Russia invades Ukraine - 3 - from 23 Oct 2022

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The PLA Navy doesn’t have the ships for either an amphibious landing or a naval blockade. That 160km river crossing would be a horror show. The build up would be obvious and the US naval assets would be ready to intervene before they even left port. Too costly for all involved.

Normally you wouldn’t consider an amphibious operation of any size without total air and sea superiority, but that would require striking Taiwan and US air and naval forces before launching the ships. And that then risks nuclear escalation.

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Le Monde is reporting that France and Ukraine are engaged in high level discussions involving a cost benefit analysis of the supply of Leclerc tanks.
Apparently there are quite a few of the tanks in Romania, where France has deployed 750 troops.

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Maybe the Russians have forgotten all the lend lease assistance they got and the fact that they were not fighting on their own…just maybe.

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About time. It’s absolute BS that the Turks are allowing that many flights per day and mostly with US made aircraft.

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Ukraine is getting western tanks | Putin is re-arming the neighbours (English subtitles) - Max Katz

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Confirms my private speculation at the time.

But such childish efforts would not work if “normal” politics was not so abysmal.

Won’t actually disrupt NATO at all as Sweden already integrated and the formalities will be completed after the Turkish election. But makes some “operator” feel successful.

BTW in that thread and some others I have glanced at recently there seem to be better worded posts from pro-Russia posters tasked with sowing doubts less trollishly. The operators behind those efforts really are being more successful.

eg Checkout other tweets from this guy, simply dismissed as a vatnik but actually not stupid:

At about 5’10" the English subtitles stopped. I was able to follow the rest by switching to Russian subtitles and auto-translate to (poor) English.

Was still worth watching (i.e reading).

Presents a clear argument for ignoring the efforts make Putin appear so irrational that his clumsy threats should be taken seriously and instead just ignore them and see how much cheaper it is to arm Ukraine properly for a quicker collapse of a failing regime than to put up with it disrupting the world economy for longer.

But I hope the proper subtitles get fixed. The automated translation is not as clear.

This makes zero sense in the context of current decision to delay Ukraine getting enough tanks for Spring.

US has enormous numbers of tanks, none of which will be of any relevance to the war in the Taiwan straits (or any conflict anywhere between the US and China).

Trying to find rationales doesn’t work when the decision makers are simply inept.

These are the people who recently supervised brilliant withdrawal from Afghanistan.

There could not possibly be anybody in the US administration who thinks 3000 tanks and 700,000 US troops made sense to expel Sadaam Hussein from Kuwait but Ukraine can expel Russia with a couple of hundred tanks.

The reality is that they don’t have a rationale for what they are doing and not doing.

Check out the journalism feeding insights about their thinking. It is full of “sources familiar with the matter” and "(somebody they just made up a vivid description of doing or saying something to somebody) declined to comment.

Here’s the latest gossip from “opinion leaders” on Blinken’s thoughts about the future of Ukraine, Putin and nuclear war, hot off the press from a royal courtier.

https://archive.is/hD11W

I see no evidence of a functioning mechanism for public discussion of policy issues in the USA.

Instead we have this breathless “The Biden administration is convinced”, “The Pentagon stresses”, “The State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are all thinking ahead”, “There is a widespread view in Washington”, “Blinken believes” and “Blinken weighs” according to “people familiar with the matter” so that readers can pretend to themselves that they have gained some insight - provided they don’t think independently AT ALL.

They are as incapable of giving a coherent explanation of their policy as the counter part hack journalists in Russia. They don’t know what the policy is and why because nobody does. But they still have to babble about it.

One thing we can be reasonably confident of is that even in the US foreign policy establishment, which is unbelievably stupid, nobody ACTUALLY believes that delaying supplies of tanks for Ukraine will help convince China that the US with send its navy and air force to defend Taiwan.

That doesn’t stop anybody from PRETENDING that there is a trade off rather than a synergy between devoting resources to defending Ukraine and preparing to defend Taiwan eg:

But they are simply dishonest. The report cited in fact concludes the opposite - immediately and drastically ramp up the industrial base for munitions production, not accept the constraint and trade off Ukraine now for Taiwan soon:

The ongoing war in Ukraine and escalating tension with
China—including in the Taiwan Strait—highlight that the
United States is no longer in a peacetime environment.
In 2022, President Biden indicated that the United States
would support the use of force now to defend Taiwan if
it were attacked by China, though much would ultimate-
ly depend on the context of a crisis.79 A failure to make
adequate changes today would fall into the category of
what U.S. defense analyst Frank Hoffman called a “pink
flamingo,” which he defined as a “predictable event that
is ignored due to cognitive biases of a senior leader or a
group of leaders trapped by powerful institutional forces.”80
In his history of U.S. defense production during World
War II, titled Freedom’s Forge, Arthur Herman documents
the critical role of the U.S. defense industry in defeating
Germany and Japan.81 But a revitalization of the defense
indsutrial base did not happen overnight for the United
States or its allies.82 As the stresses to the defense industrial
base already highlight, it is time to prepare for the era of
competition that now exists.

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Just needs some Benny Hill music!

https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1618634095906652161?s=46&t=A614rORv78k2aPHLTrN18w

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That post was about general support rather that specifically about tanks. But I guarantee you the tank production line is currently under strain. It has been running for decades at minimum rates. The skilled workforce was sized accordingly. Investment in production equipment would be for historical orders rather than wartime needs. Scaling up skilled people and high tech production lines doesn’t happen in days, it can take years. The small tank line is already busy with other orders, so existing customers would need to be delayed to service Ukraine.

The main issue with US preparations for a naval war is precision munitions. How fast can they produce precision guided missiles and bombs? What components are shared by other systems? What components have single source manufacturers with limited ability to scale up? Which of those companies are busy replacing Ukraine stocks and can’t provide parts for the PGM orders?

You’ve a tendency to overlook or oversimplify valid logistics and manufacturing challenges. When US drip feed capabilities to Ukraine, this is generally the reason. Training and logistics was why Ukraine got 4 HIMARS per month. Manufacturing capability of ammunition is why the donations stopped at 20.

Industrial capacity is going to directly limit the speed of Leopard donations. Many tanks are in storage and need major refurbishment. Rheinmetall has been operating as a peacetime company and can’t upgrade tanks at speed. There’s 40 Spanish and around 80 German tanks that would be available if industry could repair them quickly.

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How good have Poland been through all of this???

Sure, they’ve got a vested interest being so close to Pootin, but they’re really doing their bit.

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The Poles & Baltics have very good reasons to help the Ukrainians as much as possible.
Russia and Belarus are highly destabilizing neighbors apart from all the historical reasons they hate Russia with a passion.

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