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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

They are enough to f*ck up Russian logistics behind the lines. Without a massive supply of shells from the rear to the guns themselves, the Russian artillery is incapable of executing their beloved "bomb everything into pieces" WWI-style doctrine.

And the Ukrainians have destroyed an untold number of Russian ammo dumps in the last weeks. Some of the explosions have been truly spectacular. This isn't something you can easily remedy. Any new ammo dump in range will be quickly spotted by either American spy satellites or local Ukrainian spies that are probably still active in Donbass - and get blasted to hell.

HIMARS is not enough to reconquer the lost territories, true. But it is enough to give Russians a forced operational pause.

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The thing that the west is unwilling to do is give the Ukrainians cruise missiles. The Russians have lots and lots of these in the form of Kalibr and Iskander missiles that they launch from ships and mobile launchers and it seems to be making all the difference.

What difference? They hit random civilian targets far behind the frontline.

This makes people angry, but does not significantly contribute to attrition of the Ukrainian military.

The recent cruise missile hits in Ukrainian cities haven't helped the Russians acquire even a square inch of new territory.

I don't understand this terror tactic either.

* It will only more cement Ukrainians against them

* It will have no negative influence on Ukrainian military nor aviation.

* Ukraine will use those attacks in their own propaganda to get more weapons and money from the West.

So those attacks are a waste of military assets with marginally negative gain. Who in Russian leadership is planning those dumb attacks?

Rationally, this war wouldn't even start.

We are too rational here on HN to try to emulate/parse/analyze the decision making involved. There is a big dollop of madness there.

Think instead of the people who have authority over these weapon systems. How much time they spent training to use those weapons. How important it must feel to them that their weapons are used.

The fact that the intelligence needed to give them valuable targets is a secondary concern. Their main concern is the readiness and cohesion that come from pressing the fire button.

Well west is unwilling to supply modern tanks so Cruise missles look to be def. of the table. Ukraine is even short on basic armored personnel carriers and even regular consumer trucks widely used by military (mostly supplied by volunteers).

This is not really about "willingness". Modern Western tanks are a logistical nightmare, and Ukrainian logistical capabilities to support them are limited. In order not to overextend them, everyone concentrates on doing what is most effective.

In the case of this war at this very moment, it is long range high precision artillery. HIMARS eats rockets like crazy, it needs to be supplied constantly.

Once those supply chains are fully built and safe, they can talk about adding tanks to the mix.

I think it's more of a public explanation than actual reality. Even supplying soviet planes is an issue (cause ooooh it might anger Putin)

For some countries like Germany, yes.

Others are itching for a fight. I wonder if this is true:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/vzp17b/in_poland_a...

Poland is certainly one of the countries that would love to drive Putin to madness.

> The Russians have lots and lots of these in the form of Kalibar and Islander missiles that they launch from ships and mobile launchers and it seems to be making all the difference.

Do they still have them or have they used most of them up?

IIRC, for all the attention they get, the US has surprisingly few cruise missiles and would use up its stockpiles pretty quickly in a war like that in Ukraine.

Russia is no where near running out of missiles. they still have a ridiculous amount of them.

On paper, certainly.

But a lot of those missiles have been stored somewhere in Siberia for 40+ years. Their condition is probably less than stellar. Who would regularly inspect and maintain random ammo dumps located five timezones away from Moscow in the middle of nowhere?

I suspect that at least some of those missiles are outright out of commission and others are unstable enough to be a danger to the Russians themselves.

Also, see this anti-aircraft gun in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IwqmezeSuQ

Maybe but those are big assumptions. Does the USA inspect it's missiles in the middle of nowhere?

IDK, but that is hardly relevant to the current situation. We aren't trying to one-up each other in a "who is worse" rhetoric content, but looking at the situation at the Russo-Ukrainian front.

From what I get, Western stuff delivered to the Ukrainians is in working order, while the Russians shells seem to have a fairly high percentage of duds - usually an indicator of a fuse degraded by long and inadequate storage.

And if shells frequently fail, so will other long stored equipment.

It's exactly the same. Two global leaders in military power.

> Maybe but those are big assumptions. Does the USA inspect it's missiles in the middle of nowhere?

The US almost certainly does, but the Russians might not. They've been shown to have neglected routine maintenance in ways that caused very critical problems for their military (e.g. they lost a lot of expensive advanced vehicles, because their unmaintained knock-off tires disintegrated).

Both these videos are long, but they had a lot of interesting ideas and insight on this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4 [specifically 33:10] (How Corruption Destroys Armies - Theft, Graft, and Russian failure in Ukraine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg (All Bling, no Basics - Why Ukraine has embarrassed the Russian Military)

They are already running out of Kalibr and Iskander missiles. Why would they started using S300 in Groun 2 Ground role?

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-now-firing-s-30...

Given what we’ve seen, the ones that weren’t delivered inoperable due to corruption likely lack targeting infrastructure.

HIMARS might be enough to retake things far away from Russia though. Russias logistics are terrible.

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