dan/california

The bad guys are trying to stir thing up in the Balkans, since all their other projects are going so well.

C3k is correct across the board here. They way to have avoided the Ukraine war was to Declare it a NATO member as two Heavy brigades crossed the border to demonstrate that we weren't kidding, BEFORE the Russians attacked. The complication in Ukraine pre war was a substantial lack of faith in theUkrainian government, we believed what the Russians were telling themselves about Ukraine collapsing like a house of cards, or at least part of the U.S. government did. So we were afraid to commit. The Ukrainians have answered those doubts as emphatically as anybody in human history at this point, and anybody who is following this thread knows what I think NATO ought to be doing now. As far as Taiwan goes my only quibble with C3ks prescription is that it should be five times larger. The marine base on Taiwan should be the size of Camp Pendelton, and completely integrated with Taiwans own defense forces, and continually helping to upgrade them. We should attempt to sink the island with the weight of missiles awaiting a Chinese attack. Taiwan can probably make most of the missiles it needs itself. It is the center of the worlds chip making industry, but any intellectual property issues with Lockheed and friends need money thrown at them. The war in Ukraines has damaged the world economy, a war over Taiwan would destroy it. The Chinese need to be absolutely convinced that trying to take Taiwan gets them nothing but well fed sharks and crabs in the Taiwan straight,

Already out of likes, So I will just say thank you Haiduk. Glory to Ukraine!

It was written for second graders. When they start by explaining what artillery is, badly, you aren't going to learn much.

Modern systems, and soldiers for that matter, just can't be built/trained fast enough. So the fight last until one side runs out of modern gear/trained people and has to quit.

I am strongly of the opinion that XI is incandescently angry at Putin for selling him this "Short Victorious War", and then screwing it up worse than anybody thought possible.

The Russians are still trying to level Kharkiv, trying fairly hard.

Which I why I think a U.S. heavy brigade or two, and every missile and fighter bomber in NATO should adjust the Russians definition of costly.

This is hilarious!

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-9 ISW is even more negative on the condition of available Russian forces than what I would loosely describe as the thread consensus. A lot of detail about units just refusing to go back in the fight.

We have tried tolerant engagement with Russia. Anybody think is has worked out well? There are huge cost to kicking Moscow out of the civilized world ,oil and gas are not the only resources where Russia has become a huge portion of the world supply. We are looking at more defense spending, and less economic efficiency, for as far as the eye can see. The Russian people are going to suffer real deprivation and greatly diminished horizons for generations. All of this is awful. I am simply stating that Ukraine II in five years, With Warsaw flattened, and an order of magnitude worse refugee problem than the one we have now would be worse.

At the hard end of Certainty on here, we have the We [White] Men of the Civilised West MUST Unite Now To [Repel? Neutralize? Civilise? Exterminate?] These Mongrelized Asiatic Hordes line. Which carries its own implications and limitations: no compromise with the Orcs who are only mindless animals, take revenge, cleanse out the traitors among us, raze Moscow! And then on to Beijing! (scroll up a few posts) I never said on on to Beijing, I said we make it clear to Beijing that taking Taiwan is going to be too costly to even think about. The rest of it is almost right, but only applies to the Russians in Ukraine, and maybe Belarus if we can kick off a real rebellion there, too. I concede the current regime, or one that it is direct descendant is probably running Moscow for the foreseeable future. I just want that regime to spend the next fifty years thinking large scale military activity in Europe is a TRULY awful idea. We have tried tolerant engagement with Russia. Anybody think is has worked out well?

If NATO insists on continuing to split hairs in how will and won't arrange for Russians to come their deservedly unhappy ends,it seems to me Western air defense, and maybe MLRS systems manned by "foriegn volunteers "are next logical step.

It is more question of does it become one large Chinese client state, or several smaller ones. If the answer is several smaller ones the extent to which Beijing just runs the place will probably increase as you get closer to Beijing. I can't emphasize enough the extent that Russia's far east is almost utterly depopulated, and ripe for a creeping Chinese takeover. There is a video a few pages back of conscripts being called up, and loaded on buses in some piece of Russia's nearly endless back water. Mark one eyeball analysis, the people involved have at least as much cultural affinity for Beijing as they do Moscow. Now that might not be much affinity in either direction really, but at the very least implies they might be open to the highest bidder. Although the less awful bidder is probably a better way to think about it.

And usually unpleasant. The U.S. and its Asian allies are either going to have to give Taiwan an Article 5 level guarantee, or not. I don't think strategic ambiguity is going to cut it any more. And the Middle East has the potential to break in at least five different ways.

Well, yes, but It can't get harvested, shipped, and replanted for fall when Ukrainian farmers are busy being the engineering support for the army, and dodging random Russian violence. Russia is also systematically wrecking Ukraines fuel infrastructure and blockading the Black Sea, so nothing is getting shipped. Egypt, Lebanon, and a lot of other places are going to literally starve.

I have felt this way for three weeks now, but the powers that be just are not there yet. I think NATO should tell Putin that in twelve hours everything that flys will start trying to kill every Russian vehicle still in Ukraine, and every tank that moves is making best speed to the Ukrainian front lines. At some point we have to stand up to nuclear blackmail, or make him world dictator. The pre war doubts about the coherence of the Ukrainian Government, state, nation, people, and everything else have been answered as emphatically as humanly possible. Ukraine, Finland, and Sweden all in NATO, while the Russian army goes home with nothing to count its dead is they way this needs to end. I just don't buy that Putin desperate later is any different than Putin desperate now. As bonus the Ukrainians could get a crop in the ground, and less of the third world will starve to death.

I think what Macron has and has not done has been shaped by the absolute necessity of winning this election. Once the second round is over and the utter disaster of Le Pen victory off the table, hopefully, I expect the French Position to get a great deal more coherent.

it is unrealistic to expect most Ukrainian forces to look like the U.S. Ranger battalion on an exhibition exercise. I am sure they would love 18 months to train up to that level, but they certainly didn't get it. It is also worth pointing out that the amount of social media a given Ukrainian unit puts out seems to be inversely proportional to its proximity to the Regular Army. So we a TON of video from the Territorial Defense units North of Kyiv, virtually none from the JFO around Donbas.

The numbers that Poland, Moldova, and the other bordering countries have absorbed are just unbelievable. There can't be an empty spare bedroom anywhere in Eastern Europe. I really think the U.S. and Britain need to do a great deal more both to maintain political coherence in NATO, and just to spread the load around in a bearable way.

I am NOT a Boris Johnson fan, SO NOT a Boris Johnson fan. But credit must be given where credit is due. I am strongly of the opinion that the very large number of NLAWs that Britain shipped in the week or so before hostilities commenced had large effect on the outcome of this war so far. It gave the Ukrainians the critical mass of ATGMs to stop the Russians' attempt at a blind tank rush. The Russians have basically been searching desperately for a plan ever since. And Johnson has been 100% on additional support ever since. Johnson has certainly not been very good on Ukrainian refugees, but It isn't like the U.S. has been great either, and Biden was not previously locked into an extremely anti immigrant stance . In fact I need to write my congressman another nastygram on the subject.

Please can we get more likes? pretty please?

Now this is a veteran unit with the kinks worked out, and having seen what Russia did north of Kyiv, these guys are long weekend of rest away from showing up in the Donbas with DEEP conviction that the only good Russian is a $&$&$%%*** Russian. Another quick number on how hard it is to scale up production in a hurry in the modern world. Higher grade semiconductors spend four months in actual fabrication. That is after you have grown and sliced the silicon to grow them on. Both of those activities are their own ultra specialist industries. So in the unlikely event the Chinese have prepared wafers sitting around, it would be four months before the first chip came out the other end of the FAB to be incorporated in a tank, or a missile. Furthermore there are essentially no surplus wafers or FAB capacity anywhere on planet earth, they have still not caught up with the supply chain issues and demand shock from the pandemic. So for any significant capacity to be diverted to the Russian military XI would have to force a Chinese manufacturer to abrogate an existing contract. This isn't impossible, but it isn't trivial either. Doubly so since the U.S. would hammer any Chinese manufacturer that got caught building stuff for Russia with secondary sanctions that would make it impossible for them to ever buy anymore semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Ok, it was long number....

Putin's rolling atrocity has also proved that U.S. war stocks are not nearly big enough for a worst case scenario.

Well, I finally got put in twitter time out for what I said about this. I honestly think I wan't being harsh ENOUGH!