Sam Lowry said:

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KaiBear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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sombear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Robert Wilson said:

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Very interesting. Thanks.

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Also completely unsupported by any evidence except claims by the Ukrainians. Neither side releases official numbers for obvious reasons. Some just choose to take Ukrainian propaganda at face value.

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I agree the numbers are mostly unknowable. And further, the numbers matter less for Russia.

That said, even Russian millbloggers regularly report massive Russian casualties, often well over 1000/day. Whiterock is right about typical numbers. And we do know enough about Russia's tactics to have a pretty good idea that Russia is losing more. Whether that is 2-1, 3-1 or more I have no idea.

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On the contrary, what we know about Russian tactics suggests the opposite. Whiterock often says that they're fighting a war of attrition, but he doesn't understand the implications of that. They've never engaged in the sort of costly operations that the Ukrainians continue to do.

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What do such details really matter ?

Thousands of people, both Russian and Ukrainians are being killed each month due to the manipulations of elites who never getting 1000 miles of the carnage.

If such elites were faced with the prospect of their sons fighting on the front lines for the next 12 months this war would be over within 72 hours.

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It matters because the more people believe the Biden/Whiterock propaganda, the more Russians and Ukrainians will get killed next month, and the next, and the next.

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trey3216 said:

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Realitybites said:

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Link

"The American Empire is no longer led by the sons of the revolution, but by a collection of foreign peoples from all over the world, some European and many not, and very few of those leaders are of the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the dominant founding peoples of the United States. They have been overcome by the world they sought to overcome.

The United States will fail because it is seeking to achieve something that it just does not have the ability to achieve: the conforming of the whole world to its image. The United States may have gotten into this situation for different reasons than Rome, Greece, or other empires, but the result will be the same, total and utter collapse. The irony is that the more an empire seeks to conform the world to its image, the more the world ends up conforming that empire to the various images of the people that overcome that empire. As this process of demographic change increases, the more the empire is corrupted from the inside and the less capable it becomes of achieving its overarching goals.
You would think nations would have learnt this lesson by now. Some may have, but the United States is learning this lesson the hard way again in our time, and as a result, the world is in for some years of serious tumults."

Government-americans, fascists, communists, and others have fever dreams about breaking apart Russia and turning the Black Sea into another Great Lake. MAGA-Americans have an understanding, if only subconscious, of the above quote. Whenever you hear someone speak of us as an indispensable nation, you can rest assured that it is someone with no grasp of history, economics, or human nature. In all of human history, no nation has proven itself to be indispensable, but rather only a temporary construct that lasts only as long as it adheres to the laws of nature and nature's God.

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Yep. We're going to fail because not every American is a WASP. Great post.

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Quote:

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On the Costa del Sol, as elsewhere, there is nothing intentionally sinister about this. It's an organic effect of two peoples coexisting in the same space. Historically, though, changes of people in a place have tended to prompt resistance from the people already in that place. For Camus, the essence of "replacism" is that it anaesthetises such pushback, by denying that any aggregate patterns can be ascribed to a "people" - or insisting that, if such things exist, they are at best unimportant or indefinable.
For replacism, then, "peoples" are not a thing. There are only human individuals, interchangeable regardless of origin, history, heritage, upbringing, ethnicity, language, and so on. And, Camus argues, if you cling stubbornly to the belief that peoples are a thing - eppur si muove - you will face the rhetorical bludgeon he describes as "the second career of Adolf Hitler", in which any residual acknowledgement of any shared characteristics of any people will be smeared as tantamount to Nazism.
If this is true, though, cultures can have no content. If, as Camus puts it, "a veiled woman with a shaky command of our language, entirely ignorant of our culture" can say to "a native Frenchman with a passionate interest in Roman churches, the finer points of vocabulary and syntax, Montaigne, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Burgundy Wine, and Proust and whose family has for several generations lived in the same little valley of the Vivrais […] "I am just as French as you are", it follows that "being French is nothing".

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Quote:

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In a propositional nation, one of whose governing assumptions has long been that people should be treated solely as individuals, Wang observes that "there is generally no power that can break through faith in individualism and the barriers [surrounding] the private sphere. [But] science and technology have this power."
To recap, then: what Camus calls 'replacism' has flattened and obliterated European cultures, in the name of a "hyperdemocratic" egalitarianism whose moral force derives from the longing to obliterate friend/enemy distinctions. This means no rule is possible save by "the spirit of technicity": the managerial rule of technology, that promises ultimate relief from the political. And, as Camus observes in The Great Deculturation, this clears all before it, making room only for the free operations of money:
Chateaubriand believed there were secret affinities between equality and tyranny. There are others between hyperdemocracy […] and the reign of money, submission to the powers of money, and avaricious docility before the laws of the market.
Taking these implications together, we can conclude that Camus is right to speak of a "genocide by substitution" powered by colonial rule. But attributing this African or Islamic migrants is a mistake. Mass migration from the Global South into Europe is an effect of replacism, not its cause. The real power driving genocide by substitution throughout Europe is the American empire.
This is, for me, an uncomfortable conclusion. I have a great many friends and professional connections in the United States. But we can perhaps be more specific: the driving force of replacism is not individual Americans or even the legacy American people: that is, the historic, cumulative American culture and folkways. America herself contains many thinkers critical of these forces, and many Americans would likely be appalled by the thought that their nation's governing ideology is centrally implicated in the destruction of everything that makes the Old World enticing, distinctive, and awe-inspiring to the New. But replacism drives that aspect of American imperial hegemony that has become identified with the "spirit of technicity", with post-political managerialism, and with the aspiration to radical, universal neutralisation and depoliticisation expressed by these forces. Replacism is also now contested in America itself, not least in disputes over how to manage the southern border.

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Redbrickbear said:

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trey3216 said:

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Realitybites said:

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Link

"The American Empire is no longer led by the sons of the revolution, but by a collection of foreign peoples from all over the world, some European and many not, and very few of those leaders are of the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the dominant founding peoples of the United States. They have been overcome by the world they sought to overcome.

The United States will fail because it is seeking to achieve something that it just does not have the ability to achieve: the conforming of the whole world to its image. The United States may have gotten into this situation for different reasons than Rome, Greece, or other empires, but the result will be the same, total and utter collapse. The irony is that the more an empire seeks to conform the world to its image, the more the world ends up conforming that empire to the various images of the people that overcome that empire. As this process of demographic change increases, the more the empire is corrupted from the inside and the less capable it becomes of achieving its overarching goals.
You would think nations would have learnt this lesson by now. Some may have, but the United States is learning this lesson the hard way again in our time, and as a result, the world is in for some years of serious tumults."

Government-americans, fascists, communists, and others have fever dreams about breaking apart Russia and turning the Black Sea into another Great Lake. MAGA-Americans have an understanding, if only subconscious, of the above quote. Whenever you hear someone speak of us as an indispensable nation, you can rest assured that it is someone with no grasp of history, economics, or human nature. In all of human history, no nation has proven itself to be indispensable, but rather only a temporary construct that lasts only as long as it adheres to the laws of nature and nature's God.

---

Yep. We're going to fail because not every American is a WASP. Great post.

---

I mean we might or we might not....history is a long process and we are just at the beginning of the "American Empire"

Can you replace the native population of the nation and have the State not miss a beat? Maybe

We will soon find out if all people groups on earth are merely interchangeable cogs.

The EU is going through the same process (mass importing in MENA and SSA immigrants)


[It is fashionable now to refer to the West as the "Global American Empire," or GAE. An empire requires an emperor, which the United States doesn't have. Yet since the end of the Second World War, America has behaved much like an empire, though she has been a liberal democracy at home. If you, my fellow American, doubt that America is an empire, come live in Europe for a while, standing outside our country and beholding its material and cultural might.

Ironically, just as that power is waning on the global stage, so too are the domestic conditions that made it possible for the US to sustain itself as a liberal democracy. In other words, just as America's empire is crumbling, so too is its Republic. As we know from history, it was the demise of the Roman Republic that turned Rome into an Empire. America found itself to be a de facto empire after World War II, mostly because there was nobody else but the Soviets. Just as we Americans have the habit of lying to ourselves about the reality of social class in our country, we also have the habit of lying to ourselves about empire.
We have long told ourselves that all we want is for democracy to spread around the world and most of us are not being cynical when we say that. But foreigners can see through the pretense. True, the American Empire has been in most respects a beneficial one (versus, say, the Soviet empire), but come on, it's an empire.

I commend to you this powerful essay by Mary Harrington, the first of a three-part examination of Renaud Camus's thought. She begins by explaining what he means by "the Great Replacement". As she rightly observes, a population can be replaced by non-violent means. Harrington says that if you go to Spain's Costa del Sol, which is very popular with British tourists, you will find that the built environment and the norms there have been Anglicized to accommodate the massive numbers of Brits who visit there. Here's Harrington:

Quote:

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On the Costa del Sol, as elsewhere, there is nothing intentionally sinister about this. It's an organic effect of two peoples coexisting in the same space. Historically, though, changes of people in a place have tended to prompt resistance from the people already in that place. For Camus, the essence of "replacism" is that it anaesthetises such pushback, by denying that any aggregate patterns can be ascribed to a "people" - or insisting that, if such things exist, they are at best unimportant or indefinable.
For replacism, then, "peoples" are not a thing. There are only human individuals, interchangeable regardless of origin, history, heritage, upbringing, ethnicity, language, and so on. And, Camus argues, if you cling stubbornly to the belief that peoples are a thing - eppur si muove - you will face the rhetorical bludgeon he describes as "the second career of Adolf Hitler", in which any residual acknowledgement of any shared characteristics of any people will be smeared as tantamount to Nazism.
If this is true, though, cultures can have no content. If, as Camus puts it, "a veiled woman with a shaky command of our language, entirely ignorant of our culture" can say to "a native Frenchman with a passionate interest in Roman churches, the finer points of vocabulary and syntax, Montaigne, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Burgundy Wine, and Proust and whose family has for several generations lived in the same little valley of the Vivrais […] "I am just as French as you are", it follows that "being French is nothing".

---

Now, Harrington goes on to explain that the Great Replacement is required by the Global American Empire. She draws in part on the analysis of the leading Chinese intellectual Wang Huning, and his book America Against Itself (1993):

Quote:

---

In a propositional nation, one of whose governing assumptions has long been that people should be treated solely as individuals, Wang observes that "there is generally no power that can break through faith in individualism and the barriers [surrounding] the private sphere. [But] science and technology have this power."
To recap, then: what Camus calls 'replacism' has flattened and obliterated European cultures, in the name of a "hyperdemocratic" egalitarianism whose moral force derives from the longing to obliterate friend/enemy distinctions. This means no rule is possible save by "the spirit of technicity": the managerial rule of technology, that promises ultimate relief from the political. And, as Camus observes in The Great Deculturation, this clears all before it, making room only for the free operations of money:
Chateaubriand believed there were secret affinities between equality and tyranny. There are others between hyperdemocracy […] and the reign of money, submission to the powers of money, and avaricious docility before the laws of the market.
Taking these implications together, we can conclude that Camus is right to speak of a "genocide by substitution" powered by colonial rule. But attributing this African or Islamic migrants is a mistake. Mass migration from the Global South into Europe is an effect of replacism, not its cause. The real power driving genocide by substitution throughout Europe is the American empire.
This is, for me, an uncomfortable conclusion. I have a great many friends and professional connections in the United States. But we can perhaps be more specific: the driving force of replacism is not individual Americans or even the legacy American people: that is, the historic, cumulative American culture and folkways. America herself contains many thinkers critical of these forces, and many Americans would likely be appalled by the thought that their nation's governing ideology is centrally implicated in the destruction of everything that makes the Old World enticing, distinctive, and awe-inspiring to the New. But replacism drives that aspect of American imperial hegemony that has become identified with the "spirit of technicity", with post-political managerialism, and with the aspiration to radical, universal neutralisation and depoliticisation expressed by these forces. Replacism is also now contested in America itself, not least in disputes over how to manage the southern border.

---

Here in Europe, the desire to free the continent from the passions that brought on two catastrophic wars in the 20th century led people to surrender sovereignty to Brussels, which epitomizes the Spirit of Technicity. The rage the Brusselistas feel in the face of Viktor Orban's refusal to allow Hungary to be assimilated is genuine. Orban's insistence of Hungarian sovereignty and Hungarian distinctiveness is a flat refutation of the Spirit of Technicity. I don't think Americans can fully appreciate how powerful a force Brussels (a synecdoche for the Spirit of Technicity, including post-political managerialism) is in Europe. We tend to think of it as merely reproducing American federalism in Europe. But that's not true. Everywhere Brussels dominates, you see the spirits of the local cultures under siege]

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whiterock said:

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Max Boot article on status of war, with some commentary on various casualty estimates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/15/ukraine-russia-war-military-aid/

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whiterock said:

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you've got to escape genetic fallacy.

Here's an Economist article on the stark situation with Russian war production. If you read between the lines, it's clear that their military spending is at 8% of GDP but the majority of it is devoted to conversion and fusion of old equipment. Once their stocks are gone, likely in 24 months or less, their gross output in equipment will plummet.

Also embedded but poorly explained in the article is perhaps the most important factor of all - arty tubes. Their production of arty rounds is impressive. But their inability to produce new tubes as fast as they wear out means the accuracy of most of their barrages is quite low. So that 5:1 superiority in fires really overstates the effectiveness. So what if you're firing 5x your opponent, if you aren't hitting anything...... Remember, arty is accounting for approx 70% of casualties in this war. As accuracy of fires degrades, the ability to inflict casualty fades as well. Accuracy is quite important for the attacker = he's got to drop fires right over the trenches to inflict casualties. a few yards short or long.....limited effect. But pinpoint accuracy is less important for the defender, who is shooting at highly vulnerable troops advancing out in the open. (again, illustrating the dynamics for why Ukrainian casualties are so much lower than Russian casualties.)

Aleksandr Golts, ⁦@SCEEUS_UI⁩ colleague in ⁦@TheEconomist⁩ Russia’s vast stocks of Soviet-era weaponry are running out https://t.co/HuEstxqxid from @TheEconomist

— Fredrik Löjdquist (@FLojdquist) July 17, 2024

In case article is paywalled:

---------------------------------------------

Russia's vast stocks of Soviet-era weaponry are running out
It may have to scale back its offensive in Ukraine

Jul 16th 2024

For a long time, it seemed that a war of attrition between Ukraine and a Russia with five times its population could only end one way. But the much-vaunted Russian offensive against Kharkiv in the north that started in May is fizzling out. Its advances elsewhere along the line, especially in the Donbas region, have been both strategically trivial and achieved only at huge cost. The question now is less whether Ukraine can stay in the fight and more how long can Russia maintain its current tempo of operations.

The key issue is not manpower. Russia seems able to go on finding another 25,000 or so soldiers each month to maintain numbers at the front of around 470,000, although it is paying more for them. Production of missiles to strike Ukrainian infrastructure is also surging. But for all the talk about Russia having become a war economy, with some 8% of its gdp devoted to military spending, it is able to replace its staggering losses of tanks, armoured infantry vehicles and artillery only by drawing out of storage and refurbishing stocks built up in the Soviet era. Huge though these stocks are, they are not infinite.

According to most intelligence estimates, after the first two years of the war Russia had lost about 3,000 tanks and 5,000 other armoured vehicles. Oryx, a Dutch open-source intelligence site, puts the number of Russian tank losses for which it has either photo or videographic evidence currently at 3,235, but suggests the actual number is "significantly higher".

Aleksandr Golts, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, says that Vladimir Putin has the old Politburo to thank for the huge stockpiles of weapons that were built up during the cold war. He says that Soviet leaders knew that Western military kit was much more advanced than their own, so they opted for mass, churning out thousands of armoured vehicles in peacetime in case of war. Before its demise, says Mr Golts, the Soviet Union had as many armoured vehicles as the rest of the world put together.

When the then defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, boasted in December 2023 that 1,530 tanks had been delivered in the course of the year, he omitted to say that nearly 85% of them, according to an assessment by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think-tank, were not new tanks but old ones (mainly t-72s, also t-62s and even some t-55s dating from just after the second world war) that had been taken out of storage and given a wash and brush-up.

Since the invasion, about 175 reasonably modern t-90m tanks have been sent to the front line. The iiss estimates that annual production this year could be approaching 90. However, Michael Gjerstad, an analyst with the iiss, argues that most of the t-90ms are actually upgrades of older t-90as. As those numbers dwindle, production of newly built t-90ms this year might be no more than 28. Pavel Luzin, an expert on Russian military capacity at the Washington-based Centre for European Policy Analysis, reckons that Russia can build only 30 brand-new tanks a year. When the Ukrainians captured a supposedly new t-90m last year, they found that its gun was produced in 1992.

Mr Luzin reckons that Russia's ability to build new tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, or even to refurbish old ones, is hampered by the difficulty of getting components. Stores of components for tank production that before the war were intended for use in 2025 have already been raided, while crucial equipment, such as fuel-heaters for diesel engines, high-voltage electrical systems and infrared thermal imaging to identify targets, were all previously imported from Europe and their sale is now blocked by sanctions. The lack of high-quality ball bearings is also a constraint. Chinese alternatives are sometimes available, but are said not to meet former quality standards.

Furthermore, the old Soviet armaments supply chain no longer exists. Ukraine, Georgia and East Germany were all important centres of weapons and components manufacture. Ironically, Kharkiv was the main producer of turrets for t-72 tanks. The number of workers in the military-industrial complex has also fallen dramatically, says Mr Luzin, from about 10m to 2m, without any offsetting step-change in automation.

Another major concern is artillery-barrel production. For now, with the help of North Korea, Russia appears to have enough shells, probably about 3m this yearsufficient to outgun the Ukrainians until recently by at least 5:1 and sometimes by much more. But the downside of such high rates of fire has been the wear and tear on barrels. In some highly contested areas, the barrels of howitzers need replacing after only a few months.
Yet, says Mr Luzin, there are only two factories that have the sophisticated Austrian-made rotary forging machines (the last one was imported in 2017) needed to make the barrels. They can each produce only around 100 barrels a year, compared with the thousands needed. Russia has never made its own forging machines; they imported them from America in the 1930s and looted them from Germany after the war.

The solution has been to cannibalise the barrels from old towed artillery and fit them to self-propelled howitzers. Richard Vereker, an open-source analyst, thinks that by the start of this year about 4,800 barrels had been swapped out. How long the Russians can carry on doing this depends on the condition of the 7,000 or so that may be left. Mr Gjerstad says that with multi-launch rocket systems, such as the tos-1a, eking out barrel life has already meant much shorter bursts of fire.

But the biggest emerging problem is with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, which are still crucial to any offensive ground operations at scale. Although the iiss estimated that in February of this year Russia may have had about 3,200 tanks in storage to draw on, Mr Gjerstad says up to 70% of them "have not moved an inch since the beginning of the war". A large proportion of the t-72s have been stored uncovered since the early 1990s and are probably in very poor condition. Both Mr Golts and Mr Luzin reckon that at current rates of attrition, Russian tank and infantry vehicle refurbishment from storage will have reached a "critical point of exhaustion" by the second half of next year.

Unless something changes, before the end of this year Russian forces may have to adjust their posture to one that is much more defensive, says Mr Gjerstad. It could even become apparent before the end of summer. Expect Mr Putin's interest in agreeing a temporary ceasefire to increase.

---

FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

---

you've got to escape genetic fallacy.

Here's an Economist article on the stark situation with Russian war production. If you read between the lines, it's clear that their military spending is at 8% of GDP but the majority of it is devoted to conversion and fusion of old equipment. Once their stocks are gone, likely in 24 months or less, their gross output in equipment will plummet.

Also embedded but poorly explained in the article is perhaps the most important factor of all - arty tubes. Their production of arty rounds is impressive. But their inability to produce new tubes as fast as they wear out means the accuracy of most of their barrages is quite low. So that 5:1 superiority in fires really overstates the effectiveness. So what if you're firing 5x your opponent, if you aren't hitting anything...... Remember, arty is accounting for approx 70% of casualties in this war. As accuracy of fires degrades, the ability to inflict casualty fades as well. Accuracy is quite important for the attacker = he's got to drop fires right over the trenches to inflict casualties. a few yards short or long.....limited effect. But pinpoint accuracy is less important for the defender, who is shooting at highly vulnerable troops advancing out in the open. (again, illustrating the dynamics for why Ukrainian casualties are so much lower than Russian casualties.)

Aleksandr Golts, ⁦@SCEEUS_UI⁩ colleague in ⁦@TheEconomist⁩ Russia’s vast stocks of Soviet-era weaponry are running out https://t.co/HuEstxqxid from @TheEconomist

— Fredrik Löjdquist (@FLojdquist) July 17, 2024

In case article is paywalled:

---------------------------------------------

Russia's vast stocks of Soviet-era weaponry are running out
It may have to scale back its offensive in Ukraine

Jul 16th 2024

For a long time, it seemed that a war of attrition between Ukraine and a Russia with five times its population could only end one way. But the much-vaunted Russian offensive against Kharkiv in the north that started in May is fizzling out. Its advances elsewhere along the line, especially in the Donbas region, have been both strategically trivial and achieved only at huge cost. The question now is less whether Ukraine can stay in the fight and more how long can Russia maintain its current tempo of operations.

The key issue is not manpower. Russia seems able to go on finding another 25,000 or so soldiers each month to maintain numbers at the front of around 470,000, although it is paying more for them. Production of missiles to strike Ukrainian infrastructure is also surging. But for all the talk about Russia having become a war economy, with some 8% of its gdp devoted to military spending, it is able to replace its staggering losses of tanks, armoured infantry vehicles and artillery only by drawing out of storage and refurbishing stocks built up in the Soviet era. Huge though these stocks are, they are not infinite.

According to most intelligence estimates, after the first two years of the war Russia had lost about 3,000 tanks and 5,000 other armoured vehicles. Oryx, a Dutch open-source intelligence site, puts the number of Russian tank losses for which it has either photo or videographic evidence currently at 3,235, but suggests the actual number is "significantly higher".

Aleksandr Golts, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, says that Vladimir Putin has the old Politburo to thank for the huge stockpiles of weapons that were built up during the cold war. He says that Soviet leaders knew that Western military kit was much more advanced than their own, so they opted for mass, churning out thousands of armoured vehicles in peacetime in case of war. Before its demise, says Mr Golts, the Soviet Union had as many armoured vehicles as the rest of the world put together.

When the then defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, boasted in December 2023 that 1,530 tanks had been delivered in the course of the year, he omitted to say that nearly 85% of them, according to an assessment by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think-tank, were not new tanks but old ones (mainly t-72s, also t-62s and even some t-55s dating from just after the second world war) that had been taken out of storage and given a wash and brush-up.

Since the invasion, about 175 reasonably modern t-90m tanks have been sent to the front line. The iiss estimates that annual production this year could be approaching 90. However, Michael Gjerstad, an analyst with the iiss, argues that most of the t-90ms are actually upgrades of older t-90as. As those numbers dwindle, production of newly built t-90ms this year might be no more than 28. Pavel Luzin, an expert on Russian military capacity at the Washington-based Centre for European Policy Analysis, reckons that Russia can build only 30 brand-new tanks a year. When the Ukrainians captured a supposedly new t-90m last year, they found that its gun was produced in 1992.

Mr Luzin reckons that Russia's ability to build new tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, or even to refurbish old ones, is hampered by the difficulty of getting components. Stores of components for tank production that before the war were intended for use in 2025 have already been raided, while crucial equipment, such as fuel-heaters for diesel engines, high-voltage electrical systems and infrared thermal imaging to identify targets, were all previously imported from Europe and their sale is now blocked by sanctions. The lack of high-quality ball bearings is also a constraint. Chinese alternatives are sometimes available, but are said not to meet former quality standards.

Furthermore, the old Soviet armaments supply chain no longer exists. Ukraine, Georgia and East Germany were all important centres of weapons and components manufacture. Ironically, Kharkiv was the main producer of turrets for t-72 tanks. The number of workers in the military-industrial complex has also fallen dramatically, says Mr Luzin, from about 10m to 2m, without any offsetting step-change in automation.

Another major concern is artillery-barrel production. For now, with the help of North Korea, Russia appears to have enough shells, probably about 3m this yearsufficient to outgun the Ukrainians until recently by at least 5:1 and sometimes by much more. But the downside of such high rates of fire has been the wear and tear on barrels. In some highly contested areas, the barrels of howitzers need replacing after only a few months.
Yet, says Mr Luzin, there are only two factories that have the sophisticated Austrian-made rotary forging machines (the last one was imported in 2017) needed to make the barrels. They can each produce only around 100 barrels a year, compared with the thousands needed. Russia has never made its own forging machines; they imported them from America in the 1930s and looted them from Germany after the war.

The solution has been to cannibalise the barrels from old towed artillery and fit them to self-propelled howitzers. Richard Vereker, an open-source analyst, thinks that by the start of this year about 4,800 barrels had been swapped out. How long the Russians can carry on doing this depends on the condition of the 7,000 or so that may be left. Mr Gjerstad says that with multi-launch rocket systems, such as the tos-1a, eking out barrel life has already meant much shorter bursts of fire.

But the biggest emerging problem is with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, which are still crucial to any offensive ground operations at scale. Although the iiss estimated that in February of this year Russia may have had about 3,200 tanks in storage to draw on, Mr Gjerstad says up to 70% of them "have not moved an inch since the beginning of the war". A large proportion of the t-72s have been stored uncovered since the early 1990s and are probably in very poor condition. Both Mr Golts and Mr Luzin reckon that at current rates of attrition, Russian tank and infantry vehicle refurbishment from storage will have reached a "critical point of exhaustion" by the second half of next year.

Unless something changes, before the end of this year Russian forces may have to adjust their posture to one that is much more defensive, says Mr Gjerstad. It could even become apparent before the end of summer. Expect Mr Putin's interest in agreeing a temporary ceasefire to increase.

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T-72s will not fare well on the modern battlefield.

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Russian train loaded with T-54 tanks, Uzunovo station, Moscow Region.https://t.co/mouGhPa0Iv pic.twitter.com/LhSCpkL7XL

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 16, 2024

whiterock said:

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Hard for the critics to appreciate the significance of what we are watching.....many decades of Russian stockpiles being destroyed. Before the war, the Russian Army had more armored vehicles than the rest of the world combined. They could count on grinding their way thru almost anyone, even an enemy with significantly more technologically capable equipment. Or so they thought...... Going forward, they are going to have to build armies around the numbers of vehicles they can produce. The stockpiles they've counted on to wear down opponents are simply not going to be there. That will likely force changes in doctrine and in foreign policy.

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Redbrickbear said:

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Looks like Vance might not be such a fan of proxy war and regime change operations.....


[Here is my take on J.D. Vance's convention speech, published in The European Conservative. Excerpt:

Quote:

---

J.D. Vance's speech last night at the Republican National Convention was a landmark in American politics. It sealed the realignment of American politics. When Vance said the GOP henceforth would be not on the side of Wall Street, but of the "working man," in one sense, he effectively announced the end of Reaganism.

But that's not quite true. In his era, forty years ago, Reagan spoke for the common man, and won the common man's allegiance. Reagan stood for old-fashioned American patriotism, and for advocating common sense values against an out-of-touch elite in both the Democratic Party and among country-club Republicans. Reagan was the right man for his time.

Times have changed. American needed Reagan's free market entrepreneurialism and his robust, confrontational foreign policy to break the spell of statist sclerosis and national paralysis. The problems America faced in 1980 are very different from the problems it faces today. As Vance recalled, the free-trade fundamentalism ended up creating globalism, and with it the collapse of America's industrial might. It also allowed Wall Street to run wildabetted, please note, by the Clinton Democratswreaking havoc on the stability of working-class lives.

The Democrats had no real response to this. Nor did the standard-issue Republicans. The Democrats committed themselves to a left-wing cultural revolution, while doing relatively little to address the material conditions of American life. The Republicans fell back on Zombie Reaganism, as if the solutions of 1980 were evergreen truths. And both parties, especially the GOP, became devotees of permanent war, both hard and soft. The Republicans acted under the guise of 'spreading democracy' as a cover for naked U.S. hegemony; the Democrats did too, adding cultural leftism to the mix (e.g., pressuring other countries to accept LGBT dogmas).

That's over now. Donald Trump knocked holes in the wall of complacency and denial in 2016, and stands to clear even more ground if he is re-elected. And given his brilliant choice of Vance, Trump has not only chosen the most articulate and credible possible advocate of his sensibilities, but laid the groundwork for the permanent restructuring not only of American conservatism, but of America itself. Because Trump chose J.D. Vance, Trumpism will long outlast its founder. Trump resisted the pleas of media mogul Rupert Murdoch to choose someone tamer and more controllable as his running mate, and in so doing, passed the torch to a fighting tribune of the new MAGA generation.

Last night in Milwaukee, Vance emerged as the Ronald Reagan of the Millennials. He came across as patriotic and optimistic, but not sentimental. The anecdotes he shared about his rough childhood were not only factually true, but told mythical truths about what America is, and what she might be again.

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whiterock said:

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Doc Holliday said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Looks like Vance might not be such a fan of proxy war and regime change operations.....


[Here is my take on J.D. Vance's convention speech, published in The European Conservative. Excerpt:

Quote:

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J.D. Vance's speech last night at the Republican National Convention was a landmark in American politics. It sealed the realignment of American politics. When Vance said the GOP henceforth would be not on the side of Wall Street, but of the "working man," in one sense, he effectively announced the end of Reaganism.

But that's not quite true. In his era, forty years ago, Reagan spoke for the common man, and won the common man's allegiance. Reagan stood for old-fashioned American patriotism, and for advocating common sense values against an out-of-touch elite in both the Democratic Party and among country-club Republicans. Reagan was the right man for his time.

Times have changed. American needed Reagan's free market entrepreneurialism and his robust, confrontational foreign policy to break the spell of statist sclerosis and national paralysis. The problems America faced in 1980 are very different from the problems it faces today. As Vance recalled, the free-trade fundamentalism ended up creating globalism, and with it the collapse of America's industrial might. It also allowed Wall Street to run wildabetted, please note, by the Clinton Democratswreaking havoc on the stability of working-class lives.

The Democrats had no real response to this. Nor did the standard-issue Republicans. The Democrats committed themselves to a left-wing cultural revolution, while doing relatively little to address the material conditions of American life. The Republicans fell back on Zombie Reaganism, as if the solutions of 1980 were evergreen truths. And both parties, especially the GOP, became devotees of permanent war, both hard and soft. The Republicans acted under the guise of 'spreading democracy' as a cover for naked U.S. hegemony; the Democrats did too, adding cultural leftism to the mix (e.g., pressuring other countries to accept LGBT dogmas).

That's over now. Donald Trump knocked holes in the wall of complacency and denial in 2016, and stands to clear even more ground if he is re-elected. And given his brilliant choice of Vance, Trump has not only chosen the most articulate and credible possible advocate of his sensibilities, but laid the groundwork for the permanent restructuring not only of American conservatism, but of America itself. Because Trump chose J.D. Vance, Trumpism will long outlast its founder. Trump resisted the pleas of media mogul Rupert Murdoch to choose someone tamer and more controllable as his running mate, and in so doing, passed the torch to a fighting tribune of the new MAGA generation.

Last night in Milwaukee, Vance emerged as the Ronald Reagan of the Millennials. He came across as patriotic and optimistic, but not sentimental. The anecdotes he shared about his rough childhood were not only factually true, but told mythical truths about what America is, and what she might be again.

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He's echoed exactly what I've been saying about this war in that it's designed to be long and expensive, not designed to wrap up quickly.

It's frustrating that the pro war guys on here aren't realizing or don't care that the regime that's occupied DC that they're against are the same people running the Ukraine war.

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Wars of attrition wrap up when one side runs out of gas.

Do not be disappointed when our aid to Ukraine continues after Trump is inaugurated. Trump, remember, is a guy famous for berating "losers" and promising to "win so much you'll get tired of winning."

ZERO chance Trump gives Putin what he wants in Ukraine just to stop the war.

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Johnny Bear said:

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muddybrazos said:

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Thee University said:

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To sell arms to one of the most corrupt counties in the world.

To give the Russians a noogie.

Because Joe & Hunter have some tabs to pay.

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You forgot launder money and cover up whatever crimes we have been doing over there the past decade which is probably making illegal germs in bio weapons labs.

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It's no coincidence that policy decisions consistently favorable to countries like Ukraine and China have been the norm over the past 2 plus years.

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FLBear5630 said:

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Remember Afghanistan, Trump wanted out but was smart enough to know it was not the right time to go. So, we didn't. Trump will not do stupid policy moves, even if he tweets stupid stuff.

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whiterock said:

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Max Boot article on status of war, with some commentary on various casualty estimates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/15/ukraine-russia-war-military-aid/

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The wife of WashPost columnist @MaxBoot gets indicted for being a criminal agent of a foreign power -- someone with whom Boot co-wrote WPost op-eds promoting that foreign country's agenda -- and both the paper and Boot continue promoting his work as if nothing happened?? pic.twitter.com/nFtm5Q9IzB

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2024

Quote:

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J.D. Vance's speech last night at the Republican National Convention was a landmark in American politics. It sealed the realignment of American politics. When Vance said the GOP henceforth would be not on the side of Wall Street, but of the "working man," in one sense, he effectively announced the end of Reaganism.

But that's not quite true. In his era, forty years ago, Reagan spoke for the common man, and won the common man's allegiance. Reagan stood for old-fashioned American patriotism, and for advocating common sense values against an out-of-touch elite in both the Democratic Party and among country-club Republicans. Reagan was the right man for his time.

Times have changed. American needed Reagan's free market entrepreneurialism and his robust, confrontational foreign policy to break the spell of statist sclerosis and national paralysis. The problems America faced in 1980 are very different from the problems it faces today. As Vance recalled, the free-trade fundamentalism ended up creating globalism, and with it the collapse of America's industrial might. It also allowed Wall Street to run wildabetted, please note, by the Clinton Democratswreaking havoc on the stability of working-class lives.

The Democrats had no real response to this. Nor did the standard-issue Republicans. The Democrats committed themselves to a left-wing cultural revolution, while doing relatively little to address the material conditions of American life. The Republicans fell back on Zombie Reaganism, as if the solutions of 1980 were evergreen truths. And both parties, especially the GOP, became devotees of permanent war, both hard and soft. The Republicans acted under the guise of 'spreading democracy' as a cover for naked U.S. hegemony; the Democrats did too, adding cultural leftism to the mix (e.g., pressuring other countries to accept LGBT dogmas).

That's over now. Donald Trump knocked holes in the wall of complacency and denial in 2016, and stands to clear even more ground if he is re-elected. And given his brilliant choice of Vance, Trump has not only chosen the most articulate and credible possible advocate of his sensibilities, but laid the groundwork for the permanent restructuring not only of American conservatism, but of America itself. Because Trump chose J.D. Vance, Trumpism will long outlast its founder. Trump resisted the pleas of media mogul Rupert Murdoch to choose someone tamer and more controllable as his running mate, and in so doing, passed the torch to a fighting tribune of the new MAGA generation.

Last night in Milwaukee, Vance emerged as the Ronald Reagan of the Millennials. He came across as patriotic and optimistic, but not sentimental. The anecdotes he shared about his rough childhood were not only factually true, but told mythical truths about what America is, and what she might be again.

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trey3216 said:

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https://defence-blog.com/russia-faces-artillery-barrel-shortage/

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trey3216 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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trey3216 said:

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https://defence-blog.com/russia-faces-artillery-barrel-shortage/

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The mighty Russian military menace that we must all be scared of and who might run wild on Poland at any moment.

(*yet they rely on just 2 machines- made in Austria- for their critical artillery components

And apparently Moscow has been relying on imported machine tech since the 1930s...first from the USA and then from post war German? lol)


Guys this just proves we need to spend another 100 trillion dollars on European defense...

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I was told on here that sanctions aren't working....

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whiterock said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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trey3216 said:

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https://defence-blog.com/russia-faces-artillery-barrel-shortage/

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The mighty Russian military menace that we must all be scared of and who might run wild on Poland at any moment.

(*yet they rely on just 2 machines- made in Austria- for their critical artillery components

And apparently Moscow has been relying on imported machine tech since the 1930s...first from the USA and then from post war German? lol)


Guys this just proves we need to spend another 100 trillion dollars on European defense...

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Russia is likely going to lose that war - finish off worse than it started. BUT LOOK WHAT IT COST UKRAINE AND NATO TO WIN IT !!!!!

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trey3216 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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trey3216 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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trey3216 said:

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https://defence-blog.com/russia-faces-artillery-barrel-shortage/

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The mighty Russian military menace that we must all be scared of and who might run wild on Poland at any moment.

(*yet they rely on just 2 machines- made in Austria- for their critical artillery components

And apparently Moscow has been relying on imported machine tech since the 1930s...first from the USA and then from post war German? lol)


Guys this just proves we need to spend another 100 trillion dollars on European defense...

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I was told on here that sanctions aren't working....

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Sounds like they have structural problems that existed 80 years before the sanctions started....and have never been the massive military threat they have been made out to be.

(*And people on here are just reporting what the Media says....our own Western align Media saying the sanctions have not worked on consumer goods because they can just import in cheap knock off stuff from China into their malls and shops and keep going....but do work on the military hardware since they can get it from the West-like Austria in this case)

https://www.brookings.edu/events/sanctions-on-russia-whats-working-whats-not/

1.5 long talk about sanctions for a source you would not dismiss....sounds like a mixed bag of success and non success

Daleep Singh, Deputy Direct National Security advisor on International economics- "We were initially trying to induce as much Capital flight as possible, in our initial polices on Feb 26 we were trying to engineer a free fall in the ruble. That would case inflation to spike, which would crush purchasing power of Russian consumers, and cause the Central Bank to raise interest rates to emergency levels and drive away investment and then create a negative feedback loop...he [Putin] arrested that with Capital controls. Can you over come those Capital controls and return Russia to that vicious feedback loop? If you can that would be something to look into but I am doubtful that you can in the Russian economy as currently built"

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Capital controls don't prevent anything. They create artificial inflation, that realizes into full blown inflation once the capital controls are eased. The ruble did plummet, interest rates are in the 20's. people are restricted with how much they can withdraw from banks, yet prices are higher. That is painful painful inflation.

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