Good point. This war is a wealth of insights for us on battle & armament planning. One is we probably need more inventory of ammunition - artillery shells, javelins, himars, etc. But imo this style of battle where each side is just lobbing shells at each other for weeks wouldn’t be our strategy. we rely more on air attack and why we have the largest military air fleet in the world. However, with increasing sam capabilities on both sides we also might be reluctant to send in $75M JSFs over enemy lines. Build more drones!
Manufacture of munitions in peacetime is and always has been a dilemma. You have to make and store them during a period of little to no demand (except for training). And they sit there unused, slowly going bad, often becoming obsolete. Very difficult to look at square miles of idle munitions in, say, 1995 and not declare it to be massive government waste, especially after some of it reaches its shelf life or becomes replaced by something better and needs to be purposefully detonated. And then when war does happen the expenditure rate always massively exceeds projections as well as the rate at which industry can replace losses, short of major government-directed efforts in the DPA. Obviously, you can’t just pay for a major industry to sit idle for most of the time, waiting for war. In peacetime, what it makes is too much, and in war it’s never enough until you retask other elements of industry. And then it becomes way too much the moment the guns stop. And you have far more than you could ever hope to store … most of which goes bad or obsolete before the next war. And on it goes.
I think it's possible that individual units at the front are running low on munitions and weapons. Some army groups may be hoarding ammunition. Some may be reliant on ammo caches that were recently blown up by drones or missiles. I don't think that Russia has enough to give ammo to the hoarders and the rest of the troops, like they did earlier in the war. I think there is anecdotal evidence from intercepted phone calls that Russia is having some problems in this area. And there is evidence that Russia is interested in artillery shells from North Korea, even though they may be unreliable. I would certainly be confident in saying that there is no evidence that Russia is over-supplied with weapons and ammo, or they have enough right now to keep fighting for another five years. The ammo issue has been a problem since Wagner started trying to take Bahkmut several months ago, and they had to resort to kidnapping Russian regular army officers to trade for ammo. That does not seem like a normal army practice to me.
Hey, I’m for it. I hope it’s true. I don’t really care how we get to the point of Russian soldiers throwing down their weapons, fragging their officers, and marching home. I just want to get there.
Ukraine is re-purposing Russian anti-tank mines (more powerful than anti-personnel mines) and using drones to attack Russian units with them. Ukraine appears to be repurposing powerful Russian anti-tank mines and using drones to drop them on Putin's invasion army
You have to give the Ukrainians bonus points for resourcefulness. This stood out from the linked article.: "Russia's prolific use of landmines has left Ukraine as the most mined country in the world, with an area the size of Uruguay or Florida now contaminated with mines, shells, and bombs, The Washington Post reported."
I suspect that denazification entails Russia cleansing all anti-Russian rage from its next-door neighbor.
Amazing that our Russian propagandist cannot see the irony in a country "cleansing rage" from a country that it created by invading it.
The Russian stooges on this site like blame the US and NATO for Russia invading Ukraine. It was always Russia’s ambitions. Russian general admits Ukraine just a "stepping stone" to invade Europe
The Telegraph: Time is running out for Ukraine. After 18 months of war, it is no longer a question of if the Western alliance will falter, but when. Since the start, despite making many of the right noises and supplying some military hardware, France and Germany, in particular, have been reluctant partners. Their leaders have often seemed more concerned with finding an “off-ramp” for Putin than ejecting his forces from Ukraine. As well as dependency on Russian energy, a pacifist instinct among Western European political classes has led to neglect of their armed forces and a corresponding fear of escalation.
Russia is putting Pantsir air defense systems on 30'-tall towers or 20'-tall ramped platforms to increase their effective range and improve their odds of shooting down drones. It should make these systems easier to spot and attack. I wonder if you could spot them by satellite and attack them with missiles, without the missiles being shot down. Maybe distract them with a large number of drones, while sending in a missile for the kill shot. Ukraine is stepping up its drone war against Russia, and now it's Moscow turn to reassemble decades-old air-defense weapons
Well Vivek Ramen-swampy has a plan to get Putin to promise to give up relationship to China and then we will be nice to him and Ukraine will be solved and he will be nice to us. So stop worrying.
This just in: North Korean dictator Kim Jong "James Bond" Un is taking an ultra-high-speed train at top speed to Moscow to discuss sending weapons and ammunition to Russia. The urgency is so severe that the North Korean bullet train has hit its top speed of 37 miles per hour. More news on this high speed excursion at 11:00 (for the next five days). North Korea's munitions factories are considered even more highly developed than its high-speed train system, so watch out! (The train is called a bullet train because failure to reach the destination in one piece will result in the conductor receiving a bullet, which is sometimes considered fatal, if the gunpowder in the bullet does not fail.) Kim Jong Un reportedly hops on his bulletproof, drab green train for meeting with Putin
Ukraine has developed a new high-tech method for getting Russian soldiers to reveal their positions so they can be attacked. They attach a Ukrainian flag to a series of balloons and fly it over occupied territories and wait for large numbers of Russian troops to open fire on it. Drones note where the gunfire is coming from, and direct artillery strikes. Rinse, lather, repeat. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Sounds like all the Russian troops with a triple-digit I.Q. are done fighting this war. Russians opened fire on a Ukrainian flag tied to balloons, revealing their position for a counterattack, Ukraine says
ABC News says that Ukraine's counteroffensive is gaining momentum, which is expected to increase in speed once new weapons systems from the U.S. (Abrams, ATACMS, and F-16's) arrive in Ukraine. Looks like Putin's goose is cooked. He screwed the pooch one time too many. Ukraine's slow-going counteroffensive against Russia building momentum: ANALYSIS
