Macron thinks he’s Napoleon, except he has no army. He likes Josephs, not Josephines. Just another catamite of Klaus Schwab and George Soros’ cabinet penetration parties.
Sounds about right, Yuri. However instead of Josephs, how about Macaron, a tasteless, delicate, whipped item loved by PMC yuppies? Or with all the rotten eggs and guano he's been laying and the ridiculous preening of a cluck, what do you think about Maricón?
I don't think Russia's primary threat comes from France. Look to expansion of terrorist activities in the North, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Drones are the perfect terrorist weapon.
He will have an army. He’s gong to “pull it off” because it’s a racket. Read Anthony C. Sutton’s “wallstreet trilogy”. Besides Carroll Quigley this book it actually history (Princeton and Georgetown professors) who’s work is widely available but left out of the conversation because it’s to be taught to politicians but not spoken of “on stage”. Sutton also wrote the best work on the skull and bones society if you want to know what Kerry and Bush really believe.
Macron is a nutcase!!! The French People need to recall him and new elections should commence as soon as possible. War crazies like Macron have no sense of responsibility.
Good question - but necessary to specify worse than Macron from the point of view of the ruling class and EU élite?, or worse than Macron from the point of view of defending French workers and wages against the ruling class and the EU élites, and the country from foreign military adventures in Ukraine certainly, but also in Africa, the Red sea and so on
You can try. At this point I consider the whole of the political elite in the West to be a victim of mass psychosis. I cannot otherwise imagine why they want to kill Russians so much. Or is it normal every now and then to have a big one?
Interesting definition. maybe, things don't go as planned most often 😊 especially given Macron has no control over what happens. Look to his banker friends. How would your scenario help them?
Not if he makes good on his implied promise that France will act directly against Russia to prevent Russia from winning the war in Ukraine.
There are plenty of scenarios where sometime in 2024 Kiev's forces collapse so broadly that Russian forces can seize Odessa or Kiev, and in response the French military directly attacks and kills Russians, either in what used to be in Ukraine or in Russia itself. In that case Russia will strike France directly.
After that the situation can easily escalate, but whether it does or doesn't Macron cannot be considered "safe" from the moment France strikes Russia. It is not likely Russia would seek to kill him, as it helps Russia to have a physical coward in charge in France who is likely to capitulate when he feels pain, but once Russia starts striking France the situation will be so messy Macro could end up dead without Russia specifically targeting him.
Indeed. The question is whether he and his people have considered what happens and what they will do if Russia doesn’t avoid escalation. He can’t officially invoke Article 5 and if he assumes that the US will back him up he’s going to learn a hard lesson. Which could leave him with not enough force or supply to do anything except try to explain to the French people why he ordered their army to Ukraine and now soldiers are dead.
He’s bluffing on a poor hand, especially because his actual support in the military is clearly lower than he thinks. See the leaks and his approval rating with the assumption that serving military are almost certainly not his constituency.
Since the beginning of this war, we keep hearing that the West can't escalate, it would be unpopular, reckless and suicidal, but they keep escalating all the same.
I’ve read it, as well as Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly. The parallels to today with countries technically at peace sending money and weapons across the borders to start conflicts with plausible deniability are remarkable.
I do think those fellows are behind all of this ultimately.
After all the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2 went so well for them, surely a WW3 and the opportunity to pick over the bones of Russia would be especially attractive.
"The Guns Of August" is one of the most widely-sold history books in English. The title in the UK is "August 1914". Writing "between the lines", Barbara Tuchman explains how the British seduced the Germans into making the fatal mistake of starting WW1. The humiliating climb-down of the 1910 Agadir Crisis proved Germany would never intentionally attack Britain. So in 1914, London refused to say which side the UK would take, if any. One cheap telegram from the UK government to Berlin would have prevented the war, but that' not what London wanted. Tuchman laid out the fateful meeting the evening of Monday, Aug. 3, 1914. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig told of the high cost. He ruled out the 6 week garden party given in the lying history books. Haig said it would be "a war of attrition" that would take 4 years and cost Britain 4 million casualties. Exactly prescient, we now know, and the government didn't reveal the casualty numbers until 1925, at which point the royal family made a new tradition to wear a poppy on Nov. 11, to commemorate the horrific losses which they had concealed from the public. Britain had far cheaper options for managing industrial rivalry with Germany, but ... the real goal was to seize Palestine as a new Jewish homeland. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was proof of London's actual motive. Tuchman explains how Britain laid out the trap for the Ottoman Empire, although she is not blunt and you must read between the lines. Any Declaration of War always starts the war immediately - except for England's Declaration Of War in 1914. London declared on the morning of Aug. 4 that war would take effect at midnight. (Most histories obfuscate the timing and I even saw one which said 11pm Aug. 4th. Total BS.) That 14 or 16 hour delayed start gave the Germans time to bring the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of Germany. The Ottoman Empire held the real prize: Palestine. Tuchman details the cat-and-mouse game in which the German Navy ordered the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battleships to depart the vicinity of Sicily and head for the neutral waters of the Dardanelles. The Royal Navy spent a lot of energy monitoring these warships but did nothing to stop them. When the German warships entered Ottoman waters, the Sultan was faced with an unpleasant choice. Germany was extremely popular, having built the Orient Express railroad, trained the Ottoman Army and sold the Ottomans all their weapons. If the Sultan were to impound the warships, there was a real threat of popular revolt. So the Sultan chose the short-term benefit of retaining his waning power, and he joined Germany in a war he didn't want. "The Guns Of August" didn't cover the years to come, but we know it was "tab A into slot B", etc. until the British occupied Palestine and gave it to the Jews, acknowledged in the infamous letter to Lord Rothschild as head of the Jews in England. Right there is the real reason why WW1 was not prevented by one simple telegram.
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) was Jewish and wrote many popular history books. "Guns Of August" (1962) went into at least 26 reprints. My other big takeaway from her book was the senseless disaster of the Battle of Tannenberg, a costly and tragic stupidity which foreshadowed the fall of the Romanovs.
Interesting but you don’t prove your point. It’s basically mind reading to say “this happened and that was the goal” it’s not proof. Anyway big events usually have more than one motive.
To my mind, to see the end goal of the Balfour Agreement as the (re)establishment of Israel is to assume the Rothchilds cared a fig about Jews.
I do think the Rothchilds cared deeply about control of the oil rich middle east and wanted a forward beachhead to ensure they could capitalize on the region's resources.
The action forcing the Jews of Europe after WW2 into Palestine, Jews the majority of whom had little to no interest in living in a desert, was to populate this Rothchild beachhead.
The European nations were tickled pink to help with this "return" as that way they wouldn't have pesky incountry Jewish claimants wanting their assets back.
Excellent comment! I believe the ruling class of Britain would have considered the prospect of 4 million casualties a benefit, not a tragedy. With invention of farming machines such as motorized combines, tractors, and harvesters, there would have been a huge surplus of labor with no place to go. Farming in the nineteenth century was very labor intensive. Sending the unemployed off to the frontlines to be killed in large numbers would have been one way to solve the problem, in the minds of the British elite.
The Goeben and Breslau were the ships involved in the Med. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were part of the China squadron at this time and were destroyed in late 1914 at the Falklands.
Troubridge, the opposing commander in the Med, was court-martialed for not intercepting Goeben. So much for not pursuing Goeben and Breslau...
"Bought all their weapons from Germany" was not true; the Turks had two battleships on order from Great Britain, one of which that ultimately formed part of the Grand Fleet. These were seized by Churchill long before the Goeben showed up in the Dardanelles. Lots more in the following article demonstrating that it wasn't true that they bought arms exclusively from the Germans. Hell, a Brit admiral had lead their navy for years before the war.
That's a rather one-eyed view of the origin of the Great War. Another view , quite popular, is that Germany was ready to turn a regional scuffle into a great European War because of a crisis of falling expectations amongst the German boss class. All of the great powers changed from maintaining peacetime establishments to arming for war in 1911. That would be quite a long stumble.
So we have the “Sleepwalker” hypothesis, where they stumbled into war, and the “Mobilization” hypothesis where everything was wound up and waiting for an event to trigger the whole cascade into WWI.
There are more theories, one is that the constitution of the German empire put too much on the Kaiser who was the only integrating force in the state and had some rude shocks like when he wanted a mobilisation against Russia but not France. A bloke called [Sean McMeekin] thinks that it was the Austro-Hungarians wot done it, others go for a crisis of finance capitalisms and at least one writer says that it was the ceiling reached of the energy that could be gained from burning coal.
The conclusion of the 1871 war was the real event that triggered WWI. The French were dissatisfied at being humiliated, and the Germans were irritated that European pressure forced them to retreat from huge swathes of French territory that their military had won on the field of battle. They both wanted a rematch to settle the question of which country was going to be the premier land power in continental Europe.
I think this is the most logical explanation for why WWI ended up feeling so inevitable once the Serbians helped reduce the Austrian population by a few royals.
The Russians didn't seem to actually want the big war, and nor were they ready for it in the same way that the Germans and French were. Then again, the Austro-Hungarians weren't exactly ready for it either, judging by their pathetic battlefield performance.
Germany was annoyed it was unable to develop lucrative foreign colonies as its cousins had. And if you look at the history of Europe, war is mother's milk to them, often a first resort rather than a last.
Monarchs viewed war as a means to settle petty grievances, to justify raiding the budget, taking on massive debt and of course keeping the peasantry ranks slim and their asperations down.
Their populations were lured, as always, into thinking a war would be regional and short term; they were unaware of the interconnected alliance agreements their crony leadership has signed.
Colonies weren't often lucrative, see Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 (2011) by James Belich and The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1989) by Avner Offer.
No-one was under any illusions that a war wouldn't be a long and bloody affair, the short-war illusion was a post-war cop out. There was lots of analysis of the Franco-Prussian War, particularly the second part when the republican armies stretched the Prussians very thin with irregular warfare.
After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (2001) By Antulio J, Echevarria II
and
German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (2005) by Robert T. Foley
I do think the military may have been aware, but the man in the street certainly was not, and was not told otherwise by the govt or press.
Plus our man in the street initially saw the war as a one off intervention due to the Arch Duke and his wife's murder. He had no idea of the secret interlocking protection alliances among world govts. As the world's nation's dominos fell, they war grew like Toppsy or more accurately a cancer.
This is an excellent article on the war's evolution (link below):
From the article:
"The war started as a confrontation between Austria – Hungary and Serbia. The Russian Empire joined the conflict, considering itself protective of the Slavic countries and wishing to undermine the position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
After the Austro – Hungarian declaration of war on Russia 1 of August of 1914 , the conflict was transformed into a military confrontation at European level.
Germany responded to Russia with war, bound by a secret pact with the Habsburg monarchy, and France mobilized to support its ally.
The hostilities as they evolved pulled in 32 countries, 28 of them called “Allies”: France, Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Japan, the United States (since 1917 ), as well as Italy, which had abandoned the triple alliance.
This group faced the coalition of the “Central Powers”, made up of the Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire.
For the British the German invasion of Belgium was very important to mobilise public opinion, which is why Joffre was told not to toy with the idea until the Germans had made the first move.
The public had been presented with the examples of the Russo-Japanese and Boer wars.
This time it's different. They have "mobilized" the weapons and ammunition that they sent to Ukraine, but in order to maintain political power domestically, no one is mobilizing troops or recruiting civilians or jump-starting a war economy in the west. They are following the steps of escalating towards starting war but not fighting one, let alone winning one. They have truly drank their own Kool aid and believe that their wonder weapons alone that keep getting beaten in Ukraine are somehow going to beat the Russian armed forces. Laughable. I predict that NATO will try to waltz into Odessa without announcement, be very quickly disillusioned after their entire force is mangled by missile strikes, as all NATO mercenaries and "trainers" and AD crews have been since the start of the war. They'll leave and the fact that they tried to defend Odessa covertly will be "Russian disinformation" officially until a few decades later.
Yep. "The Guns of August" was a good book that illustrated the sort of inevitability of the subsequent events once the first nation began mobilization. That book also noted that it wasn't just pure German aggression. The French were itching for a rematch from the humiliation they suffered in the war of 1871. They wanted WWI just as much, if not more, than the Germans did. No one actually cared about the Austro-Hungarians and their Serbian problem. That was just the match being lit for the bomb built by the Germans and French.
At the beginning only non-military support was promised. Since then the weapons and ammo provided have increased in amount and potency by orders of magnitude, one step at a time, until now they are talking about nuclear-capable Taurus missiles. I call those those escalations.
- all arms and armour sent has depleted NATO supplies, and been destroyed in the battlefield - as each new batch is sent it is once again destroyed - and so far left unreplaced in the home country armories
There is now little left - if that too is sent then that too will be destroyed
The RF has as one of it's goals the defeat of NATO, what more efficient means could they have chosen but to destoy the armour while sparing the foot soldier
From the Russian perspective, absolutely correct. Though I have to wonder at times, are these countries, including the US actually sending their best equipment? Seems much of what they have sent is past its shelf life, and every day you see more suddenly appear from what we thought were depleted stocks. We thought the US was short of ammo, yet when Israel needed it, plane after plane after plane of US armour and weaponry was instantly on the move. Of course everyone keeps back a certain portion for its own protection, but still I wonder.
No need to wonder about the ammunition, or lack of it - either in the US or the EU
The so called best equipment these countries have is not useful in this war; besides they fear that it would be destroyed by the RF - and that it would then be more or less impossible to replace them in any length of time that would pass as acceptable to allow them to continue to play the hawk
For the US Read the about the Defense Budget and the Procurement Program Fiscal 2025
Any proposals useful for the Ukraine war have been shifted to The National Security Supplemental Bill, which has been lapping the pool since last October
The reason the US and presumably other nations are not sending their best is that it becomes the property of the RF before long and it's an intel bonanza for them, and presumably the Chinese and Iranians, at least in part. Save the best for when you have to fight the RF. This is simple logic and would be practiced by any nation - the Soviets always had export versions of everything for pretty much this reason.
There is a huge difference in the two wars' objectives The US doesn't want Ukraine to "win" it wants Ukraine to bleed Russia long term, to the last Ukrainian. True the plan is not working out as hoped.
But they still feel there is a win to be had in a stalemate allowing them to bring in Blackrock to "help" Ukraine rebuild aka, rob the EU blind. Then they can rearm Ukraine in a few years and attack Russia yet again at their leisure.
In Israel, the US goal is time sensitive and super top tier. First to kill or displace all Palestinians so that Israel can build a massive port, access the Gaza off shore gas fields, build a canal bypassing the Suez (WHY are you an ally with these people Egypt??) and run high speed rail with a gas pipe line component throughout the area and to the EU.
Israel can then take EU gas market share from Russia, pose an even greater threat to ME peace, decrease BRICS+ attractiveness to ME nations, decrease Iran gas sales and continue to be the world's least liked nation.
The US is not sending its best and it is trying to maintain a strategic reserve. But there is a point where it starts to pinch. If you track the numbers of things being sent to Ukraine over time you see a pretty steep decrease. The French, for example have already sent 40% of their artillery systems. That strongly indicates that most western arsenals are already at the pinch point or beyond.
What do mean by 'the best' that the US is not sending-
It's a stretch to designate, say, the F35 as the best when it can not fly most of the time, and as seen in the Red Sea in a slightly different context, the west can not long afford to oppose limited numbers of multi million dollar systems against huge amounts of well managed 20 thousand dollar systems
Besides whatever the best the US may have it is not the best for a war such as being fought in the Ukraine - they may not have sent the best models of the Abrams, but such would get bogged down in the mud, be as logistically impossible to run and repair, and be as exposed to drones just as the older models
Better? Patriots? no way
But this is the point - all the west has done has been to throw inefficient insufficient arms and cash - and all that the west might be able to throw as their best would also be, in all probability, as inefficient and insufficient
How in this case may western actions be described as escalation, when in reality they are de escalation, as you describe - that is so say partly because they can not afford to send anything at all and mostly because whatever they do have in any case are not fit for purpose
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals
.[FullMission capable rate is about 30%]
This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.).
The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels.
At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness
Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data
A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels
Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity
Lack of support equipment
F-35 support equipment is too frequently unavailable on flight lines
Lack of spare parts A lack of spare parts at installations and on deployments is causing maintenance delays Source: GAO analysis of Department of Defense information; U.S. Air Force/R. Nial Bradshaw. | GAO-23-105341 The Department of Defense (DOD) relies heavily on its contractor to lead and manage F-35 sustainment (see fig.). However, as DOD seeks expanded government control, it has neither (1) determined the desired mix of government and contractor roles, nor (2) identified and obtained the technical data needed to support its desired mix. The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments— specifically to the contractor-managed elements. Reassessing its a
September 2023 F-35 AIRCRAFT
DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals. This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.). The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels. At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity Lack of support equipment View GAO-23-105341.
For more information, contact Diana Maurer at (202) 512-9627 or maurerd@gao.gov.
Why GAO Did This Study
The F-35 aircraft, with its advanced capabilities, represents a growing portion of DOD’s tactical aviation fleet—with about 450 of the aircraft fielded. DOD plans to procure nearly 2,500 F-35s at an estimated life cycle cost of the program exceeding $1.7 trillion. Of this amount, $1.3 trillion are associated with operating and sustaining the aircraft.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 included a provision for GAO to review F-35 sustainment efforts. This report, among other things, assesses the extent to which (1) challenges exist with F-35 depot and organizational-level maintenance, and (2) DOD has determined its desired mix of government and contractor sustainment support for the future. GAO reviewed F-35 program documentation, reviewed readiness and performance data, visited two F-35 depots and three operational installations, conducted a survey of all 15 F-35 installations, and interviewed officials.
What GAO Recommends GAO is making seven recommendations to DOD, including reassessing F-35 sustainment elements to determine government and contractor responsibility and any required technical data, and making final decisions on changes to F-35 sustainment to address performance and affordability.
They're not sending the more modern versions of the Abrams that have additional counter-measures for anti-tank missiles.
It's also clear that a few weeks of training isn't enough for a Ukrainian crew to get good with the Abrams. Normally it's a 22 week OSUT (one station unit training) that combines basic training with tanker school just to create a U.S. Army tanker (19K) who is still seen as very wet behind the ears. They'll then be sent to a permanent duty station where they'll be the least experienced guy on a crew where 1-2 of the four members have been driving tanks for years.
That's the thing with complicated weapon systems: they're complicated and require solid training and experience to operate correctly in the best of conditions.
We can send the Ukrainians tanks, but we can't turn them into good tankers with a couple of weeks of training.
They are failures only after they failed in battle, which in turned was after escalation, ie sending materiel to Ukraine that wasn't there before or to replace equipment destroyed.
If all their escalations are failures - this does mean they are not escalations, they are meaningless attempts to throw something at a problem then when that fails something else or more of the same, but all to no effect or result, this is like walking up a hill and sliding back down at the same time, the old Greeks had stories about this kind of uselessness
If escalation is to have any meaning it must designate a planned progression in strategy to improve/increase in quantity and quality the amounts of resources, soldiers or arms, applied to the battlefield in order successfuly to achieve specific and specified goals, if not victory
NATO not only does not know what goals it has, it has no idea of how not to achieve them, let alone..
Throwing random balls of cash for others to catch is not escalation, neither is sending over small substandard mishmashes of arms and armour for them to cash in
These are failures only if you look at the result from immediate perspective of the particular batch of escalations. Long term Russia may be weakened by the war more than the West - at least in theory we have higher industrial capacity.
I wonder what impact will it have on our standing with the world. Certainly this whole nonsense will not induce much love anywhere. It does not matter when we are strong but it will when we will be weak.
I can't even fault most of the NATO generals. They're told to prepare for the military missions that politicians state publicly.
They can't prepare for a war engineered by the foreign policy ghouls in the U.S. State Department, CIA, and their European equivalents. Those people really thought they could take control of Ukraine with no repercussions and that Russia was a wounded old dog barking through the fence but unable to bite.
2014 didn't teach them anything, even as they watched in surprise as Russia straight out took Crimea and set up the armed insurrections in the Donbas.
So they doubled down even harder...and then spent 8 years not preparing Ukraine for a real war.
Fucking idiots. I can't believe these ivy league morons are in charge of the U.S. when an enlisted intel analyst with 3 years of experience could have looked at the available information and told them they either needed to have Ukraine really tool up and build a whole lot of fortifications, or they needed to dial back the rhetoric and actually begin talking to Russia as a peer nation with real security concerns.
I don't know who told the EU NATO contingent that attacking Russia would be a cakewalk. But it does appear some group did. Or did they tell them something else?
From what I have read the game plan was strategized through US eyes; Russia was expected to run a "shock and awe" invasion, quickly conquer and set up a new Ukraine govt.
The Ukraine military was not set up to wage a WW2 redux, it was trained and armed to be an insurgency force, and a pretty spiffy one at that.
But Russia saw the trap, or may it didn't initially, perhaps it just felt if it took a measured approach it would awaken reason in the EU.
The idea Ukraine at roughly 1 to 16 odds in manpower could "win" against Russia should have been clearly apparent. The idea that Ukraine on the other hand could wage a lengthy insurgency causing the Putin govt to fall to the EU's benefit would probably have been a fairly easy sell. And here we are.
Need I remind you of Soviet aircraft, air defense, armored vehicles but not tanks, artillery, then Soviet tanks, then western tanks, then western aircraft, missiles, then long range missiles, now it's western troops.
Gerard please help me understand your position as opposing Feral Finster.
If you refuse to call western actual strategy escalation, how do you name it?
It is obviously unsuccessful, if success is defined as victory for the US/West, and since this is a proxy war, victory for the proxy, i.e. Ukraine.
Unsuccessful escalation is still escalation. There is a deeper problem, that US strategy has been mistaken, wrong from the very beginning and every move, decision is standing on a very shaky foundation, but even mistaken strategy is strategy.
Western troops have been in country since well before RF armed forces crossed the border. A reminder that the war started in 2014, although some would argue 1918.
My boss (at the time) was doing foreign military sales work in Ukraine from the mid-2000s on - at least by 2005. He was a retired light colonel from a C2 systems background and a former product manager. He wouldn't have been doing the work if not directed to do so from on high that this was 'desired'. He would flip between Ukraine and Uzbekistan on a fairly frequent basis in those days. Getting a hold of him then was hard, especially since I was in the ME a lot too.
I'd also make the point that in 07/08 there were a lot of Ukrainian planes at BIAP - Baghdad International.
aand the peak of UKR combat effectiveness was when they still had Soviet AD and gear. western gear has proven pretty much perfectly helpless, no matter if Leopard, Abrams, Bradley, Patriot, Krab, Caesar... whatever.
Western troops - apart from niche roles like aiming/shooting the Himars - have proven perfectly useless either. life expectation of a French brigade (and they can only really field one) in UKR is tbh just a week or two, maybe. and that's being generous.
as others said these are fairly stupid (as in inefficient) escalations
- if you want to fight, then fight
- going into a fight (say a boxing match) 'one finger at the time' is self-defeating and just makes you weaker as time goes on.
- sending your inventory at dripple pace is even worse; you never give yourself a chance as your equipment gets destroyed piecemeal
observing this whole break EU/NATO escalation from across the ocean just makes one shake his head, WTF boys? aren't you thinking at all?? You could not have picked a worse way of doing it.
West is not stupid. They just took some wrong decisions. Because they refused to accept the world as it is, now, refused to acknowledge the change in the world.
Listen to how Indian foreign minister ridicules the West in a very intelligent way, with great sense of humor and you will understand what it is that West refuses to see.
Africans? Piss off you racist arsehole.
Bidens Regime just can't stop interfering in other countries.
Macron thinks he’s Napoleon, except he has no army. He likes Josephs, not Josephines. Just another catamite of Klaus Schwab and George Soros’ cabinet penetration parties.
Unlike Napoleon Macron isn't going to reach The Russian border.
Forgot to take pills today?
You left out 'According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry'.
Sounds about right, Yuri. However instead of Josephs, how about Macaron, a tasteless, delicate, whipped item loved by PMC yuppies? Or with all the rotten eggs and guano he's been laying and the ridiculous preening of a cluck, what do you think about Maricón?
I don't think Russia's primary threat comes from France. Look to expansion of terrorist activities in the North, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Drones are the perfect terrorist weapon.
He will have an army. He’s gong to “pull it off” because it’s a racket. Read Anthony C. Sutton’s “wallstreet trilogy”. Besides Carroll Quigley this book it actually history (Princeton and Georgetown professors) who’s work is widely available but left out of the conversation because it’s to be taught to politicians but not spoken of “on stage”. Sutton also wrote the best work on the skull and bones society if you want to know what Kerry and Bush really believe.
Macron is a nutcase!!! The French People need to recall him and new elections should commence as soon as possible. War crazies like Macron have no sense of responsibility.
"The French People need to recall him "
They voted TWICE for him ... WTF?
... but he did, after the yellow gilets jaunes and after his tyrannical vax policies...
It is like saying "the bullet ALMOST missed his head - not good enough!
Kind of; they want to kill most and enslave the "lucky"...
not WTF... WEF...
Top of the pyramid indeed.. Wef being only their puppets..
The reason he got elected twice is because of the Far right and Marine Le Pen. It is different now.
I believe the mustache guy, the Austrian painter whose name we can't say would be a lesser evil compared to Macron...
"I don't know if he was less bad than Macron"
For sure more competent.
Ernesto.
Macron got in because it was either him or Le Pen.
We do not have elections which last over a year and we do not have a circus.
We have many parties to vote for and it comes down to the most voted 2.
None of us wanted Le Pen.
Now, unless something changes VERY fast we will get Le Pen!
Good question - but necessary to specify worse than Macron from the point of view of the ruling class and EU élite?, or worse than Macron from the point of view of defending French workers and wages against the ruling class and the EU élites, and the country from foreign military adventures in Ukraine certainly, but also in Africa, the Red sea and so on
Right at this moment nothing makes her worse. That wasn't so when he got in.
I can only vote in Municipal elections and this time I will go Communist.
What will LePen do that scares you so frightfully?
Be a politician who might do some of the things the actual French people want? Oh terrible, we can't have that!
You can try. At this point I consider the whole of the political elite in the West to be a victim of mass psychosis. I cannot otherwise imagine why they want to kill Russians so much. Or is it normal every now and then to have a big one?
Macron is safe until 2027.
define safe
There will be no election and the police and army will shoot when ordered.
Interesting definition. maybe, things don't go as planned most often 😊 especially given Macron has no control over what happens. Look to his banker friends. How would your scenario help them?
If that is the price to retain power.
He can take some damage with the european elections. But nothing fatal.
Not if he makes good on his implied promise that France will act directly against Russia to prevent Russia from winning the war in Ukraine.
There are plenty of scenarios where sometime in 2024 Kiev's forces collapse so broadly that Russian forces can seize Odessa or Kiev, and in response the French military directly attacks and kills Russians, either in what used to be in Ukraine or in Russia itself. In that case Russia will strike France directly.
After that the situation can easily escalate, but whether it does or doesn't Macron cannot be considered "safe" from the moment France strikes Russia. It is not likely Russia would seek to kill him, as it helps Russia to have a physical coward in charge in France who is likely to capitulate when he feels pain, but once Russia starts striking France the situation will be so messy Macro could end up dead without Russia specifically targeting him.
Macron is betting that French forces will act as a tripwire and that Russia will continue to avoid escalation.
Indeed. The question is whether he and his people have considered what happens and what they will do if Russia doesn’t avoid escalation. He can’t officially invoke Article 5 and if he assumes that the US will back him up he’s going to learn a hard lesson. Which could leave him with not enough force or supply to do anything except try to explain to the French people why he ordered their army to Ukraine and now soldiers are dead.
He’s bluffing on a poor hand, especially because his actual support in the military is clearly lower than he thinks. See the leaks and his approval rating with the assumption that serving military are almost certainly not his constituency.
The US will support Macron, otherwise they'd tell him to shut up.
And if you think any western leader cares about public opinion....
Simplicius, I am one of your subscribers here on Substack. Will you enable audio for this article please? – Thank you.
I use a read aloud app.
Why? If you have audio there needs to be subtitles for the deaf!
Since the beginning of this war, we keep hearing that the West can't escalate, it would be unpopular, reckless and suicidal, but they keep escalating all the same.
1914. “Mobilization means war”. You just wind up the apparatus and let it go and events take their charted course.
Aye, Scott. See also: Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers." One of the best books covering the Euros stumbling into WW1.
I’ve read it, as well as Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly. The parallels to today with countries technically at peace sending money and weapons across the borders to start conflicts with plausible deniability are remarkable.
What fascinates me is how blind the masses are to the fact that all of this is orchestrated by the USA to the detriment of Europe.
True. US is worried about Taiwan and Israel and yet the US started this.
Another hypothesis has it that all this is engineered by European oligarchs with the Americans as their muscle.
I do think those fellows are behind all of this ultimately.
After all the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2 went so well for them, surely a WW3 and the opportunity to pick over the bones of Russia would be especially attractive.
Mostly British I guess, they seem to have a sick mental mind that goes back a long time
Remember the NATO dictate: keep Germany down, Russia out and the US in.
I'll add her book to my library! Thank you for mentioning it. Be well.
"The Guns Of August" is one of the most widely-sold history books in English. The title in the UK is "August 1914". Writing "between the lines", Barbara Tuchman explains how the British seduced the Germans into making the fatal mistake of starting WW1. The humiliating climb-down of the 1910 Agadir Crisis proved Germany would never intentionally attack Britain. So in 1914, London refused to say which side the UK would take, if any. One cheap telegram from the UK government to Berlin would have prevented the war, but that' not what London wanted. Tuchman laid out the fateful meeting the evening of Monday, Aug. 3, 1914. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig told of the high cost. He ruled out the 6 week garden party given in the lying history books. Haig said it would be "a war of attrition" that would take 4 years and cost Britain 4 million casualties. Exactly prescient, we now know, and the government didn't reveal the casualty numbers until 1925, at which point the royal family made a new tradition to wear a poppy on Nov. 11, to commemorate the horrific losses which they had concealed from the public. Britain had far cheaper options for managing industrial rivalry with Germany, but ... the real goal was to seize Palestine as a new Jewish homeland. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was proof of London's actual motive. Tuchman explains how Britain laid out the trap for the Ottoman Empire, although she is not blunt and you must read between the lines. Any Declaration of War always starts the war immediately - except for England's Declaration Of War in 1914. London declared on the morning of Aug. 4 that war would take effect at midnight. (Most histories obfuscate the timing and I even saw one which said 11pm Aug. 4th. Total BS.) That 14 or 16 hour delayed start gave the Germans time to bring the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of Germany. The Ottoman Empire held the real prize: Palestine. Tuchman details the cat-and-mouse game in which the German Navy ordered the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battleships to depart the vicinity of Sicily and head for the neutral waters of the Dardanelles. The Royal Navy spent a lot of energy monitoring these warships but did nothing to stop them. When the German warships entered Ottoman waters, the Sultan was faced with an unpleasant choice. Germany was extremely popular, having built the Orient Express railroad, trained the Ottoman Army and sold the Ottomans all their weapons. If the Sultan were to impound the warships, there was a real threat of popular revolt. So the Sultan chose the short-term benefit of retaining his waning power, and he joined Germany in a war he didn't want. "The Guns Of August" didn't cover the years to come, but we know it was "tab A into slot B", etc. until the British occupied Palestine and gave it to the Jews, acknowledged in the infamous letter to Lord Rothschild as head of the Jews in England. Right there is the real reason why WW1 was not prevented by one simple telegram.
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) was Jewish and wrote many popular history books. "Guns Of August" (1962) went into at least 26 reprints. My other big takeaway from her book was the senseless disaster of the Battle of Tannenberg, a costly and tragic stupidity which foreshadowed the fall of the Romanovs.
Interesting but you don’t prove your point. It’s basically mind reading to say “this happened and that was the goal” it’s not proof. Anyway big events usually have more than one motive.
To my mind, to see the end goal of the Balfour Agreement as the (re)establishment of Israel is to assume the Rothchilds cared a fig about Jews.
I do think the Rothchilds cared deeply about control of the oil rich middle east and wanted a forward beachhead to ensure they could capitalize on the region's resources.
The action forcing the Jews of Europe after WW2 into Palestine, Jews the majority of whom had little to no interest in living in a desert, was to populate this Rothchild beachhead.
The European nations were tickled pink to help with this "return" as that way they wouldn't have pesky incountry Jewish claimants wanting their assets back.
As with any crime, follow the money.
Excellent comment! I believe the ruling class of Britain would have considered the prospect of 4 million casualties a benefit, not a tragedy. With invention of farming machines such as motorized combines, tractors, and harvesters, there would have been a huge surplus of labor with no place to go. Farming in the nineteenth century was very labor intensive. Sending the unemployed off to the frontlines to be killed in large numbers would have been one way to solve the problem, in the minds of the British elite.
"Haig said it would be "a war of attrition" that would take 4 years and cost Britain 4 million casualties. "
And then he went on to ensure that it did cost that many.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau
The Goeben and Breslau were the ships involved in the Med. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were part of the China squadron at this time and were destroyed in late 1914 at the Falklands.
Troubridge, the opposing commander in the Med, was court-martialed for not intercepting Goeben. So much for not pursuing Goeben and Breslau...
"Bought all their weapons from Germany" was not true; the Turks had two battleships on order from Great Britain, one of which that ultimately formed part of the Grand Fleet. These were seized by Churchill long before the Goeben showed up in the Dardanelles. Lots more in the following article demonstrating that it wasn't true that they bought arms exclusively from the Germans. Hell, a Brit admiral had lead their navy for years before the war.
https://armingallsides.org.uk/case_studies/ottoman-navy-scandal/
Tuchman had a point of view, let's leave it at that. Also, she would not have made most of the assertions that you did.
That's a rather one-eyed view of the origin of the Great War. Another view , quite popular, is that Germany was ready to turn a regional scuffle into a great European War because of a crisis of falling expectations amongst the German boss class. All of the great powers changed from maintaining peacetime establishments to arming for war in 1911. That would be quite a long stumble.
So we have the “Sleepwalker” hypothesis, where they stumbled into war, and the “Mobilization” hypothesis where everything was wound up and waiting for an event to trigger the whole cascade into WWI.
The Sleepwalkers were the citizenry, the Mobilization group were the bankers IMO.
There are more theories, one is that the constitution of the German empire put too much on the Kaiser who was the only integrating force in the state and had some rude shocks like when he wanted a mobilisation against Russia but not France. A bloke called [Sean McMeekin] thinks that it was the Austro-Hungarians wot done it, others go for a crisis of finance capitalisms and at least one writer says that it was the ceiling reached of the energy that could be gained from burning coal.
The conclusion of the 1871 war was the real event that triggered WWI. The French were dissatisfied at being humiliated, and the Germans were irritated that European pressure forced them to retreat from huge swathes of French territory that their military had won on the field of battle. They both wanted a rematch to settle the question of which country was going to be the premier land power in continental Europe.
I think this is the most logical explanation for why WWI ended up feeling so inevitable once the Serbians helped reduce the Austrian population by a few royals.
The Russians didn't seem to actually want the big war, and nor were they ready for it in the same way that the Germans and French were. Then again, the Austro-Hungarians weren't exactly ready for it either, judging by their pathetic battlefield performance.
Certainly possible.
Germany was annoyed it was unable to develop lucrative foreign colonies as its cousins had. And if you look at the history of Europe, war is mother's milk to them, often a first resort rather than a last.
Monarchs viewed war as a means to settle petty grievances, to justify raiding the budget, taking on massive debt and of course keeping the peasantry ranks slim and their asperations down.
Their populations were lured, as always, into thinking a war would be regional and short term; they were unaware of the interconnected alliance agreements their crony leadership has signed.
Colonies weren't often lucrative, see Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 (2011) by James Belich and The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1989) by Avner Offer.
Valid point, yes some were lemons.
But then you have highly profitable cases like England's rule of India, China, and who can forget the insane wealth realized by Belgium in the Congo. This Paper gets into it starting on page 54. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2641&context=honorstheses1990-2015
Compare those with the paltry loot from the colonies obtained by the Germans and the cost to Britain of the Dominions.
No-one was under any illusions that a war wouldn't be a long and bloody affair, the short-war illusion was a post-war cop out. There was lots of analysis of the Franco-Prussian War, particularly the second part when the republican armies stretched the Prussians very thin with irregular warfare.
After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (2001) By Antulio J, Echevarria II
and
German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (2005) by Robert T. Foley
I do think the military may have been aware, but the man in the street certainly was not, and was not told otherwise by the govt or press.
Plus our man in the street initially saw the war as a one off intervention due to the Arch Duke and his wife's murder. He had no idea of the secret interlocking protection alliances among world govts. As the world's nation's dominos fell, they war grew like Toppsy or more accurately a cancer.
This is an excellent article on the war's evolution (link below):
From the article:
"The war started as a confrontation between Austria – Hungary and Serbia. The Russian Empire joined the conflict, considering itself protective of the Slavic countries and wishing to undermine the position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
After the Austro – Hungarian declaration of war on Russia 1 of August of 1914 , the conflict was transformed into a military confrontation at European level.
Germany responded to Russia with war, bound by a secret pact with the Habsburg monarchy, and France mobilized to support its ally.
The hostilities as they evolved pulled in 32 countries, 28 of them called “Allies”: France, Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Japan, the United States (since 1917 ), as well as Italy, which had abandoned the triple alliance.
This group faced the coalition of the “Central Powers”, made up of the Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire.
https://historicaleve.com/world-war-1-summary-timeline-facts-causes/
For the British the German invasion of Belgium was very important to mobilise public opinion, which is why Joffre was told not to toy with the idea until the Germans had made the first move.
The public had been presented with the examples of the Russo-Japanese and Boer wars.
This time it's different. They have "mobilized" the weapons and ammunition that they sent to Ukraine, but in order to maintain political power domestically, no one is mobilizing troops or recruiting civilians or jump-starting a war economy in the west. They are following the steps of escalating towards starting war but not fighting one, let alone winning one. They have truly drank their own Kool aid and believe that their wonder weapons alone that keep getting beaten in Ukraine are somehow going to beat the Russian armed forces. Laughable. I predict that NATO will try to waltz into Odessa without announcement, be very quickly disillusioned after their entire force is mangled by missile strikes, as all NATO mercenaries and "trainers" and AD crews have been since the start of the war. They'll leave and the fact that they tried to defend Odessa covertly will be "Russian disinformation" officially until a few decades later.
Yep. "The Guns of August" was a good book that illustrated the sort of inevitability of the subsequent events once the first nation began mobilization. That book also noted that it wasn't just pure German aggression. The French were itching for a rematch from the humiliation they suffered in the war of 1871. They wanted WWI just as much, if not more, than the Germans did. No one actually cared about the Austro-Hungarians and their Serbian problem. That was just the match being lit for the bomb built by the Germans and French.
nonsense - they are talking not doing - to you these are one and the same - but not to anyone else
At the beginning only non-military support was promised. Since then the weapons and ammo provided have increased in amount and potency by orders of magnitude, one step at a time, until now they are talking about nuclear-capable Taurus missiles. I call those those escalations.
I call those failures
- all arms and armour sent has depleted NATO supplies, and been destroyed in the battlefield - as each new batch is sent it is once again destroyed - and so far left unreplaced in the home country armories
There is now little left - if that too is sent then that too will be destroyed
The RF has as one of it's goals the defeat of NATO, what more efficient means could they have chosen but to destoy the armour while sparing the foot soldier
The so called 'escalation ' is merely disarmement
From the Russian perspective, absolutely correct. Though I have to wonder at times, are these countries, including the US actually sending their best equipment? Seems much of what they have sent is past its shelf life, and every day you see more suddenly appear from what we thought were depleted stocks. We thought the US was short of ammo, yet when Israel needed it, plane after plane after plane of US armour and weaponry was instantly on the move. Of course everyone keeps back a certain portion for its own protection, but still I wonder.
No need to wonder about the ammunition, or lack of it - either in the US or the EU
The so called best equipment these countries have is not useful in this war; besides they fear that it would be destroyed by the RF - and that it would then be more or less impossible to replace them in any length of time that would pass as acceptable to allow them to continue to play the hawk
For the US Read the about the Defense Budget and the Procurement Program Fiscal 2025
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3703751/dods-2025-budget-request-provides-45-raise-for-service-members/#:~:text=The%20Defense%20Department%20today%20laid,the%20fiscal%202025%20budget%20request.
Pentagon Procurement Programs Fiscal Year 2025
https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2025/FY2025_p1.pdf
Any proposals useful for the Ukraine war have been shifted to The National Security Supplemental Bill, which has been lapping the pool since last October
The reason the US and presumably other nations are not sending their best is that it becomes the property of the RF before long and it's an intel bonanza for them, and presumably the Chinese and Iranians, at least in part. Save the best for when you have to fight the RF. This is simple logic and would be practiced by any nation - the Soviets always had export versions of everything for pretty much this reason.
There is a huge difference in the two wars' objectives The US doesn't want Ukraine to "win" it wants Ukraine to bleed Russia long term, to the last Ukrainian. True the plan is not working out as hoped.
But they still feel there is a win to be had in a stalemate allowing them to bring in Blackrock to "help" Ukraine rebuild aka, rob the EU blind. Then they can rearm Ukraine in a few years and attack Russia yet again at their leisure.
In Israel, the US goal is time sensitive and super top tier. First to kill or displace all Palestinians so that Israel can build a massive port, access the Gaza off shore gas fields, build a canal bypassing the Suez (WHY are you an ally with these people Egypt??) and run high speed rail with a gas pipe line component throughout the area and to the EU.
Israel can then take EU gas market share from Russia, pose an even greater threat to ME peace, decrease BRICS+ attractiveness to ME nations, decrease Iran gas sales and continue to be the world's least liked nation.
The US is not sending its best and it is trying to maintain a strategic reserve. But there is a point where it starts to pinch. If you track the numbers of things being sent to Ukraine over time you see a pretty steep decrease. The French, for example have already sent 40% of their artillery systems. That strongly indicates that most western arsenals are already at the pinch point or beyond.
What do mean by 'the best' that the US is not sending-
It's a stretch to designate, say, the F35 as the best when it can not fly most of the time, and as seen in the Red Sea in a slightly different context, the west can not long afford to oppose limited numbers of multi million dollar systems against huge amounts of well managed 20 thousand dollar systems
Besides whatever the best the US may have it is not the best for a war such as being fought in the Ukraine - they may not have sent the best models of the Abrams, but such would get bogged down in the mud, be as logistically impossible to run and repair, and be as exposed to drones just as the older models
Better? Patriots? no way
But this is the point - all the west has done has been to throw inefficient insufficient arms and cash - and all that the west might be able to throw as their best would also be, in all probability, as inefficient and insufficient
How in this case may western actions be described as escalation, when in reality they are de escalation, as you describe - that is so say partly because they can not afford to send anything at all and mostly because whatever they do have in any case are not fit for purpose
17 March 2024 GAO report on the F-35
Please read GAO report on the F35 - this is far from the best, so how come they did'nt send it to fight already
They plan to build 2,000 of these non flying turkeys at a cost of $1.7T
– the US could buy every Ukranian a villa in Miami, two in Orlando, and another somewhere else for the price
That would be successful escalation
https://www.gao.gov/assets/870/861566.pdf
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals
.[FullMission capable rate is about 30%]
This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.).
The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels.
At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness
Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data
A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels
Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity
Lack of support equipment
F-35 support equipment is too frequently unavailable on flight lines
Lack of spare parts A lack of spare parts at installations and on deployments is causing maintenance delays Source: GAO analysis of Department of Defense information; U.S. Air Force/R. Nial Bradshaw. | GAO-23-105341 The Department of Defense (DOD) relies heavily on its contractor to lead and manage F-35 sustainment (see fig.). However, as DOD seeks expanded government control, it has neither (1) determined the desired mix of government and contractor roles, nor (2) identified and obtained the technical data needed to support its desired mix. The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments— specifically to the contractor-managed elements. Reassessing its a
September 2023 F-35 AIRCRAFT
DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals. This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.). The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels. At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity Lack of support equipment View GAO-23-105341.
For more information, contact Diana Maurer at (202) 512-9627 or maurerd@gao.gov.
Why GAO Did This Study
The F-35 aircraft, with its advanced capabilities, represents a growing portion of DOD’s tactical aviation fleet—with about 450 of the aircraft fielded. DOD plans to procure nearly 2,500 F-35s at an estimated life cycle cost of the program exceeding $1.7 trillion. Of this amount, $1.3 trillion are associated with operating and sustaining the aircraft.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 included a provision for GAO to review F-35 sustainment efforts. This report, among other things, assesses the extent to which (1) challenges exist with F-35 depot and organizational-level maintenance, and (2) DOD has determined its desired mix of government and contractor sustainment support for the future. GAO reviewed F-35 program documentation, reviewed readiness and performance data, visited two F-35 depots and three operational installations, conducted a survey of all 15 F-35 installations, and interviewed officials.
What GAO Recommends GAO is making seven recommendations to DOD, including reassessing F-35 sustainment elements to determine government and contractor responsibility and any required technical data, and making final decisions on changes to F-35 sustainment to address performance and affordability.
They're not sending the more modern versions of the Abrams that have additional counter-measures for anti-tank missiles.
It's also clear that a few weeks of training isn't enough for a Ukrainian crew to get good with the Abrams. Normally it's a 22 week OSUT (one station unit training) that combines basic training with tanker school just to create a U.S. Army tanker (19K) who is still seen as very wet behind the ears. They'll then be sent to a permanent duty station where they'll be the least experienced guy on a crew where 1-2 of the four members have been driving tanks for years.
That's the thing with complicated weapon systems: they're complicated and require solid training and experience to operate correctly in the best of conditions.
We can send the Ukrainians tanks, but we can't turn them into good tankers with a couple of weeks of training.
Additional measures will change little
The tank is not designed for this sort of war in this kind of place
If the Ukrainians can not be turned into good tankers, and that is what is required for success, why send them the tanks in the first place
If the US gets everything wrong that can only be the fault of the US
Or heck why not ...blame the Russians
They are failures only after they failed in battle, which in turned was after escalation, ie sending materiel to Ukraine that wasn't there before or to replace equipment destroyed.
If all their escalations are failures - this does mean they are not escalations, they are meaningless attempts to throw something at a problem then when that fails something else or more of the same, but all to no effect or result, this is like walking up a hill and sliding back down at the same time, the old Greeks had stories about this kind of uselessness
If escalation is to have any meaning it must designate a planned progression in strategy to improve/increase in quantity and quality the amounts of resources, soldiers or arms, applied to the battlefield in order successfuly to achieve specific and specified goals, if not victory
NATO not only does not know what goals it has, it has no idea of how not to achieve them, let alone..
Throwing random balls of cash for others to catch is not escalation, neither is sending over small substandard mishmashes of arms and armour for them to cash in
These are failures only if you look at the result from immediate perspective of the particular batch of escalations. Long term Russia may be weakened by the war more than the West - at least in theory we have higher industrial capacity.
I wonder what impact will it have on our standing with the world. Certainly this whole nonsense will not induce much love anywhere. It does not matter when we are strong but it will when we will be weak.
I can't even fault most of the NATO generals. They're told to prepare for the military missions that politicians state publicly.
They can't prepare for a war engineered by the foreign policy ghouls in the U.S. State Department, CIA, and their European equivalents. Those people really thought they could take control of Ukraine with no repercussions and that Russia was a wounded old dog barking through the fence but unable to bite.
2014 didn't teach them anything, even as they watched in surprise as Russia straight out took Crimea and set up the armed insurrections in the Donbas.
So they doubled down even harder...and then spent 8 years not preparing Ukraine for a real war.
Fucking idiots. I can't believe these ivy league morons are in charge of the U.S. when an enlisted intel analyst with 3 years of experience could have looked at the available information and told them they either needed to have Ukraine really tool up and build a whole lot of fortifications, or they needed to dial back the rhetoric and actually begin talking to Russia as a peer nation with real security concerns.
I don't know who told the EU NATO contingent that attacking Russia would be a cakewalk. But it does appear some group did. Or did they tell them something else?
From what I have read the game plan was strategized through US eyes; Russia was expected to run a "shock and awe" invasion, quickly conquer and set up a new Ukraine govt.
The Ukraine military was not set up to wage a WW2 redux, it was trained and armed to be an insurgency force, and a pretty spiffy one at that.
But Russia saw the trap, or may it didn't initially, perhaps it just felt if it took a measured approach it would awaken reason in the EU.
The idea Ukraine at roughly 1 to 16 odds in manpower could "win" against Russia should have been clearly apparent. The idea that Ukraine on the other hand could wage a lengthy insurgency causing the Putin govt to fall to the EU's benefit would probably have been a fairly easy sell. And here we are.
AGAIN, for the comprehension impaired..
WHAT makes you call them escalations?
(really, this question is for the Finster, he NEVER answers it)
FF is a troll - he has a collection of one liners he copied out of Trolling for Dummies - there's a quote from his mentor Goering he likes -
He goes round the internet repeating them
He grants talk of escalation as more significant than acts of escalation - which are merely the signs of not knowing what you are doing
-or in his case not knowing what he is saying
Need I remind you of Soviet aircraft, air defense, armored vehicles but not tanks, artillery, then Soviet tanks, then western tanks, then western aircraft, missiles, then long range missiles, now it's western troops.
all lost and destroyed a whole world thrown away - go write your sad song somewhere else
Gerard please help me understand your position as opposing Feral Finster.
If you refuse to call western actual strategy escalation, how do you name it?
It is obviously unsuccessful, if success is defined as victory for the US/West, and since this is a proxy war, victory for the proxy, i.e. Ukraine.
Unsuccessful escalation is still escalation. There is a deeper problem, that US strategy has been mistaken, wrong from the very beginning and every move, decision is standing on a very shaky foundation, but even mistaken strategy is strategy.
Western troops have been in country since well before RF armed forces crossed the border. A reminder that the war started in 2014, although some would argue 1918.
My boss (at the time) was doing foreign military sales work in Ukraine from the mid-2000s on - at least by 2005. He was a retired light colonel from a C2 systems background and a former product manager. He wouldn't have been doing the work if not directed to do so from on high that this was 'desired'. He would flip between Ukraine and Uzbekistan on a fairly frequent basis in those days. Getting a hold of him then was hard, especially since I was in the ME a lot too.
I'd also make the point that in 07/08 there were a lot of Ukrainian planes at BIAP - Baghdad International.
aand the peak of UKR combat effectiveness was when they still had Soviet AD and gear. western gear has proven pretty much perfectly helpless, no matter if Leopard, Abrams, Bradley, Patriot, Krab, Caesar... whatever.
Western troops - apart from niche roles like aiming/shooting the Himars - have proven perfectly useless either. life expectation of a French brigade (and they can only really field one) in UKR is tbh just a week or two, maybe. and that's being generous.
Hope you're right. NATO apparently thinks otherwise.
They will learn to fight just like everyone else, but the body bags will be aplenty in the process.
as others said these are fairly stupid (as in inefficient) escalations
- if you want to fight, then fight
- going into a fight (say a boxing match) 'one finger at the time' is self-defeating and just makes you weaker as time goes on.
- sending your inventory at dripple pace is even worse; you never give yourself a chance as your equipment gets destroyed piecemeal
observing this whole break EU/NATO escalation from across the ocean just makes one shake his head, WTF boys? aren't you thinking at all?? You could not have picked a worse way of doing it.
The west seems criminally stupid. But I assume there are hidden motives for this nonsense
West is not stupid. They just took some wrong decisions. Because they refused to accept the world as it is, now, refused to acknowledge the change in the world.
Listen to how Indian foreign minister ridicules the West in a very intelligent way, with great sense of humor and you will understand what it is that West refuses to see.
sounds good. got any links to some of that?