It's the current cool thing. Next year it will be walking under grand pianos.
Ukraine and Only Ukraine. If it isn't about Ukraine then fuck off
- Thread starter d'ranger
- Start date
Keith
Super Anarchist
barfy
Super Anarchist
- 5,229
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Some good points I hadn't considered when thinking about the winter war. When I was younger I did multi day winter trips on the Canadian glaciers at 8-9,000 ft and 30c below, I remember the dry kit bit. Boots in the bottom of your bag at night. I can't imagine being in constant readiness in those conditions.
LeoV
Super Anarchist
Yes try to read their reports, they show a lot if insight.
In 2019, trying to secure another ceasefire, Ukraine/Zelensky agreed to disengage its troops from some positions in Donbas. That was the article and video about.
Russia did the opposite: it did not comply with any agreements and moved more troops from Russia and Belarus to the Ukrainian border. And kept firing from Donbas with heavy weapons, and moved more material into the Donbas. And made work of OCSE very hard, restricting their access. While blaming Ukraine for shelling Donbas.
Zelensky tried, Russia did not play ball. The militias had not much to say other then protest. The fighting was not active or hot but stabilized on the fronts since 2018.
Here a very condensed timeline;
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
It is called Führerprinzip. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerprinzip
The Republicans are also very much into this, they will do it if they can.
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
Back in WW II blowing up civilians did about nothing to make anyone give up on any side until we got two entire cities with just two bombs
All Russia is doing is making lifelong enemies.
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
What a difference a few years makes. In 2012 Ukraine was a lot more Russia-like and Russia was not nearly as far along to a full-on Nazi state. A lot more people on all sides probably thought things could be worked out somehow between close relatives.
That day is long gone now!
billy backstay
Backstay, never bought a suit, never went to Vegas
A lot can happen in 10 short years.
Its forces are known inside NATO as “the MacGyver Army.”
U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals
When the Soviet Union collapsed, European nations grabbed the “peace dividend,” drastically shrinking their defense budgets, their armies and their arsenals.
With the rise of Al Qaeda nearly a decade later, terrorism became the target, requiring different military investments and lighter, more expeditionary forces. Even NATO’s long engagement in Afghanistan bore little resemblance to a land war in Europe, heavy on artillery and tanks, that nearly all defense ministries thought would never recur.
But it has.
In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.
Now, nine months into the war, the West’s fundamental unpreparedness has set off a mad scramble to supply Ukraine with what it needs while also replenishing NATO stockpiles. As both sides burn through weaponry and ammunition at a pace not seen since World War II, the competition to keep arsenals flush has become a critical front that could prove decisive to Ukraine’s effort.
The amount of artillery being used is staggering, NATO officials say. In Afghanistan, NATO forces might have fired even 300 artillery rounds a day and had no real worries about air defense. But Ukraine can fire thousands of rounds daily and remains desperate for air defense against Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones.
“A day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan,” said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who until recently was NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment.
Last summer in the Donbas region, the Ukrainians were firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery rounds each day, a senior NATO official said. The Russians were firing 40,000 to 50,000 rounds per day.
By comparison, the United States produces only 15,000 rounds each month.
So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells.
The West is also trying to come up with alternative systems, even if they are older, to substitute for shrinking stocks of expensive air-defense missiles and anti-tank Javelins. It is sending strong signals to Western defense industries that longer-term contracts are in the offing — and that more shifts of workers should be employed and older factory lines should be refurbished. It is trying to purchase ammunition from countries like South Korea to “backfill” stocks being sent to Ukraine.
There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.
But the obstacles are as myriad as the solutions being pursued.
NATO countries — often with great fanfare — have provided Ukraine some advanced Western artillery, which uses NATO-standard 155-mm shells. But NATO systems are rarely certified to use rounds produced by other NATO countries, which often make the shells differently. (That is a way for arms manufacturers to ensure that they can sell ammunition for their guns, the way printer manufacturers make their money on ink cartridges.)
And then there is the problem of legal export controls, which govern whether guns and ammunition sold to one country can be sent to another one at war. This is the reason the Swiss, claiming neutrality, refused Germany permission to export to Ukraine needed antiaircraft ammunition made by Switzerland and sold to Germany. Italy has a similar restriction on arms exports.
One NATO official described the mixed bag of systems that Ukraine must now cope with as “NATO’s petting zoo,” given the prevalence of animal names for weapons like the Gepard (German for cheetah) and the surface-to-air missile system called the Crotale (French for rattlesnake). So resupply is difficult, as is maintenance.
The Russians, too, are having resupply problems of their own. They are now using fewer artillery rounds, but they have a lot of them, even if some are old and less reliable. Facing a similar scramble, Moscow is also trying to ramp up military production and is reportedly seeking to buy missiles from North Korea and more cheap drones from Iran.
Given the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war in the Donbas region, NATO’s new military spending goals — 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024, with 20 percent of that on equipment instead of salaries and pensions — seem modest. But even those were largely ignored by key member countries.
In February, when the war in Ukraine began, stockpiles for many nations were only about half of what they were supposed to be, the NATO official said, and there had been little progress in creating weapons that could be used interchangeably by NATO countries.
Even within the European Union, only 18 percent of defense expenditures by nations are cooperative.
For NATO countries that have given large amounts of weapons to Ukraine, especially frontline states like Poland and the Baltics, the burden of replacing them has proved heavy.
The French, for instance, have provided some advanced weapons and created a 200-million-euro fund (about $208 million) for Ukraine to buy arms made in France. But France has already given at least 18 modern Caesar howitzers to Ukraine — about 20 percent of all of its existing artillery — and is reluctant to provide more.
The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.
In total, NATO countries have so far provided some $40 billion in weaponry to Ukraine, roughly the size of France’s annual defense budget.
Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.
The Ukrainians want at least four systems that the West has not provided and is unlikely to: long-range surface-to-surface missiles known as ATACMS that could hit Russia and Crimea; Western fighter jets; Western tanks; and a lot more advanced air defense, said Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist who is now a senior adviser at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The ATACMS, with a range of some 190 kilometers, or about 118 miles, will not be given for fear they could hit Russia; the tanks and fighter jets are just too complicated, requiring a year or more to train in how to use and maintain. As for air defense, Mr. Cancian said, NATO and the United States deactivated most of their short-range air defense after the Cold War, and there is little to go around. Producing more can take up to two years.
Maintenance is key, but there are clever answers for relatively simpler equipment, like the M-777 howitzer given to Ukraine. With the right parts, a Ukrainian engineer can link up to an American artillery officer in Fort Sill, Okla., and get talked through maintenance over Zoom.
Ukraine has also proved adaptable. Its forces are known inside NATO as “the MacGyver Army,” a reference to an old television series in which the hero is inventive and improvisational with whatever comes to hand.
To shell Russian positions at Snake Island, for instance, the Ukrainians put Caesars, with a 40-kilometer range, on barges and towed them out 10 kilometers to hit the island, which was 50 kilometers away, astonishing the French. Ukraine also sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with its own adapted missiles, and has built drones that can attack ships at sea.
American officials insist that the U.S. military still has enough matériel to continue supplying Ukraine and defend U.S. interests elsewhere.
“We are committed to providing Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said this month after announcing more Stinger missiles for Ukraine.
Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.
Already, some weapons are running low.
As of September, the U.S. military had a limited number of 155-mm artillery rounds in its stockpiles, and limited numbers of guided rockets, rocket launchers, howitzers, Javelins and Stingers, according to an analysis by Mr. Cancian.
The shortage in 155-mm artillery shells “is probably the big one that has the planners most concerned,” Mr. Cancian said.
“If you want to increase production capability of 155 shells,” he said, “it’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end.”
U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals
When the Soviet Union collapsed, European nations grabbed the “peace dividend,” drastically shrinking their defense budgets, their armies and their arsenals.
With the rise of Al Qaeda nearly a decade later, terrorism became the target, requiring different military investments and lighter, more expeditionary forces. Even NATO’s long engagement in Afghanistan bore little resemblance to a land war in Europe, heavy on artillery and tanks, that nearly all defense ministries thought would never recur.
But it has.
In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.
Now, nine months into the war, the West’s fundamental unpreparedness has set off a mad scramble to supply Ukraine with what it needs while also replenishing NATO stockpiles. As both sides burn through weaponry and ammunition at a pace not seen since World War II, the competition to keep arsenals flush has become a critical front that could prove decisive to Ukraine’s effort.
The amount of artillery being used is staggering, NATO officials say. In Afghanistan, NATO forces might have fired even 300 artillery rounds a day and had no real worries about air defense. But Ukraine can fire thousands of rounds daily and remains desperate for air defense against Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones.
“A day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan,” said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who until recently was NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment.
Last summer in the Donbas region, the Ukrainians were firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery rounds each day, a senior NATO official said. The Russians were firing 40,000 to 50,000 rounds per day.
By comparison, the United States produces only 15,000 rounds each month.
So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells.
The West is also trying to come up with alternative systems, even if they are older, to substitute for shrinking stocks of expensive air-defense missiles and anti-tank Javelins. It is sending strong signals to Western defense industries that longer-term contracts are in the offing — and that more shifts of workers should be employed and older factory lines should be refurbished. It is trying to purchase ammunition from countries like South Korea to “backfill” stocks being sent to Ukraine.
There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.
But the obstacles are as myriad as the solutions being pursued.
NATO countries — often with great fanfare — have provided Ukraine some advanced Western artillery, which uses NATO-standard 155-mm shells. But NATO systems are rarely certified to use rounds produced by other NATO countries, which often make the shells differently. (That is a way for arms manufacturers to ensure that they can sell ammunition for their guns, the way printer manufacturers make their money on ink cartridges.)
And then there is the problem of legal export controls, which govern whether guns and ammunition sold to one country can be sent to another one at war. This is the reason the Swiss, claiming neutrality, refused Germany permission to export to Ukraine needed antiaircraft ammunition made by Switzerland and sold to Germany. Italy has a similar restriction on arms exports.
One NATO official described the mixed bag of systems that Ukraine must now cope with as “NATO’s petting zoo,” given the prevalence of animal names for weapons like the Gepard (German for cheetah) and the surface-to-air missile system called the Crotale (French for rattlesnake). So resupply is difficult, as is maintenance.
The Russians, too, are having resupply problems of their own. They are now using fewer artillery rounds, but they have a lot of them, even if some are old and less reliable. Facing a similar scramble, Moscow is also trying to ramp up military production and is reportedly seeking to buy missiles from North Korea and more cheap drones from Iran.
Given the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war in the Donbas region, NATO’s new military spending goals — 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024, with 20 percent of that on equipment instead of salaries and pensions — seem modest. But even those were largely ignored by key member countries.
In February, when the war in Ukraine began, stockpiles for many nations were only about half of what they were supposed to be, the NATO official said, and there had been little progress in creating weapons that could be used interchangeably by NATO countries.
Even within the European Union, only 18 percent of defense expenditures by nations are cooperative.
For NATO countries that have given large amounts of weapons to Ukraine, especially frontline states like Poland and the Baltics, the burden of replacing them has proved heavy.
The French, for instance, have provided some advanced weapons and created a 200-million-euro fund (about $208 million) for Ukraine to buy arms made in France. But France has already given at least 18 modern Caesar howitzers to Ukraine — about 20 percent of all of its existing artillery — and is reluctant to provide more.
The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.
In total, NATO countries have so far provided some $40 billion in weaponry to Ukraine, roughly the size of France’s annual defense budget.
Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.
The Ukrainians want at least four systems that the West has not provided and is unlikely to: long-range surface-to-surface missiles known as ATACMS that could hit Russia and Crimea; Western fighter jets; Western tanks; and a lot more advanced air defense, said Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist who is now a senior adviser at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The ATACMS, with a range of some 190 kilometers, or about 118 miles, will not be given for fear they could hit Russia; the tanks and fighter jets are just too complicated, requiring a year or more to train in how to use and maintain. As for air defense, Mr. Cancian said, NATO and the United States deactivated most of their short-range air defense after the Cold War, and there is little to go around. Producing more can take up to two years.
Maintenance is key, but there are clever answers for relatively simpler equipment, like the M-777 howitzer given to Ukraine. With the right parts, a Ukrainian engineer can link up to an American artillery officer in Fort Sill, Okla., and get talked through maintenance over Zoom.
Ukraine has also proved adaptable. Its forces are known inside NATO as “the MacGyver Army,” a reference to an old television series in which the hero is inventive and improvisational with whatever comes to hand.
To shell Russian positions at Snake Island, for instance, the Ukrainians put Caesars, with a 40-kilometer range, on barges and towed them out 10 kilometers to hit the island, which was 50 kilometers away, astonishing the French. Ukraine also sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with its own adapted missiles, and has built drones that can attack ships at sea.
American officials insist that the U.S. military still has enough matériel to continue supplying Ukraine and defend U.S. interests elsewhere.
“We are committed to providing Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said this month after announcing more Stinger missiles for Ukraine.
Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.
Already, some weapons are running low.
As of September, the U.S. military had a limited number of 155-mm artillery rounds in its stockpiles, and limited numbers of guided rockets, rocket launchers, howitzers, Javelins and Stingers, according to an analysis by Mr. Cancian.
The shortage in 155-mm artillery shells “is probably the big one that has the planners most concerned,” Mr. Cancian said.
“If you want to increase production capability of 155 shells,” he said, “it’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end.”
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
Old fashioned artillery is apparently getting over worked in UKR
news.yahoo.com
Increased logistics needs, increased training... UKR has made substantial gains but I'm not sure they're in a position to keep pounding the forward RUS units into collapse.
Artillery Is Breaking in Ukraine. It's Becoming a Problem for the Pentagon.
WASHINGTON — Ukrainian troops fire thousands of explosive shells at Russian targets every day, using high-tech cannons supplied by the United States and its allies. But those weapons are burning out after months of overuse, or being damaged or destroyed in combat, and dozens have been taken off...
Increased logistics needs, increased training... UKR has made substantial gains but I'm not sure they're in a position to keep pounding the forward RUS units into collapse.
Thank the years of training from Canadian troops. If anyone knows how to fight with a mismatched collection of obsolete gear it is the Canucks, that is all they have ever had.
Keith
Super Anarchist
phill_nz
Super Anarchist
Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist
im guessing that would be a complete F wit that got sacked for not knowing shit
and not having a clue as to what senior and switched on defence personnel are capable of
im guessing that would be a complete F wit that got sacked for not knowing shit
and not having a clue as to what senior and switched on defence personnel are capable of
Chris in Santa Cruz CA
Super Anarchist
Fukin a, and when switched on command structure folks are directing properly rigged out and switched on front line personnel using fresh actionable intelligence, you will want to be somewhere else if you are in their crosshairs.
LeoV
Super Anarchist
GLSDB can reach a range of up to 150km, and would allow Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines. In the Donbas Russians moved a lot of supply routes just ouside HIMARS range.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/RXQXQBR4WNKH5OQZRGC2O5VZTA.jpg)
www.reuters.com
No ATMCS long range missiles, but an alternative. Could work. Some are pondering that there is a kind of deal with China regarding longe rang missiles.
At least the situation is not that both sides rushed all kind of military aid to the battlefield.
Setting up ww3, Seems keeping it local is the goal.
Exclusive: U.S. weighs sending 100-mile strike weapon to Ukraine
The Pentagon is considering a Boeing proposal to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs fitted onto abundantly available rockets, allowing Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines as the West struggles to meet demand for more arms.
www.reuters.com
No ATMCS long range missiles, but an alternative. Could work. Some are pondering that there is a kind of deal with China regarding longe rang missiles.
At least the situation is not that both sides rushed all kind of military aid to the battlefield.
Setting up ww3, Seems keeping it local is the goal.
LeoV
Super Anarchist
Remember the Russian propaganda about weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine to the black market ?
It is true, but the other way
The Russian interior ministry has reported a huge increase in gun crime in Russia in the last ten months, which is being blamed on large amounts of weapons and ammunition being stolen from the Russian military operation in Ukraine and smuggled back into Russia.
It is true, but the other way
The Russian interior ministry has reported a huge increase in gun crime in Russia in the last ten months, which is being blamed on large amounts of weapons and ammunition being stolen from the Russian military operation in Ukraine and smuggled back into Russia.
The U.S. Is Considering The Transfer Of GLSDB Munitions To Ukraine
The Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) combines the GBU-39 SDB with the M26 rocket motor. The Pentagon is considering a Boeing proposal to supply
theaviationist.com
GLSDB is a weapon that combines a GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor, both of which are common in U.S. inventories. The SDB is a small 250-lb multipurpose, insensitive, penetrating bomb with a blast-fragmentation warhead for stationary targets. It is equipped with deployable wings for extended standoff range that open upon release allowing the GPS-guided bomb to glide for several miles before hitting the target with accuracy.
The GLSDB has a 150 km range, about half the range of the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile, but enough to hit valuable Russian ground targets from distance.
According to Boeing’s proposal to the US European Command (EUCOM), which oversees the arms transfer to Ukraine, the main components of the GLSDB will come from the current US stockpile. “The M26 rocket motor is relatively abundant, and the GBU-39 costs about $40,000 each, making the completed GLSDB inexpensive and its main components readily available,” says Reuters’ Mike Stone. “Although arms manufacturers are struggling with demand, those factors make it possible to yield weapons by early 2023, albeit at a low rate of production.”
Ex Machina
Super Anarchist
They must be nice and quiet too if they glide inThe U.S. Is Considering The Transfer Of GLSDB Munitions To Ukraine
The Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) combines the GBU-39 SDB with the M26 rocket motor. The Pentagon is considering a Boeing proposal to supply
GLSDB is a weapon that combines a GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor, both of which are common in U.S. inventories. The SDB is a small 250-lb multipurpose, insensitive, penetrating bomb with a blast-fragmentation warhead for stationary targets. It is equipped with deployable wings for extended standoff range that open upon release allowing the GPS-guided bomb to glide for several miles before hitting the target with accuracy.
View attachment 556437
The GLSDB has a 150 km range, about half the range of the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile, but enough to hit valuable Russian ground targets from distance.
According to Boeing’s proposal to the US European Command (EUCOM), which oversees the arms transfer to Ukraine, the main components of the GLSDB will come from the current US stockpile. “The M26 rocket motor is relatively abundant, and the GBU-39 costs about $40,000 each, making the completed GLSDB inexpensive and its main components readily available,” says Reuters’ Mike Stone. “Although arms manufacturers are struggling with demand, those factors make it possible to yield weapons by early 2023, albeit at a low rate of production.”
Ex Machina
Super Anarchist
Very Very lucky guy
