Russia/Ukraine conflict

[indysurfer]

The Republican right wing isn't so isolationist they refuse to support Israel. But rhetorically they have climbed up a tree on Ukraine that it is difficult to climb down from.

Yep. It wasn't but just a few years ago that Obama and Biden were chastising Mitt Romney for calling out Russia's threat - with Obama famously saying in a debate "Mitt - the 1980's called and want their foreign policy back".

Many of the Republicans that voted against Ukrainian aid are not pro-Russian, they have become radicalized seeing the absolute ruin of our southern border and how illegals and refugees are overwhelming our major cities. They can't explain to their voters why we can send billions to Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan) but not also spend enough money to beef up our own border.

For the record I want all of the above. We might need to cut some other domestic programs, but there is plenty of fat and waste in our MASSIVE Federal budget to fund our most important priorities - of which I think Ukraine is a major priority.

 

[navguy12]

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

The Kremlin’s military expenditure in 2023, after a year of full-scale war with Ukraine, was 24% higher than in 2022 and 57% more than in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea. With spending at 5.9% of GDP, equivalent to 16% of the Russian government’s total expenditure, 2023 marked the highest levels recorded since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Global defence budget jumps to record high of $2440bn

For the first time, government military spending increased in all five geographical regions, Sipri thinktank finds

www.theguardian.com

And the Russian Dictator's economy is ~30% bigger than the economy of Spain... No offense to any Spanish readers of course.

 

[DanCar]

Over the past two months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost 5 of the 31 Abrams tanks ...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782317918216151251

I'm glad they are being used. Too bad we didn't send 310 tanks or 3K tanks. There are thousands of tanks sitting in the desert unused. U.S. has 6K tanks in various states of readiness.

 

[Crutonius]

Yes we seem to have an oversupply of tanks but looking at how these vehicles get used I'm wondering if Bradley's are a better way to go.

 

[Tiger]

I hope the "free world" is taking notes.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782439136135159881

It would be embarrassing to be unprepared and say "we didn't know" when the next drone superpower(s) arise after this war.

 

[DanCar]

Yes we seem to have an oversupply of tanks but looking at how these vehicles get used I'm wondering if Bradley's are a better way to go.

Would be nice if we could let Ukraine decide.

 

[iPlug]

Over the past two months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost 5 of the 31 Abrams tanks ...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782317918216151251

I'm glad they are being used. Too bad we didn't send 310 tanks or 3K tanks. There are thousands of tanks sitting in the desert unused. U.S. has 6K tanks in various states of readiness.

Even the world's best tanks with ace crew are highly vulnerable when they do not have the cover of combined arms, especially including EW defenses and air superiority above. It is the fault of the West that they don't have those (yet).

 

[madodel]

Interesting video of a tour of a Swedish artillery shell manufacturing plant in the process of expanding their production capacity.

And I guess because I watched the Swedish artillery shell video YouTube suggested I watch the US Army one, which is about 30 miles from my house. This video is from 8 months ago.

 

[Crutonius]

Would be nice if we could let Ukraine decide.

Yeah, no. That's not really what we do. I foresee an initial shipment involving 200 m777 artillery pieces with about 50 artillery shells, our remaining Zumwalt class destroyers, a Nimitz class carrier and 4,000 Segways.

 

[RobStark]

I haven't read in a while about Russia using phosphorus bombs .

Did they run out?

 

[Tiger]

I haven't read in a while about Russia using phosphorus bombs .

Did they run out?

No, they were told it's not nice to do that /s

 

[RobStark]

No, they were told it's not nice to do that /s

LOL.

I thought maybe they were using them but I haven't read about it.

 

[wdolson]

Lots of things can change between now and next year.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi might become President of Ukraine. He is currently polling ahead of Zelenskyy.

Trump was right to harass our allies into more Defense Spending, many times to a percentage of their economy that they agreed to. Trump was right to tell Merkel/Germany not to become dependent on Russian fossil fuels.

Many past POTUS have praised dictators. You make peace with your enemies not your friends. Public praise is many times part of that process.

The Republican right wing isn't so isolationist they refuse to support Israel. But rhetorically they have climbed up a tree on Ukraine that it is difficult to climb down from.

No POTUS has ever talked about a dictator like Trump did. Many of the extreme right in the US are also Evangelical Christians who have a thing about Israel and supporting it. But going into that is a major tangent.

Agreed that ATACMS have proven a huge thorn in Putin's side. I have only seen the vague phrase "long range ATACMS" in regard to this new bill - does anyone know more detail on HOW long range we are talking? IIRC there were several possible ranges for those missiles.
Also, @wdolson (or others) is there much hope in the fact that Armenia is showing some ... friction with the CSTO and (from their stated perspective) Russia's lack of helpfulness in fulfilling their security obligations under that umbrella? I was hoping that their overstretched military obligations might engender more unrest from the Russian Federation per se (BTW is the Federation the same as the folks in the CSTO?) and cause more headaches for Putin, but have yet to see much evidence of this. Anything that makes him take units from Ukraine seems to me to be a plus.

There are different ATACMS. The first ATACMS was a cluster munition that has about the same range as the standard rocket (the one that comes in the six pack that Ukraine has been using since late 2022). Ukraine has gotten some of those short range ATACMS and they have proven very effective. The US has those on surplus and sending them to Ukraine saves the trouble of having to dismantle them.

The long range ATACMS are the missile the US has been holding back. They are out of production and the US initially had no replacement. Last fall a replacement was proven which is a modification of a missile used by the Navy. Conversions to be used by the land based launchers is underway. A brand new replacement is under test, but the Navy missiles can fill the gap. This frees up the long range ATACMS so they can be given to Ukraine.

Yep. It wasn't but just a few years ago that Obama and Biden were chastising Mitt Romney for calling out Russia's threat - with Obama famously saying in a debate "Mitt - the 1980's called and want their foreign policy back".

Many of the Republicans that voted against Ukrainian aid are not pro-Russian, they have become radicalized seeing the absolute ruin of our southern border and how illegals and refugees are overwhelming our major cities. They can't explain to their voters why we can send billions to Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan) but not also spend enough money to beef up our own border.

For the record I want all of the above. We might need to cut some other domestic programs, but there is plenty of fat and waste in our MASSIVE Federal budget to fund our most important priorities - of which I think Ukraine is a major priority.

Mitt Romney was prophetic. The Obama administration was naive about Russia. They got that wrong.

As far as the border there was a bill that was just about everything the Republicans wanted that got killed because one person running for president wanted the border to remain a mess through the election.

The border crisis is a refugee crisis. People are coming across the border and immediately surrendering to border patrol. There are millions of people who are in this country awaiting a hearing on their asylum claim. The claim must be heard by law. However the courts that process these requests are unbelievably backed up because they are badly underfunded.

Meanwhile the people who are waiting for a hearing have a temporary work visa. In a country with a severe labor shortage that's a good thing. These people do the jobs that the native born people don't want to do like pick produce and work in food processing plants. If all these people were deported, there would be a severe labor shortage which would cause food prices to skyrocket.

Over the past two months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost 5 of the 31 Abrams tanks ...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782317918216151251

I'm glad they are being used. Too bad we didn't send 310 tanks or 3K tanks. There are thousands of tanks sitting in the desert unused. U.S. has 6K tanks in various states of readiness.

Under US law before any Abrams are exported to other countries the depleted uranium armor needs to be replaced. That's why only 31 were provided. It takes time to re-armor those tanks.

Yes we seem to have an oversupply of tanks but looking at how these vehicles get used I'm wondering if Bradley's are a better way to go.

I think Bradleys are generally more useful. The Bradley may not be quite as good as the Swedish APV, but it's up there in the premiere league of APVs. Far better than BMPs which are based on a 1950s design.

 

[navguy12]

• Rishi Sunak has promised the UK’s largest ever military support packagefor Ukraine as he warned that Vladimir Putin would “not stop at the Polish border” if Russia won the war. The UK plans to give vital equipment to Kyiv including 400 vehicles, 1,600 weapons and 4m rounds of ammunition, as well as an additional £500m in military funding, taking the total to £3bn this financial year.

Ukraine war briefing: Long-range Atacms missiles on the way, says Zelenskiy

Russian attack shears Kharkiv TV tower in half; EU ministers urge no complacency after US steps up with aid. What we know on day 790

www.theguardian.com

 

[navguy12]

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Everyone please stop posting about the US 'border crisis'. It is no longer linked to the Russia-Ukraine war now that the vote is behind us, and inevitably leads to political bickering, which we do not want in this thread.

 

[wdolson]

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I know Greece and Turkey have a long history and are constantly worried about war with one another, but realistically I don't think it's likely. At least not in the near term. Turkey has enough problems with Syria and ISIS and Greece doesn't seem interested or really capable of starting anything.

My partner had a Greek friend who got ticked off and ranted whenever she thought about the loss of Constantinople. My partner would be "chill, it was over 550 years ago!" But then my partner gets ticked about the Spanish conquering her people (Aztecs) 500 years ago. Old grudges can be hard to completely bury, even when the conflict was a long time ago and it is literally too late to do anything about it.

War between two NATO members would be a tricky problem for the rest of NATO, but NATO would probably enter the war on the side of the country that was attacked and kick out the country that started the war. NATO is a mutual defense organization first and foremost. The US giving a security guarantee to Greece is a pretty easy give compared to the other hot spots around the world.

 

[madodel]

The US and the Military Industrial Complex is gaining huge amounts of information from the war in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, New American Technology Won the Day. Until It Was Overwhelmed.

This Became Our Laboratory’​

The war in Ukraine has, in the minds of many American officials, been a bonanza for the U.S. military, a testing ground for Project Maven and other rapidly evolving technologies. The American-made drones that were shipped into Ukraine last year were blown out of the sky with ease. And Pentagon officials now understand, in a way they never did before, that America’s system of military satellites has to be built and set up entirely differently, with configurations that look more like Elon Musk’s Starlink constellations of small satellites.

Meanwhile, American, British and Ukrainian officers, along with some of Silicon Valley’s top military contractors, are exploring new ways of finding and exploiting Russian vulnerabilities, even while U.S. officials try to navigate legal restraints about how deeply they can become involved in targeting and killing Russian troops.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

• Rishi Sunak has promised the UK’s largest ever military support packagefor Ukraine as he warned that Vladimir Putin would “not stop at the Polish border” if Russia won the war. The UK plans to give vital equipment to Kyiv including 400 vehicles, 1,600 weapons and 4m rounds of ammunition, as well as an additional £500m in military funding, taking the total to £3bn this financial year.

Ukraine war briefing: Long-range Atacms missiles on the way, says Zelenskiy

Russian attack shears Kharkiv TV tower in half; EU ministers urge no complacency after US steps up with aid. What we know on day 790

www.theguardian.com

There's also more Storm Shadow missiles in that package...

...] It includes more than 1,600 strike and air defence missiles, as well as more long-range Storm Shadow missiles. [...

twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1782543389897936936

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782543389897936936