Seedorf81

This take is highly redolent of the attitudes of pessimists in the 1930's and contra your claim, there was very extensive German/fascist influence in Western democracies during that period. But then, as now, the extremist states were driven by the dynamics of authoritarian rule and could not stop themselves from over reaching.  Why? Because such states are not good at running countries very efficiently and must needs export the internal contradictions they suffer from to survive. Nuclear weapons change the way these things play out somewhat but Russia and China are simply not a match for an aroused and committed US/EU. It is a rough truth for Ukraine (and one that I find shameful) but the West has room to dither. Russia in particular, will not know when to quit and it is already working towards Russia's undoing. 

so about those Autocracies making faster decision cycles... roughly comparable to Russia's corruption issues.
Xi Jinping Purges Military Following Reports Of Missiles Filled With Water Instead Of Fuel (msn.com)
 

Absolutely.
Deocraty is by far the best societal organisation over long timeframes.
They keep educated people, have the easiest time to deal with korruption, make best use of their population and as a result have the best economies.
But short term autocracies can absolutely outperform them. Which is why democracies turned autocracies are incredibly dangerous.

Democracy's reluctance and hesitation to commit to war, even if it seems like cowardice or weakness, could be it's strongest value.
One who knows his real power and strength, should be careful when to use it. IF democracies decide to go to war, their potential is huge, because freedom of thought creates much more creativity, productivity and willingness to sacrifice, than the initial "weakness" seems to indicate.
A bit like the sleeping tiger that doesn't want to wake up, and lets the dumb human poke him. And poke him again. And again. And then the tiger kills the annoying man.
Even with current USA struggling, with Western Europe's crises, and the growing BRICS, Iran and all, opposition to democracy, I think that "The West" is like that sleeping tiger.
 
 

Thank you! That's why I like this thread.
Not just an answer, but a very good explanation, too.
I like to learn new things, and today I did learn new stuff.
Nice!
 

The Capt and Beleg85 thank you for your clarifying posts.
The Capt:
I never suspected the "low balling" and "dumping" of the ammo at a much lower price. Makes sense, and at the same time it doesn't.
One question:  you wrote "(..)one big 20 year VEO bug hunt", but even my good friend Urban Dictionary couldn't come up with a good explaination for VEO. Could you, or anyone, explain what VEO means in this context, please?
 
Beleg85:
Well spotted that the forementioned article missed the 155 - 152 mm difference. I assume the writers meant 152 mm calibre for the 20.000 Russian shells.
 
Both your posts enhance my understanding (and awe, and some disbelief)of the humongous amounts of money that are related to war. It also shows me that there are much more people that make much more money from investing in war, and war-related enterprises, than I realised. Why would they choose peace??
 
 

Democracy's reluctance and hesitation to commit to war, even if it seems like cowardice or weakness, could be it's strongest value.
One who knows his real power and strength, should be careful when to use it. IF democracies decide to go to war, their potential is huge, because freedom of thought creates much more creativity, productivity and willingness to sacrifice, than the initial "weakness" seems to indicate.
A bit like the sleeping tiger that doesn't want to wake up, and lets the dumb human poke him. And poke him again. And again. And then the tiger kills the annoying man.
Even with current USA struggling, with Western Europe's crises, and the growing BRICS, Iran and all, opposition to democracy, I think that "The West" is like that sleeping tiger.
 
 

It makes sense that western politicians are playing a careful balancing act - support Ukraine but don't go too nuts because the economy is pretty stressed right now.  One way to deal with this is to show the tens of thousands of rounds we are sending Ukraine but low-balling the price tag to avoid sticker shock.  So the prices listed are likely wholesale costs from 20 years ago when these shells were made - nicely avoiding military inflation etc.  Governments play these games all the time.
"VEO" - Violent extremist organization.  A new broad term we use to encompass terrorism but also beyond that.  Some groups are VEOs but not terrorists (legally) - but every terrorist is a VEO.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban were a VEO but not legally a terror organization.  AQ was a terror organization and VEO.  We had two completely different operations to deal with them.

And if we think of economics in terms of decision space, democracies being a bit slower than autocracies has some active advantages. Japan's economy had very little slack in 1941, and consequently when the action war revealed that many of their economic priorities were misaligned with their strategy, they couldn't easily retool. Same story in Germany. But the United States had enormous slack and could therefore invest heavily in what combat revealed to be good strategic priorities.
The war in Ukraine has revealed that we had lots of bad ideas about strategy and procurement. That offers the west the opportunity to retool towards things that will matter strategically. We need to take that opportunity, though.

It is an astonishingly strong conceit that autocracies are somehow better at war than more liberal states. Even looking at *this* war...Russia's autocracy has screwed up in every conceivable way, taken grossly disproportionate losses and cannot regain its earlier standing *even if it prevails* in Ukraine. It has inflicted on itself a strategic, economic and demographic disaster.   

Sig lines!  Get your sig lines, right here!

1700 km, no way that is less than 16 hours. 

I made a basic error 🥴, 25% isn't from total price, but price before profit.
In stead of 825 euro from 3300, of course it should be 660 euro from 2640 before profit.

https://www.technology.org/2023/01/05/how-much-do-155-mm-artillery-rounds-cost-now-and-how-many-are-fired-in-ukraine/
 
This short article calculated that an average "normal' 155 mm artillery round costs about 3300 Euro's. (3600 $)
And on average Ukraine fires about 4000 - 7000 of these per DAY(!) and the Russians about 20.000 per DAY(!). And that is just 155 mm shells.
(And one Excalibur-round costs about 103.000 Euro's (110.000 $).
 
Nothing new for most of our Forummembers, I reckon, but I did some math in order to have a better look at the ridiculous magnitude of the cost of war. (I am one of those simpletons that frequently asks himself if it wouldn't be much better if we used war-money for let's say climate-control.)
So.. in order to be sure not to exaggerate I use an average total number of 5.000 shells per day from the Ukrainians and 15.000 rounds from the Russians. That's 20.000 155mm rounds fired EVERY day, but let's say 300 days usage in stead of 365 in a year.
One round is 3300 euro's x 20.000 = 66.000.000 euro's per day.
66.000.000 x 300 days =19.800.000.000 euro's per year. (Had to check and double-check, because it blew my mind, couldn't believe it.) 1/4 is for Ukraine to pay, 3/4 for Russia.
But this is only the cost of 155 mm artillery-shells.
Not one 155mm gun, not one riflebullet, not one gallon of gas, not one drone, not one uniform, not one vehicle, not one bandage and well, you get the drift. I knew that a "cheap" missile is 20.000 euro's, that one Javelinlauncher costs more than 100.000 dollars and so on and so forth, but I never understood the bigger picture until this little 155mm round calculation. The cost of war is incomprehensible.
Now I understand the endless asking, pleading, bargaining and begging for support from Zelensky. He must.
 

And if your numbers are correct there is a lot of losses being eaten by the Ukraine allies side:
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

https://app.23degrees.io/view/KJpesgWQv1CmxoMr-bar-stacked-horizontal-figure-5_scv
So all Ukrainian direct military aid comes to about $100B in this war so far based on national reporting.  There is no way that a single munition is accounting for 20% of that aid cost estimate.  Somewhere in the chain governments are low balling those costs per unit downward.  The manufacturers are still making profit so the offset is likely within government budgets.  They buy a 155 shell at $3500 and then push onto Ukraine at a fraction of that price.
Now before anyone goes all “Imma taxpayer dammit!”  Just keep it in perspective.  Estimates on GWOT (which include Iraq and Afghanistan) range up to 8 trillion dollars.  And that was basically one big 20 year VEO bug hunt.  This war is countering a disruptive great power rival by proxy - should be a far higher priority.  So we are really in bargain basement war territory here.
https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar

Russians don't produce 155mm shells but 152 mm, which are also used in older Ukrainian pieces that survived and still consist significant part of AFU artillery park. This variety should be taken into consideration when talking about ammo disparity of both sides (I know that year ago Ukrainian artillery had serious, even dramatic shortages of these, but several companies in the West produce them and they probably managed to reach some stable- if low- plateau of supply by now).
It should be very interesting to compare overal price of production of this type of shell by muscovites with their industrial capacities, but we lack concrete data and only have approximations afaik- and these can be very tricky when talking about Russian economy and industry.
PGM's are also an issue here; katsaps rumped up their production significantly, which sadly was visible in better performance of their arillerymen in 2023. Old dumb barrages a la Seelow Heights are rarer now
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/08/24/russia-increased-artillery-shell-production/
Europe also slowly develop its support in this regard (too slow to my taste, but still):
https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2023-09-06/asap-eu-support-ammunition-production-member-states
Plus we also use broad Western connections in the world; lately have flood of videos of Krab crews loading Indian-made ammo.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2024/01/01/ukraine-is-using-indian-155mm-shells-for-the-polish-krab-sph/

This is fabulously wrong headed.
"Somehow", those effete slow liberal democracies managed to win WWII, Korea, Cold War, Gulf War, etc against those superlative and efficient autocracies and dictatorships.

https://www.technology.org/2023/01/05/how-much-do-155-mm-artillery-rounds-cost-now-and-how-many-are-fired-in-ukraine/
 
This short article calculated that an average "normal' 155 mm artillery round costs about 3300 Euro's. (3600 $)
And on average Ukraine fires about 4000 - 7000 of these per DAY(!) and the Russians about 20.000 per DAY(!). And that is just 155 mm shells.
(And one Excalibur-round costs about 103.000 Euro's (110.000 $).
 
Nothing new for most of our Forummembers, I reckon, but I did some math in order to have a better look at the ridiculous magnitude of the cost of war. (I am one of those simpletons that frequently asks himself if it wouldn't be much better if we used war-money for let's say climate-control.)
So.. in order to be sure not to exaggerate I use an average total number of 5.000 shells per day from the Ukrainians and 15.000 rounds from the Russians. That's 20.000 155mm rounds fired EVERY day, but let's say 300 days usage in stead of 365 in a year.
One round is 3300 euro's x 20.000 = 66.000.000 euro's per day.
66.000.000 x 300 days =19.800.000.000 euro's per year. (Had to check and double-check, because it blew my mind, couldn't believe it.) 1/4 is for Ukraine to pay, 3/4 for Russia.
But this is only the cost of 155 mm artillery-shells.
Not one 155mm gun, not one riflebullet, not one gallon of gas, not one drone, not one uniform, not one vehicle, not one bandage and well, you get the drift. I knew that a "cheap" missile is 20.000 euro's, that one Javelinlauncher costs more than 100.000 dollars and so on and so forth, but I never understood the bigger picture until this little 155mm round calculation. The cost of war is incomprehensible.
Now I understand the endless asking, pleading, bargaining and begging for support from Zelensky. He must.
 

https://www.technology.org/2023/01/05/how-much-do-155-mm-artillery-rounds-cost-now-and-how-many-are-fired-in-ukraine/
 
This short article calculated that an average "normal' 155 mm artillery round costs about 3300 Euro's. (3600 $)
And on average Ukraine fires about 4000 - 7000 of these per DAY(!) and the Russians about 20.000 per DAY(!). And that is just 155 mm shells.
(And one Excalibur-round costs about 103.000 Euro's (110.000 $).
 
Nothing new for most of our Forummembers, I reckon, but I did some math in order to have a better look at the ridiculous magnitude of the cost of war. (I am one of those simpletons that frequently asks himself if it wouldn't be much better if we used war-money for let's say climate-control.)
So.. in order to be sure not to exaggerate I use an average total number of 5.000 shells per day from the Ukrainians and 15.000 rounds from the Russians. That's 20.000 155mm rounds fired EVERY day, but let's say 300 days usage in stead of 365 in a year.
One round is 3300 euro's x 20.000 = 66.000.000 euro's per day.
66.000.000 x 300 days =19.800.000.000 euro's per year. (Had to check and double-check, because it blew my mind, couldn't believe it.) 1/4 is for Ukraine to pay, 3/4 for Russia.
But this is only the cost of 155 mm artillery-shells.
Not one 155mm gun, not one riflebullet, not one gallon of gas, not one drone, not one uniform, not one vehicle, not one bandage and well, you get the drift. I knew that a "cheap" missile is 20.000 euro's, that one Javelinlauncher costs more than 100.000 dollars and so on and so forth, but I never understood the bigger picture until this little 155mm round calculation. The cost of war is incomprehensible.
Now I understand the endless asking, pleading, bargaining and begging for support from Zelensky. He must.
 

https://www.technology.org/2023/01/05/how-much-do-155-mm-artillery-rounds-cost-now-and-how-many-are-fired-in-ukraine/
 
This short article calculated that an average "normal' 155 mm artillery round costs about 3300 Euro's. (3600 $)
And on average Ukraine fires about 4000 - 7000 of these per DAY(!) and the Russians about 20.000 per DAY(!). And that is just 155 mm shells.
(And one Excalibur-round costs about 103.000 Euro's (110.000 $).
 
Nothing new for most of our Forummembers, I reckon, but I did some math in order to have a better look at the ridiculous magnitude of the cost of war. (I am one of those simpletons that frequently asks himself if it wouldn't be much better if we used war-money for let's say climate-control.)
So.. in order to be sure not to exaggerate I use an average total number of 5.000 shells per day from the Ukrainians and 15.000 rounds from the Russians. That's 20.000 155mm rounds fired EVERY day, but let's say 300 days usage in stead of 365 in a year.
One round is 3300 euro's x 20.000 = 66.000.000 euro's per day.
66.000.000 x 300 days =19.800.000.000 euro's per year. (Had to check and double-check, because it blew my mind, couldn't believe it.) 1/4 is for Ukraine to pay, 3/4 for Russia.
But this is only the cost of 155 mm artillery-shells.
Not one 155mm gun, not one riflebullet, not one gallon of gas, not one drone, not one uniform, not one vehicle, not one bandage and well, you get the drift. I knew that a "cheap" missile is 20.000 euro's, that one Javelinlauncher costs more than 100.000 dollars and so on and so forth, but I never understood the bigger picture until this little 155mm round calculation. The cost of war is incomprehensible.
Now I understand the endless asking, pleading, bargaining and begging for support from Zelensky. He must.
 

Expenditure rates past and present.
 

Gee, what can't Ukraine do with a drone? Previously we saw them use drones to take prisoners, now they're using them to free prisoners. Pasting the text here since the site is a quagmire of ads.
A prisoner of war tied up in Russian trenches believed this was the end as he was dragged to enemy territory – until a drone came to save him.
Footage shared by Volodymyr Zelensky’s air assault forces shows the incredible rescue of the soldier.
In a video published on Telegram on Tuesday, he can be seen in a dugout, with his legs and arms wrapped in rope.
Ukraine’s 95th brigade had deployed three crews of drones to help neighbouring units being stormed by Russians.
As one of the operators approached the area, he spotted the captured soldier and began flashing his lights at him, trying to get his attention.
It was a miracle he had survived at all as the Ukrainian forces had just bombed the trenches, the military said.
As soon as the PoW realised the drone was Ukrainian’s, he began following it as it led him to safety.
‘The paratroopers were working in an area controlled by the enemy,’ a statement from the 95th brigade said.
Many invaders were successfully eliminated. When the Russians were destroyed, they noticed a Ukrainian serviceman tied up in the trench. It was a fighter from another brigade.
‘Our drone operator with the call sign Kevin began to attract the attention of that captive – flashing lights on the Mavic drone.
‘The guy on the ground got his bearings, realised that it was his own and started following our drone.’
Running away from the scene, the PoW was faced with another Russian soldier, but the drone dropped its last grenade, killing him on the spot.
Video of the rescue:
https://metro.co.uk/video/captured-ukrainian-soldier-details-unbelievable-escape-russian-trenches-using-drone-3093593/?ito=vjs-link
 
 

Ukraine is now using drones to teach Russians how to fly.
Meet ‘Johnny,’ A Special Fuze That Helps Ukraine’s Drones Drop Mines Behind Russian Lines
Meet ‘Johnny,’ A Special Fuze That Helps Ukraine’s Drones Drop Mines Behind Russian Lines (msn.com)
...drones are doing the delicate work that, before, was the responsibility of human scouts who would sneak toward Russian lines—usually under the cover of darkness—and seed minefields by hand.
Minelaying is dangerous work when the objective is to lay a minefield between Russian positions and nearby Ukrainian positions. It’s practically suicidal work when the objective is to lay a minefield behind Russian lines.
But not for a drone.
...the munition-of-choice for drone minelaying is the Soviet-vintage PTM-3 anti-tank mine, which features an unusual boxy shape and four pounds of explosives.
The Ukrainians modify the PTM-3s with custom fuzes they reportedly call “johnnies.” “These fuzes are equipped with a gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer that activate the mine when it is hit or moved,” CIT explained. “They can also trigger when armored vehicles, or even soldiers carrying weapons or body armor, pass nearby.”
 

A little bit of somewhat positive news:
230 Ukrainian prisoners of war coming home, in exchange for 248 Russians.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67872417

A little bit of somewhat positive news:
230 Ukrainian prisoners of war coming home, in exchange for 248 Russians.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67872417