controlled cities in the U.S. We are funding their D.E.I. initiatives for goodness sakes!
NATO has been nothing but a millstone around our neck ever since the Euros abdicated their NATO responsibilities to “Let the Americans do it.” And also pay for it.
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