The_Capt

The arrogant assumptions of western equipment superiority kinda ring true. We did the same thing - ah ha now they have then Leo 2 this war is over because I really love the Leo 2! Forgetting that our stuff is as allergic to mines and ATGM as anyone else’s. The only consistent superiority that has been demonstrated is survivability, which is not small but that will not drive the Russian hordes back over the Urals.

Won’t that create an environment even more dangerous for people? I mean if one can 3-D print a cheap smart missile that can find, track and hit a small UAS through the trees, why would I point it at a UAS and not troops and vehicles? A little micro-missile like that could target individual soldiers and be carried by a UAS firing from standoff. Or ground launched from any number of systems including new smart mine system. If we can solve for small fully autonomous UAS to any significant level, we have a new whole set of problems by whatever does the solving.

And we are back to sacrifice….

There is truth to this. Every older generation does shake their heads and wonder if it isn’t all falling apart. I heard a remake of Billy Joel’s “We didn’t start the fire” with modern references and it rolled just fine. So everyone does it…but some turn out to be right. I am sure some old guys were sitting in a bar back in 1177 BC or 476 AD having the same conversation, and they were absolutely correct their worlds were about to end. So where does this leave us. Well the reality is that humanity above about 125 people is always on the edge. We keep skirting it and pretending that we are not on free fall pretty much all the time. We invent distractions and control mechanisms but we all know civilization is about three meals deep. So why might this time be different? Well that is the real question. My guess is that we have seen a confluence of factors that all signal to a potential significant disruption in the species. Out last one was really that time between 1914-1945, but a historian 1000 years in the future could very well see us as being in a major social singularity from 1914 to 2100. We look back and see disruptions that last hundreds of years now but in our own lifetimes we can only see 50, maybe 100 years. So one could make a coherent argument that we never recovered from 1914 and this has all been part of one big century long disruption. But one has to admit the last 25 years have been nuts, even by historical standards. First was introducing global information technology. That ability is profoundly changing us in ways I am not even sure we have seen the end of. The fact that the “old guys lamenting” now stretch across every time zone on the planet and can gather on a wargame forum is an example. Then we had the end of the Cold War and a period of turbulence. We all watched the wall fall and spent the “peace dividends”. Smart politicians saw opportunity and went for a “new world order”, “thousand points of light” etc. We thought that nation states were inviolate and that our main job was to get rich and make sure the bad states didn’t melt down too badly. All the while chasing the “bad guys” across the planet, but they were all comfortably “non-state”. 9/11 shook the tree hard though. Frankly I think the last superpower is still trying to figure that one out. It started two foreign wars which turned into slow burn COIN but it was all low level. Non-existential stuff. Then COVID happened. Worst pandemic in a hundred years, the impact of that little dance are not anywhere near done being felt. At some fundamental social levels that experience shook people everywhere. We start coming out of that and then suddenly hard power, military power between states as a method to resolve dispute jumped back on the table. We really should have seen it coming in ‘03, the seal was broken but that all had enough of a multi-lateral veneer that we could convince ourselves that it occurred within the global rules based order. But then Ukraine happens and suddenly “policy and diplomacy by war” is back on the menu. Worse a great power just did it unilaterally against another sovereign state. In many ways Ukraine is worse than Taiwan. Taiwan is recognized as a sovereign nation by only 13 other nations (powerhouses like Haiti). If it wasn’t for US tub thumping and semi-conductors we could easily write that one off as “a domestic situation”. Ukraine was a fully recognized sovereign nation in the UN…we are not supposed to invade those anymore. So that shook things up. Then Hamas/Israel. Arguably intra-state but looking very brutal. Taiwan is on the horizon etc. So I do not know if this is the End of Days but we are definitely “not ok”. Finally climate change. This is a 2-3 times in an entire species timeline threat for the vast majority of life on this planet. Why so few? Because 99% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct from them. So here we are facing that pressure to our front which of left untreated could bottleneck us. So I cannot say if we are done to be honest but man a lot of lights on the old dashboard are blinking red.

Russia just did this. It was wrong, but Putin decided to basically sacrifice the front of end of his entire land force and 100k Russians (and as has been harped on repeatedly, the Russians got on board with this). I do not believe for a second that this was easy or simple. Behind the scenes I am betting there was a lot of freaking out. For Russia this was exactly what I am talking about. Putin decided to interdict western encroachment before it went too far. He risked everything and now his nation continues to demonstrate the desire, to a baffling level, to keep at it. Again I am not saying it is right in any way but one had to admit that Russia was far more willing to make sacrifices and continues to in comparison to western nations. China is another example. In the Pacific starting competition they have demonstrated a willingness to make sacrifices that hurt them and when it comes to Taiwan I strongly suspect that they are far more invested than we are. As to Ukraine, we are invested but trust me, we are not totally invested. If we were we would have risked no-fly zones and western troops. The original post was in response to Steve posting that the EU is finally getting around to sanctioning precision machinery...21 months into this thing. More bluntly, to the average westerner the plight of Ukraine is on a long list of "crappy stuff that happens elsewhere, let's change the channel". The risk/cost/calculus for us is very different. We had a chance in 2014 and basically did nothing. It is 2023 and we are doing a lot but I am still not sure whose resolve is going to fail first at this point. Russia's or the Wests. Much in the same way I am concerned about western resolve - which is basically the resolve of our people - with respect to China or any other threatening nation. We faced hard decisions too. Ones that we really had no choice not to make...but we did choose not to make them.

Well this is kinda my overall point. I guess the only example of early-sacrifice to head off a larger one may be the Cold War. That took immense sacrifice yet society in the 50s and 60s had already lived through what "ignoring the problem until too late" looked like. One could still argue "forced" but it paid forward as opposed to waiting for WW3. But your point also kinda misses my deeper one. We are in a competitive state with the other great powers (hence why pre-WW1 fits nicely). We are facing stark sacrifices that will need to be made in order to keep the playing field level. Our opponents appear to be ready to make hard decisions while we do everything possible to avoid them or pretend they aren't happening. On the margins we are actually weaker then they are. We will not tolerate massive losses to protect the far abroad. We will risk manage and push down the road. Kinda like how we got into this mess in Ukraine in the first place. it is perfectly normal. So is having people who see it coming and get ignored.

I disagree. It highlights my diatribe even better when framed this way. The entitlement and unwillingness to sacrifice that dominated the back end of the 19th century kicked the problem down the road until it came to a point when the sacrifice was no longer discretionary, it became existential. Pre-WW1 Europe went into that war blind to its realities, refusing to understand what the sacrifices actually meant (“home by Xmas”) and by the time they did it was far too late. That was not “willingness” by 1915, it was Sunk Cost entrapment. The most powerful and richest nations in human history tore themselves apart as war became a fire that ran away with its own consumption. Failure to sacrifice does not mean immediately raising the “white flag of war” at the first shot. It means that during the competition stage one refuses viable but painful options to get off the spiral. Once you hit bottom it is too late. Sacrifice is going to happen. At that point one can only choose which “bad” to take. If a nation allows events to slide to the point they are in existential crisis they have already failed in many ways. It is not western unwillingness to send millions of it own to die. It is our unwillingness to make the sacrifices to avoid that very destination ahead of events that concerns me.

So a predictable trickle? How many systems are Ukraine losing per month? People have been flashing a bunch of infographics to show how bad it is. It isn't a single line of "3 Abrams and 5 BVF per month" it is integrating about a dozen bilateral lines, all with political issues. Or a single nation takes on the whole bill, and we are back to political. Fixing this (eg breaking deadlock) is a lot more than 3 Abrams per month. Stops and starts are how democratic nations work is the other issue. Few democracies are set up to pass multi-year plans on something like this without more formal diplomatic agreements in place. Buy it or don't, it is very likely going to happen this way. I honestly think Ukraine is likely at the point where it can no longer "hope" things will get smoother with respect to western support. "What they should do" is leaving the building. Best case is we are able to sustain the support in motion but it likely will not be predictable or in a smooth strategic supply chain across the dozen+ nations all shoveling "stuff" at the problem. Big spenders are coming under domestic pressure as post-pandemic economic chickens are coming home to roost. About the only thing that may remain predictable, and it is probably the most important thing, is money. We talk about tanks, guns and stuff but money keeps the Ukrainian economy afloat right now.

So here is the thing...the honest brutal truth. This is as ad hoc a force generation framework I have ever seen. Less coherent than whatever the RA has left to be perfectly blunt. And the brutal truth is that it is going to stay that way. It is not "spring cleaning" it is the fact that a fully integrated, back-thru-to-industry supply/force generation chain is not going to happen for this war. Maybe if we get a decade of frozen conflict we could get it in motion but no single nation or group of nations is set up to deliver a coherent iron mountain with an iron river behind it to Ukraine. People point to tank parks in Ft Hood and say "ya but", well that is the US strategic armor reserve and it would be political suicide to give that away. Other nations have given a lot are are dipping into strategic stocks already because they can get away with it. There are no national defence industrial complexes built for this war. There might not even be after it. No one is going to be able to send the quantities of equipment, the supporting elements nor do the training to the levels that the UA likely need to break this thing. Hell, given what I have seen I am not sure the technology exists yet to break this thing. We may be truly stuck. So ya, basically not going to happen with respect to coherent integrated "guarantees." Sucks, but Ukraine needs to plan accordingly I am afraid. The best shot may have been last summer, or maybe this winter when the ground freezes along with several thousand Russian troops.

This part. All war is sacrifice. And in this regard the Western world is perhaps as weak as it has ever been. Our willingness to sacrifice anything for greater causes is woefully weak. We will make a lot of noise, cancel people, whatever. But actually sacrificing something that hurts...no freakin way. We are three generations into entitlement and no empire in the history of the planet has done well when it pushes the sacrifice to "lessers" (be they internal or external). Tax havens, choking out social programs, defence spending that does not loop back into our own pockets. Gawd help us, oil, gas and " export of precision machine tools and key weapons manufacturing equipment components to Russia." I am not even sure we know how to really give sacrifice anymore. If someone told people they could cure cancer and have world peace but would have to give up their cellphones, I am pretty sure I know which way it would go. So as to Russia, and China for that matter, what is most disconcerting is that this war (and maybe the next one) are highlighting that our adversaries still know how to sacrifice. Ukraine knows how to sacrifice. I mean really pay the red coins to achieve something. In Russia's case it is utterly evil, immoral and illegal by any angle, but say what you will, the Russian's still know how to sacrifice. So we can talk about Glass Dragons, real estate bubbles, Russian doomed trajectories and demographic statistics all day long. But until we recognize that our adversaries are willing to lose more than us in order to gain, we are in trouble. we can't get people to wear masks and take free vaccines in the middle of the worst pandemic since 1918, how can we expect them to endure famine and war? My biggest fear is that by the time we figure it out, it will too late. We are like the European powers in 1899, rich entitled and heading off a cliff...all arguing about who should go first.

I think this might be strategic signaling...or BS to try and divide western positions. I do not believe for a hot second that any poll coming out of Russia is not actually coming out of the Kremlin right now. So Putin has just appeared to give himself permission for peace talks. Could be genuine or could be garbage to try and appeal to weak western support - "look they are trying to be reasonable". Or could just be pinging to see how everyone reacts. It is basically everything except genuine public opinion in Russia.

They aren’t bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARM_1_mine Upsides and down sides. Better sensors, 100m range and nasty penetration. But limited battery life (30 days). Likely going to used in the c-moves/reserves or by SOF/Light for deep stuff. Good old dumb mines will end up doing the heavy lifting. Big problem for the RA right now is attacking back through their own minefields. I am betting RA record keeping and safe lane sustainment are not very high quality right now. So they will very likely have to breach their own obstacles while the UA drops explosives on their heads.

You sank my Battleship! That is a 25 million dollar system taken out by a $100k drone dropping $20 dollar munitions.

Oh ya. And we haven’t even dipped into the non-verbal queues. And that is still the shallow end as some lunatics talk about pheromones/biometrics, Mag Res/TMS, and AI pattern recognition and algorithm support.

So what they should do is stick all you guys on a Humint and PsyOps courses. Ok, so you attend 10 parties and hear the same BS line. How similar are those lines? Do they sound scripted? Are some genuine? Now what aren’t they saying? You are going to see a pecking order pretty quick so who is driving the party line? This gives you a baseline. Now as you attend more parties what is that baseline doing? Is is moving? Is it static? Who is talking to you? Who is talking to someone else and are they telling the same story? Now does the story change based on audience, teller? Once you really get good at it you will spot anomalies - no party line is going to be totally airtight (and if it is, then that is something). Human beings hemorrhage information, it is baked into the species. The trick is to see the patterns. Then there are the blanks - why is no one talking about X? Wait a minutes - didn’t the last 5 guys say X and not Y. If your eyes are glazing over, you are doing it wrong. Common phrases, buzzwords. I once jacked up a ChatGPT return because of a buzz phrase catch. Gaps in stories that someone else might fill. And then the wind shifts. You can get a sense of where the herd is going. What is spooking them. We collectively seek certainty like moths to flames. What is their certainty? What is their uncertainty? A good experienced listener can unpeel a social group in minutes. This is how Humint works - rumour, gossip, BS. I bet you can pick a MAGA guy out in seconds right now. Like that but broader.

Heh, well it depends how one listens. Often to what is not said. A trained ear can pick up some very good stuff in these BS venues. Why? Because we try and hide our truths in our lies. I would trust this source over other "expert analysis" on quite a few occasions. It can be the really good stuff, it just takes longer.

Sure let's talk about Iran.

Now that does carry some weight.

You want more than wiki? Break out your cheque book, I have a decent hourly rate...and you get "friends and family" prices. I can't speak to specific Chinese "educated cosmopolitan" mind-set (you got any good sources for this?), but hey Russia convinced itself to invade Ukraine on less than that. So, ok, as a political narrative/lever I can buy it. As to their Near Abroad, totally accept the expansion of control but I suspect they are looking at outer buffer states to protect the back door from European/Western interference. No small problem with Islamic VEOs in that back yard too...welcome to being a great power...everyone blames you for everything. I think China is gleefully happy to make Putin as weak as possible. Russia is sitting on a lot of energy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves - more wiki for ya. Oh and look at Western Siberia: https://www.britannica.com/science/natural-gas/Location-of-major-gas-fields ) and China needs that on the cheap to have any chance to challenge the US. So a weak and fractured Russia to exploit that just makes good sense. Where I draw question marks is on actual physical occupation/ownership. That is how we view the threats, through old geographic domain lenses. I am not sure China sees it that way as "more land = more problems" in a lot of ways. I do not for a second buy into the Hal Brand theories of Chinese Collapse = Chinese WW3 as if they are somehow a reincarnation of the Third Reich. In many (cynical) ways it is in the US best interest to sell China as an expansionist threat that we can all rally around. China is definitely a threat but we need to think pre-WW1, not WW2. As to Huns. As far as I can tell, no one really knows what this bunch really looked like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huns. Kinda a mixed bunch of Steppe tribes that seemed to invade and pillage whenever they got bored. They did invade China but it was in 127 BC (https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/military-defense/beat-huns.htm#:~:text=In 127 BC%2C the Huns,backup camp of the Huns.) So what for Ukraine? Well first off China will likely keep Russia on life support because the last thing they want is re-normalization and oil and gas flowing West again. They also do not want Russia to fully collapse as that is really a problem for them too. They want Russia floating in the Jello-salad like a piece of rancid pineapple. Just smelly enough to spoil the fun, but not so toxic as to screw the whole party. So they will continue to pump support...to a point. And happily watch as Russia gets weaker and more dependent on them...on that we do agree.

Ok so before I move onto LLF, I did want to come back to this one. 1. China's main modus operandi with respect to resources it wants has not been outright occupation. They could go that way but the appear to favor simply buying them out at the top and then paying locals pennies to mine/extract for them. What most people do not realize is that China has really been paying attention on how West used them in the past (cheap manufacture and resources) and is doing the exact same strategy elsewhere. In fact the infamous Belt and Road, looks a lot like the US expansion strategies of the late 1800s/early 1900s. So I do not think they foresee invasion or some weird occupation as a requirement to get butt-@ss broke Russians to dig out REMs for them. 2 & 3. Food security - now here you may be onto something. Chinese external food dependency is on the rise: https://www.cfr.org/article/china-increasingly-relies-imported-food-thats-problem What I am not sure is if the Siberian hinterland will suddenly become the Nile Valley based on climate change trajectories. Climate change is not simply "north get warmer". There some seriously impacted weather patterns that can also make an area drier or wetter. In that region specifically I would be more worried about the Gobi Desert heading north with climate change as this is already an arid area. Finally, again China just simply buys the stuff it needs while establishing conditions for that to be as advantageous as possible...often unfairly so. I am not sure somehow invading Irkutsk is going to translate into calories that Chinese farmers can use. The pressure on food security along the equator in the next 50 year will become intense. As was noted by one venerable forum member "one can work happily in 50 degree heat", but one cannot pull enough calories out of the ground in that weather to feed Bangladesh...especially if it is underwater. 4. Red herring. Right now Kosovo has higher population density than China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density China definitely has an rural versus urban demographic issue but they are not going to have to invade anyone to avoid dropping into the sea anytime soon.

You will have to excuse us out in the vassal states if we do not share your levels of confidence on the competitive trajectories of the two elephants in the room. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trump-s-plans-if-he-returns-to-the-white-house-include-deportation-raids-tariffs-and-mass-firings-1.6641829

You should have went with the “drinking” off ramp. Been awhile since I did Asian history but let me just say I have some reservations about your overall theories here. First off the Mongol Empire began fracturing in the 14th century, with Mongol-Chinese rule failing completely by late 1300s. They seem to have had aspirations after this but were kept in check by the Ming dynasty. Main cause was Chinese internal rebellion (Black Death did not help). The entire Empire had fractured by 15th century, last Mongolian Emperor dead by 1370. I can accept “it was complicated” but not really seeing a conative origin story here. https://www.britannica.com/place/Mongol-empire/The-Yuan-dynasty-in-China-1279-1368 This was all well before the rise of imperial Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia Mulan btw is a legend from as early as the 4th century…so really muddling here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Mulan So I am not entirely sure I buy Russia put Mongolia in a box and kept them there while China yearned for several million acres of Siberian wastelands…on the other side of the freakin Gobi Desert. Now to your main point - Chinese Lebensraum. Ok, there have been some pretty intense “border skirmishes” between these two nations. But has China ever demonstrated any expansion aspirations in that direction? Great Wall says “nope”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China Ming Dynasty had their chance for a few hundred years between 1400-1700 to “go north” but built a big @ss wall instead. So I guess what my poor North American fixed brain cannot see is a real theory here based on real estate. Now what does make a lot more sense is one thing China has definitely demonstrated a desire for…energy. Russia has a lot of it an China wants it on the cheap. If recent history holds, China does not want to own the land and people that energy comes from (they are already flush with human capital) they just want cheap and easy access. So Russia weak and vulnerable - to which this war is helping immensely- is advantageous to China in the short to middle term. In that vein China supporting, but not too much while cheering Russian quagmires in Ukraine begins to make sense. Russia as a Chinese propane tank to pay for this senseless war makes a lot of sense. Now if they want to keep some of their population happy by owning more of the Risk board, then this may provide options. So What? Why argue if we land on the same square? The reason I oppose any weird Chinese land expansion theories is that they feed into a Conquest Dragon narrative. First the Island chains, then Taiwan, then Nebraska!!!! Wake up Sheeple! The issue with China is far more complex and Chinas strategic objectives far more nuanced than “Evil Empire Redux”. That sort of thinking dooms us to a war we do not want. Are we in for vigorous, even hostile, negotiations, oh ya. But simplifying the Indo-Pac down to land grabs with Disney sound bites is not the way to go.

At the rate the war is going I suspect Putin may have to sell off slices on the cheap.

Ya not sure. LLF is in Manila so it is already late (early) there...I think he might be drinking. Not sure how Mongolia got wrapped up in all this. Gotta say though, Denis Villeneuve made really cool use out of them in Dune:

Hm, weird. The end piece looks knotted and tied...why do that with copper? Some sort of artistic thing? I am no electrician but I would have no idea what a copper strap like that would be for then. Militarily copper would be a terrible idea - expensive as hell, heavy and thermally shiny. Back to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fibers