How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

Consider the information shown in: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine

Now, someone correct me if I’m misreading or mistaken. 69 billion is a big number except, as far as I can tell, most of the money is directly earmarked for U.S manufacturers or NATO related to Ukraine. The only portion that Ukraine can use to purchase elsewhere is the FMF or foreign military financing, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040, and that says it’s around 6 billion. 6 billion for Ukraine to purchase ammo from 3rd parties. Most of the money is tied up in Western manufacturers and their production lines or from NATO country stockpiles or earmarked money for replacing said stockpiles.

no idea about the EU money except I certainly recall periods where Ukraine had to beg the EU to release portions of already pledged money to support the economy but again, uncertain the forms of funding.

[The_Capt]

27 minutes ago, holoween said:

Ok. Good thing space based ISR is so cheap that we can ignore its cost right here. So just to be sure lets check what it costs. 750 million for 5 satelites with the 3 replacements clocking in at 800 million. So for a constallation that hass any chance to track ground movements were already looking at a full brigade equivalent in cost. And its not exactly impossible to shoot them down.

So lets go with long range Drones instead. And were at 130 million back in 2013. And those arent survivable if there is air defense around.

So to finally go to a reasonable pricepoint lets move down to a TB2 at 5million. And hope the air defense cant get anything done like at the start of the ukraine war. Otherwise youre just getting them shot down for very little gain.

And lets handwave the initial ISR price and go to the Switchblade range and were looking at 80k each so youre down 2.5 million and they fit right into the target profile of the Skyranger system. Though here it gets very interesting. If any individual strike can be made large enough to overwhelm the defenses it will quickly be cost effective. If it cant be made large enough though its a massive waste of ammunition.Now in ukraine atm a single fpv is enough for a successful strike. With the unit were discussing thats already a whole lot more

You should really quit now because you are getting way out of your lane.  You are now trying to apply the start up cost of strategic ISR to my tactical example.  Strategic and operational costs are treated as equal in a peer conflict…that is why it is peer.  You are also confusing operational and tactical platforms but that is more forgivable given the blurring we are seeing.  A switchblade 600 also has a 40km range, at $80k apiece I can field 156 of them for the same cost as a single Skyranger.

And this game is just starting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136

33 minutes ago, holoween said:

So are we ignoring the cost of the arty systems or can we simply assume both sides have equal ammounts of them? Because yes you can cause casualties but shooting at long range against moving targets as there hasnt been anything forcing the attacking force to stop isnt something that usually nets a whole lot of hits even with smart rounds.

Yes we can assume parity in guns…peer conflict.  If an enemy fancy prancy multimillion dollar mech company tries the same thing we will do it to them.  We have got plenty of evidence of the significance losses cause by the ISR - artillery combo in this war on AFVs, there is no debate here.  I have read a lot of articles and assessments and to be seen in this war is to be targeted and killed…so disperse, stay back or dig.

40 minutes ago, holoween said:

Your smart mines arent really something that exists even as a concept yet outside of your head (though i might have missed it so feel free to prove me wrong)

C’mon man, you aren’t even trying now.  I am the TV you are yelling at by this point.  You wanna come on this thread and share you informed opinion at least do the damned homework:

 

44 minutes ago, holoween said:

And were in the same situation as when we first got into lointering munitions range. Basically can our aps intercept the ATGM fired at us at a high enough rate. There is no technical reason i can see why they wouldnt be able but that part is at least not proven for diving missiles yet. For direct firing atgm and rpgs gaza has shown it quite possible.

Now you still have an issue in that you still havent forced the attacker to stop. The mines force a reroute but youre not going to lay a russian 500m deep minefield along the entire front in a few hours.

There is no APS for submunitions or EFPs but you completely missing the point…likely because you don’t want it.  We are talking about layers of incoming threats that are going to overwhelm anything other than a very expensive - think carrier group - defensive bubble.  For some weapons, like artillery, there is no counter.  Or, while you accuse me of hand waving, going to chirp up on CRAM?  I have stopped the company by this point because they are all freakin dead.

48 minutes ago, holoween said:

See there i fundamentally disagree.

That is because you have clearly demonstrated that you do not know what you are talking about.  You have offered no real evidence or references, this is all your opinion.  I know your background so go ahead and post it and we can play the compare resumes game.  A battalion is a major target, as in “hey this ain’t no lovin probe”.  It is going to draw an order of magnitude more hellfire, while being visible from even further back.  So now we can introduce rockets like HIMARs, tac aviation and likely stand off CAS - do some reading on Chinese precision strike at 100kms.  That is going to get engaged on top of everything else you have not solved for.

With a Bn we also get into logistics loads and lines, which are definitely going to be targeted by a lot of systems.  You are pinning a lot of hopes on the shield systems here.  30mm AA guns, APS, CRAM, AD and armor.  I would add friendly UAS to this as well.  

And here is the punchline to my overall thesis - it still won’t work.  We will end up spending so much money trying to keep very expensive platforms alive that we will cost ourselves out of the business.  If I need a suite of counters that cost more than those Boxers themselves we get upside down very quickly.  The evolution of warfare is not on the side of mech, which makes perfect sense as we have heavily incentivized countering mech for 80 years.  There are too many cheap, mass producible ways to project friction and corrosion on the modern mech system.  To the point that the system one would need to achieve superiority is likely able to replace the mech system we have.

If you have an integrated system that can shoot down every bird sized drone flying in trees, swat every next gen ATGM and zap every artillery shell…point the f#cking thing at the enemy Boxer company!  It will be able to shoot the tire bolts off from a postal code away.  The solution, if we can build it, will change war more than the current problem we have.  But you are so desperate to try and make the current system relevant that this point is being left on the table.  Real grown ups do not give a flying fiddle whether tanks, IFVs or squirrels in f#cking jet packs can get offensive operations back up and running again.  They care that they can get them up and running again in a manner that won’t bankrupt the nation and we can sustain for a high intensity war.

[Letter from Prague]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

Everybody assumed that the the Russians would be the tiniest bit rational about throwing good money and lives after bad. We were wrong, we all need to take a deep breath and stay in the fight.

The flipside of this is that the Russian are completely willing to collapse themselves by throwing more and more to its destruction. If the Ukrainians had enough ammo, drones and air defences they could turn this into a tower defence game and just wait until Russia runs out of meat and metal.

But we can't seem to be able to supply them with enough ammo, drones and airdefenses.

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Consider the information shown in: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine

Now, someone correct me if I’m misreading or mistaken. 69 billion is a big number except, as far as I can tell, most of the money is directly earmarked for U.S manufacturers or NATO related to Ukraine. The only portion that Ukraine can use to purchase elsewhere is the FMF or foreign military financing, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040, and that says it’s around 6 billion. 6 billion for Ukraine to purchase ammo from 3rd parties. Most of the money is tied up in Western manufacturers and their production lines or from NATO country stockpiles or earmarked money for replacing said stockpiles.

no idea about the EU money except I certainly recall periods where Ukraine had to beg the EU to release portions of already pledged money to support the economy but again, uncertain the forms of funding.

Ugh, now that 1) rings true and 2) is discouraging.  We spend money for Ukraine on our own manufacturing to build capacity…which of course is going to come with western overhead and likely no small amount of fat-catting.  FFS, it isn’t Ukrainian corruption we need to worry about, it may be the good old fashion western mil industrial complex.

[Letter from Prague]

By the way anything happening in the Ukrainian over the river operations? I saw some claims that "Ukrainians are countering new Russian front by opening another front" in various places, but it feels kinds nonsensical.

[Eddy]

3 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

By the way anything happening in the Ukrainian over the river operations? I saw some claims that "Ukrainians are countering new Russian front by opening another front" in various places, but it feels kinds nonsensical.

There was this, this morning. Nothing particularly stood out to me tbh

 

 

[FancyCat]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ugh, now that 1) rings true and 2) is discouraging.  We spend money for Ukraine on our own manufacturing to build capacity…which of course is going to come with western overhead and likely no small amount of fat-catting.  FFS, it isn’t Ukrainian corruption we need to worry about, it may be the good old fashion western mil industrial complex.

Recall the headlines here: https://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/ukraine-says-only-30-of-promised-eu-artillery-shells-received/

pledged artillery shells, only 30% of a million, the pledge was made in 02-2023, consider the Czech artillery hunt,  https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/inside-europes-drive-get-ammunition-ukraine-russia-advances-2024-03-06/ which is looking for shells beyond the EU, this initiative came on the heels of the EU arguing about purchasing ammo outside the EU

evidently, Ukraine does not get blank checks, with U.S leadership out of action, the EU didn't do anything beyond pledging money until 2024, and whatever it did, excluded looking for ammo from 3rd parties (why would they be having debates on it in the first place) until Ukraine looked ready to buckle. Sorta felt like the EU collectively forgot how to hunt for military equipment honestly. Now, the shells from the Czech initiative are inbound starting https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-czech-initiative-artillery-shells/32908749.html with 500k shells for about $3 billion? From this article, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/inside-europes-drive-get-ammunition-ukraine-russia-advances-2024-03-06/

and pricing for shells has increased on the global market, 

Quote

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told EU foreign ministers last week that Ukraine needed 2.5 million artillery shells this year, according to the Financial Times - suggesting a daily requirement of 7,000 - but the EU had sent only 400,000.

Demand from the Ukraine war has driven up prices to $2,800-3,200 per round from $700-$1,200 beforehand, two sources familiar with the market said.

 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Ok. Good thing space based ISR is so cheap that we can ignore its cost right here. So just to be sure lets check what it costs. 750 million for 5 satelites with the 3 replacements clocking in at 800 million. So for a constallation that hass any chance to track ground movements were already looking at a full brigade equivalent in cost. And its not exactly impossible to shoot them down.

You can do it for a lot lower cost.  That's a small constellation of SAR satellites designed for long life (like a decade or more) so as @The_Capt pointed out, it's not really fair to compare it to cost of a tactical ground unit.  Especially since you can use it all over the earth for all that time.

PlanetLabs has a couple hundred imaging satellites in orbit that do multiple passes over every place on earth every day at 3.7m resolution.  That's not enough to pick out objects easily, but there are ways to squeeze out *much* better resolution in post processing.  Those satellites probably cost less than $500K each to build.  20ish of their satellites are ~half-meter optical telescopes that give half-meter resolution on the ground and can do 5-7 visits/day of anyplace on earth.  They probably cost less than $100M each to build.

And that's just Planet.  

Aside from a few thousand Starlink satellites, there are ~1500 other US based satellites orbiting the earth, including several commercial imaging and SAR companies, plus the NRO/USAF stuff.  Add it all up and look at the available resolutions and revisit rates and it's hard to hide anything bigger than a bicycle for very long.

Starlinks cost a few hundred $K each, and they'll sell you a bus (or a truckload of them) that you can slap whatever you want onto (like a telescope and camera for a few hundred more $K) and you can have your own imaging constellation for much, much less than $1B.

Shooting down one satellite is easy.  No harder than launching a satellite, really, if you're doing a kinetic kill.  Shooting down 1500 satellites is a lot harder.

[kimbosbread]

55 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

FFS, it isn’t Ukrainian corruption we need to worry about, it may be the good old fashion western mil industrial complex.

Yeah, the US in particular is incapable of doing anything for a reasonable price, be it infrastructure, weapons, transit etc.

9 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

evidently, Ukraine does not get blank checks, with U.S leadership out of action, the EU didn't do anything beyond pledging money until 2024, and whatever it did, excluded looking for ammo from 3rd parties (why would they be having debates on it in the first place) until Ukraine looked ready to buckle.

I stand by my claim if the US withdraws from this, Europe will give up in short order.

[Kraft]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told EU foreign ministers last week that Ukraine needed 2.5 million artillery shells this year, according to the Financial Times - suggesting a daily requirement of 7,000 - but the EU had sent only 400,000.

Demand from the Ukraine war has driven up prices to $2,800-3,200 per round from $700-$1,200 beforehand, two sources familiar with the market said.

The target of 7000/d is already abysmally low and doesnt come close to matching russia and yet even that goal is missed by 6k/day? Wow

Without the late 2023 mass production of cheap as dirt FPVs the front would be breaking apart right now under the locust swarms of russian tanks and troops.

How good that the managed escalation policy makers foresaw this development and worried not /s.

Edited May 14 by Kraft

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/world/europe/russia-detains-general-yuri-kuznetsov.html

Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, who oversaw the ministry’s personnel department, was detained on an accusation of “large-scale” bribery, Russia’s Investigative Committee, a federal law enforcement agency, said in a statement on Tuesday.

 

Another long serving figure out at the Russian MOD.

[Twisk]

Some of this is likely knock on effects of the Ukrainian weapons being a hodgepodge of whatever Europe had on hand.

- Ukraine needs to hold onto more total vehicles (items of all types) as replacements (each vehicle type requires a minimum # of replacements)
- Ukraine needs specific training for each type of vehicle

- Movement of units is likely constrained somewhat by where their specific logistics train is located
- Loss through movement is likely higher

 

I'm talking about vehicles but it'd probably apply to just about anything more complicated than a rifle and even then do you want half your company firing 5.56 while the other half fires 5.45?

~~

If you have 100 BFVs you need a larger percentage of them out of the fight to act as replacements than if you had 1,000. You also need to acquire specifically trained replacement crew so you can't just grab anyone. Then that BFV equipped unit may have issues if it rushes across the front in getting ammo, spare parts, replacements, etc... Suddenly your logistics point is 100km behind and moving that represents opportunities for loss from interdiction. And then you might have some natural loss on top of that. You have 10k rounds of 25mm ammo sitting in a hide somewhere near Orikhiv that no one there can use and now all your Brads are 150k away near Donetsk fighting.

 

Edited May 14 by Twisk

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Kraft said:

The target of 7000/d is already abysmally low and doesnt come close to matching russia and yet even that goal is missed by 6k/day? Wow

7000 rounds per day is about all Ukraine can use, I think.  At least I don't recall them having been able to fire more than that.  So as a target it isn't bad.  What is bad is how badly this target is being missed.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, ok...slow down now.  This would not be the first (or last time) that a side makes a major show in a final desperate push to pull off something...before a collapse. The fact that the RA is employing tactics from WW2 at Kharkiv (i.e. dismounted troops) could be a sign of just how bad things are, or it could be a sign that they have gotten the memo on mech...or both.

At the very least it is an admission by Russia that it is unable to do much with the rest of the front.  If it thought it could exploit Avdiivka or create another significant breach in the line, those 50,000 troops invested into a distracting action would have instead been invested in the main front.  Therefore, the new border incursion does appear to be a sign that Russia isn't having much luck so far in 2024 and is trying to change it. 

Bundanov's tantalizing statement that he had expected another attack in the Sumy region, but that it hasn't happened because of the Kharkiv one, is also good news.  It also answers the question I had in my head which was "why isn't Russia trying this elsewhere"?  The probable answer is that it doesn't have enough resources to start up another one.  I can picture them reallocating the resources for Sumy to Kharkiv or elsewhere.  At least I hope that's what is going on.

Steve

[FancyCat]

tbh, HIMARS strikes on Belgorod could have done a lot....its time the restriction be lifted. Especially if the situation is as serious as indicated. 

Quote

Ukrainian officials are making a new push to get the Biden administration to lift its ban on using U.S.-made weapons to strike inside Russia, saying the policy kept them from attacking Russian positions as they prepared for their major march toward Kharkiv.

A group of Ukrainian parliamentarians is in Washington this week to enlist congressional help on the issue, which they see as handcuffing the Ukrainian war effort as Kyiv looks to hit Russian military supply depots over the border.

Just this week, tens of thousands of Russian troops poured over the border in Ukraine’s northeast in an assault that Ukrainian intelligence officials had been anticipating for months. The Russians are smashing into overstretched, equipment-hungry Ukrainian units that are giving up ground as they regroup.

Ukrainian officials watched for weeks as the Russians massed near the Ukrainian border, unable to use U.S.-supplied weapons to conduct a preemptive strike due to Washington’s policy. The Biden administration, as a condition of sending the long-range weapons to Ukraine, said they could not be used to strike inside Russian territory.

Russia is well aware of this limitation, and was able to mass at least 30,000 troops and equipment on the border without fear of being hit by long-range U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, which Ukraine has used to devastating effect on Russian troops inside Ukraine.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/14/ukraine-weapons-russia-00157970

[FancyCat]

blackouts again in Ukraine. 

Quote

Our streets and homes go dark again. Due to severe energy imbalance and Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, at least seven Ukrainian regions and Kyiv City are introducing partial blackouts for tonight. Russia keeps trying to drag us into the pitch-black abyss it is falling into, but we still have our candles, our EcoFlows, and our Kindle readers at our fingertips.

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

At the very least it is an admission by Russia that it is unable to do much with the rest of the front.  If it thought it could exploit Avdiivka or create another significant breach in the line, those 50,000 troops invested into a distracting action would have instead been invested in the main front.  Therefore, the new border incursion does appear to be a sign that Russia isn't having much luck so far in 2024 and is trying to change it. 

Bundanov's tantalizing statement that he had expected another attack in the Sumy region, but that it hasn't happened because of the Kharkiv one, is also good news.  It also answers the question I had in my head which was "why isn't Russia trying this elsewhere"?  The probable answer is that it doesn't have enough resources to start up another one.  I can picture them reallocating the resources for Sumy to Kharkiv or elsewhere.  At least I hope that's what is going on.

Steve

I gotta be honest, I am far more concerned at the indications that then western mil industry complex has become a sponge for military aid.  It makes sense that we had to go through them as Ukraine really had no MID of their own and we have been buying few-expensive for the last 30 years.  Now we are asking industry to do many, so there are going to be losses.  But I have a sinking feeling that a whole lot has been wasted getting our own factories up to speed while the UA goes dry.  I am not sure that even if we got western troops involved (which we won’t) that we ammo stocks to supply them either. This trend of highly inefficient contributions has to stop.  But perhaps we are in a “darkest before dawn” moment.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

tbh, HIMARS strikes on Belgorod could have done a lot....its time the restriction be lifted. Especially if the situation is as serious as indicated. 

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/14/ukraine-weapons-russia-00157970

They way to make a statement would be giving the Ukrainians permission to drop about twenty ATACMs on Taganrog airbase. That would force the Russians to respect the possibility everywhere else, in addition to whatever damage it did.

30 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I gotta be honest, I am far more concerned at the indications that then western mil industry complex has become a sponge for military aid.  It makes sense that we had to go through them as Ukraine really had no MID of their own and we have been buying few-expensive for the last 30 years.  Now we are asking industry to do many, so there are going to be losses.  But I have a sinking feeling that a whole lot has been wasted getting our own factories up to speed while the UA goes dry.  I am not sure that even if we got western troops involved (which we won’t) that we ammo stocks to supply them either. This trend of highly inefficient contributions has to stop.  But perhaps we are in a “darkest before dawn” moment.

 

This is the good news.

and this

Quote

 

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/04/goal-100k-artillery-shells-month-sight-army-says/396047/

The U.S. Army is on a path to triple its monthly production of 155mm shells following the passage of the Ukraine supplemental, its vice chief of staff said today. 

“With the supplemental that just thankfully passed last night, we’ll be at 100,000 rounds by next summer,” Gen. James Mingus said at an event hosted by think-tank CSIS.

 

 This might be the bad news.

 

Quote

 

https://www.newsweek.com/us-nato-defense-facilities-ukraine-russia-sabotage-1892099

A recent string of mysterious accidents at defense facilities in the U.S. and U.K. that have been producing weapons and equipment for Kyiv's forces in the war in Ukraine has fueled speculation on social media of possible Russian sabotage.

 

We still are not doing a great job of acting like their is a war on.

 

Edited May 14 by dan/california

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, chrisl said:

You can do it for a lot lower cost.  That's a small constellation of SAR satellites designed for long life (like a decade or more) so as @The_Capt pointed out, it's not really fair to compare it to cost of a tactical ground unit.  Especially since you can use it all over the earth for all that time.

PlanetLabs has a couple hundred imaging satellites in orbit that do multiple passes over every place on earth every day at 3.7m resolution.  That's not enough to pick out objects easily, but there are ways to squeeze out *much* better resolution in post processing.  Those satellites probably cost less than $500K each to build.  20ish of their satellites are ~half-meter optical telescopes that give half-meter resolution on the ground and can do 5-7 visits/day of anyplace on earth.  They probably cost less than $100M each to build.

And that's just Planet.  

Aside from a few thousand Starlink satellites, there are ~1500 other US based satellites orbiting the earth, including several commercial imaging and SAR companies, plus the NRO/USAF stuff.  Add it all up and look at the available resolutions and revisit rates and it's hard to hide anything bigger than a bicycle for very long.

Starlinks cost a few hundred $K each, and they'll sell you a bus (or a truckload of them) that you can slap whatever you want onto (like a telescope and camera for a few hundred more $K) and you can have your own imaging constellation for much, much less than $1B.

Shooting down one satellite is easy.  No harder than launching a satellite, really, if you're doing a kinetic kill.  Shooting down 1500 satellites is a lot harder.

The thing about space and a world class C4ISR enterprise is that they are non-negotiable for credible major powers.  We cannot invest in ground capabilities (air or maritime for that matter) as an offset.  We could have all the gold platted Bns but if we do not have a full spectrum ability to illuminate the battlespace on par with an opponent, or we likely lose.  Russia just proved this in spades over the last two years - of course one needs capability to exploit that ISR but as Ukraine has shown one can risk manage capabilities, one cannot risk manage C4ISR disparity.  Especially in a western context as we would never accept the losses Russia has suffered in a similar context (I.e. a discretionary war).

So space based and high end C4ISR are pretty much non-negotiable no matter what damned vehicles we decide to use for manoeuvre.  The remaining question is what is the best mix of capabilities to form a new combined arms team in this new environment?

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

They way to make a statement would be giving the Ukrainians permission to drop about twenty ATACMs on Taganrog airbase. That would force the Russians to respect the possibility everywhere else, in addition to whatever damage it did.

 

This is the good news.

and this

 This might be the bad news.

 

We still are not doing a great job of acting like their is a war on.

 

It is good news…but, how much of all those billions were spent getting these factories back up to a wartime speed?  We really got caught flat-footed by this war in many ways,  I hope we learn from it.

[dan/california]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

It is good news…but, how much of all those billions were spent getting these factories back up to a wartime speed?  We really got caught flat-footed by this war in many ways,  I hope we learn from it.

A LOT obviously, but from where we started there really wasn't any other choice. It is the Chinese who really lose here, it has cost them THEIR chance to catch us flat footed and sound asleep.

[danfrodo]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

At the very least it is an admission by Russia that it is unable to do much with the rest of the front.  If it thought it could exploit Avdiivka or create another significant breach in the line, those 50,000 troops invested into a distracting action would have instead been invested in the main front.  Therefore, the new border incursion does appear to be a sign that Russia isn't having much luck so far in 2024 and is trying to change it. 

Bundanov's tantalizing statement that he had expected another attack in the Sumy region, but that it hasn't happened because of the Kharkiv one, is also good news.  It also answers the question I had in my head which was "why isn't Russia trying this elsewhere"?  The probable answer is that it doesn't have enough resources to start up another one.  I can picture them reallocating the resources for Sumy to Kharkiv or elsewhere.  At least I hope that's what is going on.

Steve

This is an interesting point.  If Putin had this big force available, why didn't he use it to take the other stuff he's been trying & failing at?  One thing I like to keep in mind in all this is who we are dealing with.  Putin is a (yet another) dictator who is in a serious bind, so he keeps doubling down, over & over, throwing more & more into the fray in the hopes that the other side will fold.  We've seen incredibly desperate moves with horrific losses for negligible gain as he flails about for some kind of victory.

So thinking about it from that angle, what is going on up north?  I am wondering whether Putin got tired of getting nowhere at great cost and decided to fire everyone and get some new schmucks with new ideas -- but the new schmucks also can't overcome the fundamental issues that have led to failure so far.  Someone then came up with attacking on a new front where UKR would be weak, supposedly.  So off they go that-a-way.  

I am interested in knowing if the attacks & shelling & overall RU activity on other fronts has lessoned, which would probably mean there's not enough resources to around.  Not much good to run a feint if there's not enough to exploit it elsewhere.  

But we'll see.  UKR pushed back some today north of Kharkiv, so things might already be stalled up there.  And if Budanov is right and Sumy isn't happening then there's definitely lack of resources.  Of course, we migth see Sumy activate but I bet if so then Kharkiv will suddenly become much quieter.  Or the rest of the front will be become much quieter.  Seems when you lose ~1000 men + dozens of armored vehicles & artillery per day, there's a limit -- I hope??

[Battlefront.com]

Interesting article in Politico about the turmoil in Georgia and blaming some of it on the Republicans in the House.  Hypothesis is people around Russia are hedging their bets and the dithering by the US has caused some to throw their lot back in with Putin because they believe he isn't going anywhere.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/14/us-georgia-unrest-congress-00157989

I dunno... this seems to be falling into the trap of thinking everything that the US does or doesn't do is the most important thing on the planet.  I don't doubt that US dithering is a factor, but I think the biggest factor is that Georgia has been sliding back into Russia's orbit for years now.  Can't blame that on the House GOP (and there was a good quote in there about just that). So at most, I think, it could have given the pro Russian types a little less concern about sliding backwards.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I gotta be honest, I am far more concerned at the indications that then western mil industry complex has become a sponge for military aid.  It makes sense that we had to go through them as Ukraine really had no MID of their own and we have been buying few-expensive for the last 30 years.  Now we are asking industry to do many, so there are going to be losses.  But I have a sinking feeling that a whole lot has been wasted getting our own factories up to speed while the UA goes dry.  I am not sure that even if we got western troops involved (which we won’t) that we ammo stocks to supply them either. This trend of highly inefficient contributions has to stop.  But perhaps we are in a “darkest before dawn” moment.

I wouldn't characterize it as "wasted" as the capacity didn't exist and legitimately needed a lot of reinvestment to get it back up to snuff.  The options were to not invest in a significant way or to ramp it up so slowly that it wouldn't benefit Ukraine at all.  Fortunately that doesn't appear to have happened.

What I would say is that we're all paying for mishandling the "peace dividend" that came after the Cold War ended.  Clearly a better strategy was needed to save money while also keeping in mind future needs.

The important thing is to see what happens now that production has been brought back from the dead.  It seems that this year the US might be able to aid Ukraine without drawing down stocks necessary for its own purposes.  And heavens forbid, rebuilding stocks to a higher level than was previously thought necessary.

Steve

[The_Capt]

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I wouldn't characterize it as "wasted" as the capacity didn't exist and legitimately needed a lot of reinvestment to get it back up to snuff.  The options were to not invest in a significant way or to ramp it up so slowly that it wouldn't benefit Ukraine at all.  Fortunately that doesn't appear to have happened.

What I would say is that we're all paying for mishandling the "peace dividend" that came after the Cold War ended.  Clearly a better strategy was needed to save money while also keeping in mind future needs.

The important thing is to see what happens now that production has been brought back from the dead.  It seems that this year the US might be able to aid Ukraine without drawing down stocks necessary for its own purposes.  And heavens forbid, rebuilding stocks to a higher level than was previously thought necessary.

Steve

Not saying the effort was the waste it was the rapid ramping up.  Worked in government long enough to know a massive spending sinkhole when I see one.  The government needed rapid production of a bunch of stuff so industry had to rapidly increase production lines - that costs an obscene amount of money, which that funding would need to backstop because risks are so high.  Government contracts were not doubt flying.

It is not anyone fault, or at least no one still in the business today. We dialled all that back in the 90s, GWOT did not need it, and we ignored the signals from 2014.  But it means that for some production runs the cost per unit was very high which soaks up the limited funding.  Once we hit steady state we will be awash in artillery shells, let’s hope they do not show up too late.  Russia should be very worried because the clock it ticking against them and they likely know it, hence the push to make hay while the sun shines this year.