Completely wrong, totally sophomoric and incorrect understanding of the SMO. You're listening too much to Strelkov, you should learn to diversify your habits a bit, ingrain some truth into your daily dose of doomer agitprop and propaganda
What about Ugledar do you need explained? There are upwards of 5-10k men serving there, and you saw a couple hand-picked videos of 3 dead guys and a completely (intentionally) mischaracterized video showing a few broken tanks, and you think that's indicative of something major? Please show me a video that shows hundreds or thousands dead in Ugledar. The fact of the matter is, there was one small operation that had a few mishaps, a few people died, big deal. It's not indicative of the fight at large whatsoever, and there is zero evidence showing more than that. You're erroneously extrapolating a hand-selected video to try and characterize a much broader front with 5-10k people serving on it. It's simple sophistry and intellectual disingenuousness, it's also fairly heavy denial and coping.
Fact is, the AFU lost far more men in Ugledar than Russia has.
you help us understand the real stakes. Massive arm production was decisive for the collapse of the Soviet Union. They had created a military industrial behemoth which hoovered all their resources, but ironies of history, in the long run that policy has proved critical for survival. Putin soon understood this fsct and has pursued to have an strategic balance between tanks and butter from the beginning. The Ukranian bone is resulting much harder than expected to crack to the surprise of both Nato and Russia. The empire's industrial powerhorse is weak now, but its growing by the hour. If Russia doesnt meaningfully speed up before the end of the summer the Z regime will be able to launch major offensives with growing number of Nato forces engaged. The big question is still unanswered. WTF is China going to do about it. They know 200 % they are the next in the list, and still arent able to decisevely support Russia. Are they waiting until the yanks cross the Yalu river?
I dont think that the Wests industrial power base is growing by the hour .Sure there has been an attempt at ramping up the rate of military production but that hasnt really even began .If you allow your industrial base to erode to the extent that the West has it will take a couple of years before they can even begin to to produce the weapons that it would take to defeat Russia or China. Meanwhile it is probably in Russia's interest that China is not directly involved at this stage as there is a hope ,albeit slim , that and all out world war may be avoided .And even if there is no hope,a civilized country must follow some sort proportionate reaction protocol .The way I see it its better for China to remain an industrial power base, unencumbered by war, for the moment if it can be achieved . A country that lost 20 million people in the war with Japan will not allow anyone to cross the Yalu river again
If Ze says that he is doing Europes work for every russian tank destroyed. Russia is doing China a favor for every piece of Nato Equipment destroyed. It is one less equipment China will face on the case of a taiwan scenario. And about choosing between butter and ammo. The west is having rapid deterioration of the economic situation for the average Joe, so the same is true for the Western Elites...
Chinese food is good, but Taiwanese is Great. I pray Taiwanese culture being protected no matter what side controlls them.
And I'm not sure China can move the forces across the water to get there, without destroying taiwan completely first. Look how powerful the defence is in Ukraine. Modern weapons work, people kind of wondered would they work? they do. China would be shredded crossing the ocean and the survivors shredded again trying to land a compacted mass of humans on one of the few landing beaches, probably covered in mines, constantly under pre-targeted airbursting fire from artillery and mortars in hidden caves and bunkers. It would be like Saving Private Ryan but more even more explosions and faster deaths.
Chinese would defeat America first, then allow blockaded Taiwan to join them and receive food shipments again, without firing a shot. They don't want to own Taiwan that's fucked up like Ukraine, they can wait. Russia couldn't wait for a long-term Ukraine solution as Ukraine was pursuing biological and nuclear weapons.
I don't think NATO can move heavy equipment to China anymore, that's why China built the island chain and a brown-water navy. I think the Navy looks scary, an the Roads look harmless, but the navy is really defensive and the roads are offensive. They can block America from doing an Iraq build-up by ocean, the only way to move that quantity of stuff. And they can simultaneously project military power across continents with the roads they've built. And they'll nuke Japan, to destroy and deny. Or they'll have NK nuke Japan. (like how America won't nuke Iran, but Israel will with American nukes)
Also western elites are getting rich as the populace gets poorer. The bank prints money. Now there's more money. You're % of the money in supply is less. You have less wealth, even though your bank balance is the same. Where did the wealth go? The bank GAVE that money to it's friends and it's subsidiaries. When they're 'propping up wall st' they literally give the money to their friends to go shopping. Did you get money to prop up wall st? Nope it went to banks and investment houses friendly or controlled by the people giving the money. Gave it to themselves. And told you they were helping the economy, and you should thank them.
Soon a few families will have all the money, and everyone not explicitly loyal to them will be killed by a poison injection.. oh they did that... Soon everyone who has been poisoned will be replaced by cheap automatons. Burger King and McDonalds have been asking for 20++ years to go robotic, but the federal gov't won't let them because of the % of population they employ and the ripple effects on their economy. You know their cash registeres don't have words or numbers, just pictures? They don't add up the price of 2 burgers at $2 each, and deduct from the $5 bill you gave them. They push the burger button twice. The company values them that much.
Both American and Soviet empires devoted much resources to a military industrial complex, which if big enough, can self-sustain by being a generation ahead of any other small country's products, and a huge export market is created. You don't sell the products at cost, you charge a profit, and this profit pays for your own weapons, meaning you are getting your army kind of for free.
Of course America started screwing their allies over sabotaging and cannibalizing their production, and the industry started screwing the military over by overcharging and too many scams to mention. I bet the Soviet experience is similar. British had a great rifle EM2 and a great cartridge in the 1950's and America is just starting to catch up to it today. They sabotaged the trials and cheated and made their rifle (american) and cartridge (nato) the standard.
Look at f35, almost every ally country has to buy it, they have no hope of ever developing a stealth fighter. Sure Turkey is trying, but they're pulling away, and will be punished. Japan is developing too, but is complicated and transitional and confusing. Japan offered Australia awesome submarines, lots of them, but they'd have to be made in Japan. Great subs great price and they can have them starting tomorrow. For 'some reason' Australia turned this down, and gave France a bunch of money for VAPORWARE, realized they got scammed, aand is spending like 10-100x the amount of money to produce American submarines, which might be worse because they have to build the shipyard to build the submarines. Australia's shipbuilding is shitty and Japan's is great. So today Australia is out sooo much money, and if they'd given the money to Japan they'd have subs already, but they gave it to france and america and they have promises.
Oh and the US submarines are going to be nuclear weapon capable, though they say they won't carry them of course...
What's China going to do? They go back to their history and the most successful military against the west, and in general, was the Mongols. And the Mongols would win the battle before they fought. And the Mongols didn't fight alone, their spies went in first and formed a fifth column in the enemy before they'd attack. If the Mongols had continued into Europe, their would have been hosts of European knights riding and fighting alongside of them.
China is at war now, they're finding and strengthening allies in their enemy countries. And defensively they're rooting out the same, and trying to pry American allies away from them. I think they just got PNG, sure it's a small place, but it's a clear victory for them and defeat for America. The war will change over time, but right now they're fighting in grand geopolitical moves, maybe even so far as supporting political parties in far away countries, to affect internal changes... just maybe close to you.
I wouldn't wish for Chinese success if I were you, just a remotely stable multipolar world where diversity and safety are respected.
I like your comment .I live in Australia and must say we are buffoons. The only thing is I didnt mean to give the impression I wanted China to be too successful. A stable multipolar world is ,as you say, best
Right!? No one cares about stability, they don't understand the stakes and the risks, the exponentially escalating risks of instability.
Re procurement - There's this game on youtube where military and technical historians joke about a fictional country, Elbonia, and they joke about how to screw them over by making the shittiest decisions and buying the crappiest equipment. There's no way to look at the Australian military investment than this, you guys should treat those in charge as suspected enemies of the state, and put them in house arrest until a deep investigation clears them. Subs are strategic deterrent, it's unheard of to fuck around in that field. Rifles, sure, planes ok, but your strategic deterrent??? It's like Jack and the beanstalk.
The US does this a lot too, they spend a billion dollars and decide NOT to build the vehicle, the Marines with their amphibious vehicle, the army with their helicopter, navy LCS, they all waste money and produce literally nothing from the programs. Not one vehicle to one unit, of the navy they got shitty shitty ships that don't work at all, at all, and they're taking funding from good ships to keep them going. Canada paid a country hundreds of million$ to NOT buy their helicopters. They paid to NOT buy them. We are so fucked if war happens today. Even War Hawks should want peace while we clean the system out of parasites and traitors. Everyone should want peace.
As another Australian, I have to say Western Politicians at all levels are mostly buffoons but the submarine debacle may have worked for the best. The Japanese Soryu Class may well be the best Diesel-Electrics going, but their crew accommodations are actually SMALLER than the outgoing Collins Class (and they are a claustrophobes nightmare, having worked under/around Farncombe, Waller and Collins during drydock refit as a 6 ft human being).
The French Short-fin Barracuda (a paper version of the Barracuda SSN) was by far the better choice, if only because having made that choice, and with the French sure to f#@k up the redesign process, we (Australia) could turn around and say "you know what?? just make us the nuclear ones instead..."
This was probably the point where alarm bells ring in DC and Whitehall (who both have different reasons to want the French not have this kind of success) and various carrots and sticks were applied, giving us the AUKUS agreement.
At the time, I had a look at US/UK sub building programmes, and it was painfully obvious that Flight 5 Virginias were NOT going to happen, too much demand...but Lo! the Astute Class was just coming to the end of its programme...
Thus here we are, and a recent article has the UK offering us the Astute Class at a price hard to beat, not quite the Virginia, but still a world-class SSN hunter-killer, massively better than any diesel-electric.
Funny how even political buffoonery can sometimes work out...
I'm not presing for opsec, but I'm interested to hear more. I listen to Subbrief on YT and got info from there. He never mentioned comfort. Just that the Japanese have a new power technology, powercells? The French thought they could make them but can't. Its all a mystery. Jap subs can have conventional engines, but still run super fast underwater.
But look at this, Australia and Japan could be great allies, and sharing defence weapons would make sense. And they'd have something TODAY, not promises on a piece of paper. I'm not against China, just being real that most Jap and Aus defence planning is against them, and that's what defence planners are supposed to do, so no fouls.
So you're not building the American subs anymore? I can't keep up.
I read reports of British submarines trying to practice firing an SLBM and the sub nearly sank. At the end of their deployment on the way home they were like, "lets see if everything's working" and it fucking wasn't. Sailors started bitching on the internet, and the Brit navy sucks at everything from base security to maintenance to training guys or maintaining guys, it's suck all around. Don't buy their subs.
If you are running an arms plant during a war, sending a rail car full of shells directly to the front is a lot easier than sending it to a town, to be potentially loaded on a truck, take to a warehouse and unloaded so someone in another ware house could load a truck to take 1970's shells to a rail car to go to the front.
I expect both is happening, and some empty warehouses are being re filled, some old shells going, some new shells going.
Inventory rotation is good practice anyway, use the old shells before you have to decommission them.
Nato reports look like snitching on themselves. They Say Russia but it means themselves, they're running low, they're turning to Korea (south), in fact Ukraine is using Iranian ammunition. No evidence of any foreign material aid to Russia, shown yet, they are projecting the appearance of strength and independence, accepting foreign aid would look weak.
North Korea shelled an island heavily, and South Koreans snuck over and investigated, and found a double-digit dud rate in their shells. If there were north Korean shells in Ukraine someone would have posted a picture of a dud by now.
Looking at that American shell factory you posted, the one with the forge - German forges must be multiple times bigger, and they will have to spend a lot of money on energy to heat theirs. While Russia is flaring away excess gas they can't ship or store, German glass factories are shuttering perhaps permanently.
Could you consider an article on the soviet ammunition stockpiles being destroyed across Russia and Europe in the years leading-up to the war? The Himars epiosode shows that they're prime targets desired to hit by both sides. And exactly how has Russia dealt with this problem Nato posed? Did they just have to deliver the shells in small batches so Himars couldn't get them, and that's why the daily number fired reduced?
Fun fact the largest explosion in Canada's history was an ammunition ship off from New Brunswick during WW1, and there was another ammunition ship in New York that cooked off. There's always an official explanation, like they could prove it, but the book Simple Sabotage says spy agencies like to recruit civilian assets working in war industries who can just do little tiny things that can have big negative effects, like a pinch of sand in hydraulics oil, or oily rags in a pail placed in the corner of a flammable room.
It seems like as much ammunition is being destroyed in catastorphes than fired at the enemy, and some manufacturing facilities in Russia have had fires... Just an interesting aspect of the war directly affecting the home front.
Well, as for the number of shells - we don't know any numbers. There have been just several guesses, estimates published. Some claims had been made. Lacking specifying - what counts as a shell? Only tube artillery? Mortars? Rocket artillery? Beginning from which calibre? 57 mm guns? 60 mm NATO mortars? 120 mm Nona / mortars? Up to 300 mm Smerch? In which percentages these ammo types contribute to the numbers suggested? Oh, tanks shooting HE from covered positions indirect fire should count as well - add 125 mm & 115 mm to the mix.
Comparing with WW II, it shouldn't be forgotten that smaller calibres where used then. 152 mm was army and corps level arty. On regiment level, 76 mm guns where the norm.
So may be it would be easier to compare when giving the amounts of ammo in tons. E.g. the UK depot in Germany "Brachter Wald" had up to 45 kT ammo, which was considered one of the biggest in the West.
I mostly wanted to keep to 152/155 shells only to keep it focused and more intelligible for a wider dispersion. But this thread might interest you in reference to what you mentioned: https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1607589109132062721
In short, Russia reportedly has 7X the steel production now than USSR in WW2, and as such should theoretically be able to manufacture ungodly amounts of corresponding shells
On the whole i'd rather deal in numbers of munitions. Weight doesn't really give any idea of amount of rounds as munitions vary in size and weight. 45K tons sounds a lot, but at the rate of expenditure we are seeing in Ukraine what does that actually mean? Sure one can do the maths when you know the weights of the various munitions but numbers of rounds makes more sense to me.
Worked with a Russian fellow. Been a couple years since, but he talked about there are many small mom and pop tank and armor, weapons and ammo shops, the Russian procurement system contracts work to. Such as small outfits who install upgrade kits on late T65, T70s and R80s, ot they will do a bunch pf final fit up, or install reactive armor kits, lot of shops employ ladies and babooshkas who do the intricate painstaking and detailing things, he said similar with ammo and small arms components. Makes common sense, used to be similar in the US, I grew up and worked 47 years as a welder, a lot of it in aerospace and .mil contract shops, when we used to manufacture things in this country, small shops are what makes big production possible, its similar in the automotive and truck industry till the tarrif/offshore wealth transfer treaty rackets started.
But whats really critical and you almost never hear of it because being a makere and a craftsman in skilled trade has been so long looked down on now since the 70's, os institutional knowledge of the skilled labor trades, you lose that it requires decades to recreate it. Probably more time now because so many have forgotten what an axe, a shovel, and a Rifle are for, to coin a phrase. Besides the corporate vulturism and class structure begin in the 80's, if you did not go to colledge you where dirt, and they did everything to diminish the labor value of skilled labor, and it was nothing to do with any union stuff, this was flat out comdpiracy across corporate America to set the cheapest pay rates they would all stick with in order to create rea;;y low wages because no longer was there any compotition for say a skilled welder like me, every ridgid tube assembly house, be it GE's engine shop in Hookset NH or PanAm's at JFK, they all paid the same wage, same if you would go to a general metal fab job shop, same with tool and die guys, or precision sheetmetal fabricators, after awhile no one wanted a career in these trades, they paid just above survival wages.
So there is that and believe you me, it matters more than a lot of things, you dont have a skilled workforce you dont make much of anything.
My last welding gig was in a premier rocket and jet engine tube assembly shop, to do weldments they have to have certified fusion welders, i was the only old hand there, lot of years there, one day the big cheese comes asks me how can the company get any skilled welders, nobody shows up to job fares or answers adds. Told him outright, the pay sucks for welders, nobody wants to be one because of it, few weeks later I get a $10 dollar hour raise unasked, shows up in my paycheck, and they ask me to become a weld teacher for the company, train green employees how to weld, but other than a couple old guys like me, they still could not get new welders with a pretty decent payrate increase. They just could not get it. Skilled labor, true cradt labor, its a culture thing and a tradition thing and it was destroyed by globo=peedo to squeeze the last buck out of America, i watched it happen.
That was trhe conversation with this Russian fellow, we where talking about the various reades in each of our countries, and it was clear to me Russia never lost that institutional/time honored traditions in trades and skills and makers crafts, all those people are no more there is no legacy here in the US, but we sure did have it in my lifetime in America, just like Russia still has. The west is Kaput, I could see it in the early 90's coming, for the reasons above. And all the implications.
Russia can never be defeated now, not because of manufacturing might but because of spirit, because its a nation made up of men and woman who not only know what an axe a shovel and a Rifle is for, they are good folks who appreciate what those things are for and more so those who know how to use them. The manufacturing might and capacity follows.
Those ladies putting upgrade kits on tanks and BMPs, they put Love into them, O'm not shitting about it, its love because people like that when they put their labor into it, they do so because, it ain't gonna fail because of me, mentality and mindset.
Its something the satanists despise as nothing else and destroying that in a productive prosperous happy nation is the prime directive. All that you ain't shit unless you go tocalledge was class and culture warfare/pogrom. To wreck what was gear about America.
And you can't turn it back on like lights in a new factory no matter what you do or throw money at. That stuff came with the founding of America. It built this country. It is men in suits who destroyed it after men in a pair of dungarees and wotk boots created it, (woman included too absolutely).
Thanks, great post. I agree about the culture thing, though I never heard about the artisanal small shop stuff, that's interesting will have to look into it sometime.
You're right, the big end all, be all at the end of the day is always culture, and particularly a unified, strong/proud culture. The U.S. is currently gravely diseased in this regard, a metastasized tumor completely eating away at the core. I've never seen or heard of a country in my life so utterly corrupt down to its very soul. It's one thing for countries to have corrupt 'political systems', more or less every country on earth suffers from this to various degrees. But the corruption of the very cultural zeitgeist of America is breathtaking to behold. The cold grasp that the globalist elites have on the heart of America's very ethos is just mindboggling.
I think Russia has some fairly severe problems too, not just political but cultural as well. It still has never fully recovered, only in fits and spurts, from the dissolution of the 90's. The new generation is sort of just waywardly trying to find its footing and outline a new cultural ethos after the blank slate wipe which occurred at the end of the USSR's downfall. But they aren't fully succeeding yet, there's a lot of neoliberal corruption, that same cancerous disease trying desperately to grip the youth there too, and moderately succeeding in some places. You can see this by interviewing various 'youth' and 'young adults' in the streets of cosmopolitan cities like Moscow, many of their cultural/political views are poisoned by the western mind virus. But alas, at least the prospects are much better because Putin has put a pretty heavy clamp on those insidious cultural trojan horses, at least to the best of his ability. But the west is sparing no expense in continuing efforts to infiltrate and assimilate them from the inside out.
the Lima plant doesn't manufacture Abrams tanks any more, hasn't for close to twenty years. It now only consists of a conversion line, for upgrading older versions. As far as I know, no NATO country still produces MBT's, and they haven't for many years, and there are no production lines left.
Curiously, the one exception might be Greece, which obtained a license to produce part of their Leopard-2 production themselves. They produced only a handful of tanks per year, and I'm not sure when they finished production.
that's true, I had to double check and apparently it now 'upgrades 11 tanks per month' (or at least as of 2019) just to keep the production line operational but doesn't build any new ones. As per this article: https://www.rt.com/news/570546-ukraine-us-abrams-tanks/
the ones they intend to supply to Ukraine will come from this stock also. So this alone means it would be months for Ukraine to hypothetically get them as the plant only produces 11, depending on how many they intend to give Ukraine
Per this article it’s building 11 per month all for export as of 2019. Under Obama the plant almost closed. And his administration did request it be closed, but congress ignored that.
Taiwan is supposed to get some eventually, but that may be delayed as that production goes to Ukraine. That version does not have the depleted uranium armor.
Re Russian armor losses: why should it matter if Oryx (albeit using inflated numbers probably) is counting LDPR losses as "Russian" losses? Both oblasts are now incorporated into the Federation, so they will work from the same "stock" as the RuAF. So whatever tanks got lost in the past year by LDPR _and_ Russia will need to be replenished by the same Russian military-industry complex.
That is one consideration BUT DPR also has its own facilities and industries for--maybe not tank production--but tank refurbishment, repair, and upgrades (remember, the Donbass region is the manufacturing, industrial heart of Ukraine, that's where ALL the main heavy industries and specialists are). That means THEIR losses don't put as much of a strain on the Russian replenishment infrastructure because they can in some ways take care of their own losses. Sure the bare stock has to still come from Russia's copious stockpiles (of which it famously has 15,000 - 20,000+ depending how you count).
So in short, DPR has its own pipeline in many ways that operates independently of Russia, with large inventory of stocks of their own armor already built up from years of steady Russian supplies since 2014. That means to a large extent the two columns of "losses" have to be distinguished and considered separately.
Yes technically in a semantic sense it's all "Russian" now for the sake of simplicity because DPR/LPR are incorporated into Russia, BUT, the issue is, the OTHER side (i.e. AFU supporters) don't consider it this way when they refer to "Russian losses", and secondly, the vast majority of LPR / DPR's losses occurred when they were NOT legally and officially part of Russia. Putin only signed the republics into Russia proper, constitutionally, relatively recently in September 2022. Previously he had only signed a recognition of their 'independence' from Ukraine, but not as part of Russia. But when Oryx and his crowd say "thousands of Russian tanks were lost', the vast majority of which were in the period prior to September '22, they are in fact referring to tanks mostly lost by the legal entities of the independent DPR/LPR republics. Tanks which were part of their stock already long ago, which Russia no longer considered its own stock which makes it disingenuous and specious to call it 'Russian losses'.
But ultimately as you said, the replacements have to come from mothballed Russian inventory (of which there are still 15k - 20k) but it doesn't put a strain on Russian industry/resources apart from shipping them over, as DPR/LPR have their own infrastructure and facilities for commissioning (un-mothballing) the tanks.
Great insights about the number. Just one question - how do both the sides stack up when it comes to cruise missiles? Will the US be able to produce more cruise missiles than Russia annually?
It's a trickier question shrouded in more secrecy as missiles are a bit of a more 'strategic' weapon. However we know that U.S. has had a stockpile of about 4000 tomahawk missiles and that they were producing 200-300 per year at the peak, however after 2015 or so they dropped to 100 per year and possibly stopped even producing them in past few years. THey shoot about 100-200 per year just for various tests and other stuff so the 100 production was meant as upkeep of that. However, in the discussions of procurement it did seem like producing more than 100-200 would be very difficult for them as the infrastructure is no longer there for massive ramp ups. If they wanted to ramp it up drastically it would take several years to do so.
As for Russia, it's unknown for certain but experts estimated that in peacetime years they also produced about 120+ Kalibrs per year and likely stockpiled similar 2000-4000 numbers just because that's a standard level of stockpiling for most Great Power countries. The more expensive/sophisticated like Iskander they built even less.
However the thing is, Russia uses a lot more types of cruise missiles than the U.S.
The U.S. effectively just uses the Tomahawk with maybe the JASSM to a lesser extent.
While Russia utilizes a vast amount, and so far in Ukraine has used things like 1. Kalibr 2. Kh-101 3. Iskander-K (the cruise missile version, not Iskander-M which is the more well known ballistic) 4. P-800 Onyx fired from BAL coastal defense launchers, 5. older Kh-55's but if you count missile systems in general it also fires the 6. Iskander-M 7. Kinzhal and has others in inventory it hasn't used yet like 8. Zirkon hypersonic cruise missile etc.
But the point of saying this, is to say that Russia has this vast array of missiles and most of them have completely different manufacturers. That means they all have their own production lines. So if they were building 120+ Kalibrs per year, they were building similar numbers of all these other ones, so total cruise/ballistic missiles built per year in peacetime were likely in the high hundreds.
However now after the start of the SMO most of the production lines reported MASSIVE increases. Many of these corporations hired 500-2000 new people and were working 3/4 full shifts rather than 1 previously. So we can only assume and expect that the output could potentially have tripled or even more.
With that said, RUssia reportedly already fired somewhere north of 3000-5000 missiles so far, but they are intermixing them deliberately to not completely use up the stocks of any one in particular and use them evenly.
But it should be noted that, even if let's say Kalibr and Kh-101 (which are the 2 mainstays) were tripled in production to somewhere in the range of 300-400 per year, that's still only about 25-30 per month or basically 1 missile per day for each of them, which is still a fairly low number for high intensity conflict which means that Russia could run low if it uses them indiscriminately. And they likely HAVE already run fairly low as we speak due to having fired the alleged 3000-5000 number already. I don't mean SUPER low but let's just say perhaps at least below 50% stocks on a lot of them.
But long story short, you can see from the above that in regard to the question of who would do better logistically U.S. vs. Russia, it's quite clear that U.S. would stand no chance whatsoever in competing here as they only have the 1 or 2 manufacturing pipelines for their 2 mainstays. Whereas Russia has far more companies producing a larger array of cruise missiles with similar capabilities which all have their own production lines and now already have a massive headstartin ramp up capabilities for likely close to a year now, which means in 2023 and beyond they should be firing on all cylinders.
And btw, this is why (I forget if I posted this in the above article) it was known that NATO had already depleted most of their 'smart munitions' in the form of cruise missiles and guided bombs within the first week of Libya conflict as you can see here: https://i.imgur.com/AD3Z98g.png
If you were to tell what I wrote above to a western supporter, they'd say "yeah but the sanctions on Russia will put the squeeze on their tech industry, they don't have the advanced parts and chips for the missiles" but in reality I've already highlighted that it's a double edged sword because U.S./Europe heavily relies on Russian/Chinese rare earth/precious metals for THEIR own 'high-tech' industry and advanced chips for the weapons industry as can be seen here:
Another factor to take into account is that % of GDP due to manufacturing is very different between China/US/Russia. Forgive me for not remembering which Substack reported this, but once you take out Wall Street, and set US manufacturing at 100%, then China is 150% (no surprise) and Russia is 70%...
But!! (huge caveat) that's in dollar terms... given the labour exchange rates, actual output may even more heavily weigh toward China/Russia.
Looking back to WW2, where you had Ford/GM/Chrysler/Every Other Manufacturer producing weapons/vehicles/systems etc.... Then until you see these and Caterpillar and John Deere/CaseIH/GE blah blah blah turning over to arms manufacture, then the US will NEVER hit major war quantities of anything.
Another WW2 lesson the West has forgotten, in the search for an ever better iPhone, is that seeking perfection is the enemy of the 'good enough'.
Tigers were fantastic, Shermans were good enough.
Russian systems/weapons are "good enough", and thus easier to produce in quantity. Abrams/F35's/HiMARS etc are complex, long lead time items, lack of quantity is a foregone conclusion.
Yep it's all true. The true worth and potential of Russia's economy is artificially muted by fraudulent number conversion games. Russia's real GDP is on par with Germany, except given the fact that Russia is the most sanctioned country on the planet and Germany isn't, that means Russia's true fullest economic potential is even way beyond Germany. And given that the world is now slowly seeing a reorientation from 'service based' economies to once again industrial and resource powerhouses in the new 'mini dark age' we've entered, Russia's economic sun is only rising and stands to reign supreme in the coming years
And btw I should mention, the U.S. has fired total 2,193 Tomahawk missiles in its entire existence since the 80's and the first Gulf War. Russia has now fired 3000-5000 in just 1 year of the SMO.
It's obvious that Russia is the true cruise missile king.
As far back as 2020, we were kind of pissed because Russian ammo manufacturers had quit exporting their surplus small arms ammo the U.S.
When it came to affordable training ammo, Tula, Wolf and other ammo couldn't be beat even if the steel cases and berdan primers meant we wouldn't reload them.
Looking back on it, looks like Russia was already getting ready to be on war footing and producing ammo in preparation for the SMO against Ukraine if they kept crossing the red line.
This piece inspired me to write my own survey of Russian economic statistics and how they relate to military spending. Thank you for proving that there is a marketplace for deep analysis regarding the war in Ukraine.
Completely wrong, totally sophomoric and incorrect understanding of the SMO. You're listening too much to Strelkov, you should learn to diversify your habits a bit, ingrain some truth into your daily dose of doomer agitprop and propaganda
What about Ugledar do you need explained? There are upwards of 5-10k men serving there, and you saw a couple hand-picked videos of 3 dead guys and a completely (intentionally) mischaracterized video showing a few broken tanks, and you think that's indicative of something major? Please show me a video that shows hundreds or thousands dead in Ugledar. The fact of the matter is, there was one small operation that had a few mishaps, a few people died, big deal. It's not indicative of the fight at large whatsoever, and there is zero evidence showing more than that. You're erroneously extrapolating a hand-selected video to try and characterize a much broader front with 5-10k people serving on it. It's simple sophistry and intellectual disingenuousness, it's also fairly heavy denial and coping.
Fact is, the AFU lost far more men in Ugledar than Russia has.
you help us understand the real stakes. Massive arm production was decisive for the collapse of the Soviet Union. They had created a military industrial behemoth which hoovered all their resources, but ironies of history, in the long run that policy has proved critical for survival. Putin soon understood this fsct and has pursued to have an strategic balance between tanks and butter from the beginning. The Ukranian bone is resulting much harder than expected to crack to the surprise of both Nato and Russia. The empire's industrial powerhorse is weak now, but its growing by the hour. If Russia doesnt meaningfully speed up before the end of the summer the Z regime will be able to launch major offensives with growing number of Nato forces engaged. The big question is still unanswered. WTF is China going to do about it. They know 200 % they are the next in the list, and still arent able to decisevely support Russia. Are they waiting until the yanks cross the Yalu river?
I dont think that the Wests industrial power base is growing by the hour .Sure there has been an attempt at ramping up the rate of military production but that hasnt really even began .If you allow your industrial base to erode to the extent that the West has it will take a couple of years before they can even begin to to produce the weapons that it would take to defeat Russia or China. Meanwhile it is probably in Russia's interest that China is not directly involved at this stage as there is a hope ,albeit slim , that and all out world war may be avoided .And even if there is no hope,a civilized country must follow some sort proportionate reaction protocol .The way I see it its better for China to remain an industrial power base, unencumbered by war, for the moment if it can be achieved . A country that lost 20 million people in the war with Japan will not allow anyone to cross the Yalu river again
If Ze says that he is doing Europes work for every russian tank destroyed. Russia is doing China a favor for every piece of Nato Equipment destroyed. It is one less equipment China will face on the case of a taiwan scenario. And about choosing between butter and ammo. The west is having rapid deterioration of the economic situation for the average Joe, so the same is true for the Western Elites...
so true
Chinese food is good, but Taiwanese is Great. I pray Taiwanese culture being protected no matter what side controlls them.
And I'm not sure China can move the forces across the water to get there, without destroying taiwan completely first. Look how powerful the defence is in Ukraine. Modern weapons work, people kind of wondered would they work? they do. China would be shredded crossing the ocean and the survivors shredded again trying to land a compacted mass of humans on one of the few landing beaches, probably covered in mines, constantly under pre-targeted airbursting fire from artillery and mortars in hidden caves and bunkers. It would be like Saving Private Ryan but more even more explosions and faster deaths.
Chinese would defeat America first, then allow blockaded Taiwan to join them and receive food shipments again, without firing a shot. They don't want to own Taiwan that's fucked up like Ukraine, they can wait. Russia couldn't wait for a long-term Ukraine solution as Ukraine was pursuing biological and nuclear weapons.
I don't think NATO can move heavy equipment to China anymore, that's why China built the island chain and a brown-water navy. I think the Navy looks scary, an the Roads look harmless, but the navy is really defensive and the roads are offensive. They can block America from doing an Iraq build-up by ocean, the only way to move that quantity of stuff. And they can simultaneously project military power across continents with the roads they've built. And they'll nuke Japan, to destroy and deny. Or they'll have NK nuke Japan. (like how America won't nuke Iran, but Israel will with American nukes)
Also western elites are getting rich as the populace gets poorer. The bank prints money. Now there's more money. You're % of the money in supply is less. You have less wealth, even though your bank balance is the same. Where did the wealth go? The bank GAVE that money to it's friends and it's subsidiaries. When they're 'propping up wall st' they literally give the money to their friends to go shopping. Did you get money to prop up wall st? Nope it went to banks and investment houses friendly or controlled by the people giving the money. Gave it to themselves. And told you they were helping the economy, and you should thank them.
Soon a few families will have all the money, and everyone not explicitly loyal to them will be killed by a poison injection.. oh they did that... Soon everyone who has been poisoned will be replaced by cheap automatons. Burger King and McDonalds have been asking for 20++ years to go robotic, but the federal gov't won't let them because of the % of population they employ and the ripple effects on their economy. You know their cash registeres don't have words or numbers, just pictures? They don't add up the price of 2 burgers at $2 each, and deduct from the $5 bill you gave them. They push the burger button twice. The company values them that much.
Both American and Soviet empires devoted much resources to a military industrial complex, which if big enough, can self-sustain by being a generation ahead of any other small country's products, and a huge export market is created. You don't sell the products at cost, you charge a profit, and this profit pays for your own weapons, meaning you are getting your army kind of for free.
Of course America started screwing their allies over sabotaging and cannibalizing their production, and the industry started screwing the military over by overcharging and too many scams to mention. I bet the Soviet experience is similar. British had a great rifle EM2 and a great cartridge in the 1950's and America is just starting to catch up to it today. They sabotaged the trials and cheated and made their rifle (american) and cartridge (nato) the standard.
Look at f35, almost every ally country has to buy it, they have no hope of ever developing a stealth fighter. Sure Turkey is trying, but they're pulling away, and will be punished. Japan is developing too, but is complicated and transitional and confusing. Japan offered Australia awesome submarines, lots of them, but they'd have to be made in Japan. Great subs great price and they can have them starting tomorrow. For 'some reason' Australia turned this down, and gave France a bunch of money for VAPORWARE, realized they got scammed, aand is spending like 10-100x the amount of money to produce American submarines, which might be worse because they have to build the shipyard to build the submarines. Australia's shipbuilding is shitty and Japan's is great. So today Australia is out sooo much money, and if they'd given the money to Japan they'd have subs already, but they gave it to france and america and they have promises.
Oh and the US submarines are going to be nuclear weapon capable, though they say they won't carry them of course...
What's China going to do? They go back to their history and the most successful military against the west, and in general, was the Mongols. And the Mongols would win the battle before they fought. And the Mongols didn't fight alone, their spies went in first and formed a fifth column in the enemy before they'd attack. If the Mongols had continued into Europe, their would have been hosts of European knights riding and fighting alongside of them.
China is at war now, they're finding and strengthening allies in their enemy countries. And defensively they're rooting out the same, and trying to pry American allies away from them. I think they just got PNG, sure it's a small place, but it's a clear victory for them and defeat for America. The war will change over time, but right now they're fighting in grand geopolitical moves, maybe even so far as supporting political parties in far away countries, to affect internal changes... just maybe close to you.
I wouldn't wish for Chinese success if I were you, just a remotely stable multipolar world where diversity and safety are respected.
I like your comment .I live in Australia and must say we are buffoons. The only thing is I didnt mean to give the impression I wanted China to be too successful. A stable multipolar world is ,as you say, best
Right!? No one cares about stability, they don't understand the stakes and the risks, the exponentially escalating risks of instability.
Re procurement - There's this game on youtube where military and technical historians joke about a fictional country, Elbonia, and they joke about how to screw them over by making the shittiest decisions and buying the crappiest equipment. There's no way to look at the Australian military investment than this, you guys should treat those in charge as suspected enemies of the state, and put them in house arrest until a deep investigation clears them. Subs are strategic deterrent, it's unheard of to fuck around in that field. Rifles, sure, planes ok, but your strategic deterrent??? It's like Jack and the beanstalk.
The US does this a lot too, they spend a billion dollars and decide NOT to build the vehicle, the Marines with their amphibious vehicle, the army with their helicopter, navy LCS, they all waste money and produce literally nothing from the programs. Not one vehicle to one unit, of the navy they got shitty shitty ships that don't work at all, at all, and they're taking funding from good ships to keep them going. Canada paid a country hundreds of million$ to NOT buy their helicopters. They paid to NOT buy them. We are so fucked if war happens today. Even War Hawks should want peace while we clean the system out of parasites and traitors. Everyone should want peace.
As another Australian, I have to say Western Politicians at all levels are mostly buffoons but the submarine debacle may have worked for the best. The Japanese Soryu Class may well be the best Diesel-Electrics going, but their crew accommodations are actually SMALLER than the outgoing Collins Class (and they are a claustrophobes nightmare, having worked under/around Farncombe, Waller and Collins during drydock refit as a 6 ft human being).
The French Short-fin Barracuda (a paper version of the Barracuda SSN) was by far the better choice, if only because having made that choice, and with the French sure to f#@k up the redesign process, we (Australia) could turn around and say "you know what?? just make us the nuclear ones instead..."
This was probably the point where alarm bells ring in DC and Whitehall (who both have different reasons to want the French not have this kind of success) and various carrots and sticks were applied, giving us the AUKUS agreement.
At the time, I had a look at US/UK sub building programmes, and it was painfully obvious that Flight 5 Virginias were NOT going to happen, too much demand...but Lo! the Astute Class was just coming to the end of its programme...
Thus here we are, and a recent article has the UK offering us the Astute Class at a price hard to beat, not quite the Virginia, but still a world-class SSN hunter-killer, massively better than any diesel-electric.
Funny how even political buffoonery can sometimes work out...
I'm not presing for opsec, but I'm interested to hear more. I listen to Subbrief on YT and got info from there. He never mentioned comfort. Just that the Japanese have a new power technology, powercells? The French thought they could make them but can't. Its all a mystery. Jap subs can have conventional engines, but still run super fast underwater.
But look at this, Australia and Japan could be great allies, and sharing defence weapons would make sense. And they'd have something TODAY, not promises on a piece of paper. I'm not against China, just being real that most Jap and Aus defence planning is against them, and that's what defence planners are supposed to do, so no fouls.
So you're not building the American subs anymore? I can't keep up.
I read reports of British submarines trying to practice firing an SLBM and the sub nearly sank. At the end of their deployment on the way home they were like, "lets see if everything's working" and it fucking wasn't. Sailors started bitching on the internet, and the Brit navy sucks at everything from base security to maintenance to training guys or maintaining guys, it's suck all around. Don't buy their subs.
Simp I'm gob smacked.Just outstanding
"Out of Ammo" - Shortest Tragedy Ever Written
If you are running an arms plant during a war, sending a rail car full of shells directly to the front is a lot easier than sending it to a town, to be potentially loaded on a truck, take to a warehouse and unloaded so someone in another ware house could load a truck to take 1970's shells to a rail car to go to the front.
I expect both is happening, and some empty warehouses are being re filled, some old shells going, some new shells going.
Inventory rotation is good practice anyway, use the old shells before you have to decommission them.
Very well written article simp
You have a talent for this
thanks I greatly appreciate it. more to come
Factory in Hungary should be interesting.
Nato reports look like snitching on themselves. They Say Russia but it means themselves, they're running low, they're turning to Korea (south), in fact Ukraine is using Iranian ammunition. No evidence of any foreign material aid to Russia, shown yet, they are projecting the appearance of strength and independence, accepting foreign aid would look weak.
North Korea shelled an island heavily, and South Koreans snuck over and investigated, and found a double-digit dud rate in their shells. If there were north Korean shells in Ukraine someone would have posted a picture of a dud by now.
Looking at that American shell factory you posted, the one with the forge - German forges must be multiple times bigger, and they will have to spend a lot of money on energy to heat theirs. While Russia is flaring away excess gas they can't ship or store, German glass factories are shuttering perhaps permanently.
Could you consider an article on the soviet ammunition stockpiles being destroyed across Russia and Europe in the years leading-up to the war? The Himars epiosode shows that they're prime targets desired to hit by both sides. And exactly how has Russia dealt with this problem Nato posed? Did they just have to deliver the shells in small batches so Himars couldn't get them, and that's why the daily number fired reduced?
Fun fact the largest explosion in Canada's history was an ammunition ship off from New Brunswick during WW1, and there was another ammunition ship in New York that cooked off. There's always an official explanation, like they could prove it, but the book Simple Sabotage says spy agencies like to recruit civilian assets working in war industries who can just do little tiny things that can have big negative effects, like a pinch of sand in hydraulics oil, or oily rags in a pail placed in the corner of a flammable room.
It seems like as much ammunition is being destroyed in catastorphes than fired at the enemy, and some manufacturing facilities in Russia have had fires... Just an interesting aspect of the war directly affecting the home front.
Well, as for the number of shells - we don't know any numbers. There have been just several guesses, estimates published. Some claims had been made. Lacking specifying - what counts as a shell? Only tube artillery? Mortars? Rocket artillery? Beginning from which calibre? 57 mm guns? 60 mm NATO mortars? 120 mm Nona / mortars? Up to 300 mm Smerch? In which percentages these ammo types contribute to the numbers suggested? Oh, tanks shooting HE from covered positions indirect fire should count as well - add 125 mm & 115 mm to the mix.
Comparing with WW II, it shouldn't be forgotten that smaller calibres where used then. 152 mm was army and corps level arty. On regiment level, 76 mm guns where the norm.
So may be it would be easier to compare when giving the amounts of ammo in tons. E.g. the UK depot in Germany "Brachter Wald" had up to 45 kT ammo, which was considered one of the biggest in the West.
I mostly wanted to keep to 152/155 shells only to keep it focused and more intelligible for a wider dispersion. But this thread might interest you in reference to what you mentioned: https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1607589109132062721
In short, Russia reportedly has 7X the steel production now than USSR in WW2, and as such should theoretically be able to manufacture ungodly amounts of corresponding shells
On the whole i'd rather deal in numbers of munitions. Weight doesn't really give any idea of amount of rounds as munitions vary in size and weight. 45K tons sounds a lot, but at the rate of expenditure we are seeing in Ukraine what does that actually mean? Sure one can do the maths when you know the weights of the various munitions but numbers of rounds makes more sense to me.
Worked with a Russian fellow. Been a couple years since, but he talked about there are many small mom and pop tank and armor, weapons and ammo shops, the Russian procurement system contracts work to. Such as small outfits who install upgrade kits on late T65, T70s and R80s, ot they will do a bunch pf final fit up, or install reactive armor kits, lot of shops employ ladies and babooshkas who do the intricate painstaking and detailing things, he said similar with ammo and small arms components. Makes common sense, used to be similar in the US, I grew up and worked 47 years as a welder, a lot of it in aerospace and .mil contract shops, when we used to manufacture things in this country, small shops are what makes big production possible, its similar in the automotive and truck industry till the tarrif/offshore wealth transfer treaty rackets started.
But whats really critical and you almost never hear of it because being a makere and a craftsman in skilled trade has been so long looked down on now since the 70's, os institutional knowledge of the skilled labor trades, you lose that it requires decades to recreate it. Probably more time now because so many have forgotten what an axe, a shovel, and a Rifle are for, to coin a phrase. Besides the corporate vulturism and class structure begin in the 80's, if you did not go to colledge you where dirt, and they did everything to diminish the labor value of skilled labor, and it was nothing to do with any union stuff, this was flat out comdpiracy across corporate America to set the cheapest pay rates they would all stick with in order to create rea;;y low wages because no longer was there any compotition for say a skilled welder like me, every ridgid tube assembly house, be it GE's engine shop in Hookset NH or PanAm's at JFK, they all paid the same wage, same if you would go to a general metal fab job shop, same with tool and die guys, or precision sheetmetal fabricators, after awhile no one wanted a career in these trades, they paid just above survival wages.
So there is that and believe you me, it matters more than a lot of things, you dont have a skilled workforce you dont make much of anything.
My last welding gig was in a premier rocket and jet engine tube assembly shop, to do weldments they have to have certified fusion welders, i was the only old hand there, lot of years there, one day the big cheese comes asks me how can the company get any skilled welders, nobody shows up to job fares or answers adds. Told him outright, the pay sucks for welders, nobody wants to be one because of it, few weeks later I get a $10 dollar hour raise unasked, shows up in my paycheck, and they ask me to become a weld teacher for the company, train green employees how to weld, but other than a couple old guys like me, they still could not get new welders with a pretty decent payrate increase. They just could not get it. Skilled labor, true cradt labor, its a culture thing and a tradition thing and it was destroyed by globo=peedo to squeeze the last buck out of America, i watched it happen.
That was trhe conversation with this Russian fellow, we where talking about the various reades in each of our countries, and it was clear to me Russia never lost that institutional/time honored traditions in trades and skills and makers crafts, all those people are no more there is no legacy here in the US, but we sure did have it in my lifetime in America, just like Russia still has. The west is Kaput, I could see it in the early 90's coming, for the reasons above. And all the implications.
Russia can never be defeated now, not because of manufacturing might but because of spirit, because its a nation made up of men and woman who not only know what an axe a shovel and a Rifle is for, they are good folks who appreciate what those things are for and more so those who know how to use them. The manufacturing might and capacity follows.
Those ladies putting upgrade kits on tanks and BMPs, they put Love into them, O'm not shitting about it, its love because people like that when they put their labor into it, they do so because, it ain't gonna fail because of me, mentality and mindset.
Its something the satanists despise as nothing else and destroying that in a productive prosperous happy nation is the prime directive. All that you ain't shit unless you go tocalledge was class and culture warfare/pogrom. To wreck what was gear about America.
And you can't turn it back on like lights in a new factory no matter what you do or throw money at. That stuff came with the founding of America. It built this country. It is men in suits who destroyed it after men in a pair of dungarees and wotk boots created it, (woman included too absolutely).
Thanks, great post. I agree about the culture thing, though I never heard about the artisanal small shop stuff, that's interesting will have to look into it sometime.
You're right, the big end all, be all at the end of the day is always culture, and particularly a unified, strong/proud culture. The U.S. is currently gravely diseased in this regard, a metastasized tumor completely eating away at the core. I've never seen or heard of a country in my life so utterly corrupt down to its very soul. It's one thing for countries to have corrupt 'political systems', more or less every country on earth suffers from this to various degrees. But the corruption of the very cultural zeitgeist of America is breathtaking to behold. The cold grasp that the globalist elites have on the heart of America's very ethos is just mindboggling.
I think Russia has some fairly severe problems too, not just political but cultural as well. It still has never fully recovered, only in fits and spurts, from the dissolution of the 90's. The new generation is sort of just waywardly trying to find its footing and outline a new cultural ethos after the blank slate wipe which occurred at the end of the USSR's downfall. But they aren't fully succeeding yet, there's a lot of neoliberal corruption, that same cancerous disease trying desperately to grip the youth there too, and moderately succeeding in some places. You can see this by interviewing various 'youth' and 'young adults' in the streets of cosmopolitan cities like Moscow, many of their cultural/political views are poisoned by the western mind virus. But alas, at least the prospects are much better because Putin has put a pretty heavy clamp on those insidious cultural trojan horses, at least to the best of his ability. But the west is sparing no expense in continuing efforts to infiltrate and assimilate them from the inside out.
You might be interested in this:
https://www.ndia.org/-/media/vital-signs/2022/vital-signs_2022_final.pdf
Hi,
the Lima plant doesn't manufacture Abrams tanks any more, hasn't for close to twenty years. It now only consists of a conversion line, for upgrading older versions. As far as I know, no NATO country still produces MBT's, and they haven't for many years, and there are no production lines left.
Curiously, the one exception might be Greece, which obtained a license to produce part of their Leopard-2 production themselves. They produced only a handful of tanks per year, and I'm not sure when they finished production.
that's true, I had to double check and apparently it now 'upgrades 11 tanks per month' (or at least as of 2019) just to keep the production line operational but doesn't build any new ones. As per this article: https://www.rt.com/news/570546-ukraine-us-abrams-tanks/
the ones they intend to supply to Ukraine will come from this stock also. So this alone means it would be months for Ukraine to hypothetically get them as the plant only produces 11, depending on how many they intend to give Ukraine
Per this article it’s building 11 per month all for export as of 2019. Under Obama the plant almost closed. And his administration did request it be closed, but congress ignored that.
https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-ohios-lima-army-tank-plant-only-tank-builder-in-the-us-2019-3?
Taiwan is supposed to get some eventually, but that may be delayed as that production goes to Ukraine. That version does not have the depleted uranium armor.
Another article:
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/tank-plant-trump-says-he-saved-was-never-in-danger/
Re Russian armor losses: why should it matter if Oryx (albeit using inflated numbers probably) is counting LDPR losses as "Russian" losses? Both oblasts are now incorporated into the Federation, so they will work from the same "stock" as the RuAF. So whatever tanks got lost in the past year by LDPR _and_ Russia will need to be replenished by the same Russian military-industry complex.
Good article though, thanks for sharing this!
That is one consideration BUT DPR also has its own facilities and industries for--maybe not tank production--but tank refurbishment, repair, and upgrades (remember, the Donbass region is the manufacturing, industrial heart of Ukraine, that's where ALL the main heavy industries and specialists are). That means THEIR losses don't put as much of a strain on the Russian replenishment infrastructure because they can in some ways take care of their own losses. Sure the bare stock has to still come from Russia's copious stockpiles (of which it famously has 15,000 - 20,000+ depending how you count).
So in short, DPR has its own pipeline in many ways that operates independently of Russia, with large inventory of stocks of their own armor already built up from years of steady Russian supplies since 2014. That means to a large extent the two columns of "losses" have to be distinguished and considered separately.
Yes technically in a semantic sense it's all "Russian" now for the sake of simplicity because DPR/LPR are incorporated into Russia, BUT, the issue is, the OTHER side (i.e. AFU supporters) don't consider it this way when they refer to "Russian losses", and secondly, the vast majority of LPR / DPR's losses occurred when they were NOT legally and officially part of Russia. Putin only signed the republics into Russia proper, constitutionally, relatively recently in September 2022. Previously he had only signed a recognition of their 'independence' from Ukraine, but not as part of Russia. But when Oryx and his crowd say "thousands of Russian tanks were lost', the vast majority of which were in the period prior to September '22, they are in fact referring to tanks mostly lost by the legal entities of the independent DPR/LPR republics. Tanks which were part of their stock already long ago, which Russia no longer considered its own stock which makes it disingenuous and specious to call it 'Russian losses'.
But ultimately as you said, the replacements have to come from mothballed Russian inventory (of which there are still 15k - 20k) but it doesn't put a strain on Russian industry/resources apart from shipping them over, as DPR/LPR have their own infrastructure and facilities for commissioning (un-mothballing) the tanks.
Very informative - thankyou!
Great insights about the number. Just one question - how do both the sides stack up when it comes to cruise missiles? Will the US be able to produce more cruise missiles than Russia annually?
It's a trickier question shrouded in more secrecy as missiles are a bit of a more 'strategic' weapon. However we know that U.S. has had a stockpile of about 4000 tomahawk missiles and that they were producing 200-300 per year at the peak, however after 2015 or so they dropped to 100 per year and possibly stopped even producing them in past few years. THey shoot about 100-200 per year just for various tests and other stuff so the 100 production was meant as upkeep of that. However, in the discussions of procurement it did seem like producing more than 100-200 would be very difficult for them as the infrastructure is no longer there for massive ramp ups. If they wanted to ramp it up drastically it would take several years to do so.
As for Russia, it's unknown for certain but experts estimated that in peacetime years they also produced about 120+ Kalibrs per year and likely stockpiled similar 2000-4000 numbers just because that's a standard level of stockpiling for most Great Power countries. The more expensive/sophisticated like Iskander they built even less.
However the thing is, Russia uses a lot more types of cruise missiles than the U.S.
The U.S. effectively just uses the Tomahawk with maybe the JASSM to a lesser extent.
While Russia utilizes a vast amount, and so far in Ukraine has used things like 1. Kalibr 2. Kh-101 3. Iskander-K (the cruise missile version, not Iskander-M which is the more well known ballistic) 4. P-800 Onyx fired from BAL coastal defense launchers, 5. older Kh-55's but if you count missile systems in general it also fires the 6. Iskander-M 7. Kinzhal and has others in inventory it hasn't used yet like 8. Zirkon hypersonic cruise missile etc.
But the point of saying this, is to say that Russia has this vast array of missiles and most of them have completely different manufacturers. That means they all have their own production lines. So if they were building 120+ Kalibrs per year, they were building similar numbers of all these other ones, so total cruise/ballistic missiles built per year in peacetime were likely in the high hundreds.
However now after the start of the SMO most of the production lines reported MASSIVE increases. Many of these corporations hired 500-2000 new people and were working 3/4 full shifts rather than 1 previously. So we can only assume and expect that the output could potentially have tripled or even more.
With that said, RUssia reportedly already fired somewhere north of 3000-5000 missiles so far, but they are intermixing them deliberately to not completely use up the stocks of any one in particular and use them evenly.
But it should be noted that, even if let's say Kalibr and Kh-101 (which are the 2 mainstays) were tripled in production to somewhere in the range of 300-400 per year, that's still only about 25-30 per month or basically 1 missile per day for each of them, which is still a fairly low number for high intensity conflict which means that Russia could run low if it uses them indiscriminately. And they likely HAVE already run fairly low as we speak due to having fired the alleged 3000-5000 number already. I don't mean SUPER low but let's just say perhaps at least below 50% stocks on a lot of them.
But long story short, you can see from the above that in regard to the question of who would do better logistically U.S. vs. Russia, it's quite clear that U.S. would stand no chance whatsoever in competing here as they only have the 1 or 2 manufacturing pipelines for their 2 mainstays. Whereas Russia has far more companies producing a larger array of cruise missiles with similar capabilities which all have their own production lines and now already have a massive headstartin ramp up capabilities for likely close to a year now, which means in 2023 and beyond they should be firing on all cylinders.
And btw, this is why (I forget if I posted this in the above article) it was known that NATO had already depleted most of their 'smart munitions' in the form of cruise missiles and guided bombs within the first week of Libya conflict as you can see here: https://i.imgur.com/AD3Z98g.png
If you were to tell what I wrote above to a western supporter, they'd say "yeah but the sanctions on Russia will put the squeeze on their tech industry, they don't have the advanced parts and chips for the missiles" but in reality I've already highlighted that it's a double edged sword because U.S./Europe heavily relies on Russian/Chinese rare earth/precious metals for THEIR own 'high-tech' industry and advanced chips for the weapons industry as can be seen here:
https://fortune.com/2023/01/22/ukraine-war-europe-russia-rail-trade-china-defense-industry-rare-earth-supply-chains/
and here: https://i.imgur.com/HDRM90v.jpg
Another factor to take into account is that % of GDP due to manufacturing is very different between China/US/Russia. Forgive me for not remembering which Substack reported this, but once you take out Wall Street, and set US manufacturing at 100%, then China is 150% (no surprise) and Russia is 70%...
But!! (huge caveat) that's in dollar terms... given the labour exchange rates, actual output may even more heavily weigh toward China/Russia.
Looking back to WW2, where you had Ford/GM/Chrysler/Every Other Manufacturer producing weapons/vehicles/systems etc.... Then until you see these and Caterpillar and John Deere/CaseIH/GE blah blah blah turning over to arms manufacture, then the US will NEVER hit major war quantities of anything.
Another WW2 lesson the West has forgotten, in the search for an ever better iPhone, is that seeking perfection is the enemy of the 'good enough'.
Tigers were fantastic, Shermans were good enough.
Russian systems/weapons are "good enough", and thus easier to produce in quantity. Abrams/F35's/HiMARS etc are complex, long lead time items, lack of quantity is a foregone conclusion.
Yep it's all true. The true worth and potential of Russia's economy is artificially muted by fraudulent number conversion games. Russia's real GDP is on par with Germany, except given the fact that Russia is the most sanctioned country on the planet and Germany isn't, that means Russia's true fullest economic potential is even way beyond Germany. And given that the world is now slowly seeing a reorientation from 'service based' economies to once again industrial and resource powerhouses in the new 'mini dark age' we've entered, Russia's economic sun is only rising and stands to reign supreme in the coming years
And btw I should mention, the U.S. has fired total 2,193 Tomahawk missiles in its entire existence since the 80's and the first Gulf War. Russia has now fired 3000-5000 in just 1 year of the SMO.
It's obvious that Russia is the true cruise missile king.
As far back as 2020, we were kind of pissed because Russian ammo manufacturers had quit exporting their surplus small arms ammo the U.S.
When it came to affordable training ammo, Tula, Wolf and other ammo couldn't be beat even if the steel cases and berdan primers meant we wouldn't reload them.
Looking back on it, looks like Russia was already getting ready to be on war footing and producing ammo in preparation for the SMO against Ukraine if they kept crossing the red line.
This piece inspired me to write my own survey of Russian economic statistics and how they relate to military spending. Thank you for proving that there is a marketplace for deep analysis regarding the war in Ukraine.
Part 1: https://aaronlee.substack.com/p/one-trillion-dollars-in-2023-how
Part 2: https://aaronlee.substack.com/p/one-trillion-dollars-in-2023-how-9d4
Part 3: https://aaronlee.substack.com/p/one-trillion-dollars-in-2023-how-74e