dan/california

This has been discussed in a great deal of detail. About 200 pages worth to be precise. Below is s small sampling of facts I can comfortably state most of the board mostly agrees with. First of all there is rock solid photographic evidence that Russia has lost about as many tanks as they started the war with in operational service. This represents the absolute minimum of Russian losses since it doesn't include anything they managed to limp or haul off of the field. The majority Russias mothballed fleet has been stored out doors in places where it snows all winter and given little or no ongoing maintenance, they are little more than scrap metal. So much so there is at least one incident of the officer charge of one of these glorified scrap metal operations killing himself when the MOD rang him up told him to get running tanks on trains to Ukraine. If you look at the video below of the Russian tank restoration facility you will find a segment of a tank engine on a work stand. It is about as much rust as metal. I would bet my car the pistons are seized solid, among many, many other joys. We are talking about a hundred hours or more of skilled labor to get that apart, re-machine large parts of it, and put it back together so that actually runs for more than five minutes. This is one they put in their propaganda video. I could go on, and on, and on...

When LLF tells us we are full of it he brings receipts! Boxes of them...

It is just terrible that the burden of leadership weighs on him so. He really needs to retire somewhere quiet with no internet. How dare these people rush him over the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

The problem is that Putins demands are beyond unreasonable. The West can't give into nuclear blackmail on this or it never ends. If a whole lot of Russians have to die before Russia sees sense on that. Well it sucks to be a Russian peasant, and ALWAYS has. 1905 and 1917 imply there is some limit to what even they can stand though.

I was speculating on this a few pages ago, I am guessing a LOT of the captured stuff and not a little of Ukraines pre war stock, are more or less completely worn on out on the same two or three weakest links. I don't know what the weakest links are, but any large fleet of similar vehicles by the same lineage of designers is likely to have one or two. Hopefully the Czechs and the Poles are spooling up to make whatever it is. But if the original part was never made West of the Urals that could be a truly large scale pain. Does anybody have a good source of where and by what entity the various flavors of BMP, and BTR and so on were produced? Not just assembly, but the major subsystems. The definition of major here is that it wont move or shoot without it BTW. An article about Soviet compatible 82mm mortar being produced in Eastern Europe somewhere implies someone is thinking about these things. That doesn't mean the solution is always easy. I am assuming that the production of both Western, and Soviet compatible artillery barrels needs to be increased by a factor of five, or maybe twenty. That is real specialist heavy industry. But the lead time won't get shorter because we futz around for months with the contracts first.

And a competent autocrat would have taken some fig leaf of a diplomatic victory at about the end of the second week, and bided his time until he had a better idea. Putin is provably NOT competent. Sucks for the peasants, and is going to keep sucking for a couple of generations if he quits tomorrow. If it takes another year for cancer or lead poisoning to kill him it will be THREE generations.

It was lower before Russia started committing Mobiks with three days training, perhaps even a bit lower still at the peak of Russias artillery edge in the late spring and early summer. But yes essentially the entirety of the initial invasion force is dead wounded, or shell shocked into uselessness. Fifty years of accumulated munitions and equipment have just been wasted by sheer incompetence from the very top to the very bottom. Just to continue the theme of Russian incompetence, and extraordinary percentage of whatever was left of that semi professional army has been committed to a grinding attempt at offensive trench warfare around Soledar. They have managed to seize, by the most optimistic estimates two or three kilometers of cratered wasteland. Some of it used to be a town, but you have to look at the photos for a long time to even tell, because there is nothing left. Soledar is of course merely an outer bastion of Bakmuht, and taking Bakmuht at the price Russia is paying in both lives and shells per square meter would probably speed up Ukraine's victory by six months or more. In a few more months, maybe three, maybe six, Ukraines best units are going to be equipped entirely with first line NATO equipment. Since the ever lower quality Russian army is getting it head handed to it now...

No, A your wounded ratio is at least double the real number. Some if that is the lethality of modern weapons, and a lot more of it is the absolute shambles of the Russian militaries casualty evacuation and medical system. And given the inevitability of imperfection on an estimate like this one it is generally correct. That why Putin is about to round up several hundred thousand more mobiks to feed to the grinder. They will die too. The third wave might get a clue, or perhaps they don't, and in two or three years the Chinese take over the Russian far east without firing a shot.

Russia is averaging FIVE HUNDRED KIA PER DAY. It might take six months, or might take two years but that is NOT sustainable.

They are throwing everything they have at Ukraine. They don't seem to want to trigger an automatic Article 5 by attacking supply bases in Poland. I really think the one one thing they could do that would at least take a while to trigger an article 5 response is attacking undersea gas pipelines and communication cables around Europe. Russia would of course deny doing it and have their proxies turn it up to eleven screaming that Ukraine did it to pull NATO into the war. I don't think this works, either Article 5 would be invoked, or perhaps Ukraine suddenly has a bottomless supply of ATACMS to make Western displeasure very clear. When you are launching your second mass mobilization, and hoping, MAYBE, to find a a 40 year old rifle and helmet for the new cannon meat, you have expended your good options.

Ammo not vehicles, but otherwise exactly what you asked for.

This is an excellent example of good enough engineering

"Joint ventures" manufacturing in Poland until the end of hostilities sound even better.

Please note that Kinophile is a much better writer than I am. Well said sir!

If we are sending Strykers, every SHORAD Stryker in inventory should be at the front of the line.

Poland has been 100% pro Ukraine from 90 seconds after the balloon went up. Scholz has tried every which way to avoid taking positions that would upset Moscow. It is very clear that the Polish governments position is a lot more popular in Poland than the German governments is in Germany. With an election coming up the Polish Government sees an obvious opportunity to do well while doing good. You have explained at some length that Scholz's position is driven by the internal politics of his party. Baerbock's visit to Kharkiv implies that it may no longer work for the parliamentary coalition that made him Chancellor though. I am going to indulge in a little bit of speculation here. If you hate my speculations feel free to stop now. The Russians are provably lousy at maintaining there equipment, and until the war kicked off the Ukrainians were severely resource constrained. I have a suspicion, and that is all it is. that a LOT of the captured Russian stuff, and more than a little of Ukraines own stock have all worn out the same one or two subsystems. whether that is some particular piece in the drive train or some other weak link. So Ukraine is looking at fields full of captured AFVs that it can't get moving because they all need the same bleeping part, whatever that part is. Something that hasn't been made outside of Russia for twenty five years, and maybe not in Russia for a decade or three either, at least in any quantity. Which would why all the Mobiks are on the shoe leather express. Pure speculation again, but perhaps attempts to get the weakest link manufactured new in say Czechoslovakia are not going well? So either vastly more effort has to go into fixing this supply chain issue for the Soviet stuff, or the NATO transition has to move along. In terms of the tactical benefits of the Bradley's they are still eggshells armed with hammers. But they have much LONGER hammers that can see in the dark. How much does this matter? Well it looks like their is going to be a little test, and not just of the pixeltruppen variety. The extremely flat and open terrain around Melitipol , and Mariupol does seem like the place this would really help.

The Poles have risen to the moment. Scholz has had to dragged.

It is a telling admission that that woman needs her very own lamp post, or at the very least an engraved seat at the Hague.

You are of course right about all of this. I particular the single greatest short term need for Ukraine is artillery ammo, and GMLRS pods, these have been the indispensable equipment of this war. There is however a communication aspect to the supply of NATO MBTs/IFVs, It is an unmissable signal, to the Russians, to the Ukrainians, and the to the rest of the world(China) that NATO isn't quitting on this. That whatever Ukraine needs will be manufactured and supplied, that Russia's strategy of exhaustion is not going to accomplish ANYTHING except killing of a generation of Russian men, and tipping Russia the rest of the way into demographic and economic disaster.

Turkey is also fond of cash, still great they are there. No shortage of targets.

It really does seem like the dam has broken and we are finally sending Ukraine enough stuff to actually WIN this bleeping thing. And yes I know it is a picture of a completely different munition than the one mentioned in the article.

Out of likes, very well put...

Is Russia repeating its mistake at Severodonetsk? Overpaying so badly for whatever they are gaining that it weakens their whole army?

How much of that perception is just the eighty years since the west fought an even conventional fight. Artillery utterly ruled the first world war, and by every account I ever read did most of the actual killing in WW2. We just forgot this in an era of great power peace? I would love to see better studies of both Korea and the Iran/Iraq war. And the Russian rail network among other things was intentionally structured around Moscow to facilitate this kind of control. At least part of the problem is that your planning is no better than your information. The further into the future you try to plan, the lower quality information you are working with. I think the question is did the Soviets miss the last revolution in air power, or has Ukraine bootstrapped the next one, and fundamentally changed the balance of power between offense and defense in the air. I would argue the jury is still out, but I think most tech trends point to a fundamental change in the balance. My guess, worth what you paid, is that going forward things are going to be bleeping dangerous for anything bigger than a crow, or slower than a ballistic missile. Then we get into the whole question about can drone swarms really work... There is a subtle variation where the winners of the Russian power struggle send the losers to the Hague to buy at least some relief from sanctions. If they are constructing fortifications this is a distinction without a difference. And the whole question is can they agree on a new primus without a circular firing squad that is fatal to the whole system. There is going to be a test, sooner or later.

The best path to REGIME survival is Putin's demise. Blame it all on him, get out of Ukraine with bad grace, and claim it is politically impossible to concede anything on reparations/warcrimes. Hope you can sell enough oil, metals, and fertilizers to make it through. They have been very slow to figure that out.