I’ve seen a lot of small scale operations filling in the gaps. Ukraine doesn’t have a central logistics function that covers all the needs of various units. Many units have vehicles maintained by local businesses. Food from local charities. Equipment from local fundraisers. There’s units that fundraise to repair a captured tank.
Huge numbers of drones are in the hands of front line units because of charities like that one. Night vision goggles and scopes. Radios. Hearing protection for artillery crews. Body armour and helmets. First aid kits. Tourniquets.
It’s a powerful method of direct fundraising. A unit can put a request out for a specific need and get it fulfilled. I like it. Not every solution needs to come from the same source. There’s some fraud that has occurred, but generally the bad actors have been exposed and those delivering to the front have built good reputations quite widely.
True. Since the korean war defence procurement in the US has been almost devoid efficiency considerations and more about jobs in the states of indluential politicians.
However, one of the previously shared articles note that they are investing in munition production facilities all over. The Canadian manufacturer is getting 68mil from the US gov to expand production of 155mm shells and others.
In 2014 Ukraine had a dysfunctional system. Occupation of Crimea and the Donbas was the result. They now have a lot of problems that they are clearing up. Foreigners deciding which units need what are a problem, not a solution.
Not foreigners. Ukrainians with local connections getting gear for units they know well.
The motorised infantry brigade that is equiped with Bushmasters regularly fundraisers for drones. That’s how they keep up with the attrition, drones are provided to an extraordinary degree by crowdfunding.
There’s that key word, functional. Just because you can spend millions on a new plant to be more efficient doesn’t mean that the old ugly plant has lost its value or bang-for-buck.
In fact, all that machinery has probably been written off decades ago. So the cost of production is pretty cheap compared to a new line.
I’ve seen major investments drive a good plant to close. The depreciation and interest costs made the plant unprofitable on paper, even though they were more productive.
Thanks for posting. I only knew a little of the Winter War
It gives some balance to the many reports of Russian inadequacy in troop resources and battle strategies.
With a population of 145 million I had assumed that Russia had enough numbers to undertake progressive training.
I noticed from one post here of troops complaining, that they in fact were undergoing 3 months training before going to fight
Never under estimate the enemy and do not swallow all the upbeat reporting.
it depends. I think they might be going with the western model where you have Bn of infantry, Armour, Arty and Engr and you form battle groups Bg by taking and infantry Bn as the core and adding a Sqn or two of armour, arty and engr or a Armour Bn and add a Coy or two of infantry, arty and engrs.
if that is the case, then a Bn would have 3 or 4 coy of infantry with 3 Pl each of 30 soldiers or so and a weapons det (hvy mg, agls, javelins); a combat support coy with a recce Pl/sniper Pl, mortar Pl, Anti tank Pl and pioneer Pl maybe. So 500 to 600 infantry soldiers.
A Bn ready to fight would have in addition to that an Admin coy wich includes supply, trasport, mechanics, ambulances and medics and pers admin. then a HQ wich will include the signals, int, and the ops and trg staff. I don’t think the trg included this later stuff.
and I now see that @FuriousGeorge already had replied with essentially the same thing
High tech can also involve sophisticated maintenance and a shorter life span.
Going by Biden’s emphasis on the Buy America Act, it could be that it will go beyond micro chips to a wider range of local content in defence procurement. Also that a lot could be sourced from the rust belt in proximity to defence manufacturing.
IDK how much the US States chip in to entice defence manufacturers. Certainly here the Qld Government has invested in the Rheinmettal plant at Redbank
Stays within its lane, does not address the Kekkonen legacy of Findlandisation, which consumed Finnish politics and history - and early on was cited as a potential outcome for Ukraine.
Yes, I didn’t know too much about it either, just the general stories about the Russians comin in uprepared and getting wiped out by mobile skiing Finns. But they did evolve their tactics clearly and took out the Finnish defences.
The last bits are important:
However, as one commentator put it: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has yet to find his 21st century Timoshenko” to facilitate such a rigorous top-down adaptation process in the Russian military currently fighting in Ukraine. It would be nonetheless a mistake to assume it cannot happen due to Russia’s military culture, inflexible leadership, mounting losses, and an adherence to rigid doctrine. Good leadership at the company, battalion, regiment, and even division levels was the exception and not the rule in the Red Army throughout the Winter War, and the Red Army still performed tactically poorly relative to Finnish forces.
Seems ominously similar to the current war, the Russians are missing a tactically adept leader who is also capable of pulling all of the headless chooks into line. Let’s hope they continue down that same path but AFU need to assume that they don’t (worst case planning) and have the right counter measures in place.
I have read the article and one glaring omission stands out. There is no mention of Stalin’s pogrom of the Russian army officer corps. Many thousands of the brightest and best officers were killed off not long before the invasion of Finland, and this had a devastating effect. An effect that was magnified on the leadership of the army when the Germans did invade, and was responsible in part for the huge defeats the Russian army suffered.
