From Trent Telenko on X. Allegedly:
I've seen a lot of accounts touting this Bain and Company consulting report Sky News is publicizing about Russians beating the West 3-to-1 shell production.
I don't buy it because the text shows a lot of typical consulting tricks (See text [below]) ...
Russian shell crisis [tread]
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x.com/TrentTelenko/status/1794812519724511268
This makes more sense than the video on Russian artillery production that was posted here yesterday. Russia has ramped up production, but I think Trent makes some good observations here.
There is a lot of hand wringing about the volume of Russian artillery, and it is a problem, but Russian artillery is vastly less accurate than western artillery. They require a lot more artillery shots to destroy a target than western systems do. The Ukrainians may not be able to match Russia in artillery volume, but they can beat Russia in accuracy by a large margin.
Russia had zero artillery gun barrel production at the beginning of this war, and they may have started up production again, but Russian steel is inferior to the top grades of German and American steel. That's why a new M109s can fire more artillery rounds before needing to replace the barrel.
I have seen satellite photos of Russian vehicle storage. There are a lot of SP artillery without any barrels.
Someone more versed in the topic please help me understand this: SDBs and ATACMS use GPS to find their way to any given target. So the Russians just jam GPS where they don't want their high value targets to be hit. A couple questions come to mind:
When these weapons were procured, didn't anyone account for the possibility that GPS could/would be jammed?
Long before GPS even existed, US cruise missiles used terrain following guidance to fly to designated locations. My $200 cell phone can take a picture of a plant and tells me what the plant is. How is it that million $ missiles can't fly to a rough location and have software autonomously identify the most compelling target and take it out?
RT
The Storm Shadow/Scalp and ATACMS are hitting their targets without any problems because they do have back up guidance systems. Most arms fielded by the US that have guidance systems have back ups because planners foresaw that an enemy with anti-satellite capability could take out the GPS system in orbit.
As well as considerations for battlefield jamming. Though jamming is less of a concern for US war planning because of the large investment in HARM capability in the USAF as well as other air arms of the US military. Any battlefield jamming system would immediately become a target for AGM-88s from Wild Weasel anti-radiation aircraft.
The main weapons having problems are GLSDBs, apparently. The biggest culprit may be Boeing.
Once world class, these days corner cutting is the rule such that civilian and military products are having serious operational problems. Just a little more thought and expense prevents many problems. Penny wise, pound foolish...
Aside, such weapons need to have radio programming/hardware updates frequently:
“The life cycle of a radio in Ukraine is only about three months before it needs to be reprogrammed or swapped out as the Russians optimize their electronic warfare against it,” Mr. Patt wrote in his testimony. “The peak efficiency of a new weapon system is only about two weeks before countermeasures emerge.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/...e_code=1.vE0._YXy.0muAh_xJv69a&smid=url-share
The GLSDB was slapped together by Saab and Boeing as a fast and cheap way to get glide bombs to the Ukrainians. Boeing does have a lot of problems. I left Boeing just as the problems were starting. John Oliver did a great piece on Boeing's decline a couple of months ago. It's on YouTube now and I would recommend it.
But the shortcomings of the GLSDB are not so much a problem of Boeing's decline but of oversights because the program was thrown together so quickly.
More juice:
The beginning of an imperial overstretch and imminent collapse?
It's like the new gold rush, new perestroika, everyone for themselves ... new fortunes and power structures to be made ...
Authoritarian regimes look strong until suddenly everything unravels in a short time. Predicting when Russia will unravel is difficult. The Russian people will tolerate a lot more pain than western countries before they push back.
I think someone here posted something leaked from Russia that their internal security forces are badly understaffed. When the public aren't rebelling, that isn't a problem, but it will become a problem if widespread protests against the war start.
