To make more stingers, U.S. needs to revive production technology from scratch
technology.org
technology.org
Though I imagine there are valid criticisms if we had all the details. “They didn’t think to preserve X specimens.” “Y software was lost on a tape drive somewhere.” “Z blueprints got improperly stored inside the Ark of the Covenant.”
NATO would have air superiority and not need as many stingers.
Not to mention that Russia has had a land border with NATO since 1948.
NATO is absolutely zero threat to Russia, and Russia knows it. Finland joined and Russia shrugged, and has since even removed many troops from that border because it knows NATO will not attack.
What matters is the national security interests of Ukraine.
Russia is a massive threat to the national security interests of Ukraine, and Ukraine really wants to join NATO to be safe from Russia. Russia knew that if it wanted to invade and conquer Ukraine, a souvereign country, it would have to do soon because it would not be possible anymore after Ukraine joined NATO.
Russian security interests, fuck off. Neither Ukraine nor NATO is a threat to Russia.
Ukraine's security interests, those are very obviously threatened.
They've removed them because they need to avoid any possibility of a provocation. The merest hint of a wrongful look at Finland will not go well for them.
We’re talking about the US here, not Ukraine.
Yes, if you are a third-party citizen and observe a woman as well as a group of men who you suspect to be absolutely predatory scumbags, you can make predictions about what might happen.
Yes, if you are a third-party citizen and observe ...
This is just spin and narrative to suggest that the war isn't really Putin's fault.
Mhm.
The whole topic here is about how America could/couldn’t have anticipated the invasion. The very comment that you replied to says “The Pentagon should have”… that’s not Ukraine.
Not my problem that you are off-topic.
The topic here, at least where it started to veer way off course from the original thread, is the essentially pro-Kremlin narrative in the GGGP comment and its GP ("The proxy war started in 2014 with Euromaidan"). In this context - US calculations as such are a red herring. What matters here is the clear (and basically rather crass) implication in these comments of core Western responsibility for Russia's military actions.
Which implication your words definitely seemed to be (if obliquely) echoing and supporting. Or at least playing footsie with, for some reason known only to you.
I’ll note that you can’t even accuse me of doing anything even remotely concrete. “Seemed to.” “If obliquely.” “Playing footsie.” All just accusations of association. Not a leg to stand on at all.
Take your control round over who is batting for the correct team elsewhere.
> US calculations as such are a red herring.
Then just say that. My God. No one cares.
Probably because you're throwing up such an ink cloud that it's difficult to what point you're trying to make, let along for which "team".
> The Pentagon should have recognized that the Eastern expansion of NATO
This is your mock-quote:
> "The so-called victim must have realized that going out dressed like that
Clearly you are mocking this statement on what the Pentagon “should have realized”.
Then I come along and point out that the mock-quote doesn’t apply since The Pentagon is not the victim in this war.
It’s not my fault that you want to find my spooky ulterior motives.
What matters as far as planning is concerned is analyzing likely outcomes given your own actions. We can for the sake of the argument just take as a given that the Russian government is bloodthirsty and expansionist and wants Ukraine.
Event: Euromaidan
Likely long-term outcomes: ?
There’s not more to it than that. No need to moralize over who did what or who is culpable. This is all about one entity (America) analyzing likely outcomes given a series of events.
No, actually. I do not think it should have been taken for granted that Russia would be stupid enough to do this invasion.
The fact that they were willing to make such insane strategic bludders is a bit of a surprise.
Should have been: given any kind of event.
Considering Us behavior when the Soviet Union installed assets on Cuba, there isn’t a whole lot of ethical ground to be found here. Just Great Power politicians playing stupid games with innocent lives.
If the US had put nukes in Ukraine and pointed them at Russia, and did so before the Crimean invasion, your comparison might be more fair.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-protest_laws_in_Ukraine
No one in Ukraine believes this narrative. Why do you?
None of this is true, what happened in reality and not in the fever dreams of FSB, GRU and SVR agents is that there where protests when Yanukovych went back on a number of election promises and started aligning himself with Russia instead of joining the EU Like he promised he would.
After that happened he was removed from his seat of power by the parliament and he fled back to his handlers in Russia.
So many politicians blathered on about the peace dividend but the bear was hibernating, not dead. I was repeatedly ridiculed for saying so. Fortunately, it turns out the bear rotted from within pretty badly during it's hibernation.
A week of not hearing anybody actually use the only official language of the country, that Russian would conclude that Ukraine is mostly fake.
Of course that led Russians to underappreciate the willingness of Ukraine citizens to actually fight for it.
Now, yes, of course.
This is Russian propaganda and not even true all Ukraine did was introduce a bill to make all offical communications be provided in Ukrainian.
Nothing stopping people providing it in Russian too.
The law does a lot more than that, and is quite obnoxious actually.
Can you provide a link all I’ve seen from sources is that it required all offical information to be in Ukrainian.
It omits a few key aspects unfortunately, but I'm sure you'll be able to find those on your own.
If they have the social and political awareness of a 12 year-old, perhaps.
Nobody actually talks in Ukrainian around them.
Absolutely not true for (and a very weird thing to say about) Kyiv.
In Odesa/Kharkiv Russian is clearly dominant, but it's not like you'll never hear Ukrainian spoken.
NATO is first and foremost a military alliance setup to contain the western expansion of the USSR. It’s a strategic alliance. It’s defensive in as much as a military alliance can be.
What the US is using NATO for now that the USSR is no more and what is the EU getting out of it are actually very valid questions.
They were very valid questions up until the Ukraine invasion revealed Russia to be the mustachioed villain we were always told they were. Now nobody questions the need for NATO. Good job, Mr. Putin, your "Recruiter of the Year" plaque is on the way.
Countries still need protecting from the remnants of the USSR's aggression, mainly Russian aggression.
If NATO didn't exist you can be sure that Russias ambition would not stop at countries like Ukraine.
Countries don’t need protecting. Countries should aim to protect themselves. The EU doesn’t need the US for its protection and should have invested in a proper army decades ago.
It’s obvious that the main benefit for the USA is that NATO dissuades the EU to actually be a power. That some countries in the east are happy to play lapdogs is a major issue.
It's simply not possible from some countries to protect themselves for other larger aggressive countries (such as Russia) that can both out spend them and have many more bodies to throw at the problem.
A collective defensive alliance in this cases makes sense as both a deterrence to any possible belligerents and as a practical measure if someone does try something.
How, exactly?
Then jets like the F-22[3] would be used to establish command of the airspace.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_military_parachu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor
It doesn't need to be singularly successful since it's part of a collective of redundant systems[2]. Air isn't working then increase missile strikes, missiles can't attain good effect on target then increase covert operations with local insurgencies, etc.
That's just some of the possible angles of attack. There's leaving out things like drones and cyber attacks that would also be employed to some effect.
Eventually the enemy loses the ability to fight since it's critical points are weakened to such a point it can no longer wage an effective resistance.
Another example: why attack heavily defended artillery positions when you can blow up the logistical route and starve them of rounds to attack with?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare
How is Russia establishing air superiority over Ukraine now? Or is going to change the tempo of the war into their favor?
How does this pertain to them denying NATO+allies from probably eventually attaining air superiority in a hypothetical full conflict?
How many helicopters can Russia sustain to lose? They've lost several over the last few weeks.
Supply routes have be successfully attacked by Ukraine with estimates of slowing logistics by 50% in certain areas.
And again how many AA batteries can they sustain to lose?
Meanwhile Ukraine has made slow but steady advances forward gaining ground.
Where's Russia changing the direction? Is that by terrorizing civilian targets (your bombing campaign) and blowing up hydroelectric dams? So essentially they're just using the tactics of terrorists.
Yet they still can't freely fly over Ukraine because they still lack control over the skies.
When's Russia regaining the momentum in their favor? Last week one of their best units tried to storm Moscow and hang their top military leaders.
AND now Russia is more weakened to a full confrontation with NATO than they were before starting their war in Ukraine. So all the more likely to lose air superiority to NATO+allies.
I dunno know about this part of the statement, the fact that we are still seeing long range deep strikes into important Russian territory (sometimes killing hundreds of soldiers at a time), tells me that maybe Russias EW and AA against semi modern cruise missiles isn't as good as people think.
Yeah but these missile strikes have been hitting high value targets like air fields and troop barracks.
Regardless of if they can’t defend these areas because they don’t have the systems or the systems cannot intercept them it doesn’t bode well.
I guess they might have been Russia's best airborne units, but both at Hostomel and in other engagements, they've been shown to be overrated. Then again, Hostomel was a shitshow of poor planning/intel. I bet the VDV would have loved to know that there was a UKr unit right next door with heavy artillery before they kicked off the assault.
What happens when the enemy has exhausted it's supply of AA ammo?
Or lost use of its radar?
HALO is for opponents lacking AD and radar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Invasion
Edit: If you're objecting to HALO insertion as a measure against AA then fine but even describe as a way around AA:
"The technique is used to airdrop supplies, equipment, or personnel at high altitudes, where aircraft can fly above surface-to-air missile (SAM) engagement levels through enemy skies without posing a threat to the transport or load. In the event that anti-aircraft cannons are active near the drop zone, the HALO technique also minimizes the parachutist's exposure to flak...
... The combination of high downward speed, minimal forward airspeed, and the use of only small amounts of metal helps to defeat radar and reduces the amount of time a parachute might be visible to ground observers, enabling a stealthy insertion."
Edit: I don't understand why you're fixated on one or two options being insufficient for certain scenarios out of a redundant number of options at the U.S. disposal but whatever.
Like HALO is the only way to insert a team? You're clearly not clueless about a variety of tactics so I'm confused why you're not extending that here.
1. Round the clock bombing. We saw how F-117, flying the same route day after day in Serbia was shot down by an S-75 Dvina (first deployed in 1957) in optical mode. You will never see a B-2 flying in daylight any more than you would see an AC130.
2. What US artillery can outrange an S300/S400? US artillery is already outranged by Russian artillery.
3. Missile strikes are the only thing you list that are even doctrinal against a modern A2AD system. And those are limited, as NATO found out when several members ran out of smart munitions when overthrowing Qaddafi. But yes, that's what we'd use. JASSM, Tomahawk, SCALP, etc.
4. Using Iraq as a measure of how we'd fight a near peer opponent is ridiculous. While Iraq had a large standing army, it was never a match for the US in 1991, much less 2003. There are numerous things we did in Iraq that we'd never have attempted in the Fulda Gap.
5. Finally, back to HALO. Sure the operator jumping out using HALO might have a minimized signature, but remember that big, lumbering transport that he's jumping out of? The one with the ginormous radar signature? Flying high (so the H in HALO) can occur, meaning every radar in the world can spot it? BOOM. Shot down as soon as it's in range of an S400. Which is roughly between 300 and 400KM. So if you're expecting a team dropping in by HALO to survive, you're delusional.
So you can’t refuel, your home runways are trashed and the carriers are sunk. Then what.
Range and logistics matters and the Ruskies have it in that neck of the woods.
Stingers are inexpensive comparatively cheap surface-to-air missiles that allow an individual soldier on the ground to pick off an aircraft that happens to fly sufficiently low; it's useless if air superiority is actually being contested or if aircraft are bombing away from high altitude and mainly functions to whittle down the size of the edge the opposing force's air superiority gives in the ground combat.
These are questions the US has been working on since Vietnam - they’ve gotten pretty good at it by now.
But anyways, they’re already using US gear, tactics, ISR - why not this? You don’t need red blooded Americans to employ SEAD.
So no, other than one old missile, they're not using US gear, nor US tactics, nor US ISR for SEAD/DEAD.
They don't have the modern aircraft, or missiles that would make SEAD missions against modern Russian AA effective.
Despite the narrative most of the stuff Ukraine is getting is super old.
- Leopard 1's.
- M113 APC's
- Mig 29's
- Sukhoi 24's
- Mi-28's
- Mi-8s
The HARM's that you speak off, we don't know what variant they are but they won't be super effective because they cannot be effectively integrated with the aircraft Ukraine has so they are probably older variants using pre programmed fixed coordinate attack modes.
That should hopefully change once the F-16's arrive and they can start more effectively using more modern air borne weapons especially for SEAD.
The air defences are probably some of the most modern pierces of equipment that Ukraine has.
HIMARS are a good example of modern equipment with relatively modern munitions but they still haven't gotten any PrSM's or ATACMS.
Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)? Who will maintain them? How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back). How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
> Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)?
Probably relatively far from the action.
> Who will maintain them?
Ukrainians its one of the reasons why its taking so long for them to get them.
> How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back).
They don't have to fight at the front line, they can be used effectively as missile trucks to throw long range weapons like Storm Shadow and other long range weapons at Russian lines.
If a SU25 and Mig29 can survive doing that a F-16 will have no problem.
> How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
The same way that the SU25 and Mig29 do, the F-16 will survive much better.
And how is Russia going to pummel NATO airbases? This isn't 1985 when the Soviet VVS had thousands of fighter bombers tasked with taking out the airfields. They're not next door to Germany/France/UK anymore since NATO has expanded East. The RuAF might have 500 flying aircraft for their entire nation. They have no stealth aircraft in service (the Felon isn't in production yet if ever).
While behind with aircraft, Russia has objectively outclassed the West with missile tech (and defense).
Do yourself a favor and read this book:
Let's just look at AA gear. Pantsir has been shown to be ineffective against most drones, Storm Shadow, etc. Same with BUK. S300 and S400 have really good range, but I think that Patriot and SAMP stand up well in comparison. The Ukrainians are using older Patriot missiles and are successfully engaging Khinzal and any cruise missile the Russians can throw at it. NATO has THAAD and better versions of Patriot in their arsenal, so even being generous, I think this is a draw.
For offensive weapons, the Russians have nothing in the class of SCALP/Storm Shadow, much less JASSM/LRASM. They would even have a hard time coping with Tomahawk.
So what weapon system are the Russians going to use against Lakenheath and Mildenhall? A Kalibr is going to have a very hard time making it across the Baltics to the UK, and I doubt any aircraft doing a suicide mission would make it either. How about Aviano? Same problem. Ramstein and Spangdahlem as well.
And Russia sure has done a great job "pummeling" Ukrainian airbases, right? I mean, they've utterly failed at this. The Ukrainians are still flying Fencers, Fulcrums and Frogfoots from their bases.
Indeed it is and the proof shows that Ukraine intercepts a large number of Russian missiles with air defence.
Whilst Russia intercepts a lot of Ukrainian weapons with the intended targets.
The Russians have maybe shot down a single stormshadow out of all the ones that have been fired.
They don’t seem so good at intercepting modern western cruise missiles.
This all ignores that Ukraine managed to get TU141 drones that look like they have the radar signature of a truck past Russian air defence to hit targets within Russia.
Your true believer enthusiasm is endearing, but it doesn’t win wars.
They have a single photo of a single storm shadow.
Because they haven't shot down anymore, I presume they will move it to 100 different sites to try and claim they have shot down more like they did earlier with the downed drones.
And all I'm saying is, plan to be able to start the dang factories again.
A broad section of Americans, from the 1970s (roughly post peak Soviet power) through today (albeit declining), has called for dismantling our military-industrial complex. That production capacity is the military-industrial complex. The peace dividend of the 90s was a direct result of reörienting military production to civilian use, making fewer guns and more butter.
Crucial electronic components for a piece of equipment designed in 1978 and last manufactured in 1987 are no longer manufactured, and replacing them will require a redesign and a requalification? Who could have understood that, besides anyone with a EE degree.
And when you are: “wow the MIC is leeching the country dry!”
I’m glad this realization is making its way to the knowledge of the general population.
People have been seduced by cheap foreign goods, and balked at the idea of something costing more than the lowest cost.
Come to think of it, I am wondering if making cheap industrial labour generally available was a “soft power” exercised by some countries. This enabled the dismantling of flexible Western production capabilities, increased reliance on these countries, and dissuaded aggression towards them.
Also see the reliance of Europe on Russian fossil fuel imports.
Of course it is. But US and Global Capitalism fought tooth and nail to get into China. The manufacturing base in the US was dismantled (literally) on purpose by American billionaires and the politicians they owned.
Tiananmen square made it clear China wasn't going to change and the idea that "improving economy leads to democracy" has literally never happened unless that nation was occupied by the US military like Germany and Japan
Not sure about the implicit attempt to address power imbalance: if you invest your IP in some "underdeveloped" country and then they decide to sell chips to all comers, or not to sell to you and sell exclusively to your global competitors something is going to give... or break. Or get broken.
But that's literally how it was sold: give up your industrial base for a safer world. (We thank you for your patriotism, former industrial worker of the western world.)
Not having a way to increase production of Stingers is acceptable, but they've apparently done nothing since 1987 to make sure they have a viable blueprint for scaling production of a critical part of any modern military. That's the real story here, because it shows a fundamental problem in how the US military procures things and there is most likely similar issues all over the place for other critical things(artillery shells have similar shortages). How does the military not have a plan for war breaking out and needing to scale production? That's supposed to be their core job
The Russian-Ukraine War, with no direct US involvement, is a weird edge case we weren't prepared for.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-pric...
https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages
this whole situation shows deep issues in how the US military does procurement and also basic forecasting/planning
The US only has a shortage of Javelins because they have sent so many into Ukraine. In the past half a century the US hasn't had to supply a military conflict as it has with Ukraine v Russia, and almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion. The notion of literally planning for every possibility is absurd, and if the US military tries to do that regarding a budget, it'll just get that much more flak for spending policies.
Armchair Internet users will proclaim the US military should know all and see all and know exactly how many Javelins it will need based on knowing every single conflict that will happen before it happens. And if they make a mistake, and spend a lot of money on weapons they don't need, then they must be attacked for the ridiculous spending. The armchair crowd can't have it both ways.
I’m surprised by this. There were articles and discussions on it for years. The water supply to Crimea was sore point. In the immediate lead up to war the troop build ups were in the news.
If the US Army or Marines needs to defend against air attack, they expect to have their own air support available.
Keeping this production line hot would be extremely expensive, and since none of our allies were buying any and the US military expects to have air superiority/supremacy in any conflict they fight, this is a tempest in a teapot.
Ukraine isn't an edge case, Ukraine is what you would expect from anything less than a turkey shoot. It's just we haven't been in anything other than a turkey shoot since the Stinger came out.
The US Air Force is the largest one in the world. The second largest? The US Army. 4th largest? US Navy. I think the USMC is #7 or so.
That doesn't mean the US will have air supremacy in every situation or even air superiority, but it's unlikely to be close to even for long, if it ever is.
> ... despite a world-class air force’s best effort against a second-rate defense, the United States never gained air supremacy. High-value intelligence platforms such as the E-8 Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System were prohibited from flying over land where their sensors were most useful and instead had to stand off outside the threat region.
(c) https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-dangerous-allure-of-th...
A military that cannot send stingers to allies, right now, is objectively not very capable; focusing on air superiority might be the best choice after all, but it cannot be an excuse for late stingers.
Nuclear powers feared conflict between each other not because one or the other's conventional army (or arms) were superpowered, but because it dramatically increased the chances of a conflict escalating to the nuclear level - which could well be the end of both civilizations, if not the better part of the entire human species.
Anyone planning for that war needs to stop whatever the hell they are doing and start planning for how to avoid it instead.
IIRC Russia is at 99% air defence effectiveness vs the start of the Ukraine war; i.e. it has not been materially degraded at all, despite HARM anti-radar missiles and so forth given to Ukraine.
Though I don’t full agree with Russia only using ground based air defense as the few newer generation jets Russia have are shooting down a lot of Ukrainian jets. They fly higher, faster, and can both lock and engage Ukrainian jets before the Ukrainian have even detected them.
I think that the USAF will have its hands full overcoming Russia's A2AD environment, assuming it's set up and competently managed. The range on S300/S400 makes it hard to use anything other than Tomahawks and stealth aircraft to target. It definitely won't be like Baghdad during DS.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/first-marine-corps-tom...
- old C versions from early 90s - only working on pre-programmed target mode - no targeting pods like AN/ASQ-213
And nobody flies aircraft at "treetop level", with the possible exception of the A10 which is designed to and actually has flown home successfully after a missile hit. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/a-10-pilot-explains-how-the-...
Also there is no such thing as a "MANPAD", it's not a plural -- it means "Man-portable air-defense system".
Helicopters fly this low all the time.
I can understand not having full production facilities due to expense, but at least plans for those facilities if they need to be built in a hurry?
We have allies to do that for us.
Before the Russia-Ukraine war escalated in 2022, Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany, and combat training from Canada and the UK.
If we began directly providing offensive weaponry to Ukraine before 2022, we would have ended up escalating the conflict much sooner.
By allowing our allies to handle procurement we were at least able to buy Ukraine enough time to rebuild their army after it collapsed in the aftermath of 2014.
Don't you mean artillery from Deutschland? :)
Probably that suggestion/rule is followed by some parts of the UN and perhaps some documents from a few foreign ministries. I certainly hadn’t ever seen it in the wild until the GP comment. It made me chuckle…not at the commenter but at the country.
But what the hell, yes I wrote (and will continue to write) “Turkey”, but I won’t call Istanbul Constantinople, much less Byzantium.
Not sure why these absurd dictatorial tendencies are being taken seriously...
Also it's 2023 and people know how to deal with tricky alphabets and stuff now.
Not saying it's wrong to not deride someone for using the proper spelling but the existence of the French forms shouldn't inherently require forms from languages without significant influence on English.
They asked for it to be changed, and got what they asked for. Both the UN (https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-türkiy..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey#Presidential_ci...) and the USA (https://www.dw.com/en/us-officially-changes-spelling-of-turk...) decided to change that spelling.
I think I may have mixed up some of the post-2022 arms exports to Ukraine with pre-2022 with earlier reporting about Ukrainian weapons imports.
Everyone in the military did indeed have their "doctrine and practice" in mind, the status quo, and suddenly the world rushed up to the military's front door, knocked furiously at the door saying "we need 20,000 Stingers, fast!" And hopefully they had the introspection to realize 'wow, we failed. We can't supply this. Our doctrine and tactics are wrong."
Do you seek air superiority via spending money to create an air-superior fighter jet, or do you seek air superiority via spending money to give every infantry soldier a manpad? Two different tactics with the same goal. Except that the former is a wasteful illusion of superiority, the latter is meat-and-potatoes common sense superiority.
Begs the question what's going on with the lack of common sense in the military.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Stinger type MANPADS are designed for short range point defense, no greater than 5km range and limited by cloud cover. It's a completely different ballgame to have air superiority fighters with radar guided missiles covering you from above. US doctrine is based entirely around this fact; that winning a war means being the side which is able to maintain that.
The only way to achieve air superiority is with a fighter aircraft and its associated support aircraft. You can deny air superiority with a full spectrum AD program (which a MANPAD is but a small part), but you can not impose it.
Poland plus Romania plus Czechia plus Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, and potentially Ukraine and Bosnia and Central Asia with Georgia and Azerbaijan, where these could be used.
It was totally not obvious that Russia (an important but quite small subset of Warsaw pact) will keep its military production capacity but the rest of collective will not - eventually running out of it and often without meaningful replacement.
They supplied significant number of these to Ukraine where it performed well.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.armyrecognition.com/polish_...
Estonia and Norway also likes them https://www.technology.org/2022/12/01/piorun-manpads-goes-ma...
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/558342-america...
The lack of basic weaponry seems to be a failure in that regard. Imagine if the US and Russia were fighting directly. The US may not have air superiority because of Russian jamming and air defense systems. Neither side wants to use nukes. So a long term ground and air war is a possibility, and the same seems possible with modern China. The Pentagon was not prepared for this as shown by what is happening in Ukraine. Instead they seem to have assumed that there will be no more big wars (not unreasonable until Russia decided otherwise and the US decided to "diversify supply chains" away from China) and they spent all the trillions on ever more advanced weaponry, never making large quantities of anything, but always starting the next new program. It is apparent they were caught by surprise, as was the EU who underinvested in defense for a long time. Now everybody is putting out contracts for new arms, but the manufacturers are going to take years to ramp up production. I expect this is partly caused by Congress in the US who tend to assume money solves everything, but in this case money can not buy time. Much of the material needed to make gunpowder and rocket motors comes from China, good luck ramping up production of those quickly if the US is fighting China. Part of the problem is outsourcing of manufacturing to other countries such that the US no longer has the ability to quickly switch industry to a war footing. US car makers rely on thousands of parts from other countries. That happened slowly over time, but even so the Pentagon wasn't keeping their eye on the ball and let capabilities slip away; car factories today could not make a tank, they are not set up for handling the heavy sheets of armor, all the robots would be useless, and there are no workers still trained in the old manufacturing methods. Yet another factor is secrecy, the US can't/won't give its most current weapons to Ukraine because that would reveal them to Russia and China. So all our super weapons can't even be used because of secrets. This shows a lack of foresight that not everyone fighting on our side in a war is going to have access to the most current US weapons. If it was NATO fighting Russia the EU do not and would not have the most advanced versions of the F35 and F22 for example, they'd have the export versions. There are factors unique to the Ukraine war, such as the time needed to train the Ukrainian military to use Western weapons (where the assumption was the US and EU already knew how to use them, so no problem for us) and the fear of escalation to nuclear war, but it seems the US military really was not ready for a long drawn out war in a remote location and they are obviously scrambling to adjust to that. A big concern recently is the realization that it would be very difficult for the US to fight against China (say to protect Taiwan) because it is so far away and we have few bases in the area. F22's and F35's can be refueled mid-air, but mid-air refueling planes can be shot down. Aircraft carriers are really vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. Basically it seems the world has changed (or perceptions of it anyway) and the US military has not adjusted (yet) to the that and didn't seem to see it coming. Maybe their hands were tied by Congress (for example demands to keep old planes flying instead of stocking more ammunition), we'll probably never know. The US has not fought a war against a near peer power in a long time, much of its planning for such a war has to be guesswork by people with little experience. If the US was attacked by Russia or China in a conventional war current munition stockpiles would probably be plenty, the long distance would work against the attackers. A war on the other side of the world is a very different set of logistical problems, yet may be considered just as crucial as defending home territory. If US military strategy says that is not worth considering, that's a decision to intentionally limit what kinds of wars can be fought. History would then judge whether that was a mistake or not.
The “game changing weapons” that the US has been providing are very old. And we’re still not giving them the good stuff. Secrecy is not the reason.
Ukraine wants ATACMs for the HIMAR units and F16s.
The storm shadow missiles which have been making headlines lately are fired off of Ukrainian Soviet era planes
It’s true that surface to air missiles are very good these days. But that’s not very useful against long range missiles precision weapons. Which Russia largely does not have. See their recent use of an iskander ballistic missile to take out a company of infantry under a bridge out of desperation and lack of alternatives.
1) Poorly trained (by highly motivated) Ukrainian soldiers are fighting successfully against the best the Russian Federation can offer, using both old Soviet era that they owned and manufactured (Most of the good Soviet gear was made in Ukraine), and old US and NATO gear. Old HIMARS, old M113, old Leopard tanks, etc etc. The best stuff being provided is Javelin, M777, a few Patriot batteries, etc. Even the Abrams and Bradleys are old versions.
So the Russians aren't doing well, and are no threat in conventional terms.
2. The US wasn't surprised at all by the invasion, though the IC was surprised at how poorly the revamped Russian military performed.
3. The EU has been underinvesting in defense for 50 years, so their lack of deep inventories is no surprise.
4. This isn't WW2 where Detroit can switch in a month from building Studebakers to Sherman tanks. The only tank factory in the US is in Lima, OH, and has been building Abrams since 1980. The idea that defense items can be built quickly and cheaply ignores the complexity of the gear US forces use.
5. NATO members who have purchased the F-35 have the same capabilities as the USAF etc. There's no "export" version, and some purchasers are even part of the manufacturing process. And none of them have the F-22 as you imply, since it's not available for export (and the production line has been shut down for decades).
6. It's not "a big concern recently" about the tyranny of distance in fighting a war against China. This has been discussed for decades.
7. Finally, you say that the US has not fought a war against a near peer power in a long time. Well, duh. The US has had the most powerful economy since 1916, two oceans to keep enemies away, and hasn't had it's homeland significantly touched by an enemy since the War of 1812.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-america-bro...
Modern military equipment is incredibly expensive, complex, bespoke, and made in small batches. Even in cases when that is not true, as with artillery shells, peacetime supply chains cannot meet wartime demand. Ramping them up takes time, and maintaining them in a constant scaled state of readiness entails an opportunity cost that most societies are not willing to pay.
HN readers should know that military supply chains are not like global commercial supply chains. The supply chains that say Apple or Walmart have built are global scale and quickly responsive to demand. That simply does not apply to many military components from manufacturing through assembly and deployment. The timelines are much longer.
There are things Ukraine needs that money cannot immediately solve. These bottlenecks are an example. (Fears of escalation are another…)
Ukraine is fighting a poor man’s war with a lot of second-hand Cold War equipment and Stingers that served the mujahedeen just as well decades ago.
This is partially due to US funding mechanisms. It’s very easy for Biden to exercise discretion in what he sends (and therefore regulate the intensity of the war) through the mechanism of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which can only draw upon existing DOD stocks. He relies heavily on PDA, thus the nature of the second-hand stuff.
What’s interesting is the dual-use piece of the equipment used in Ukraine. By paying frontline soldiers some 5x what they would normally earn, Ukraine has created a market driven by the demand of infantry, usually pooling their purchases in small groups.
They are buying all sorts of equipment, notably power banks, satellite ground terminals, mobile devices, from much more responsive supply chains.
That is, we have strong revealed preferences of the kind of equipment soldiers buy when their lives depend on it, and it looks very different from the bloat purveyed by primes to the Pentagon.
Disclosure: I work with Ukraine Defense Fund to send dual-use tech to the AFU.(Ukrainedefensefund.org)
That’s how completely mismanaged the defense industry is in the US.
Businesses barely do any contingency planning because there is no money to be made in it and it takes away from making money. so when a contingency finally hits, they're all caught with their pants around their ankles
The thing is, in IT it's a common saying "a backup ain't a backup unless you regularly validate it". The US MIC clocks in at many hundred billion dollars a year in budget - seriously it can't be that hard for the government to select every five years a couple dozen small metalwork, electronic and other companies needed to make arms parts, give them all the blueprints and instructions and look if they can make parts that meet the specs?
Had they done that instead of allowing the weapon manufacturers to gobble up small competitors left and right, they wouldn't be stuck with the current clusterfuck. Because what I just said is precisely what would happen should the US be forced to enter a full blown war with China instead of just steamrolling over some poor guys in deserts armed with Kalashnikovs.
Does the traditional idea of "supply chain" actually apply here? There isn't a "market" for these parts. There's a single buyer and a single supplier behind an exclusive government contract. The single-use equipment has no intrinsic value, can't be put to any other use, and can't be sold after it's shelf life has expired.
In the case of military goods, especially of the more expendable type like all kinds of ammunitions but also complex systems like tank or fighter jets, it is even harder since there is, in piece time at least, no continious demand. That means as soon as the large initial production runs are delivered, production capacity sits there unused. And gets ultimately dismanteled, technology becomes obsolete, people change jobs and retire.
All that is left at some point is maintenance capabilities, which only gets you that far in terms of building new gear, and low level production to replenish stores or conduct retrofits. Increasing that lost capacity is expensive and time consuming.
Generally, a supply chain is everything that has a supplier and a customer and moves physical goods. And the general, underlying principles haven't really changed since the days of the first silk road, or heck, since as early as the bronze age.
which in turn caused a cascade of mergers in defense contractors and the retirement of much this production and mechanical know-how. I think you are incorrectly conflating this transition period with the offshoring knowledge decay.
The alternative is to raise taxes or tariffs to pay for keeping unneeded production lines active, which means hardworking Americans in the rest of the country take home or keep less money. Which might sometimes be the right tradeoff for national security, but you only ever really know in hindsight.
Nobody was predicting a major European land war.
> The alternative is to raise taxes or tariffs to pay for keeping unneeded production lines active, which means hardworking Americans in the rest of the country take home or keep less money. Which might sometimes be the right tradeoff for national security, but you only ever really know in hindsight.
The parent wasn’t talking narrowly about keeping defense supply chains maintained (although that’s probably a good idea) but about maintaining our manufacturing industry in general so we have the equipment and experience to build. This requires a policy shift, but an eminently sensible one for reasons besides military policy: we (the US) should reduce our dependence on a reliably oppressive dictatorship (particularly with respect to critical supply chains like defense) and bring those jobs and ingenuity back home (or at least to friendly shores).
To wit, middle class Americans would bring home more money (although not so much for the American managerial class, which has enriched itself by outsourcing American middle class jobs), but there would be less cheap, disposable plastic junk on our shelves—things would cost more but they would last longer and we would repair our goods rather than disposing of them.
Apart from reasons of global and national security, economy, etc, why should we allow products on American markets that were made with labor and environmental conditions that we would never tolerate here? Why should we be complicit?
If taxes are raised then yes hardworking Americans in the rest of the country take home or keep less money.
If tariffs are raised then it's not hardworking Americans that take home or keep less money. It's people who import things that can and should be built locally instead.
Better to keep the money in the USA instead of sending it overseas; better to pay Americans to build the things instead of paying people who are already rich to get richer.
Well, it's the customers that suffer due to higher tariff-induced prices. And if prices are kept the same and the company takes the hit, workers get hit by the lack of new investment the company now can't afford to make.
Indeed? Except the customers are also getting paid better because they now have jobs instead of shipping those jobs overseas.
There was a post that hit the front page recently about how the us airforce paid $50k for an airplane trashcan. It costs that much not because the raw materials + direct labor to create it cost that much, but instead because you have to pay for the 30+ people involved to restart that product line again for a super small batch.
This is the thing, you don't actually have to pay to get "a" suitable trashcan. You do have to pay to get that exact one and be able to prove it. Certifications, approvals and so on carry significant costs. And significant benefits, like making aviation extremely safe, and standardisation allowing interchangeability and cooperation.
When the system ossifies over time, plenty of people are more than happy to simply follow the rules in their silos rather than think about whether there's a better way. And, indeed, this sometimes is the best way rather than doing something clever, expedient and inventive that gets your name included in a NTSB report in 15 years' time.
This isn't to say that Ukraine can't defend itself from Russia, or that the invasion was good, but a simple recognition that there were things that led to this situation that were unforced.
The point of NATO has been said to "Keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Soviets out" [of Europe]. Post-1991, there is no need for it and it has mainly been used to provoke and bomb other countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, and now Ukraine/Russia. Arms manufacturers are kissing their freshly printed dollar bills and thanking our economic system for their great fortune.
Russia requested that nato would leave all the eastern european countries that had joined, Poland, Baltics, Czechia, etc. Then russia could also start invading us after it had taken Ukraine.
Russia was mot interested in diplomacy, they just wanted Ukraine one way or other.
1. There was no 2014 coup in Ukraine, there was a change in president (ratified by parliament) because the first guy (Putin's stooge) had the police kill protestors. This predictably provoked riots, but a riot isn't a coup and indeed the government wasn't overthrown.
2. The invasion was never about NATO; this was just one in a litany of obvious propagandist justifications and it has no more credibility than any of the others ("de-Nazifying Ukraine" and "defending ethnic Russians against genocide"). To wit, if Russia was genuinely motivated by NATO encroachment why would he, after years of NATO weapons, personnel, and doctrine being turned away from Russia and toward the middle east, would it do the very fucking thing designed to flood Russia's doorstep with NATO weapons, personnel, and member states?
3. The idea that there has been no need for NATO since 1991 (because Russia hasn't been particularly aggressive) is a non-sequitur--Russia hasn't been particularly aggressive since 1991 because of NATO.
4. NATO has not been used to provoke conflicts with anyone.
5. NATO didn't provoke an attack in Afghanistan; Afghanistan aided and abetted an attack on a NATO member state. Recall NATO is a defensive alliance.
6. NATO wasn't involved in Iraq; various member states were involved.
7. NATO bombing in Libya was implementing a UN Security Council resolution (recall that China and Russia have UNSC veto rights which they declined to exercise).
8. NATO did intervene to halt an ethnic cleansing campaign in Yugoslavia. They found a loophole in International Law that allowed them to intervene legally.
9. NATO had no role in the Ukraine/Russia conflict except to provide Ukraine with the weapons, training, intelligence, etc necessary to defend itself. Russia is the unambiguous aggressor.
10. "The point of NATO has been said to..." this is not evidence, it's baseless rhetoric. I promise
I don’t think that entirely accurate. Mearshiemer is one prominent example. Nuland being another.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-...
My take is that Mearsheimer triggers cognitive dissonance.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-95-is-ukraine-the...
He has been entirely wrong about Ukraine for years but still people pretend that no, actually he was right for some vague reason that has little basis in reality.
And lately he's resorting using "Moon of Alabama" (newspaper run by a religious cult) as if it was a legitimate citation, because his ego won't allow him to back down from his wild statements. Why does anyone take this guy as an authority?
I think you confused them with someone else, Moon of Alabama is just an anonymous pro-Russian blogger:
>The editor and the person who runs the blog are anonymous, and the about page states that “Bernhard started and still runs the site, and you can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard
>In this update, we find that Moon of Alabama has become sympathetic toward Russia and the war in Ukraine, often citing misinformation ... Generally, Moon of Alabama is a pro-Russian conspiracy website.
In a true emergency, we could find replacement parts by spending money on design, and we could machine shop the actual production.
That isnt what is happening here. This is a case of being frugal, not changing the design, and reassembling the assembly line as if nothing happened over the last few decades.
No one is spending money on design here and it shows. No one wants to spend money on machine shopping these, it shows.
Makes sense too, 30 months max isnt so bad when you have a stockpile, you are going to be making some during pre-production, and its not an emergency.
I've seen some amazing things happen when emergencies happen. Prototype/Machine Shops will boggle your mind, but they make you pay.
Disclaimer: I didn't work with the military, so I imagine there is some 'top secret' access that makes all of this worse.
But I'm not sure that's what's going on here. Think of the Saturn V. When Congress greenlit the SLS, the obvious question came up: why not just build the Saturn V again? And the answer is... we can't. Obviously there are specs and manufacturing processes and documentation for taht but I'm not sure we even have it all. Some of it was rushed too and bespoke. These were really hand-built every time. Also, materials science has changed in the past 50+ years so it may be an issue producing materials that are to spec.
These are remarkably complex systems. And you have to fit in with current logistics processes. Users, installers and maintenance crews need to be trained. If what you build now behaves differently, it's a potential problem. Think of the MCAS issues with the 737MAX. That was a system added to counter more reliable and more powerful engines that were placed more forward on the airframe. You see how these things can cascade.
[1]: https://blog.ucsusa.org/jknox/defense-spending-reaches-recor...
The introduction date of US weapons has little bearing on their sophistication due to the Ship of Theseus upgrades, and most were a decade or two ahead of their counterparts when released anyway. Most can be upgraded or downgraded to a specific version/standard on demand. Downgrades are commonly done for export of US military inventory.
I believe that is the point, notiwthstanding that all jobs programs are not the same. Time for some baseball (my favorite analogy).
If you want to preserve your ability to "play ball" "against the day": it's not enough to keep a stock of balls, gloves and bats. You have to be able to make gloves, balls and bats. You need suitable "dual use" fields, or a plan (and force) for rapidly converting fields for baseball use. But that's just the infrastructure.
You need to preserve your ability to play ball. You can't just hire some people and put them on retainer. (And creating NFTs of baseball players doesn't work either.) The players need to practice as a team in realistic conditions; some of them could get hurt during practice (and equipment could get destroyed). You can't just hire H1Bs for this (although a nod to the French Foreign Legion, at least historically), you need people who are actually good at it and passionate for the game: you're going to have to have continuing tryouts and a farm system for identifying potential top players, and you'll need to cycle talent through over time because people don't stay at the top of their game forever. Finally, that passion is required of players if you expect them to stay at the top of their game over time in the face of a world which doesn't care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
"The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified."
When it came time to refurbish the warheads, everyone in the know had long since retired and documentation was minimal, so it took over a decade and $100m+ to produce a usable batch.
The problem is that because testing of nuclear weapons is now banned (for good reason!), if they produced something different but better, there would have been no way to test it and confirm it. So they had to produce the same thing, yielding this result.
Of course, that's just something I read somewhere and don't even remember where, so it's possible that's not accurate...
I wonder what the compensation packages look like for these roles. What does coming out of retirement for an assumed well paying job for up to a couple of years??? do to someone's retirement financial plans? What if you're on a fixed income from the gov't, and now you have a salary again? Is paying them under the table viable?
The financial benefits are usually quite extensive for the engineers involved, because there is nowhere else to obtain supply of the needed skills.
Assuming they are in the US, and the fixed income they are on is Social Security (SS), what happens if you have income other than SS is that it can change how much of your SS income is taxable, and if you are under your full retirement age it may reduce your benefit (which will return to normal when the job is over).
For taxing the key is a thing called your "combined income" (CI), which equals your adjusted gross income (AGI) + tax free interest income + 1/2 of your SS income. (NOTE: SS income is not part of AGI).
For individuals if CI <= $25000 then SS income is tax free. If CI > $25000 some of your SS income may be taxable. For couples filing jointly SS income becomes partly taxable when CI > $34000.
For people who retired early, if the job pays well enough once you go back to retirement you could find that your SS benefit is higher because the SS taxes on the job earnings go into the benefit calculation so you might come out ahead even if your monthly benefit was temporarily reduced during the job.
I think those are the main considerations if you are on SS and considering taking a high paying job.
It's totally crazy that the pentagon put out a contract for more of these almost obsolete weapons. I'd love to blame RTX, but if someone at the pentagon is willing to put the money out, it's hard to blame them for taking it.
>Institutional memory and reverse smuggling
https://web.archive.org/web/20111228105122/http://wrttn.in/0...
HN discussion from 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3390719
Wikipedia states that the unit cost is $2MM in 2022 dollars [1]. Not clear where the number comes from, but if you check the DoD budget ([2], page 86), you'll see that the 2024 procurement for the US Marine Corps will be of 34 missiles for $105 MM, which comes to a bit more than $3MM apiece.
The more concerning thing is the number though: the entire US military will procure only 34 missile for the 2024 year. For a sense of scale, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, 802 Tomahawk missiles were fired. If we ever get into a hot war with China or Russia, we'll need to fire thousands per month.
How can the military industrial complex scale from 34 per year to thousands per month? I hope that the reason these missiles are so expensive is that they keep the assembly lines running, so that if the need arises the production can quickly ramp up.
But it's a very difficult optimization problem: on one hand you don't want to waste money on missiles you will not need, on the other hand you want to be able to get them in huge quantities when you'll need them. How do you maintain the production capability as a nation at peace?
I can appreciate that the answer is not easy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)
[2] https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg...
For example, they throw them on Humvees for a cheap, portable air defense system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TWQ-1_Avenger
Pioruns probably aren't interchangable in these.
The real answer is that the Stinger needs a long overdue modernisation.
A good example is when the US started making Merlin Engines during WWII, it amounted to a near redesign.
Modern Stingers use the same guidance package as the AIM-9X Sidewinder and have a dual mode IR/UV imager that is largely impervious to flares. There isn't anything more sophisticated on the market.
We've also given Ukraine just a tiny fraction of the Patriot and NASAMS systems that we ourselves would use.
How are they supposed to fight against invisible air-superiority fighters (F22) and nearly-invisible multi-role Fighters? (F35) ?
----------
The worry with China is their missile forces, not their air force. The Chinese missiles have a chance at wrecking the USA's Aircraft Carriers.
As we can see, they have to survive decades in storage, need an absurdly high pass rate, need to survive incredible abuse in battlefield situations AND survive who-knows-how-many G’s of acceleration (/ vibration) catching up to a target.
I suspect that there is some combination of military contractors forgetting how to move fast, and the military being so wrapped up in process instead of results at play here.
There's 1.02kg of HTA high explosive to launch shrapnel with. The M67 fragmentation grenade carries 0.182 kg of high explosive, kill radius of 5 meters, injury radius of 15 meters.
Would you want, "Move fast and break things," development attitude with an electronically detonated bomb less then an inch from your head?
The P-51 Mustang went from conception to flying prototype in 179 days by a company that had never built a fighter before. Fighters aren’t famous for being lower stakes than bazookas.
I know that complexity doesn’t scale linearly, but we can use the Dragon vs Starliner development to make the point that legacy military contractors have forgotten how to move with purpose. The Starliner capsule has been in development for longer than the entire Apollo program, is years overdue, and still has no scheduled crew test flight. The dragon, meanwhile, made by a company that famously moves fast, has successfully, and safely, been flying crewed missions for years. That seems pretty high stakes to me…
On the cost and time scale of military hardware, it's not out of the question for them to make new copies of the old asics.
Most of those ics can be replaced with a single FPGA today.
Also, the DoD actually owns and operates their own semiconductor foundry in Sacramento that is specifically and deliberately setup to manufacture old and obsolete ics needed by the military.
So yes, there are challenges to sourcing them, you can't get them from digikey, but there is a whole infrastructure built up to keep supplying and or replace these things with fpgas or whatever
Edited - typo
It's usually the encapsulation, enclosure and testing that's different. Those are really not big deals, it's not trivial, and they can't be interchanged with consumer product, but it's not as if you are making a fundamental different thing.
There are many mil spec fpgas available
What of these points can not survive an iPhone motherboard without battery and display?
Most people underestimate how violent that environment can be.
I can already see the HN comments: Pentagon and defence conteactors to stupid to conduct simple quality control. The software obviously sucked, but what do you expect from government or old industry... Let's just say that Raytheon has a pretty strong incentive to be able to scale up Stonger production, and despite claims of the contrary, they are pretty good at doing so.
I'm guessing that Stinger missiles, just like any other machine, have a failure rate above 0% already.
If we can produce them more quickly, efficiently, etc., but that failure rate increased that might be worth it if we get to produce more missiles.
Or maybe the new missiles are cheap enough that targets we previously couldn't cost effectively engage can be added to the menu.
Even in war, "good enough" is still important.
We can just as easily lose that F35 because we didn't have any missiles to launch, so it didn't even take off.
On the other hand, the F-35 doesn't use them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabricati...
Makes sense on the lead height thing, the more you know.
There are packages which come with the solder, like BGA, which can (usually?) safely be reballed to use leaded.
95,000 people worked on thr F-22 program. That's a crowd.
It's the most American thing in the world to bid as high as possible at times like these.
Grumman at one time was making money hand over fist sourcing COTS microprocessors, acid washing off the identifying marks, flipping them over, then remounting them to final assemblies, and charging the Government a 2500% markup per unit until the deception was found out.
Frankly, I think the Government should 100% own the specs, and let anyone who wants to take a shot at building them cheaper do so.
So, there is a kernel of truth in saying it will expensive to recreate production tech to build current spec stingers. Also true that this kernel of truth is great opportunity to get more funding.
Apparently this is something the US military is doing with the F-22 replacement, NGAD. They will require ownership or a perpetual license or similar to the NGAD spec and blueprint, rather than allowing a defense contractor sole ownership of the design. Gives them a little leverage and ability to source multiple manufacturers, diversifying its supply line.
That is a far cry from the DoD publishing the specs.
This has been standard in all US government contracts for decades. As long as I can remember. You must give the US government an unlimited perpetual license.
This is also what happened in WW2 - the bulk of the U.S. war machine wasn't built by the shipyards and artillery vendors that had supplied WW1, but by new consumer giants like GM, Chrysler, Raytheon, Boeing, Hewlett Packard, Fairchild that pivoted from consumer markets to the war, or defense-specific startups like Grumman & Kaiser that were founded in the 10 years leading up to the war to capitalize on new technologies. WW1 technology was generally obsolete by WW2; the war was fought in a fundamentally different way, with different suppliers, because tech had advanced.
Do you want your weapons to come from China and Taiwan?
This has been a known problem for 10 years, but supply chains are hard, and oftentimes the alternative to buying from foreign companies is having a worse-performing product.
Call me a pedant but it feels dirty to give an acronym in parentheses without actually saying the thing the acronym describes. It should be "Stinger man-portable air-defense system (MANPAD)"
You'd expect the rocket and explosive parts to be a more of problem. Many companies make electronics, but few make rockets.
DoD has a new consortium to make a new Javelin, but it's just Lockheed and Raytheon. They're not going outside the DoD contractor community.
Every modern war is a production war, you either outproduce your opponent, or you get overwhelmed. If Ukraine can't achieve self reliance and remains fully dependent on western trickle down, it cannot succeed long term.
Most of East European mods of Soviet weapons are "easy" upgrades, where they change electronics and optics packages.
Doesn't seem like the upgrade was that easy.
this sounds like an important part
On a side note, this explains why US army acquired (bought?) the Piorun MANPAD schematics.
This is just squeezing the American tax payer for all they have.
Yet again.
Mass
Missile – 22 lb (10.1 kg)
System – 35 lb (15.7 kg)
Effective firing range
0.16–8.05 km (.1–5 mi)
Warhead weight 6.6 lb (3 kg)
Maximum speed 745 m/s
Mass
16.5 kg (36 lb) total
10.5 kg (23 lb) missile
Operational range
400 m (1,300 ft)–6.5 km (4.0 mi)
Warhead weight 1.82 kg (4.0 lb)
Maximum speed 660 m/sModern Stingers share a guidance package with the AIM-9X Sidewinder and, unlike the Piorun, have dual mode imagers that work in both IR and UV which makes them impervious to flares.
Edit:
The mods here apparently think responding to the Russian influence campaigns on their site is worthy of a shadow ban.
We don't have to give them to Ukraine, but doing so generally furthers our interests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_Ukraine
> On 20 March 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a ban on 11 political parties for ties with Russia: Opposition Platform — For Life, Party of Shariy, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Leftists, Derzhava, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.
Quite a few other parties remain in Parliament:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_Ukraine#P...
Given history - one such party helped Russia take Crimea in 2014, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Unity - that seems reasonably prudent in the pursuit of still being able to be a proper democracy in the future.
Democracy isn’t a suicide pact; you don’t have to let Hitlers take power in a crisis. Ukrainian law provides for martial law, and their Supreme Court upheld the bans. That’s democracy functioning too.
Correct, Russia invaded Ukraine and committed war crimes. Thus why Russia can be penalized for those war crimes as a country, even though the crimes were committed by individual soldiers.
> if there is a war, there will be war crimes
And if you have a city, people will commit crimes too. Should we not punish those either?
I don't know I think the scales of rape and torture of civilians by Russia in Ukraine is pretty egregious.
A quick google gave me this as a top result: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-put...
We should have given them this support when Russia took crimea, but didn't. The least we can do now is follow through on our agreement.
(Plus all of the other reasons in this thread -- there are fantastic reasons for the western nations to support Ukraine's defense separate from those I'm referring to here)
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/deterrence...
That is absolutely what was agreed to, you can read the Budapest memorandum right here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Specifically the US, UK and Russia agreed to.
> 1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.[7]
> 2. Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory.
> 3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
> 4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
> 5. Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory.
> 6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.[8][9]
In this. case the "signatory" is Ukraine.
Like peace in society, international peace exists because aggressive elements make an economic calculation, and stay calm. Once that math changes you get riots and wars.
Like when the US gave stingers to the Afghani, we don't support Ukraine for moral reasons (perhaps partly) but mainly because it's in our interest.
It weren't for that fact, the ability for countries like Germany to trade oil with Russia still would have totally overridden any possibility of sanctions.
And the West very frequently does not get involved in areas where terrible things are happening so long as those areas aren't really in their interests.
Which doesn't justify Russia in any form shape or way. Personally, because it's individuals we aren't involved in international politics and we are still perfectly valid in criticizing Russia for being hilariously evil.
And because in the world of might makes right, Russia is also losing.
So it doesn't really matter. Any Russian who tries to make this argument might be correct in calling out hypocrisy, but their weak and stagnant nation lacks the might to make the right.
America has already shown that.
The currency of Afghanistan is called Afghani.
Afghans have said that they are annoyed that even after 20 years of U.S. presence in Afghanistan, people still aren't getting this right.
Is the net balance in favour of supplying weapons? This is the type of analysis I've not seen done yet across thousands of articles, essays, blog posts, etc...
There are several losing states (complete annexation, split like Korea). However, there are only two main ways Ukraine can lose. The world can stop sending free weapons or even with free weapons Ukraine is defeated.
It's hard for me to think of any way that "the west stops sending weapons" is not more likely to result in Russian or Chinese aggression. Is China more emboldened by "US arms without US military personnel lost a war" or "the US can be counted on to lose interest in any conflict over 2 years"?
So it doesn't matter what the downsides are[0]. It seems like no matter what, the US is better off helping Ukraine.
[0] Unless Putin pushes the big red button. But that topic has been written about extensively.
Nuclear weapons are practically an all-or-nothing proposition, but nowadays there a lot of other ways to deliver some intermediate amount of 'revenge'.
And it's a lot easier to destroy then create, as the war has shown, I estimate the asymmetry is easily 100 to 1. That is to say $1 of novichok, or whatever nasty means, can easily cause $100 worth of damage, and the combined economic size difference isn't even 20 to 1.
Though I'm just spitballing the numbers here.
Even if Ukraine loses with the weapons, it loses less hard than without them, and can push for a split, for example, instead of a full annexation.
You don't have to, but I would regard it as prudent: so that the USA - and many other countries - don't become like, or part of, Russia. Think of Ukraine as being somewhat similar to Vietnam. If Ukraine falls, then Taiwan is fucked, North Korea will fuck Japan and just plain say goidbye to Europe (socialist bastards that we are).
You mean that the invasion by America into Vietnam is similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
-John Stuart Mill
Prior ~80% were against doing anything to resist Hitler that might result in violent conflict.
Because clever replies like "got news to catch up":
Hint: neither the US or NATO members are directly involved in the war between UA and RU, or any other war (yes, the US is always at war with other nations.)
US giving away billions in equipment for a foreign actor and thus creating the need to replenish stock is all on them.
The US spent trillions for decades preparing for this sort of fight, all the way up to Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars stuff… and it turned out that something like 20% of one year’s US military budget (and some very brave, determined allies) does the trick.