O/T:- Ukraine [Incorporating 'Congrats to Russia' thread]

[andy6025]

Andy, you obviously know more than I do about the levels of weaponry held by those who are supplying their excess to Ukraine, but is it really possible that they aren't manufacturing it as fast as they are giving/selling it? Come to that, does anyone trust America not to look to make money at any other country's expense at any chance they get?
#WW2.

Or is it a possibility that Russia are prolonging the war to ensure the west is slowly being drained of it's ability to defend nations neighbouring Russia who might apply to join NATO?

Laxton,

So according to the western media which has, in my view, been extremely reluctant to
publish any ‘bad news’ coming out of Ukraine or news critical of it (ie, the war is unprovoked, Ukraine is winning, and Russia and their troops are hapless, etc), the west is not only running out of weapons to supply Ukraine, but that Ukraine is burning through them MUCH faster than they can remanufacture them. Nor can they easily or quickly ramp up production. Those links I provided a few posts ago are all saying them same thing, some more detailed than others, so you can click on any of them to read the details. Things like artillery shells, which are supposedly responsible 70%-80 of casualties on the battlefield - Ukraine’s allegedly firing in 2 days what the US takes a month to produce.

I think you’re absolutely right that America loves to make money on arms sales, but there are several reasons why they can’t or won’t ramp up production quickly. Despite America’s extremely bloated defense budget, there hasn’t been a war of this intensity since WWII. Wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, etc., typically used a lot of very expensive cruise missiles and other bombs to take out ‘enemy’ defences and infrastructure (military, civilian, whatever) in the initial phases but then, where applicable, shifted quickly to counter-insurgency operations that don’t rely on prolonged and intensive use of artillery, tanks, etc. They had an assload of these weapons lying around since the tail end of the Cold War, but there just wasn’t high enough demand to be producing them en mass. The way the western media describes it is that for the past 30 years or so, they’ve been producing at “peace-time production rates.”

Now, the manufacturers are private companies, and investing in new factories and/or converting existing factories both takes time and is very expensive. Even if they decided to do so, it would take years to start pumping out weapons and ammunition and the rate Ukraine is burning through them. The weapons manufacturers are perfectly willing to do this so long as they can be guaranteed one simple thing... contracts! And lots of them. Who wants to make extremely capital-intensive investments only for the war to end? Nobody! I wouldn’t want to be left holding the bag of owning brand new factories designed to pump out 30,000 artillery shells per day... and nobody’s buying them. When you build this capacity, you want to be guaranteed that your customer base is going to buy, and keep buying things at the rate you’re making them.

Western officials and intelligence agencies have publicly told us that they mistakenly presumed that the war would end quickly in a Russian victory. Western officials and the media also frequently tell us that the Russians also thought the war would end quickly in a Russian victory. I am not privy to the Russian battle plans (nor are western officials), and I’ve not heard any Russian officials tell us what their plans were, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that their ‘Plan A’ was to steam roll Ukraine at lightning speed and force a quick negotiated end to the war on Russian terms.

Either way, the collective west led by the US thought the war would end quickly, and thus under those presumptions there’s no point in ramping up production for a war that’s about to end. Nobody still knows when the shooting will stop - either by Russian victory, Russian withdrawl, or a negotiated compromise (beware of anyone telling you otherwise). According to propagandists on both sides, the other guy’s army could well be on the verge of collapse. Either could be right, or they both could be wrong. Furthermore, nobody can reasonably predict another war of this nature to take place again in the foreseeable future. All of this uncertainty doesn’t send signals to the manufacturers to significantly ramp up capacity. They’re definitely in talks with the Pentagon and other officials over possibly doing so, but so far they haven’t signalled a massive new commitment, and even if they do, it’ll take a very long time to start producing at the rate Ukraine is using.

As for Russia having the strategy of prolonging the war to drain western capabilities... I can’t say for sure, but I think that unlikely. I think Russia wants to win sooner rather than later. That said, I persona don’t think they want to be stupid about it. I think they do want to preserve their own troops and use them cautiously (ie. no waves of Russian suicide hordes) and I think Putin’s orders are to be extremely cautious of committing civilian casualties (when you compare known civilian casualty rates to all other wars as far back as is known, it’s low by a lot). I do believe though, that one of Russia’s primary objectives is to destroy the Ukrainian army, and I don’t predict that to be a quick prospect under the circumstances. So I will guess that this war still has a significant ways to go... but just like everyone else I’m just guessing.

Edit: I’d also add in the question as to who’s going to pay to bring manufacturing capacity up to a level to sustain Ukraine-rate usage for the indefinite future? While European countries certainly want to restock their supplies, is there the political will to keep spending rates this high when European countries are in serious economic peril?