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Jarf posted:I'm no expert but I assume a part of it is that they need a standing army incase anything else happens. China absolutely could do that right now if Russia didn't have nukes.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:14
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No WW3 fantasies, please. No one will invade a nuclear power, and there's no large standing army left hiding in Russia.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:17
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Denazification going great. https://twitter.com/Jake_Hanrahan/status/1633791315132416000?t=U6eLjvv32r19xXpFMoScsw&s=19
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Mar 9, 2023 15:17
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If I'm not mistaken Russia has between 6-7 million men of military age. Currently they have 500,000 in arms/training, they've lost what, around 200,000? And 1 million have fled to avoid conscription. They still have numbers to draw on but training/equipping them is a big issue. Ukraine I don't know their numbers except 1/4th of their population are refugees elsewhere.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:18
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RuMoD has said that the last night's airstrike was a retaliation for the Bryansk village attack. https://t.me/rian_ru/196438
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Mar 9, 2023 15:25
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ummel posted:Just a couple days early with this comment. There's a massive missile wave tonight, per twitter. It's only half as massive as the waves at the start of the year that were in retaliation for the Crimean bridge explosion. The strikes today are explicitly called by Russian MoD retaliation for 'terrorist acts' in Bryansk oblast'.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:25
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NPR is reporting some of the missiles that got through last night were hypersonics. "NPR posted:
Click through for full article. new rules haven't hit yet post all your long-form paywalled articles 
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Mar 9, 2023 15:31
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Ukraine is reporting that ~80 missiles were launched in the latest attack on its energy infrastructure. Keep in mind that Ukraine is a large country. The density of strikes is quite small for so many potential targets. By way of comparison, in 2017 the US launched 59 cruise missiles against a single airbase in Syria. Some analysts have predicted that Russia is likely maintaining a relatively small reserve of ballistic and cruise missiles in case the conflict widens, but that in Ukraine they are subject to using only what they can produce. Thus, they can save up several weeks' worth of production and then launch attacks to saturate air defenses. These predictions seem to be accurate so far. To new thread-joiners, for the sake of clarity: Russia does not possess existing reserve conventional ground forces in any meaningful numbers. They're not in reserve; they're not manning remote Siberian bases; they simply do. not. exist. There are handful of mechanized battalions in Moldova; Kaliningrad probably has a division or so; there are probably a handful of personnel officers and the equivalent of MPs at some bases; and that's about it. The 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is out of Vladivostok for goodness' sake, and Russian sources report it has had at least a half-dozen rounds of replacements from mobilized personnel. In terms of conventional maneuver forces, if it's not in Ukraine or Kaliningrad, it doesn't exist. The security apparatus is another matter. The Rogsvardia likely retains significant capability, as do the various local security forces.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:42
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Jarf posted:If they commited 100% of their forces to Ukraine China could just be like "oh wait, our border is actually supposed to be 100 miles north of here, oopsie". I don't know what the appropriate thread if any to discuss this is, and I do not think that China is going to invade Russia, but it is my understanding that a lot of Chinese people believe the far eastern chunk of Russia (Vladivostok etc) belongs to China. (IIRC Russia took it from China in the mid 1800's.)
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Mar 9, 2023 16:01
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1858-1860, to be precise.
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Mar 9, 2023 16:04
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As an addendum, the whole "human wave tactics" thing is completely non-functional. Without gear for the theoretical people they could mobilize, they aren't going to be able to leverage any theoretical manpower advantage. They maybe still have enough guns and bullets for now, but if they increase their headcount substantially that won't be true forever, and they have shown a decided weakness for supplying the front. The strikes on caches a few months ago likely made them more cautious about overcommitting resources, but in the hypothetical where they just shoved a million people across the border to try to advance they would get obliterated by the minefields and artillery and then any survivors would have to retreat due to lack of basic supplies (food, bullets, etc). I have no military experience, so this is more me regurgitating what I've consumed here, but it tracks with the beats of the war in terms of the reasons why Russians have had to retreat from their initial over-ambitious goals in and around Kyiv and throughout basically any areas not in the vicinity of holdings from 2014. You can't "Zerg rush" to extend fortifications, and your supply chain isn't "creep", you need actual built-out infrastructure and roads or rail lines to move things, and you can't extend your commitment to roads or rail lines unless you have a good way to control the potential ambush points and prevent artillery fire from hitting your trains/convoys
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Mar 9, 2023 16:35
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Jarf posted:I'm no expert but I assume a part of it is that they need a standing army incase anything else happens. China absolutely could do this tomorrow. 95% of the units based in the Far East are in Ukraine now. There is no effective "strategic reserve", Russia sent *that* to Ukraine months ago. China isn't doing this because the world isn't a bad Tom Clancy novel where every nation is run by a manic mapgame player and China is already getting everything it wants from Russia. (Also, nukes exist.) Lum_ fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 17:36
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Speaking of materiel, the US isn't the Arsenal of Democracy it used to be."Washington Post posted:In race to arm Ukraine, U.S. faces cracks in its manufacturing might
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Mar 9, 2023 17:45
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Moon Slayer posted:Speaking of materiel, the US isn't the Arsenal of Democracy it used to be. I've been wondering about this as well. I'd imagine this issue is a result of the US not moving to a "total war" dynamic like it did in WW2. I don't see any Ford or GM factories building Javelins (yet). Surely production during WW2, without total war industrial mobilization, would have been subpar too.
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Mar 9, 2023 17:51
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Lampsacus posted:One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? Is it just limiting escalation because of fear of this turning into something big? Russia is enormous with military objects peppered all across its territory and since this war is not really existential for the country they cant just leave them with a skeleton crew - and commanders of those bases (and people immediately above the chain of command) are invested in having people there since it means allocated money and manpower (and, you know, not losing their people and assets in a meat grinder). Even with that, you have marines from Baltic and Far East fleet and even personnel of Strategic Missle Forces participating in action as infantry.
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Mar 9, 2023 17:59
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Moon Slayer posted:Speaking of materiel, the US isn't the Arsenal of Democracy it used to be. I am not too sure the example of Stinger and Javelin missiles with artillery shells would be the best example. Stinger missiles are a legacy platform for the US and production was at a trickle since they are so old and demand was limited. Javelin missiles and 155mm shells are different though. The US in a time of major conflict would use these weapons but they were not heavily produced since they are not really part of the US' military doctrine of air dominance (artillery). Or armoured vehicles in the case of infantry anti-tank weapons and MANPADS.
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Mar 9, 2023 18:00
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Not sure if I should ask this in the EE thread or here, but since most of his videos are explicitly about the war, this thread seems more appropriate. What do yall think of Vlad Vexler's stuff? I've been watching him talk about the russian mindset and his analysis of Putin's regime and it seems pretty reasonable to me. I like how he's careful to stay out of subjects where he doesn't consider himself an expert, but I don't actually know how comprehensive his expertise is or what others think of his analysis. He's been recommended by a few goons. He's not quite my style, because I find him a little long-winded and since he's obviously doing this as part of his living, his videos are presented in an algorithm-chasing kind of way that puts me off a little. I can't speak for his expertise, but what I've watched so far seems solid. There haven't been any red flags, unlike, say, Zeihan, whom we've discussed recently. As for Western Putinologists and analysts, there's plenty of informed people who know there stuff. I tend to skip past professional youtubers and go straight to academic recordings these days. Here's the panel discussion I linked a couple of days ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcERDZR9lpo Maybe too long or too dry for most people, and I have a hard time summarizing a 90 minute discussion, but this is a good recap of the military, economic and societal developments in Russia over the last year, with some informed projections about the upcoming months. For Putin's regime and power structures inside Russia, some people who stood out for me that I consider knowledgeable would be Mark Galeotti, and the Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan.
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Mar 9, 2023 18:08
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chupacabraTERROR posted:I've been wondering about this as well. I'd imagine this issue is a result of the US not moving to a "total war" dynamic like it did in WW2. I don't see any Ford or GM factories building Javelins (yet). Surely production during WW2, without total war industrial mobilization, would have been subpar too. Well, part of the dynamic there is that both sides were burning off cold war stocks. The reason Russia had, what, three thousand tanks at the start of this conflict is that the USSR had been building them nonstop since the sixties. Meanwhile we've been making javelins nonstop since, what, the nineties? Of course the initial phases of the conflict are going to involve both sides using up decades of production. Thats why both sides spent all those decades producing.
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Mar 9, 2023 19:06
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I'm really curious how the war is going to look in, say, fall of this year. Are we going to see the same kind of artillery duels or are both sides going to start being really conservative with ammunition? And what does a conflict like this look like then?
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Mar 9, 2023 19:34
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Moon Slayer posted:I'm really curious how the war is going to look in, say, fall of this year. Are we going to see the same kind of artillery duels or are both sides going to start being really conservative with ammunition? And what does a conflict like this look like then? US shell production is ramping up, Ukraine will want to spend more shells, not less, since they got land to take back. As much trouble as Russia's economy is in, ramping up their own shell production is both a massive priority and not that difficult compared to making more missiles or tanks. So I think we'll be seeing a rise in shell use on both sides over the long term. The shape of the battlefield will play more of a role in how the war goes. Last spring Ukraine started taking chunks of their land back, this spring they have a weaker enemy and western tanks to help. So while shell production says there should be more shell use later this year, where this war is going could change dramatically within the next few months.
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Mar 9, 2023 19:45
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Moon Slayer posted:I'm really curious how the war is going to look in, say, fall of this year. Are we going to see the same kind of artillery duels or are both sides going to start being really conservative with ammunition? And what does a conflict like this look like then? Youtube's favorite talking head Zeihan has argued that after a really bloody March-May things will take a decisive turn either way then it's a matter of the winning side pushing through to the end. It's one of his few predictions that can be tested in the short-term. By May Ukraine will have their next group of tanks trained up and Russia will have their max number of mobiks trained and deployed.
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Mar 9, 2023 19:46
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Orthanc6 posted:US shell production is ramping up, Ukraine will want to spend more shells, not less, since they got land to take back. As much trouble as Russia's economy is in, ramping up their own shell production is both a massive priority and not that difficult compared to making more missiles or tanks. So I think we'll be seeing a rise in shell use on both sides over the long term. Having an additional supply of tanks will also translate to a bump in maintenance on the tanks and demand for shells. So I think we'll see who can sustain supply better (almost guaranteed Germany and the US) vs Russia.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:28
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Moon Slayer posted:I'm really curious how the war is going to look in, say, fall of this year. Are we going to see the same kind of artillery duels or are both sides going to start being really conservative with ammunition? And what does a conflict like this look like then? Based on current rates of production and consumption, Ukraine at least will likely need to reduce its artillery consumption in the mid-term (next several months to a year or so out, maybe longer). Russia may need to do the same, but their ammunition situation is more opaque. The quality of Russian ammunition is already far less than that of Ukraine, though. It's older, more prone for inaccuracy, and they don't have as many precision artillery shells to begin with. I do wonder how much of this can be solved by throwing money at it. Like, if NATO countries said "here is 100 billion Euros", could Europe produce 100,000 shells/month in 3 months? Do any goons know enough about industrial scaling to weigh in?
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Mar 9, 2023 20:29
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Ynglaur posted:Based on current rates of production and consumption, Ukraine at least will likely need to reduce its artillery consumption in the mid-term (next several months to a year or so out, maybe longer). Russia may need to do the same, but their ammunition situation is more opaque. The quality of Russian ammunition is already far less than that of Ukraine, though. It's older, more prone for inaccuracy, and they don't have as many precision artillery shells to begin with. Short answer , no , the constraints are usually the capital equipment necessary to mass produce goods that have long lead times to procure. You can’t drop ship in 100,000 employees and build these by hand you need capital equipment for production.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:36
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Orthanc6 posted:US shell production is ramping up, Ukraine will want to spend more shells, not less Except, as the article I posted states, it's not ramping up very fast. They will get to 90,000 a month maybe this year. Then you've got the logistics of getting them across the ocean and across Europe. And we've already heard accounts from Bakhmut about Ukrainian forces needed to conserve ammunition for the first time in the conflict, most likely because they've burned through the stuff stockpiled around the world in the last fifty years and are beginning to have to rely on newly produced munitions.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:39
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Ynglaur posted:I do wonder how much of this can be solved by throwing money at it. Like, if NATO countries said "here is 100 billion Euros", could Europe produce 100,000 shells/month in 3 months? Do any goons know enough about industrial scaling to weigh in? The EU is presently figuring this out. Following on an earlier Estonian proposal to do a EUR 4bn group buy, the talks were had under auspices of the following scheme: 1. EU + Norway puts up EUR 1bn on the table simply for 155mm shells produced by the EU + Norwegian manufacturers (at least 16 different organisations) 2. EU commission directly negotiates on behalf of everyone with these companies to skip red tape (goal: contract in a few weeks) 3. Participating countries start offloading strategic artillery shell stocks to Ukraine 4. Participating manufacturers sell the reserved capacity to these countries, which pay 10-60% of price of the shells out of their pocket (increasing over time), with the rest of the money being covered by the common pot The most recent update we have is that EU defence ministers have all backed this plan yesterday in an informal meeting. Which should mean that we simply twiddle our thumbs until March 23-24 European Council meeting, where it will get signed into reality by the heads of state. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-08/eu-urges-faster-joint-purchases-of-artillery-shells-for-ukraine 1 billion is supposed to be a test run, which if works out will then see countries “topping up” the artillery fund. I believe the current final ask by Ukraine of the EU is 250k shells shipped per month, though I'm not sure if we'll get there soon if the whole U.S. production is 30k/month.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:44
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The EU is going to need to get off their butts and create a local arms industry. It might not be Trump, but at some point America is going to have a President or Congress who refuses to foot the bill for military hardware. The recent Estonian proposal is a good start, but they should have done this 10 years ago when they ran out of bombs to hit Libya with in the first week.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:41
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Pook Good Mook posted:The EU is going to need to get off their butts and create a local arms industry. It might not be Trump, but at some point America is going to have a President or Congress who refuses to foot the bill for military hardware. The recent Estonian proposal is a good start, but they should have done this 10 years ago when they ran out of bombs to hit Libya with in the first week. Or at least like a year ago when it became clear that putin won't just get bored. Seems like we wasted a lot of time by not immediately starting to ramp up production.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:43
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Perun had a video on this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deK98IeTjfY He made the point that there are more artillery shell producers than just the US and Europe as well (for example, Australia is ramping up production).
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Mar 9, 2023 21:44
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Tomn posted:I'm not sure this is quite as simple as that. Yes, Ukraine currently has an advantage in mobilized manpower, but it sounds like they've mobilized just about everything they COULD mobilize. quote:Meanwhile Russia's half-assed mobilization was a joke in many ways, but they still have reserves of manpower they could draw on if they decided to mobilize further. This matters because just plain having more divisions in the field would be an advantage when they could threaten Ukraine anywhere along the line and force them to spread themselves thin while being able to more easily contain any Ukrainian breakthrough. The problem isn't that you'll literally kill off every fighting man of the enemy, the problem is that being able to field greater numbers creates major headaches for the enemy. How then isn't Russia's greater population not relevant in the long-term when the threat of a full Russian mobilization is constantly hanging over the heads of the Ukrainians? So far Ukraine has mobilized less than a million and Russia maybe half a million. Toal population has been meaningless and will continue to be meaningless as regards to putting manpower on the front lines. quote:I'm also not sure WW2 is really the best backing for your argument - Germany famously had issues with manpower severely degrading their combat capability as well as their home front as nobody became available to work or fight. Yes, it's possible to drag out an inevitable defeat if you're willing to burn an entire generation but that's a far cry from "Achieving anything that might be termed a victory," and it's not exactly what I'd call an ideal model for Ukraine to follow. Ukraine is still an order of magnitude away from those numbers (Ukraine had a pre-war population of 44 million, but women are also mobilized into the armed forces). DTurtle fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 22:08
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DTurtle posted:I have no idea where you get that from. According to many news reports, Ukraine is still mostly able to fulfill their recruitment needs through volunteers. It is easy to find reports of people complaining that they need to wait months in order to be able to join. There have been more and more reports, that that is apparently changing, in that they are now starting to also conscript people who haven‘t volunteered. I haven‘t seen anything with regards to Ukraine being unable to fill their recruitment needs. There's been some videos of Ukraine forcibly recruiting people. I don't think they've generally been credible, but there's been enough "examples" out there and signal boosted for people to start asking questions. Example: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/ukraine-begins-jailing-draft-dodgers:-mp
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Mar 9, 2023 22:18
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WarpedLichen posted:There's been some videos of Ukraine forcibly recruiting people. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 9, 2023 22:29
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When you are mobilising hundreds of thousands of people there's always going to be a proportion who evade. They're running a draft but they're also picking and choosing from the draft cohorts who they actually bring into the military. There's no sign at all that that Ukraine has manpower issues or that draft evasion is a serious problem. All polling still suggests that the war is more popular than Jesus in Ukraine which wouldn't be true if people where terrified of the draft.
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Mar 9, 2023 22:43
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WarpedLichen posted:There's been some videos of Ukraine forcibly recruiting people. Despite this, they’ve apparently been mostly meeting their recruitment needs through volunteers. Russia has probably mobilized more people against their will than Ukraine. Ukraine is nowhere near mobilizing everything they could mobilize - which is what Tomn posted, and what I am arguing against.
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Mar 9, 2023 22:43
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WarpedLichen posted:There's been some videos of Ukraine forcibly recruiting people. Hadn't heard of Al Mayadeen before, so I looked them up and Wikipedia article on Al Mayadeen posted:In September 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Al Mayadeen spoke to Russian sources about setbacks in eastern Ukraine.[38] It has referred to the Government of Ukraine as a "Nazi regime" and promoted the discredited Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory.[39]
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Mar 9, 2023 22:43
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oh yeah the pro-assad news organization that george galloway had a show on lol From the bottom of the linked page  
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Mar 9, 2023 23:03
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Jarf posted:I'm no expert but I assume a part of it is that they need a standing army incase anything else happens. Think it's important to keep in mind that China likes having Russia around as an added pain in the rear end to the West a lot more than it likes some territory. Imo it's gonna try to keep Russia afloat while not sticking its neck out too far rather than stab Russia in the back or anything.
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Mar 9, 2023 23:14
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Herstory Begins Now posted:oh yeah the pro-assad news organization that george galloway had a show on lol They're even buying in to the bio lab bullshit.
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Mar 9, 2023 23:16
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Ynglaur posted:
Speaking from my experience with consumer manufacturing, this would not be possible. Building/retrofitting facilities, expanding production lines, getting equipment, procurement of raw materials and components, trial runs, QA/QC process work, training... None of these are quick even if you're just expanding existing production lines, and some of these have to be done in sequence
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Mar 9, 2023 23:34
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Alchenar posted:There's no sign at all that that Ukraine has manpower issues or that draft evasion is a serious problem. There have been plenty of signs of that if you follow their local news. To grab something more recent, here's February 17 radio interview excerpt with the spokesperson of AFU's operational command “South”. She laments “faltering enthusiasm” of people who could've been subjected to mobilization, in that they show disregard for the expectation to keep up to date their address etcetera for the mobilization needs, exploiting loopholes in law. https://censor.net/ru/news/3400438/mobilizatsionnyyi_resurs_trebuetsya_dlya_rotatsii_entuziazm_u_lyudeyi_padaet_ok_pvden In general, there's been a trickle of news both about people dodging attempts to mobilize them, going AWOL and so on – a bit more actively in January and February.
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Mar 10, 2023 00:02
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