This is still speculation by Peter Zeihan. A lot depends on public opinion in Russia.

 

The Russians are risking nuclear war to prevent something that is not going to happen. No country in the West wants to invade Russia. The threat to Russia comes from China.

Nevertheless, before I snicker too much at the paranoia of the Russians, I am reminded of our own War in Vietnam.

Somehow we thought that if we did not stop the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, they would invade California.

There was more to it than that, of course, but we greatly over estimated the danger of Communism. During the Cold War there was never a remote chance of a Communist dictatorship being established in the United States. The danger was of a nuclear war that would have ended civilization. In the United States reactionaries in the Republican Party exploited the fear of Communism to discredit the overwhelmingly popular reforms of the New Deal.

 

I think the war is about over.Noway Ukraine can last much longer. All the money the USA and other country are giving is a waste. If Russia wins NATO is done.

 

Russia taking Ukraine is highly unlikely.
If it did happen, it would not finish NATO.
Rather, NATO would be made stronger.

 

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Former NATO chief warns Black Sea will be next front in Ukraine war
ByMark Moore
June 5, 2022

A former NATO commander warned Sunday that the next front in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will likely develop in the Black Sea — and that the US will have to help escort grain ships to prevent a global food crisis. “You’re going to see another … front open in this conflict, which is going to include escorting grain tankers in and out of Odessa,” former Admiral James Stavridis told host John Catsimatidis on his AM 770 radio show in an interview that aired Sunday.

“I think that mission will probably be undertaken by the United Nations, by NATO, by the United States and our allies. But it is going to be a new front in the war that will emerge over the next few weeks,” said Stavridis, the former NATO supreme allied commander.

Ukraine, the world’s sixth largest wheat exporter, has blamed Russia for blocking shipments from its Black Sea ports, including Odessa. But Ukrainian officials fear that establishing safe corridors to allow for the shipment of its exports could also create a path for Russian warships to attack it. Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, has called on the West to lift sanctions imposed against it.


Stavridis predicted the US will need to escort grain tankers in and out of Black Sea ports like Odesa.
REUTERS/Alexey Pavlishak
President Vladimir Putin, in remarks on Russian television Friday, blamed Western nations for causing any shortages, denied the allegation that Moscow was blocking Ukrainian ports and called for the safe passage of all ships carrying grain. “We will facilitate the peaceful passage and guarantee the safety of arrivals to these ports, as well as the entry of foreign ships and their movement through the Azov and Black seas, in any direction,” Putin said.

Stavridis said the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had some unintended consequences for Putin, including uniting NATO more than at any time since the Cold War. “You have Russia as the obvious aggressor in Ukraine today but making very threats … for example, about the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — who are members of NATO. All of that has created real focus on the part of the alliance,” he told Catsimatidis.

“We are seeing European defense spending rise … Sweden and Finland, two highly capable militaries, previously neutral countries, are now applying for NATO membership. That NATO membership card is the hottest ticket in Europe this summer,” Stavridis said.

The former NATO chief said the Russian leader ”is failing his nation, and he is failing the world. And he will reap the cost of doing so.” Putin launched his attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24 with the intent to quickly overtake Russia’s eastern neighbor and end the possibility that Ukraine would join NATO. He claimed Russia’s goal was to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.”

The Russian leader also wanted to limit what he saw as the continuing expansion of the NATO alliance into Eastern Europe and with it, the extension of the West’s military presence in the region. But Putin’s early plan to quickly take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and overthrow the country’s government failed in the face of fierce resistance from Ukraine fighters and a number of tactical blunders that stymied the movement of Russian troops and bogged down their equipment. Since that setback, Russian troops have been pressing an offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where they have been putting Ukrainian cities under constant artillery fire.

https://nypost.com/2022/06/05/former-nato-chief-black-sea-will-be-next-front-in-ukraine-war/

 

If true, this is not something a lot of posters on this site want to hear.

‘Failure of leadership’ American public ready to abandon Ukraine as trust in Biden plunges
AMERICANS are prepared to abandon Ukraine in the war against Putin's Russia because of a "failure of leadership" by US President Joe Biden, a new exclusive poll for Express.co.uk has revealed.
By David Maddox Political Editor
11:48, Wed, Jun 1, 2022 | UPDATED: 18:34, Wed, Jun 1, 202

The findings in an exclusive poll by the Washington DC based Democracy Institute shows that the international efforts to back Ukraine President Zelensky and his country’s struggle with Putin’s Russia is in crisis. The floundering leadership of US President Joe Biden has been blamed for the results which show that a majority of Americans oppose measures to support Ukraine and hurt Russia. According to the poll only about a third of Americans (six percent) support Biden’s Ukraine policy while 53 percent disapprove. Half of Americans (50 percent) disapprove of his $40 billion aid budget to Ukraine with just 45 percent supporting it. A mere five percent see Ukraine as a top priority compared to 26 percent on a shortage of baby formula food, 21 percent inflation and 16 percent economy and jobs.

It appears to be linked with a lack of confidence in the administration with Biden’s own approval rating being negative with 56 percent disapproving compared to only 39 percent approve.

There is a heavy contrast with Boris Johnson, who has been beleaguered over the Partygate scandal of lockdown drinking in Downing Street but internationally praised for his personal leadership on Ukraine.

The US polling gets worse for Biden with Americans' views on his handling of foreign policy with 58 percent negative and a mere 37 percent positive. The concerns over the cost of living crisis which is also hitting America as well as the UK, shows that 56 percent now believe sanctions against Russia hurt the USA more while just 42 percent think it harms Russia.

Crucially, in a major blow to President Zelensky, 45 percent would be “OK” with America allowing Ukraine to lose while 40 percent “not OK”. Worryingly, 16 percent of those polled would like to see Putin in the White House as their President. Meanwhile, almost half (48 percent) oppose Putin being removed from power compared to 42 percent who support the idea. In fact more Americans believe that it would be better for them for Biden to be removed (56 percent) than Putin (43 percent). Russia is also only seen as the fourth biggest international threat (14 percent) compared to China (45 percent), Iran (20 percent) and North Korea (17 percent).

In a video interview with Express.co.uk, Director of the Democracy Institute Patrick Basham blamed the US public turning on Ukraine on “a failure of leadership” by the Biden administration. He also blamed the cost of living crisis and the effects of the war for making that worse, but added: “It is more the perceived lack of leadership. “People out in the country are patriotic, they would like to punch Russia on the nose and would like to rally around the flag and the Commander in Chief...But they are so impacted economically, they know it is even worse now and they don’t see light at the end of the economic tunnel....So the lack of leadership, the fact that everything that has been predicted by Biden [defeat of Russia with sanctions] and his colleagues hasn’t happened.”

He noted that other Presidents including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama would have been able to rally the country better to the Ukraine cause. He said: “There just isn’t the ability for Biden himself or [Vice President Kamala] Harris or any of the obvious secretaries of state to convincingly persuade the people in one direction or another. “It has to be done for them or happen to them organically almost accidentally.

“When you have that obvious contrast with Reagan or Obama or Bill Clinton who in the moment could speak to the country and present an argument which, whether it was correct or not, could be very persuasive, gain traction and really resonate with ordinary people.



A majority of Americans polled are OK with Ukraine losing the war (Image: DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE)


Americans oppose Putin being removed from power (Image: DEMOCRACY INSTITUTE)

“Biden and Harris to this point are unable to do that. “In fact, when they talk about the subject - Biden goes off script and starts talking about regime change, Harris gives everybody an infant school analysis of the geopolitical realities. “So, people aren’t just getting the leadership from the top to persuade them it is worth hanging in there with Ukraine in this particular crisis.”

The crisis for Biden has forced him to write a piece in the New York Times in a bid to win public support for the war efforts. In it he confirmed that the US will provide Ukraine with more advanced rocket systems and munitions “that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets” after initally suggesting he would not.

Mr Biden also tried to calm fears of boots on the ground by reassuring Americans that the US will not try to bring about the “ouster” of Vladimir Putin in Moscow, despite his comments in March which suggested that was the case.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1619260/Joe-Biden-US-Ukraine-Zelensky-trust-poll-crisis-news

 

It appears that the pro-war Western media is now preparing audiences for the unfortunate reality of Ukraine's loss on the battlefield in the east. In order to do so, they are shifting the blame onto Ukraine and its apparent ability to conceal the truth from Western intelligence agencies, Western politicians, and even the Western media itself.

Watching this unfold has been like something out of "The Guns of August" (WWI) in which: "The fighting had been presented to the British public -- as to the French -- as a series of German defeats in which the enemy had unaccountably moved from Belgium to France and appeared each day on the map at places farther forward."

Stepping even further back, media-wise, in many ways, this is sort of like how the Russian Collusion and Hunter Biden Laptop stories ended. The media would lie and lie and lie, and then suddenly, when lying was no longer an option because truth and/or reality was beating down their door, they then shifted the blame to someone else -- or finally admitted, as if something new had just been uncovered, what any well informed citizen already knew to be the truth.

It is NEVER related to something that they did...

West's Media U-Turn in Ukraine as Reality Sets In

 

can't be long to go now, 3 or 4 weeks maybe?

 

Summary of an Interview with Russian journalist Alexander Kots: It's Far From Over

The Russians with Attitude blog site posted an interview (June 8) with Russian journalist Alexander Kots, a war reporter with over 20 years of experience in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Donbass and Karabakh. In it, a Q&A session was streamed about the war yesterday.
Following is a summary of what Kots said:

- The Ukrainians have excellent artillery training and equipment
- The AFU emphasize small unit tactics; this slowed down the Russian advance in the beginning of the war
- The Russian offensive routes largely matched with those the Ukrainians trained for in NATO exercises
- The border regions were full of photo traps and other surveillance equipment that gave the Ukrainians a good idea of what was happening militarily
- Even a full liberation of the DPR (Donetsk People's Republic) and LPR (Luhansk People's Republic) won't secure Donetsk from Ukrainian shelling because of long-range weapon systems
- The seemingly senseless shelling of Donetsk is explained by Ukrainian attempts to cause discontent among civilians in the sense that the Russian Armed Forces cannot protect them
- The capture of Lisichansk will mark the full liberation of the LPR
- "Small cauldron" tactics and the slow advances are deliberate, but not the tactics of choice; Russians are advancing at best with a 1:1 ratio and often against a numerically superior enemy
- Prisoner exchanges are still taking place, but not mass exchanges, 15 for 15, 30 for 30
- The Ukrainian army generally refuses to pick up their dead despite being offered ceasefires to do so
- The average level of experience in the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) has dropped significantly since the start of the war, it's now 20% professionals and 80% conscripts
- Ukrainian infantry is of very low quality in terms of training and morale; their artillery and special forces are decent
- The Ukrainians generally don't accept close quarter combat and retreat instead, but they usually do so in an organized manner
- The volunteers from all over Russia who are trained in Gudermes (Chechnya) are doing quite well in the war
- This scale of combat is seen for the first time since WW2; Kots has never worked in a conflict of this intensity
- Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but with the entire NATO infrastructure: intelligence, satellites, communications, military equipment, counter-battery systems, electronic warfare systems
- "Bayraktars" are absolute crap, they're fish in a barrel for any decent anti-air
- The Ukrainians are having problems with some munitions, e.g. their Smerch & Uragan MLRS systems rarely fire in volleys nowadays, mostly single shots
- Ukrainian artillery is often the only thing slowing down Russian advances
- Securing Donbass won't automatically win the war

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1534465824274239489.html

 

Even if Russia wins the War in Ukraine, Russia will be much worse off than if Russia had not invaded Ukraine to begin with, and deservedly so. Ukraine was never a threat to Russia. It is not acceptable to invade a country because the invader thinks that at some time in the future a third country might invade through that country.

 

Russia should have learned from her occupation of Eastern Europe that it is bad policy to occupy countries that want to be independent. I will not justify the Indian wars, or the Mexican War, but the land we conquered was sparsely inhabited, so we could settle it with our own people.

 

The "Special Operation" currently being conducted by Russia in Ukraine has turned into little but a meat grinder. As of two weeks ago, Ukrainian casualties ranged from between 600 and 1000 dead and wounded per DAY (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/ukraine-casualty-rate-russia-war-tipping-point) These losses are unsustainable and there is no reason to think they have recently become more favorable to Ukraine. Russia's tactics are to pin and destroy Ukrainian troops with artillery (which outranges Ukrainian artillery), and then send in infantry to mop up the surviving remnants. While the US has GPS-guided rocket artillery which outranges Russian artillery and is more accurate, Biden has not yet sent any to Ukraine.

Further, neither the US nor NATO has faced a peer level foe since WW2. Years from now, it will be interesting to see what strategic and tactical lessons our military thinks they have learned from this conflict.

THE PARADIGM SHIFT IN WAR
By Adam Piggott
June 13, 2022

The Russian special operation being conducted in eastern Ukraine is a fascinating opportunity to observe a once in a century military paradigm shift unfold before our eyes. Larry Johnson, Andrei Martyanov and the Saker blog, (all of which are linked to on my sidebar), are doing some truly excellent critical analysis of just what is playing out in real time. What we are seeing is a major military strategic shift in action, in a similar fashion to what was going on before the outbreak of The Great War in 1914. Back then, strategy and tactics were being painfully adjusted to reflect the reality of game changing new military hardware and the effect that this was happening on various battlefields. The first and second Boer Wars were excellent examples of this; the rapid fire rifle and the Maxim machine gun both seeing extensive use in that conflict. But while every nation’s army of the time had a small cohort who understood what was at stake, the vast majority of professional military men were entirely resistant to the new and radical ways of thinking.

It would take a good twenty four months on the fields of northern France and Flanders before the necessary adjustments would begin to be made, which culminated in 1918 with visionary generals such as General John Monash utilising shock troop tactics under creeping artillery barrages to break through the German lines on what became known as the blackest day in Prussian military history.

America’s wars of the past few decades have been lopsided affairs against third rate opponents, outgunned and overwhelmed by material might. Even so, the U.S. has managed to lose most of those wars. The tactical method most utilised in such combat operations was to send out groups of lightly armed infantry to make contact with insurgents. Once contact had been made, forward observers would bring down the immense firepower available to them from strike aircraft and artillery systems while the infantry sat tight. It is important to understand that the U.S. and its allies were very rarely, if ever, on the receiving end of similar treatment.

On a strategic level, the U.S. has run its localised wars based on an effort to win and hold territory. The thinking went, the more territory that you hold, the better that you’re doing. This was most noticeable during the twenty year war in Afghanistan when at one time the Taliban forces were restricted to a few tiny inaccessible pockets of the country. Yet the Americans still lost. When the tide turned in 2021, vast areas of Afghanistan flipped to Taliban rule in a matter of weeks. The strategic aim to hold land proved to be worthless when that land could so easily revert back to an enemy that still existed as a fighting force.

The same Western generals who ran those wars are now providing the bulk of the mainstream media commentary on what is happening in the Ukraine. The expert commentators are of the firm opinion that Russia’s war is going very badly indeed, since the territorial gains are supposedly not up to standard. But Russia’s strategic aim is not to win territory, but rather to grind down and destroy the ability of the Ukrainian military to successfully wage war. It’s a body count executed by artillery in various forms, with infantry providing a follow up to finish off what’s left on the ground.

Precision strikes by advanced Russian hyper sonic missile technology has been used against foreign mercenary encampments and stockpiles of foreign sourced weapons. But the Russians have been holding back from using much of their high end tech, presumably because they don’t want to give the game away to a NATO opponent that is still convinced the year is 1989.

Larry Johnson has an article out today which refers extensively to Martyanov’s excellent book, Losing Military Supremacy. One topic of discussion is the U.S. carrier fleet, a projection of American military might for over eighty years. What are the ramifications for such expensive military hardware in light of the development of Russian hyper sonic missile technology?

The introduction into service in 2017 of the 3M22 Zircon hyper-sonic missile is already dramatically redefining naval warfare and makes even remote sea zones a “no-sail” zone for any US major surface combatant, especially aircraft carriers. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, no technology capable of intercepting such a missile exists or will exist. . . .the X-32 (Kh-32) cruise missile whose range is 1000 kilometers and has a speed in excess of Mach 4.2. This missile, apart from being able to attack anything on the ground, is capable, in fact was designed primarily for the purpose, of hitting anything moving on the surface of the sea. The missile, let alone a salvo of them, is incredibly difficult, if even possible at all, to intercept and as the above-mentioned demonstration showed, Iran most likely would have no problem with allowing these very TU-22M3s to operate from her airspace in the event of a worst case scenario. Launched anywhere from the Darab area, the hypothetical salvo would not only cover all of the Persian Gulf but will reliably close off the Gulf of Oman for any naval force. No ship, no Carrier Battle Group would be able to enter this area in the event of a conventional conflict with Russia in Syria—the strategic ramifications of this are enormous.”

It wasn’t the raid on Taranto Harbor that finally convinced military minds that the battleship had become an anachronism, nor did Pearl Harbor seal the deal. Rather, it was the sinking of HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales by Japanese aircraft off the Malaysian coast that finally ended the glorious reign of the battleship. A few months later at the Battle of Midway, it took US dive bombers just six minutes to permanently disable three out of the four Japanese carriers, but the mythical might of the carrier has managed to endure for a further eighty years. It will finally end not with a whimper, but with a bang brought on by a precision strike, and the power of U.S. hegemony will go down with it.

The military world is going through a real time process of being brought kicking and screaming into the new rules of 21st century warfare. Nations like Russia and potentially China seem poised to gain the most advantage, while the Western belt of powers still cling to what they know and are comfortable with.

It will take a severe shock to shake them out of their psychological malaise; but by the time they realise what is happening it could well be the case that the world will have moved on.

https://richardsonpost.com/adam-piggott/27408/the-paradigm-shift-in-war/

 

If the Russians conquer Ukraine they will still have to contend with sabotage from a nation that has learned to hate them.

I think the United States still has the advantage in the precision guided munitions that made such a difference during the Gulf War.

Russia has a much smaller economy than the United States. Can Russia afford to maintain an advanced military?

 

I wonder what this character had to say about the Gulf War. We won that hands down.

Also, what about the Bosnian War? We won that without a single casualty.

When he starts talking about Nazis in Ukraine, I suspect he has a bias against Ukraine.

The President of Ukraine is Voldymyr. Zelenskyy. He is Jewish and owes his position to winning a democratic election.

It should be clear to everyone that the vast majority of Ukrainians do not want to be governed by Russia. That is what really matters, regardless of who wins this war, which began with an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by a country that has never been famed for human rights. Listening to this man gloat about the dire situation in Ukraine made me feel as though I was hearing a commentary by an American during the beginning of World War II who was boasting of how well Nazi Germany was doing in the war.

 

OK, so the war in Ukraine is going badly. This creep does not have any suggestions about how we can turn the situation around. He wants us to let Russia get away with an unprovoked act of aggression against a country that never threatened Russia.

Don't think Russia will be satisfied with Ukraine. Russia's next target will be Poland, and possibly Finland.

 

Here is one strategic lesson the west must learn for sure.
It makes sense during peace and certainly during time of war....don't play games with your industrial potential and certainly don't outsource it to China.

The Return Of Industrial Warfare
Saturday, Jun 25, 2022 - 10:30 PM
Authored by Alex Vershinin via the Royal United Services Institute,

Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?

The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own. The mass scale combat has pitted 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers, together with 450,000 recently mobilised citizen soldiers against about 200,000 Russian and separatist troops. The effort to arm, feed and supply these armies is a monumental task. Ammunition resupply is particularly onerous. For Ukraine, compounding this task are Russian deep fires capabilities, which target Ukrainian military industry and transportation networks throughout the depth of the country. The Russian army has also suffered from Ukrainian cross-border attacks and acts of sabotage, but at a smaller scale. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.

This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war. If the US government is planning to once again become the arsenal of democracy, then the existing capabilities of the US military-industrial base and the core assumptions that have driven its development need to be re-examined.

Estimating Ammo Consumption
There is no exact ammunition consumption data available for the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Neither government publishes data, but an estimate of Russian ammunition consumption can be calculated using the official fire missions data provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense during its daily briefing.

Number of Russian Daily Fire Missions, 19–31 May



Although these numbers mix tactical rockets with conventional, hard-shell artillery, it is not unreasonable to assume that a third of these missions were fired by rocket troops because they form a third of a motorised rifle brigade’s artillery force, with two other battalions being tube artillery. This suggests 390 daily missions fired by tube artillery. Each tube artillery strike is conducted by a battery of six guns total. However, combat and maintenance breakdowns are likely to reduce this number to four. With four guns per battery and four rounds per gun, the tube artillery fires about 6,240 rounds per day. We can estimate an additional 15% wastage for rounds that were set on the ground but abandoned when the battery moved in a hurry, rounds destroyed by Ukrainian strikes on ammunition dumps, or rounds fired but not reported to higher command levels. This number comes up to 7,176 artillery rounds a day. It should be noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense only reports fire missions by forces of the Russian Federation. These do not include formations from the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist republics, which are treated as different countries. The numbers are not perfect, but even if they are off by 50%, it still does not change the overall logistics challenge.

The Capacity of the West’s Industrial Base
The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either.

Presently, the US is decreasing its artillery ammunition stockpiles. In 2020, artillery ammunition purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the plan is to reduce expenditure on 155mm artillery rounds to $174 million. This is equivalent to 75,357 M795 basic ‘dumb’ rounds for regular artillery, 1,400 XM1113 rounds for the M777, and 1,046 XM1113 rounds for Extended Round Artillery Cannons. Finally, there are $75 million dedicated for Excalibur precision-guided munitions that costs $176K per round, thus totaling 426 rounds. In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

The US is not the only country facing this challenge. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.

Unfortunately, this is not only the case with artillery. Anti-tank Javelins and air-defence Stingers are in the same boat. The US shipped 7,000 Javelin missiles to Ukraine – roughly one-third of its stockpile – with more shipments to come. Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.

The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.

If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime

The initial stockpile in February 2022 is unknown, but considering expenditures and the requirement to hold substantial stockpiles back in case of war with NATO, it is unlikely that the Russians are worried. In fact, they seem to have enough to expend operational-level cruise missiles on tactical targets. The assumption that there are 4,000 cruise and ballistic missiles in the Russian inventory is not unreasonable. This production will probably increase despite Western sanctions. In April, ODK Saturn, which makes Kalibr missile motors, announced an additional 500 job openings. This suggests that even in this field, the West only has parity with Russia.

Flawed Assumptions
The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption. Many ‘dumb’ indirect fire systems are achieving a great deal of precision without precision guidance, and still the overall ammunition consumption is massive. Part of the issue is that the digitisation of global maps, combined with a massive proliferation of drones, allows geolocation and targeting with increased precision, with video evidence demonstrating the ability to score first strike hits by indirect fires.

The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will. This mode of thinking was imported from the business sector and has spread through US government culture. In the civilian sector, customers can increase or decrease their orders. The producer may be hurt by a drop in orders but rarely is that drop catastrophic because usually there are multiple consumers and losses can be spread among consumers. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from. This is especially challenging because many older armament production systems are labour intensive to the point where they are practically built by hand, and it takes a long time to train a new workforce. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country.

China’s near monopoly on rare earth materials is an obvious challenge here. Stinger missile production will not be completed until 2026, in part due to component shortages. US reports on the defence industrial base have made it clear that ramping up production in war-time may be challenging, if not impossible, due to supply chain issues and a lack of trained personnel due to the degradation of the US manufacturing base.

Finally, there is an assumption about overall ammunition consumption rates. The US government has always lowballed this number. From the Vietnam era to today, small arms plants have shrunk from five to just one. This was glaring at the height of the Iraq war, when US started to run low on small arms ammunition, causing the US government to buy British and Israeli ammunition during the initial stage of the war. At one point, the US had to dip into Vietnam and even Second World War-era ammo stockpiles of .50 calibre ammunition to feed the war effort. This was largely the result of incorrect assumptions about how effective US troops would be. Indeed, the Government Accountability Office estimated that it took 250,000 rounds to kill one insurgent. Luckily for the US, its gun culture ensured that small arms ammunition industry has a civilian component in the US. This is not the case with other types of ammunition, as shown earlier with Javelin and Stinger missiles. Without access to government methodology, it is impossible to understand why US government estimates were off, but there is a risk that the same errors were made with other types of munitions.

Conclusion
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability. The Russian onslaught consumes ammunition at rates that massively exceed US forecasts and ammunition production. For the US to act as the arsenal of democracy in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner and the scale at which the US organises its industrial base. This situation is especially critical because behind the Russian invasion stands the world’s manufacturing capital – China. As the US begins to expend more and more of its stockpiles to keep Ukraine in the war, China has yet to provide any meaningful military assistance to Russia. The West must assume that China will not allow Russia to be defeated, especially due to a lack of ammunition. If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must first radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-better-buy-more-bullets

 

The Moon of Alabama blog is a rather interesting read. Written by an American of Russian (??) descent, the blog keeps readers apprised of the war's progress generally from the Russian POV. The blog describes in detail (with maps), the "Special Operation's" progress in eastern Ukraine. As might be expected, readers there are not necessarily fans of the west (see example comment below). To them, the main thrust of the operation is to kill or destroy the Ukrainian military, not necessarily to control territory. That last will come later when there is no army left to defend Ukraine. Even more interesting, right or wrong, these people see NATO, the EU and the US as ineffective "paper tigers..." That is the lesson they feel Russia has learned.

Well there you have it. The rout will begin and the Ukrainian military will cease to be a coherent entity. No doubt we will begin to see Zelensky's off-Broadway show begin to totter, narratives will shift, coup attempts mooted and dumb articles in the Western media about how this is just a ruse to lure the Ruskis into the range of Wunderwaffe. But truths are being proclaimed as though a sky-writer had soared above us to etch them in the deep azure: Russia has won, Russia can dictate its terms, NATO is a paper tiger, the EU a vacuum of will and sovereignty, the post-war US hegemony is OVER.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/06/lysichansk.html

 

But, due to Demographics, if Russia wants to keep on going, it has to do it now.
A lack of draftable military-aged males in 20 years will ensure it is not capable of doing this again then.
So, to Putin, rebuilding the Soviet empire is now or never.

- Scotchlass

Empires do not last. They especially do not last when the conquering country is surrounded by subject provinces that hate it. If a country says that it is surrounded by enemies, and if it behaves that way, it becomes that way. No one in the West wants to invade Russia. We only want to be left alone by Russia.

 

Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian shopping mall with more than 1,000 people inside, Zelenskyy says

Business Insider, June 27, 2022

• A Russian missile struck a Ukrainian shopping mall on Monday.
• The attack in broad daylight set the mall on fire, with as many as 1,000 civilians inside and trying to escape.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the number of casualties is "unimaginable."

 

The Ukrainians never forgave Russia because of the holodomor. That is why so many of them supported the German invasion, until they learned that the Germans were even worse.

Right now the Russians are giving the Ukrainians more reasons to hate them. That hatred will not have dissipated twenty years from now when demographic changes prevent Russia from drafting a large army. Russia should be making friends. Instead Russia is reinforcing the democratic world's worst suspicions about Russia.