The War in the Ukraine

Abominable said:

Even if Ukraine's air defences improve, so will Russia's offensive capability. Over the last few months we've seen a massive increase in the number of KUB & lancet strikes, contrast that to the start of the war there was none. I think the Russians will continue the path of evolving cheaper, easier to mass produce drones.

The patriot is a solution to a problem the Ukrainians don't have. Their existing air defences are doing enough of a job to keep out VVS. If strategic bombers were flying over Kiev then they would make sense.

Unless the American plan is to use billion dollar air defence platforms to take out thousand dollar drones.

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It's why having more anti-air gun systems to hunt drones would be a must. Quite strange that they didn't give LPWS (Land Phalanx Weapon System) yet. I think we heard some in Odessa against Geran drone in their first couple of waves but no confirmations.

Patriot will fill the gap of s300 stock slow depletion. It's clearly not to improve it. First two batch of patriot (pac1 and 2) was worse than s300 anyway. If Ukraine got their existing medium and lr air defence going down, Russia will have even more way to wreck stuff. Patriot will be there to replace the dwindling existing stock more or less...

According to M. Koffman, Russia’s greatest problem at the moment is supplying its army with sufficient artillery munitions, after it spent extravagant amounts during the summer offensive in Luhansk.

At the same time, even a country like the US is finding it difficult to produce much more than 15,000 155mm shells per month.

In WW1 Germany and Austria produced 680 million artillery shells between 1914-1918. The Allies produced even more.

How come modern economies, despite being an order of magnitude larger, struggle to produce but a small fraction of those numbers?

Zichan said:

According to M. Koffman, Russia’s greatest problem at the moment is supplying its army with sufficient artillery munitions, after it spent extravagant amounts during the summer offensive in Luhansk.

At the same time, even a country like the US is finding it difficult to produce much more than 15,000 155mm shells per month.

In WW1 Germany and Austria produced 680 million artillery shells between 1914-1918. The Allies produced even more.

How come modern economics economies, despite being an order of magnitude larger, struggle to produce but a small fraction of those numbers?

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1) The west turned to super wunderwaffle precicion ammo that you need only 10 to win a war (sarcasm there). So production facilities and output have been smaller and smaller but also way costlier. Turned from mass production to precision tooling low rate production.

2) Europe need energy to produce steel for ammo or they can buy cheap steel from Russia and Ukraine to make them, maybe China can help them ??. nah forget the second part...

3) They will catch-up soon enough, money wise people will found a way to get richer.

Atomicfrog said:

It's why having more anti-air gun systems to hunt drones would be a must. Quite strange that they didn't give LPWS (Land Phalanx Weapon System) yet. I think we heard some in Odessa against Geran drone in their first couple of waves but no confirmations.

Patriot will fill the gap of s300 stock slow depletion. It's clearly not to improve it. First two batch of patriot (pac1 and 2) was worse than s300 anyway. If Ukraine got their existing medium and lr air defence going down, Russia will have even more way to wreck stuff. Patriot will be there to replace the dwindling existing stock more or less...

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Standard phalanx cost 32 million per unit for peactime opearation.

Now imagine the support cost of it. And the required training for maintanance personel.

Atomicfrog said:

It's why having more anti-air gun systems to hunt drones would be a must. Quite strange that they didn't give LPWS (Land Phalanx Weapon System) yet. I think we heard some in Odessa against Geran drone in their first couple of waves but no confirmations.

Patriot will fill the gap of s300 stock slow depletion. It's clearly not to improve it. First two batch of patriot (pac1 and 2) was worse than s300 anyway. If Ukraine got their existing medium and lr air defence going down, Russia will have even more way to wreck stuff. Patriot will be there to replace the dwindling existing stock more or less...

Click to expand...

How many does the US have? I think it's possible that they don't have enough that they want to give them away. Other possibility is risk of espionage.

Zichan said:

According to M. Koffman, Russia’s greatest problem at the moment is supplying its army with sufficient artillery munitions, after it spent extravagant amounts during the summer offensive in Luhansk.

At the same time, even a country like the US is finding it difficult to produce much more than 15,000 155mm shells per month.

In WW1 Germany and Austria produced 680 million artillery shells between 1914-1918. The Allies produced even more.

How come modern economies, despite being an order of magnitude larger, struggle to produce but a small fraction of those numbers?

Click to expand...

You know the answer I'm sure. Tangible industrial output is simply not a priority in the modern western economy. GM which has many more factories than Tesla is worth a fraction of the company's value even with the recent drop. Plus all the other factors: Preference for more complex guided projectiles, reliance on air power vs. artillery, war economy vs. peacetime economy

Anlsvrthng said:

Standard phalanx cost 32 million per unit for peactime opearation.

Now imagine the support cost of it. And the required training for maintanance personel.

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Nice, they will use patriot missiles instead, 4millions per shot, no problems... just that it would be a nice place to test them.

"The divisions of PMC Wagner took control of the entire territory of Soledar. The number of prisoners will be announced tomorrow." - Prigozhin

tabu said:

It is not known whether it was the Wagnerians from the ex-prisoners or the old line-up. Former thieves and murderers die as cannon fodder.

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Pretty sure Soledar currently has a layer of snow, so this video is likely from december or older. And export grade copium.

supersnoop said:

How many does the US have? I think it's possible that they don't have enough that they want to give them away. Other possibility is risk of espionage.

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Saudi Arabia has Patriots so at this point they must be a known quantity by all interested parties, including China.

sheogorath said:

Pretty sure Soledar currently has a layer of snow, so this video is likely from december or older. And export grade copium.

Saudi Arabia has Patriots so at this point they must be a known quantity by all interested parties, including China.

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I was referring the the Phalanx. Of course the Phalanx itself is nothing new, but perhaps some kind of datalink or something else as part of the ground package. It was kind of a rush job to deploy it to Afghanistan, so maybe they didn't lock everything down knowing it would be used around US bases.

Zichan said:

According to M. Koffman, Russia’s greatest problem at the moment is supplying its army with sufficient artillery munitions, after it spent extravagant amounts during the summer offensive in Luhansk.

At the same time, even a country like the US is finding it difficult to produce much more than 15,000 155mm shells per month.

In WW1 Germany and Austria produced 680 million artillery shells between 1914-1918. The Allies produced even more.

How come modern economies, despite being an order of magnitude larger, struggle to produce but a small fraction of those numbers?

Click to expand...

Obviously, a guidence system for shells do matter in terms of increasing complexity.

But that hardly covers for anywhere near the discrepancy.

The truth is that economies and the power they derive cannot be counted by gdp anymore since the 1980s. In the years since the last days of the cold war, countries started adopting new types of "growth" which focused on pumping up gdp as high as possible, using the "service" sector of legal fees, insurances as well as the banking sector by giving loans.

In the past, companies that were national champions, and their associated industries, were the drivers of growth. In times of war, steel, medicines, explosives and engines can directly be used to help the nation fight. But bonds and banking cannot be be used as ammuition.

The west naively believed that they were the rulers of the world that only needed to print fiat money whose value is under their control, which they can use to redeem for real goods. They thought power lies in gdp, but in reality, power lies with whoever makes the goods.

Why can EU only barely sustain supplies even after combining their contribution the world's 2nd largest economy who does a have a real arms industry, when little Russia with a fraction of their gdp can introduce as many krasnopol, lancet and iskander as they need? Why did 9 rounds of sanctions barely cause any damage to the Russian economy?

Because in terms of real economic power, EU is much much closer to Russia than they dared to think they were.