Eddy

Quick, dumb, question from a non-American - what pressures does a Republican Member of Congress face if they represent a safe Republican district, where they are almost guaranteed to be re-elected. Is it because they may face a primary from another Republican and get de-selected as the Republican candidate? Or is it party management within Congress? (Not taking sides here, same question applies to Democrat members). Basically, why do they feel the need to listen to their populist base? In the UK, MPs are relatively rarely de-selected by their local constituency party other than when they've done something dodgy. The pressure to vote one way or the other mainly comes from party management within the House of Commons, by whipping, threats to careers, promises of jobs in Government etc.

Right click on the time at the top left of the post and choose copy link https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/01/eu-leaders-gather-for-key-summit-in-bid-to-unblock-orban-veto-on-ukraine-aid-europe-live?page=with:block-65bb73188f08d26c7ae387f2#block-65bb73188f08d26c7ae387f2

Perun did a recent video on recruitment which is a perhaps more detailed look at manpower recruitment Here is the first part of a summary Summary is generated using this site => summarize.tech: AI-powered video summaries Just pop in the YouTube URL and a few seconds later a summary is generated. Saves a lot of time working out whether something is worth watching or not. Or just getting the gist of a video. Edited for inclusion!

On top of that this happened => Russian Lukoil Refinery Incident Has Moscow Considering Gasoline Export Ban | OilPrice.com. Production of petrol has been halted at one of the biggest refineries and the incident happened on Friday, 12th Jan. and They only just re-started gasoline exports in mid-November and now it looks like they may have to stop them again. UATV on YouTube said it was because something (a Catalyst/Catalyser/Cata-something - I have no idea) broke and needs Western parts to fix. Dunno if the cause is true (not sure how reputable UATV is), but I trust Reuters that production has stopped.

Thanks Bill for posting the Foreign Affairs article. As suspected all is not well in the Russian economy. I actually think the situation is worse than is outlined in the article, especially concerning Russian income from oil and gas. On that note, it looks like the Saudis may have thrown in the towel on maintaining the oil price: Oil drops sharply as Saudi price cuts overshadow Middle East tensions (ft.com) If you're unable to read the article (I can never work out the FTs free to read policy) the Saudis are no longer cutting oil production but instead are looking to maintain there own market share by dropping the price of the oil they produce. As the article headline states, this has already driven down oil prices and will continue to do so. Which for the purposes of this thread means less money for Russia.

More on this here => Ignore the click-baity title of the vid. It's a reasonably informative take. According to this guy the problems with the delivery are caused by 1. Currency. The agreement was that India would pay half with Chinese yuan and half with the UAE dirham for the Russian oil. The Indian Govt. was reluctant to use yuan, and now the UAE banks are reluctant to provide dirham because they are concerned that the deals are in breach with of the oil price sanction and they don't want to face secondary sanctions 2. Russia has increased prices of its oil to above $60 a barrel while Iraq has reduced its price to around the same. Therefore for India, it's less risky to buy the Iraqi oil 3. Clampdown on sanctions. Some of the ships have cargoes that are above the $60 a barrel sanction cost and the Indian ports Seems a reasonably solid explanation and he does by and large provide sources. Russia rather desperately needs this money. Their economy is under considerable strain and their rainy day fund won't last forever. Income down, expenditure up and diminishing reserves can't last forever or even very long in a war of this intensity. Especially if they splurge 100s of millions of dollars in missiles on non-military targets. That said, economies are resilient and these conditions can take years and years to have a decisive impact. This is obviously a land-centric wargaming forum and that's what we are mainly interested in but the economic stuff is really, really important.

I did not know German troops were in Rotterdam at the time, so thanks for that

@Haiduk do you know how many missiles in total were launched?

Rotterdam?

Seeing as though we are playing fantasy fleets (not you, others), could it not be Hungary and then Austria after Moldova, rather than the Baltics. After all Hungary is, erm, less robustly anti-Russian. and Austria is not in NATO. I mean if I was a delusional, socio-pathetic, fantasist autocrat that's maybe what I'd be be thinking. I'm not btw. Well at least not an autocrat.

1. Don't know although almost certain it's not zero 2. Don't know. Maybe the Ukrainian lads can help Also this article ( Russia Launches Biggest Long-Range Attack Since Start Of War (thedrive.com) ) makes the point that What, if anything, does that signify? Saving them up for another day, difficulty producing them or delivery aircraft being used for something else? Answer: Don't know

I do actually. Thanks for posting this. Good to actually get some numbers. Very roughly because the chart is actually quite hard to read and the dates don't precisely match but: 1. 11/09/22 -> 29/12/2022 => 719 missiles fired, 452 intercepted, interception percentage = ~62% 2. 06/09/23 -> 29/12/2023 => 301 missiles fired, 218 intercepted, interception percentage = ~72% So a clear reduction in missiles fired (42% of last years number)and an increase in the interception percentage over very nearly the same period of time. NB: Chart does not include Shaheds

I miss when we used to take the time to have individual country bashing days. This latest 'West Bashing Day' trend is just slapdash.

We don't have any actual data on Russian missile stocks. But we can attempt to deduce from how often or not missiles are being used. So far this winter, including last night, the numbers are way down on last year. Therefore it could be they have less. It also could be they are stockpiling them for a future campaign. Or it could be last night was the start of a missile campaign. If there are no further missile attacks for 2 months does that mean their stocks are low. Not definitely but it would reinforce the impression. (Impression is the wrong word but I can't think of a better one)

I read somewhere else recently that these issues were to do with problems with payments. Russia wants to be paid in roubles, India wants to pay in rupees. Lately the oil has been paid for with rupees which Russia can't convert into roubles because of sanctions and it needs that money in roubles. Or it could be that Indian refineries are full and the ships are being used as floating storage until capacity becomes free. This happened last year from memory. That said, I hope the businessinsider article is correct. About time we started clamping down on these sanction busters.

Not so sure about this tbh. Russia has not been deterred up to now and even today the Guardian is reporting that 70% of Kherson is without electricity due to shelling. And Shaheed attacks on civilian areas are still ongoing nightly, which also doesn't look like Russian being deterred. I wonder whether if we don't see a cruise/hyper-sonic/ballistic missile campaign like last winter it's because the Russian no longer have the capability, not by choice. The only production numbers we have seen come from Ukraine, which is understandably incentivised to err on the side of caution. Maybe the Russian's just can't produce that many anymore and the estimates from Ukraine are wrong.

If there even is a winter missile campaign card. We are deep into winter and there has been nothing like last years onslaught. Maybe they are waiting for the weather to turn really cold or something, but it's not like so far we've seen any evidence of Russia waiting patiently, building up its capability until everything is in place. I wonder whether they've got the ability left for another winter missile campaign. At least on the same scale as last winter. If they haven't that will be very instructive. Of course it goes without saying that the people on the receiving end couldn't give a stuff if it's a single Shaheed or full blown winter campaign. I wouldn't want to appear to be belittling the suffering going on.

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s. However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks?

Not a dumb question, Dan. Both Reporting from Ukraine and Anders Puck Nielsen YT channels have asked the same question. There's no evidence either way except that 5 Su34s/Su30s were shot down by something in the last few days. As Nielsen states, if the F16s were quietly introduced this is probably what it would look like. The trouble is if they were shot down by Patriots (or whatnot) this is also what it would look like. I've been going through the old Warzone articles on the the timelines for training UKR pilots on the F16 and they basically put forward the opinion that it will takes many, many months. But I wonder whether that's for full training across all missions, like ground attack, SEAD/DEAD etc. I wonder how quickly experienced pilots could be trained to do just AA missile interception and then train them later on the other stuff. That said, Carolus is correct. Without AMRAAMS/Meteor the F16 would not be capable. (I don't even know if F16 are integrated with Meteor - the only thing I could find on it is that Greece has Meteor missiles and also F16s. Doesn't mean they're integrated. Greece also has Rafales which are integrated).

Apologies if this has already been linked but if your life is not complete without a report from RUSI on UGS's, then it is now Uncrewed Ground Systems: Organisational and Tactical Realities for Integration | Royal United Services Institute (rusi.org) and the pdf is here: Uncrewed Ground Systems: Organisational and Tactical Realities for Integration (rusi.org) Chapters: What are UGS? What are the purported benefits of UGS? What are the potential uses of UGS? Considerations for UGS support to light manoeuvre forces How do UGS get to, and stay in, the fight? How to make sure soldiers use them I know this OT but we have occasionally touched on UGS on this thread so just thought I'd link it.

It's not published by RUSI. It's published by Bloomsbury if you don't want to pay Mr Bezos The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century: New Perspectives on Defence and Security Jack Watling Bloomsbury Academic

2 chapters in - all killer and no filler (for those of us of a certain age ). It's excellent so far.

Not sure if this will be relevant to what you've been tasked with but Jack Watling from RUSI has a new book out - 'The Arms of the Future': The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the 21st Century: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century (New Perspectives on Defence and Security): Amazon.co.uk: Jack Watling: 9781350352957: Books I've just got it on kindle and only read the intro so far, but it looks promising. Judging by his RUSI articles it hopefully may be of some use.

Maybe a bit off topic this but why have 2 top Polish generals resigned? Poland’s top commanders resign days before election | Financial Times (ft.com) (paywalled) Is this just internal politics or is it important wrt support to Ukraine?

Now this is a good read => Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context - War on the Rocks Here's the Bing Chat summary: but I think it's well worth a read.