That is looking a bit dire bollickal for Uk. Lots of frontal pressure being applied to engage the defenders of Bakhmut, while a pincer movement pushes towards Kalinina in the south, and forward troops in the north around Krasna Hora are at risk of being encircled and cut off. I wonder what Uk has in reserve, and how long the front line can hold out.
Could Uk cut off the salient in the north to relieve the line at Krasna Hora?
Ukraine will have a trigger point for a withdrawal. Probably after the loss of Ivanivske to the south.
Theyâve massive defensive lines a kilometre or two back from the front.
Russia hasnât demonstrated the ability to quickly close an encirclement, so most of the Ukrainian forces will be able to withdraw overnight.
Whispers are that UK is considering EF-2000 tranche 1 block 5 fighters to Ukraine.
The advantage is that thereâs no countries that can block the export.
Itâs well worth reading and a welcome relief from all the stories about how heroic Finns easily defeated vicious Soviet attack and similar about how Baltics and Poland less successfully resisted a Soviet aggression that somehow gets presented as though the Soviets were the enemy in WW2.
It is a distraction to argue about that endless stream here. The anti-communists of Europe, including some far right and a lot of people clueless about the history of WW2 are on the right side of this war against fascism and Russia, not Germany is the fascist enemy. Their belief that the fascist and Tsarist regime in Russia is the heir of the Communists they also hated and fought against on the fascist side in WW2 is as absurd as Putinâs pretense that his fascist regime is the heir to the Soviet victory against fascism. It isnât worth the effort of arguing about so I wonât.
But I am again mentioning it because silence in the face of the endless repetition should not be mistaken for acquiescence.
The simple reality is that WW2 would have been won by Nazi Germany if the Soviet Union had not acted preemptively to establish defensive positions for what it knew would inevitably be the assault prepared by the deliberate policy of pre-Churchill Britain and others to appease fascism in Spain and support Germany continuing the war the West launched against the Russian revolution when 14 countries invaded to support Tsarism against the Bolsheviks so that Russians would continue being slaughtered in the trenches of the utterly criminal imperialist WW1.
The Polish fascist government like the Austrian fascist government collapsed instantly when Germany made its move and Soviet forces occupied the East to the line agreed in the non-aggression pact with Germany to keep the Nazi forces from advancing East to the Soviet borders. BTW most of the Jews who survived in Poland did so because they were able to flee to the East when the Nazis arrived from the West.
The Finnish government was also fascist and its military led by a Tsarist General. Their border was less than 40km from Leningrad which made Leningrad indefensible in the coming war. They were offered an exchange of territory and refused. The massive loss of life in forcibly fixing that problem was certainly a violation of Finnish sovereignty but it was an absolute military necessity to save Leningrad. Leningrad did not fall when the allied German and Finnish forces attacked from a lot further away.
The Baltics were occupied, also in violation of their sovereignty again as a military necessity because they would have been part of the Nazi front line if they had not been.
Finland was an Axis power in WW2 and the subsequent âFinlandizationâ was enforced neutrality like that imposed on Austria, which was technically not a fascist power as it had been occupied by Nazi Germany (without resistance). Other states alllied with Germany in attacking the Soviet Union were occupied by the Red Army when it won the war in Europe unleashed by appeasement, and together with the Chinese Red Army defeated Japanâs occupation of China.
The subsequent degeneration of the Soviet Union and disintegration that liberated the states occupied is another important historical issue as is the emergence of a fascist regime now. It was basically impossible for many people to understand that Brezhnev era Soviet Union was already Tsarist and fascist. Many still donât understand that the Putin regime is Tsarist and fascist but it is at least possible to mention it since Russian State TV clips trumpeting it are now widely available.
The âarsenal of democracyâ was also a vital necessity for defeating fascism, and the US actually joined the war against fascism after Pearl Habour. So one also has to put up with endless Hollywood stories about how US troops won the war in Europe, which is pure fantasy.
It was the âineptâ Red Army that fought and won the war against fascism.
That is a historic fact. Lies about it are ONLY helpful to the Putin fascist regime in its efforts to convince the people under their rule that they are defending Russia from Western Nazis.
There are big differences but that similarity does exist. There are a lot of Russians who are not fascists and will stupidly fight what they are told is a war in defense of Russia, just as there were lot of Germans who did so and Americans and Australians who fought to âdefend democracyâ in Vietnam.
Australia even has a national holiday celebrating a defeated invasion of Turkey in WW1.
The utter rubbish people believe about history should not distract from occasional parallels.
The level of incompetence displayed by the Russian command in this war is quite staggering. It cannot be relied on. It might just collapse but Ukraine has to prepare for the possibility of more competent fascists taking power for at least some period after the regime supporting Putinâs particular clique is gone.
Ukraine is now facing a much larger army which has been subjected to at least a Darwinian process of adaptation by natural selection so it is unlikely to be as inept as before.
Ukraine NEEDS everything they are asking for NOW.
A lot of lives are again being lost by the failure of the West to mobilize quickly enough for collective defence against fascist aggression.
We should concentrate on uniting to do that. So I wonât keep arguing about history and donât intend to respond to discussion of this rant
But I will keep arguing that the West needs to do a lot more, and a lot more competently a lot faster.
Having earlier intended to retain 24 of its Tranche 1 Typhoons out to 2040, the UK will now retire them in 2025 with more than half of their airframe hours remaining.
Of the 53 Tranche 1 aircraft received by the Royal Air Force (RAF), 30 remain in the inventory. Of these, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) told Janes that 20 are in active service while the remaining 10 are in storage.
That happens. Instead old plant sometimes gets âmothballedâ instead of scrapped. So for example obsolete power plants can be brought back into operation when there would otherwise be a shortage of capacity.
There used to be fairly regular cycles of mass unemployment. Since the Great Depression and WW2 there has been a strong shift towards maintaining over capacity so that industries can meet fluctuations in demand with smaller shifts in employment.
Nominal depreciation and expected rates of return (including assumptions about that frozen into loan repayment schedules) should never be the basis for subsequent investment decisions. The bad decisions of the past could instead result in liquidating the enterprise with its debts and transferring the assets and experienced workforce to a new management and ownership.
But what has clearly happened in US munitions production is not the premature retirement or even âmothballingâ of efficiently functioning plant but catastrophically stupid bungling by the military bureaucrats responsible for ensuring that production capacity would be available to ramp up production from peacetime use for artillery practice.
That bungling is currently costing lives in Ukraine. It can and will be overcome. Other bungling is continuing.
The quotes above are precisely the story that the bureaucrats responsible for Ukraine currently being short of ammunition while allied with major industrial powers including a âsuperpowerâ were telling.
Repeating such excuses is not helpful.
Modern munitions plants need to be accelerated now at substantially greater cost than if there had been a planned overcapacity as is necessary in other industries. That is what âstrategic stockpilesâ are for. The stockpile of shells can be relatively small PROVIDED the overcapacity in both the industry producing them and the industries that produce the equipment needed to expand the industries producing them is adequate.
They werenât adequate.
In unrelated defense news, the former French aircraft carrier Foch has been sent to the bottom.
Interesting side note that Macaron still hopeful of a Australian sub deal âŠ
Sorry, every time I see Uk I thing United Kingdom; although, its ISO 2 letter code is GB.
The ISO 2 letter code for Ukraine is UA
my issue, Iâll deal with it, lol
UA, noted.
well, let me make this clear.
This is not about nostalgia or pork barrel politics by keeping jobs in useless endeavours.
The considerations should be mostly guided by the numbers and then HR factors as @Benny40 explained earlier. But politics and bean counters in the US have a big role in the decisions. The focus in the last few decades has been about cutting costs and keeping the budget balanced. But every year we have the drama in Washington about whether congress will allow the gov to spend money.
So the pentagon staff looks at their options and sticker shock is a big political hot potato; do we spend $5B in a brand new plant and contract or can we get by with spending $5M maintaining the older plants - note that since the production lines in these old plants have already depreciated to 0 the cost of producing a shell are way lower than in a new plant.
Short sighted ? YES
Should they expand production by adding more production lines in the old plants: YES if possible.
Should they build a new plant with all the bells and whistles? maybe - it will take years and may become a political liability (but Iâm leaning to yes also)
Itâs also about project risk.
Adding extra shifts to existing plant, negligible risk.
Adding a parallel production line with new equipment or upgrading modules of the old plant, low risk.
Building a new plant AND training staff from scratch, medium-high risk.
And by risk I mean project timeline and cost blowouts.
Edit - the upside of a new plant is the highest. If you didnât have an active war you would just do that. But when short term production is critical, youâre better off with an all of the above approach. Make as much now as you can and set up the big step change plant as fast as you can.
Yes. All valid and correct. As is the taking of war trophies from a war zone (which has been going on as long as warfare has existed). Museums such as the AWM would not have such an extensive collection - especially WWI artifacts - if it were not for war trophy collecting by soldiers. All the objections raised - legal, moral or other - are pure nonsense.
Presidential executive authority is limited
There is also the perennial policy constraint of Congress blocking the equivalent of Supply when the budget is in deficit. This is a regular feature of US politics, when foreign policy strategic interests are held to ransom
Canadian sources are about the best informed of those thinking outside the Beltway
