Posted on 01/18/2023 9:30:14 PM PST by Zhang Fei
[>> 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.]
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.
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Good assessment of our current situation.
Thanks.
Biden-Brandon is a petty grifter hired by his masters to serve as a puppet. He, himself, doesnt matter. He is a creature of wood and paint. His grifts are penny ante.
Attacking him is just rhetorical war, not substansive. Look to who runs things in NYC for the people pulling his strings. THEIR grifts are what you should care about.
One guy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Schwarzman
Though even he is likely to be a figurehead, or just one of a committee - Blackstone is just one private equity outfit, one that is particularly in the public eye. Also note that this fellow is nominally a Republican. This is bipartisan.
We don’t user the M-60 any more but we made 15,000 of them. Pull them off the used car lot and send them to Ukraine.
Addition to your comment #2.
US Plans to include 100 Stryker infantry carrier vehicles in new Ukraine aid package – Bloomberg
https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/01/19/us-plans-to-include-100-stryker-infantry-carrier-vehicles-in-new-ukraine-aid-package-bloomberg/
And on the German Leopards...
Russo-Ukrainian War. Day 330: Leopard tanks for Ukraine on Germany’s new defense minister’s priority agenda
https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/01/18/russo-ukrainian-war-day-330-leopard-tanks-for-ukraine-on-gemanys-new-defense-ministers-priority-agenda/
That is war. People die.
Ref - a great book I’m currently reading, “Poilu”, Louis Barthas. A memoir of a French soldier in the trenches of WWI. People die.
My point is you all need to consider the big picture of US power when looking at the situation in Ukraine. Its a bit hard to grasp the vast totality of US power without truly studying it. Ukraine is not modern war in all its forms. Its a peculiar situation due to the many constraints on both sides. Its a “little war”. A “big war”, when the US is truly involved, will look entirely different.
There is also a talk about supplying Ukraine with GLSDB-s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_Launched_Small_Diameter_Bomb
It reuses the M26 rocket engine and attaches a gliding bomb to it. M26-s have been in the process of being decommissioned (at the price of over $1000 a piece), but now there is a use for their engines.
The gliding bomb solves the problem of M26-s being very inaccurate.
Obama administration stupidly destroyed ~300,000 M26-s, but there should be about 200k left.
I think most M60 series were sold or scrapped.
US has @2500 M1 series assigned to the 20 divisions of the Active Army and the National Guard, or in prepositioned storage around the world. And another 3,700 in reserve. Unlike the M60, the M1 chassis was designed to be at least somewhat modular and upgradable, so the maintenance and upgrade potential is always there.
Thats an enormous number of first line tanks.
[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!]
Kamil Galeev, a young Russian analyst from Kazan, attributes this kind of accusation to envy, on both sides of the fence, and I think he’s got a point:
https://twitter.com/mcminn_bill/status/1607055839763877888
Like, ok, I understand that you’re poor, constantly stressed about money and necessity to pay the bills. I also understand that you’re envious about yachts and villas. That doesn’t mean that “they’re crooks” theory is all explaining. If they were, this war just wouldn’t start
“They’re just crooks” narrative is not successful, because it is so true. It is so successful, because people are obsessed with their unreflected envy and cannot distance from it. If this war is going on, it means they’re not *just* crooks. They’re something else, too
This goes far beyond Russian problem though. Much of the moral fervour induced narratives (Crooks! Corruption!) draw their strengths from the meanest human instincts. Hence their success. People are so incredibly envious, that their critical thinking just turn off at some point
Honestly I’m just tired of this constant moral fervour. If the missiles 1) take off 2) hit the target, it means “they are all about stealing” theory is false. Or rather used far beyond its limits of applicability. If the stuff works, plenty of managers steal little to nothing
I would even say that if the missiles take off, that suggests there are (not so few) administrators who are not only not crooks, but who are absolutely selfless. Who identify with their work 100% and are ready for personal self-sacrifice. That’s why stuff works
Russian capacity to raise cities to the ground is not based on “crookery” (how did you come up with this insanity?). It is based on hard work, integrity and personal self-sacrifice of not so few people. Proof? Cities razed to the ground]
Even the UK ran out of cash to finance its war against Germany, and only the Channel Islands were ever occupied by Germany. And this was the empire upon which the sun never set, possessor of vast holdings in Asia and Africa mostly untouched by Axis occupation.
Before long, however, the British empire was bankrupt and could no longer afford to buy the American goods it needed, nor was there anything of value left to trade. Shortly after Roosevelt’s election to his third term in November 1940, he came up with a bold plan to help the British, Lend-Lease. Essentially, Lend-Lease stated that the United States would give Britain whatever it needed in order to fight the Nazis. Once Britain won the war, the the two countries would sit down and figure out exactly how much Britain owed the United States. Roosevelt used the analogy that if your neighbor’s house is on fire you wouldn’t stand around arguing about the price of your garden hose. Rather, you’d give him the hose and he could pay once the crisis was over.]
I have fond memories of training with the M60-A1-Rise main battle tanks. But one of the advantages of the Abrams is that it can continue operating after taking hits from weapons like RPG-7s and other HEAT rounds that would cause a catastrophic kill on an M60 . The Abrams has twice the cross country speed and is much more survivable. It out classes all common Russian tanks and thus provides a psychological advantage to its crew.
Many of our M60s were dumped offshore as part of an artificial reef program.
That is a good source of reserve equipment. If all are used that will quadruple US stocks of HIMARS/MLRS ammo.
And it has inherently greater range than the GMLRS.
Potentially a great hack. The biggest question is how fast can they deliver them.
Trouble with the M-1 is the turbine engine. Bringing the Ukrainian engineers up to speed during wartime would be problematic. I am pretty sure a lot of the M-60’s are sitting in a pasture somewhere.
MLRS should have been there eight months ago. It is time to stop pussy footing around and provide more decisive systems.
Ukraine has MLRS, maybe a dozen of them, delivered from European stocks. Plus those 20 HIMARS.
The issue is ammo. They are using those 30-odd launchers hard.
IIRC those engines were easy to swap?
The Ukes can probably send busted engines to Poland for higher level repair.
Anyway, the plan right now seems to be to give the M1’s to the Poles, who will ultimately then give the Ukes the remainder of their T-72 type tanks and their Leopard IIs. The Poles have been training on the M1s for at least 6 months.
The USA is giving weapons to a country to defend itself from aggression.
The USA is not at war with Russia.
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