I.judt don't see how 16-20 himars can make that much of a difference in a war involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
- Start date
I.judt don't see how 16-20 himars can make that much of a difference in a war involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Those soldiers need feeding, fuel and ammo. There are not hundreds of thousands of supply depots or trucks available.
Disagree, you tend to need both.
You need a good number of howitzers near the front lines to pummel enemy infantry and tank positions with large volumes of (relatively) inexpensive 155m shells. This is for preventing enemy advances and forcing retreats. You can’t pepper spray guided rockets costing millions per round, it's a waste of resources. But you do of course need these long range GMLRS guided rockets to strike deep into enemy territory and take out high value targets like radars, command posts, ammunition dumps etc.
Each part of the artillery plays a different and equally important role. And like Gehrman said, we have hundreds if not thousands of old M109 artillery pieces in NATO, which are near obsolete and are rusting away in storage. These might be useless to most NATO nations but are no older than what the Russians are using. They would be valuable to the Ukrainian artillery divisions. I feel more effort should be made to supply those to Ukraine.
Last edited:
There will be a lot of older equipment in storage that will need to make way for all of this.
Germany, the German government and the German political parties should be embarassed, when looking at the contributions of Poland to the security of Europe, the EU and NATO.
With half the population and and a GDP per capita half of Germany they will have in the future roughly 4-5 times as much MBTs as Germany. They will also have much more IFV. That means they will field much more panzer and mechanized infantry divisions than any of its rich and more populous european western allies
Poland will be the backbone of land based European defense and security.
While Germany hast as much panzer divisions as Switzerland available...
With half the population and and a GDP per capita half of Germany they will have in the future roughly 4-5 times as much MBTs as Germany. They will also have much more IFV. That means they will field much more panzer and mechanized infantry divisions than any of its rich and more populous european western allies
Poland will be the backbone of land based European defense and security.
While Germany hast as much panzer divisions as Switzerland available...
Perhaps Russia needs invading?
Poland is investing heavily in ground forces. With the coming f35s the air force is also going to be capable, but still the western european countries have considersbly larger air forces, and of course navies. That state actually would be very beneficial for nato since air assets can be moved quickly , and there will be no need to deploy US troops early on in large numbers, because Poland would have the best equipped army in Europe.
Even without nukes its extremely difficult to achieve. It can get bombed into the ground though.
They deserve some backlash at home but it will only work in favour mobilisation of the military.
At least the Poles have the experience of having conquered Moscow before, thats always something.
I believe that just an ultimatum from NATO that Russia has 48 hours to remove all their forces from Ukraine (including Crimea) or these forces will be bombed without mercy inside Ukraine, would end this war today.
I think this is the easiest way out for Putin, too. He would announce that the denazification has finished, or that the west has too many planes and they are evil, or whatever, I am sure he will find something to say to avoid a war against NATO.
The problem is that NATO should be unified in their response, and should really mean it, which is quite hard to achieve with Biden, Scholtz and all... there are no Churchills around.
Is @harms still around ?
I've got into an accident 4 weeks ago which affected my schedule significantly. Don't really have the time to check this thread but if you have any questions feel free to tag me here.
Hope its not too serious mate. Anyhow, since you are replying you are probably not in a gulag.
Sadly it was quite serious, but yeah, at least I'm not imprisoned.
Get well soon.Sorry to hear, I hope you recover as quickly as possible.
Hope you get well quickly. Take care
Sad to hear that. My best wishes for a speedy recovery!
Special maintenance operation.
Not to mention, “removing nukes from Europe” would mean France and the UK just up and opt to give up their nuclear deterrent. I have a hard time seeing that happen.
Never going to happen, especially not with Russia ramping up nuclear weapons programs.
The real problem is that Russia never denuclearized itself quickly enough after 1991 and were seeking for any excuse to get out of all treaties while the West went too far ahead without keeping an eye for proportionality in the mutual denuclearization process.
wasn't it the trump administration which pulled out of the denuclearization treaty? the one that limited each side's stock? pretty sure it was.
Pinker making baseless assumptions just like he does in his books. Consistent.
To believe that nuclear deterrents are useless at this point in time, you would have to believe that; had Ukraine retained its nukes Russia would still have invaded, that Russia's nukes played no part in the wests thinking around how to respond and that removing them right now to give Russia its win wouldn't encourage further aggression or coercion.
All this following an attack on a previously non aligned non nuclear country.
Great thinking there, we should definitely do this Steve what could possibly go wrong?
It’s crazy how few in Europe listened to the warnings from Poland/Baltics that imperialist Russia will weaponize the energy supplies when the time comes, you only needed to have alternatives to switch to quickly and some contingency planning. This is a feck up of enormous proportions.
You are right. Add to that the simple fact that Russia had a KGB president who crushed democracy in his country. And the fact that Russians tried to cause problems inside many Western countries. And the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. And many many other indications that Russia is a big problem.
After all that, I wonder what did the numerous "security analysts" advice in their reports to the politicians? And what did the Western politicians decide to do and why? It is crazy that in 2021 some European politicians were still enthusiastic about Nord Stream 2. Why did we have so much complacency in the West?
I mean, if it's just about the nukes close to the border, the question is if this wouldn't just be a symbolic act Putin could sell as a victory. When a single MAD submarine is enough to wipe out Russi, it's not as if you'd give up all deterrents you have.
Just for the record, I don't support his idea.
A lot of it is what Simbo says here…
To look at just one example… I follow UK MOD happenings just as a hobby because I like military history etc. and for years and years security analysts and military leaders warned the government that the British military was becoming a paper tiger in the name of saving £’s, but politicians continued to make decisions to cut capabilities and patch the holes over with “new technologies” that didn’t come to fruition. The 2015 and 2021 Defense white papers have started to try and reverse it, but they’ve got a lot of damage done to overcome.
This has happened in a lot of European countries. Since the end of the cold war most western European countries have masively cut the spending on their armed forces and comletely ignored the security threats that still exist.
Yes, it is money and corruption. And Putin definitely invested heavily in the corruption of our societies. Even today, after such a terrible war and so many dead Ukrainians, nobody investigates or blames anyone, like nothing happened at all and all the politicians and decision makers have zero responsibility. I haven't even read any investigative journalism talking about these issues.
It’s mad how little coverage it gets. 4 years ago a money laundering investigation uncovered $234 Billion (with a B) was funnelled from Russia into various banks, trusts, shell companies, etc in the west through a single Estonian branch of a Danish bank between 2007-2014.
That’s just one instance, how much cash do we think the Russian elite have laundered in total since Putin took control? A trillion is probably lowballing it. There are countless places pretty much set up to hide this kind of money, in the US, UK/offshores, etc and don’t get me started on crypto. This money can be all too easily weaponised. Whenever I hear someone talking some random bollocks that just so happens fits in to the Russian narrative, it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Talking about corrupt politicians.
The UK went with a pipeline to Norwegian gas rather than rely on Russian supply. In the end there is only so much pie to divide up. If you want a national health service you can't spend so much on defence.