acrashb

Here is a lengthy but comprehensive review.  Haven't listened to all of it, but nothing unreasonable in the opening bits:
 

Modern production can be insanely efficient, and fast once it is set up. Setting it up take a LONG time. Exhibit A is two years into the pandemic I still can't get the bicycle I want, it is expensive, and particular, but two years on from the pandemic induced demand shock they still can't make enough of them. That is with me standing at the counter saying take my money. Now Putin may about to try harder, like if this line isn't running in six months I will shoot your whole family hard. But he is also in a vastly bigger hole. Russia needs to ramp things up by a factor of ten or more in many areas, and they have never owned much of the supply chain, or the underlying manufacturing technologies. Russia couldn't get a new plant up for thermal imagers built in two years before the sanctions, now it isn't clear they can do it at all. I am honestly not sure where China is on some of this stuff. But it is some indication that until very recently, if not still, they were relying on Russian jet engines. With the U.S. congress waving fistfuls of dollars at them Intel says they might have some new U.S. semiconductor production in the U.S. in 2025

While I have no particular axe to grind over this, I don't think this thread is the place for such 'beliefs'?  I also hope your concluding belief is not actually correct.
Anyway, back to Ukraine if possible...

I'd love to know just how much of a M1 Abrams is dependent on non-democratic countries...if at all.

'fully mobilized' affects funding and manpower, but I think the inter-connectedness of supply chains, in a sanctioned entity like Russia, is the issue here.  For a WW2 MBT you needed steel, rubber, copper, various sundries, crude oil (for fuel, lubricants and hydraulic fluids), sand (optics) and nitrogen and cellulose for the exploding parts.  Maybe you would get fancy and have a radio.  All of that could be found in one regular country.

A modern MBT is an entirely different (steel) beast.

All very fair points. My angle, to clarify, was more along the lines of the Come As You Are notes earlier...but my post veered off and your own points are perfectly valid in that context.
But ref the difficulty of making modern weapons in non-wartime economies, vs WW2 weapons in fully mobilized societies, there's no real equivalence, I feel.
Even so, I think a modern economy spun up to full wartime mobilization could produce modern gear at a crazy rate, far outstripping the WW2 pace.

and to think the Sherman got a bad rap.

Everyone says this like Ukraine has an unlimited number of artillery pieces and ammunition.  For all I know that's correct, but it seems to me that, in the excitement about Switchblades, Javelins and NLAWS, no-one is talking about resupply of arty ammunition.
Does anyone have an analysis of Ukraine's stocks and usage rates?  I presume that can't be manufacturing much right now, so it's whatever was in stock.

After explosions on several ammunition storages in 2016-2018 we have some... not a lack, of course, but significant reduction of some types of ammunition. As if this is first of all 152 mm shells for Giatsynt heavy guns (2B36, 2S5) and 270 mm rockets for Uragan MLRS. But this is on the level of forum talks...  

1 You can't make modern weapons from Church bells.
2 Russia has lost plenty of wars.  This Napoleon/Hitler view is hardly the only story of Russian wars.. and in both those Russia got enormous aid from its allies.  China isn't so forthcoming.
You think Russia is stubborn?  I think Ukraine is teaching them a whole other lesson in stubborn.

looks at pic... starts crying because it has curved roads...

Because it (almost inevitably) appeared elsewhere:

No doubt about it, something is happening to Russian mass.  We do not know if it is the Russians getting in their own way or as a result of UA actions, maybe a combination of both.  The standard belief is that the Battle Group, Battalion Task Force or BTG are supposed to the smallest tactically self-sufficient blocks of conventional mass.  They are baked into a Bde-like structure and are designed to be able to run and burn for days, pointed at operational objectives. 
Combat Teams/Coy TGs are supposed to operate within that Battalion construct.  It is very rare to see one operate independently (e.g. Bridge Demolition Guard).  Since very early on in this war, we saw reports of Russians seemingly unable to fight a BTG as designed...why?  It is too easy to say "well the Russians suck", so I immediately distrust it.  The Russians have not set a high water mark of military campaigning, that much is true but how much is their fault and how much was inflicted on them by the UA?  More importantly has the UA approach essentially broken the Russian one?
I see a lot of debate on "the future of the tank?" with a lot of people in armored uniforms and tank books saying "no way" [aside: including JasonC, which does not surprise me at all as we rarely have agreed on anything].  I also see people leaning way too far, too fast with the "tank is dead...long live the infantry!!"  This is not the important question.  The important question is "what just happened to conventional warfare?"  Not just the tank, but all of it?  The entire system of mass, which looks a lot like the ones we use, just failed gloriously when by all metrics it should not have.
This odd de-aggregation of mass at the front end of Russian advances is just another symptom.  We saw Russian tanks going unsupported almost everywhere, while infantry also appear to be unsupported.  Unless the UA invented a "forget combined arms" magic ray gun, one has to wonder why this is happening.  I am not sure if it is friction caused by a combination of UAVs and long range smart ATGMs that may have insane Pk rates.  Or is it a result of information superiority leading to Russians having to adopt ad hoc tactical approaches?  Or is it a result of attrition of Russian frontline troops?
But one thing is certain, Russian mass is not working.  What happens next in the south appears to be building to a final showdown between traditional conventional mass and whatever the UA has come up with.  I suspect the Russians will double down on mass but try to build it up in a WW1 "one last push" thing.  It is going to meet the UA hybrid approach, which also includes UA conventional at certain points and spaces.  The Russian mass will be blunted, slowed and stalled complete with logistics/LOC strikes, but what we don't know is who will break first.  

I am an offender here, but I agree. Although I doubt that's going to change much. Just keep scrolling.....

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think anyone is trivializing the holocaust.  I think what we are hearing is a relative comparison of the impact on the Ukrainian people regarding German versus Russian fascism.  Now given what we are hearing from some Russian nationalist forces one could say those folks attitudes towards Ukraine mirror the Nazis views and final solution for Jews.  (stated goal to exterminate etc) but I don't believe anyone is trivializing. Unless we are saying that one can never do a comparison to the Nazis when someone is talking about exterminating your own people.
My point was the Russians are clearly exhibiting extreme fascist behavior so can we move on?

RK-3 Korsar ambush by Ukrainian police:
 

Don't let the American police see that, or they'll order rocket launchers for routine traffic controls.

Looks like it.
For anyone that doesn't think you have to be brave to use a short range ATGM, the launch was an enormous "blaze away here" sign.

Thats nuts, the tank is facing towards them and doesn't see them? Theyre so close!
By "nuts" I mean CMBS Russian tanks would have killed my guys lllooooOOOOONNNng before they got that close, and absolutely from the front. I torture myself into knots trying to maneuver to hit MBTs. And wtf is with all the unsupported tanks in this war? I learned really hard and really fast after the very first game of CMBS - dont leave tanks alone.

I'd lay strong odds we'll soon see (in 5 years) overwatch drones slaved to the tank targeting & acquisition systems, that will be sent up and constantly be tracking with and above the tank, providing heavily increased range of awareness both to the tank and nearby units. Probably two drones per tank - one up and watching, one down and recharging. 

It's not quite as simple as she's making out.
They didn't give it to him, it's not a hand out. It's not charity. It's business, and for a critical resource that frankly, without it, makes making and doing things in Europe a good deal more expensive and awkward.
Those billions paid for gas etc to heat homes, run power and importantly support industry, manufacturing, science and research.
Sure he's getting money, but he has pretty high costs and that money loses significant use if he can't buy whizzbang Western tech or products (civ or mil).
I'm not saying it's a good thing (it absolutely ISN'T) but that's the blunt reality.
Think of it like this - Russia's gas is powering and heating the societies and industries that are now ****ing with his invasion in all sorts of delightfully maddening ways. Hell, his gas helps make the damn NLaws, Javelins and Panzerfausts that are slaughtering his tanks.
 

If one wants to read Sun Tzu, the Cleary translation is far and away the best.
The most consumable, reasonably-accurate political spectrum theories are "horseshoe".
Any simple right-left spectrum presumes that all of human political thought can be reasonably shown on a one-dimensional line, which doesn't really work, see Steve's stuff below and my amplification of same.
 
That's all pretty good. I'll add that both Communism and Fascism are both Socialist political philosophies (so Germany's National Socialist party, aka 'NAZI' party, was accurately named). In Communism, the state owns and plans / controls the means of production and the enemy is other classes.  In Fascism, the state allows private ownership but still plans / controls the means of the production and the enemy is other people / nations.  Both say they work for "the people" (hence Volkswagen, the 'peoples car'), but both in practice end up working for the powerful and connected elite few.
So switching from communism to fascism is relatively easy, as demonstrated recently by China, and to some extend, although less deliberately and completely, in Russia.
Having said all of that, the political evolution of Russia is complicated and not, I think, primarily driven by political ideology and fascism (as developed, most vividly, by Mussolini and refined by Hitler).  I think it's more of a kleptocracy that uses nationalism / fascist motifs as a tool to manage the population and keep the spoils flowing.  Having said _that_, reviewing Putin's declarations over the last twenty years or so makes it evident that he does have some ideology which one might summarize as Russian Greatness.  He has, for example, been crystal clear and consistent that he views the dissolution of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical disaster ever.  Whether his ideology is a pragmatic matter (securing the borders and maintaining the support of the kleptocracy) or is pure ideology or as a blend of both I don't know, but I think it's a blend as non-pragmatic ideologies don't maintain power for this long.

The relevance of this to the current war, and hence this thread, is in determining likely / possible exit paths and the related post-war political / economic order both globally and with respect to the Ukraine / EU / Nato relationships.
 
For those keeping score I'm oversimplifying a bunch of stuff for the sake of argument (e.g., Mussolini did not independently develop Fascism but was the most prominent proponent early on).
 

We live in an era of Strasserism, 'social fascism' claims and what used to be called the 'red-brown alliance'. In the end, it's all about opposition to liberal democracies which is why the fight for Ukraine is of outsized importance. Reactionary populism and revanchism must be stopped there or we'll be fighting at worse odds to stop it everywhere else.

For those interested, some trenchant comments on the 'end of the tank?' copy-pasted above from @JasonC over at BGG.