Yeah, this is kind of what I was getting at.
Russia is already in a war of attrition with Ukraine, and against all prewar napkin math, Russia is slowly but steadily losing. This is already the longest biggest war in europe since ww2, and you would have to say that the gap between russia and ukraine is smaller than in feb 2022.
fog of war and everything, UA was trailing in confirmed mechanical losses 2:1 at the start of counteroffensive, and is now basically even while overtaking defensive positions and minefields without close air support. this is basically a military success that almost everyone would have called impossible even 6 months ago.
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God do I wish we could give the Ukrainians gunships and A-10âs.
Still, Russia had been preparing for this war for years, has a massive military, is a more populous nation and absolutely ruthless. Putin doesnât care how many Russians die.
Trading tank for tank, soldier for soldier, artillery for artillery is not a path to victory for Ukraine.
There are roughly half a million Russian soldiers in the occupied areas of Ukraine.
If they can drag this out until January 2025 and Trump wins the election all US support (including intelligence) is immediately cut off. Will Europe have the nerve and necessary resources to keep supporting Ukraine to the extant necessary?
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noone is saying victory is easy or guaranteed. Zelensky just answered in an interview that nothing would be a âhappy endâ for them. the point is that comparing losses is both quantitative and qualitative. they are not losing tank for tank, or artillery for artillery, and we can go even further to look at how losses stack up week over week. i am fairly confident UA is not losing solder for soldier because the armor and med evac are better, but thereâs no data that proves it right now. russia had been preparing for a blitzkrieg against a hapless nation, not whatever this is. UA liberated ~17k sq km^2 in the last 14 months, not all of which is just catching the orc army unaware. kherson liberation was a methodical grind and a look into the future of war against an entrenched enemy. for comparison, US elections are in 14 months from now. a lot could happen. especially if putin keeps provoking a nato member to enter the conflict.
plus the political bet that trmp would immediately make a deal with putin is not at all a sound strat. i donât think the shtick will fly, and most euro observers think europe will also step up if US support looked shaky in the summer of 2024. i agree, because the alternative would be to deal with both putin and tmp at the same time, which is just ⌠oof.
Holy fuck.
How many armored vehicles is a submarine worth?
Depends on the size of your navyâŚ
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Honestly the naval base not being safe anymore is kind of perfect. When the Russians annexed Crimea I kind of got it because of that naval base. You look at the history of Russia and itâs immediately apparent that they can barely be modern Russia without a major black sea naval port and thatâs what Sevastopol has always been. When you factor in that pretty much everyone in and around the base + the community around it probably resembles the Russian equivalent of the people who live in Camp Lejeune, NC I kind of understood them not being OK with that remaining under the control of a non puppet regime.
They should have stopped there because that is approximately where any reasonable legitimacy ran out. And now, because theyâve spent years trying to force their way into territory that doesnât want anything to do with them, theyâre going to lose the naval base probably forever.
This war ends with Russia as a minor player in global politics. They were way weaker than anyone thought and they exposed that to everyone. Ironically nobody is probably madder about this than people inside the US military and the contractors that support their operations whose career was about deterring the Russians from acting like orcs.
I kinda doubt they too pissed about the whole world lining up for more HIMARS/jets/etc?
The money in maintaining massive amounts of modern armor cannot be overstated.
I just would be shocked if the total western/NATO military spending over the next 30 years was decreased by this conflict? Like you really think this is going to cause less total military expenditure down the line?
I think weâre about to start hearing about how scary the Chinese military is. Investing tons of money into stuff that really deals specifically with what the Russian military does? I expect those programs to start sunsetting sooner rather than later.
This is probably the last major conflict in human history to use tanks. Reminds me of WW1 and horses.
You donât think we going to have drone tanks? Seems like old is becoming new with drone versions of things. We got air defense of people shooting rifles at stuff again
The only reason anyone on either side of this conflict is using tanks is because they were already built before it started. This entire war has just been poor bastards in armor getting victimized by guided munitions over and over again⌠and the last chance modern Armor had to really show off why it still mattered got stalled out by a low tech minefield.
Infantry with drones + artillery support + shoulder mounted missiles >>>>>>> armor. And itâs to the point why you start wondering what the armor does besides ferry the combat troops around unreliably at great cost. Thereâs probably a role for explosive munition resistant vehicles to move troops around contested territory. But battle tanks? Done like cavalry. They were already pretty pointless with 80âs technology clearly, but you put drones into the picture and the conversation immediately becomes âwe could buy how many drones for the price of that burned out battle tank over there?â
This happened to battleships too. This is not a new thing in warfare. Entire battle doctrines go obsolete. The heavy armor centered land war one is done done.
Pretty much every serious military person Iâve read on the subject strongly disagrees with this. Combined arms is all they talk about
Sure but your whole thesis that started this discussion is you think military industry is mad that Russia being shown up as this will cause a decrease in military spending. But battleships not being relevant surely hasnât decreased spending. There always going to be some new weapon
Right thatâs what theyâve built an entire career on. And they arenât wrong about the whole concept, but the armor part of it can get cut. Too expensive, too narrow a use case, too vulnerable to other cheaper better weapons.