As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production
roblh.substack.com
roblh.substack.com
BAE and Rheinmetall also make 155mm rounds, and many of those are going to Ukraine. Israel is unhappy that the US stores of ammo in Israel are being sent to Ukraine, and is ordering domestic manufacture from Elbit.
The article doesn't make a clear distinction between the foundry and machining steps in the process. The first part involves casting and forging molten metal, and the second is ordinary machining. They don't have to be carried out in the same plant. Either or both can be outsourced separately.
Filling, where explosives go into shells, is done in dedicated plants with lots of separation between buildings, buried storage bunkers, and many other safety precautions. That's the dangerous part but not the bottleneck.
Here's a modern 155mm shell forging plant in Germany.[3]
[1] https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/large-...
Yes, they have their own ground-leveling to do after all..
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/13/...
> [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNtmrYeBwWQ
That appears to be a Serbian company, though?
Even in the US?
It just makes sense.
ATF is empowered to interpret these laws. The law is quite clear that a howitzer is regulated.
A modest proposal: the US Army should offer obsolete and surplus artillery in exchange for handguns. Given the price of ammunition, correlation between poverty and gun violence, the logistics involved in large-scale artillery theft, and the comparative complexity of non-assisted suicide by howitzer, this policy seems like a sure-fire way to drastically reduce the number of lethal gun crimes committed in the US.
The $4,000/round figure sparked my curiosity, and after checking it looks like the actual unit price is below $2,000.
There are some beefy pricetags being floated around, buy they are calculated indirectly by dividing the total cost of a ammo supply contract by the number of artillery rounds ordered. From the article, I wouldn't be surprised if those contracts also covered investments required to ramp up production, which is also covered by this article.
At $1,800,000/round, firing hollow rounds loosely packed with $100 bills and a note promising another volley as soon as the target agrees to stand down would probably be a more cost-effective option.
None of that is commonly consumed by civilians. There are routes to get there, but it seemed difficult to me (I looked once upon a time).
The largest caliber even somewhat commonly used by civilians is .50 BMG (12.7x99mm NATO). I have seen 20mm rifles and ammo for sale (once), but it is a HUGE pain in the ass to get them and probably rightfully so.
Anything over .50 is automatically considered a destructive device by the ATF unless a specific sporting exemption is given to it (that's generally only for big game rifles). Getting one of those requires a fistful of certifications last I checked; I think you effectively have to be an arms dealer to get one (or at least pretending enough to be certified as one).
None of this is legal advice, talk to the ATF and/or a lawyer before trying to buy anything too exotic.
and when it comes to mortars, arty, etc, they don't fire that many rounds in training and exercises. even during the Iraqi-led pushbacks against ISIS, where US Marine artillery fired a ton of rounds in support, there was little over-all impact on supply. before that, counter insurgency work generally doesn't use much artillery -- though lord knows they tried to until around mid-to-late 2004.
by comparison, estimates are as high as 20k-50k shells per day in Ukraine.
The contract length part I covered, and I'm convinced that's the main issue.
We'll probably burn through the RAM/SM inventory in weeks . . but not before leaving a whole bunch of ships with empty magazines, because they can't UNREP top off their VLSs. We're just now getting a taste of this problem in the Gulf of Aden, and that's in an AoR surrounded by safe/friendly ports, versus a bunch of Iranian second stringers.
This is the core reason for the "Replicator" initiative in DoD, but, Pentagon being the Pentagon, their "replicator" systems are on course for being too expensive by orders of magnitude. They need to get focused on cheap commodity DEWS, and do it yesterday; the fact that a teenage youtuber[2] hacked up a kilowatt-class DEWS capable of burning 2-3mm steel at 200m says to me - emphatically - that there is ZERO reason to not have these things ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. Having air defense missiles and light strike also being built on commodity would also be dandy, but harder, and also not as critical as getting mass defensive DEWS CIWS up.
[0] DoD procurement and business process is . . it's something else. I'm not sure I can communicate it to outsiders. Fighting inertia inside of defense organizations has basically turned into my career focus, although in a tiny little bubble of technical content production, and at the cost of chopping a zero off my salary. I think, at the end of the day, I'm just tired of twenty million dollar PDF files - that are also late, and wrong.
[1] I'm including armed UAS in this. They're basically missiles built on dual use chassis - the more fight you fit into commodity UAS, you get exponential returns. China's close link with their dual use industry gives them a depressing advantage here, but that might be a double edge sword in a EW-heavy AoR.
Wait, for real?
That seems crazy to me. Lot of those ships minus the vls are pretty useless.
I guess they rely on bases all over
Similarly, ships carry more defensive missiles than they can expect to be able to fire. No defensive system anyone uses has a 100% effectiveness; Burkes have sufficient stock of ESSM and Standard that you can expect there to be leakage and the ship to be taken out before they run out.
But all this assumes a fairly mirrored matchup, with both sides using weapons of similar quality. If one side uses a lot of cheap, attritable munitions, it might not work out the same.
> My solace is that in a real conflict, all of that red tape would be put to the side and people can get about building things.
That's just not going to happen. A real conflict would involve nukes, and the war would be quickly over.
I doubt that something close to Vietnam can happen again either. (And even for a 2nd Vietnam, I doubt that any significant artillery would be used when, as you point out, missiles are an option.)
Invasion, now . . well, there's the magic power that comes with having 'em. No one invades you, ever.
Also,outside factors could change the math here, like a megavolcano under the west antarctic ice sheet or something that raises ocean levels by meters. That redefines "back against the wall". If your country loses all access to fresh water, well, you might as well be under occupation or destroyed, so you might use your nukes aggressively. Just don't accidentally drop them in the water you're trying to get.
I also kind of doubt that China is going to try, at least in the next decade or so, because those so far irreplaceable chip factories are almost certainly booby trapped and are a critical piece of the global economy, so China would be sabotaging itself first. (And Xi has probably a long way to go for Putin-like mistakes.)
The reality is the US would very much like to avoid having to negotiate that situation: far easier to arm Taiwan to the teeth with AA and anti-shipping missiles, and let them take care of it.
EDIT: It's also worth noting nukes aren't the only deterrent forces. It's one thing to "know" that the US Navy isn't going to get involved...it's quite another to conduct an invasion of an ally while well inside the missile engagement range of the US Navy on the assumption that's actually true.
If the Republicans abandon Ukraine, US credibility will take a huge hit, probably worse than when the US abandoned South Vietnam.
Russia presents a threat to Europe that it doesn't present to the USA. Europe needs to tool-up. I say this as a former pacifist.
And so far, NATO has to actively participate in the fighting in Ukraine. Since this would be a major escalation, one that is extremely hard to sell to NATO country citizens, that will obviously not happen anytime soon.
And even if you'd want to use that metric. How exactly loosing zero US personnel at the cost of getting a real-life assessment of NATO combined mobile warfare against the Soviet artillery superiority doctrine is a lose situation for US?
But I'd say that this makes it even the more valuable lesson. Battlefield characteristics is still very close and Russians (now) are acting like they would act against the NATO-trained forces.
And, of course, it's liberal on my part to put Ukrainian Army in the basket of NATO forces as that is only true for maybe a year (after the first rotations ended).
That being said. I think that there's unprecedented amount of military intel US is getting out of this conflict for pennies on the dollar.
I don't think they are even close to that - their meat assaults Avdiivka type is not something that would ever happen in conflict with NATO involvement, because the frontline would never stabilize in a way that would enable russia to employ those tactics.
NATO-trained is very wide statement, some African armies and Afghanistan ones were NATO trained and it went nowhere.
>That being said. I think that there's unprecedented amount of military intel US is getting out of this conflict for pennies on the dollar.
Sure. There's no EW piece that russia had in 2022 and wasn't captured intact in the first few months :)
Chinese preparations for an invasion would take more than that.
What to do with them anyways? Taiwan would need plentiful supply of them and a reliable delivery mechanism. Japan surrendered because the US had total air superiority and bluffed about their supply of nukes. North Korea has long-range missiles and literally tens of thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul.
A nuke is easy to hide, we are not talking about global second strike capability here, just delivering a couple of them to close coastal cities, even by smuggling them in some civilian transport. Can China be 100% sure that not one slipped through? Taiwan could do a proof detonation on non-city Chinese soil if things get tense.
Even after a Chinese decimation attack, if the invasion force is not immediatly ready Taiwan will still have enough time to build the nukes.
Realistically if PRC seriously think they haven't eliminated TW nuke production, they'd throw their entire airlift capabilites and drop 50-100k troops a day into the grind and if that doesn't work, nuke TW first and send in NBC teams to an uncontested husk of an island to clean up. If US+co materially impacts that effort and PRC ends up eating a nuke, then we're in global MAD territory.
Also consider nukes has hasn't deterred PRC from security interests less important than TW, they fought US (really all of UN in Korea) /USSR/India, threatened UK over HK, supplied Vietcon against French. If risking nuclear war is what it takes, then they'll (if history is teacher) risk nuclear war.
> drop 50-100k troops
That's fantasy land, most of those planes would be shot down, and if not the soldiers would land in a kill zone with no reinforcements.
Shoot down with what, preempt air campaign would have destroyed most of TW anti air. Fantasy is thinking TW has any chance to deny the air game. Planner for porcupine model US advocates doesn't assume TW has any chance to deny PRC air superiority, only hope they sink enough amphib to deny mass invasion, and barring that, make the ground/urban fighting long enough until US comes to assist.
If scenario is actually about denying TW nuke run, then US won't be assisting. Only other actor with intelligence on ROCA comparble to PRC is probably US. Given stakes, things will get stupid real fast. PLA airlift will be dropping in zones secured by persistent CAS and a buffer soaked in chemical warfare on a one way mission to destroy TW nuclear infra in the mountains if they have to. Maybe TW resists fine alone, and nukes a few mainland targets (assuming no duds, and no intercepts). Then what, PRC nukes living resistance off surface of island and then waltz in bunny suits to breech production sites.
TW trying to nuclearize is automatic invasion redline for a reason. It's not like PRC has an exact contingency plan, only they'll throw everything and the kitchen sink to make sure it doesn't happen.
E: Dang is going to badger me for engaging this thread too long. We'll just have to agree to disagree on whether PRC will be deterred by TW nukes.
Capturing the mainland won't help you at all in that case, and there's no way you would get them all. It would be a MAD situation, and that's all TW needs.
- state-of-the-art submarines. Anything else can't hope to evade the Chinese, and they probably have to be nuclear as well to ensure range and stealth
- submarine-launchable missiles (ballistic or cruise), with a lot of range since China can probably deny the sea immediately off the mainland.
- nukes compact and reliable enough for the missiles
Gaodeng is a ROC island just five miles off the mainland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaodeng_Island An atmospheric nuclear test there would be the wildest provocation imaginable that would not actually be on PRC soil.
This doesn’t make sense. The point of nukes is to say you have them so no one touches you. You become a prickly porcupine.
The only country that doesn’t follow this rule is Israel, but they just present it differently (“MAYBE I’m a prickly porcupine. Touch me and find out.”)
is not a credible deterrence. Snuggling a nuke will work maybe once, and that is not nearly enough to hit all assets Taiwan should be worried about. If the nukes work, it will strengthen China's resolve to dismantle any threat it perceives Taiwan to be. Even at the price of shooting every ship leaving the island for the mainland.
Even very plausible low thousands of artillery pieces can put out enough dakka to slag anything looking even remotely like an air defense radar or missile launchers.
And you're not putting your guns literally at the frontline - you need them more back so they don't get counterbatteried (or just bombed, which would be more likely in case of US involvement) instantly.
This is at best disputed, and alternative explanations have a great deal more supporting evidence.
Just maintaining their power.
And that gives them time to pursue things politicians from liberal democracies consider things of history.
The big problem of a Chinese invasion so is: the Taiwan straight. They have to get the invasion force across, that meens a lot of big, slow, fat transport vessels. Those are easily sunk, meaning not enough boots on the ground. Which leaves pounding Taiwan with missiles.
No one is crazy enough to go to war over it, and that might put Taiwan into panic mode.
Another is to isolate it politically and create a soft blockade around it.
A country in, maybe, panic mode is not conquered. And if said island is strategically important enough, yes, people will go to war over it. And if it isn't, there is no real point beyond symbolism to take it in the first place.
An invasion of Taiwan would probably effectively destroy globalisation, China exports would be sanctioned, China imports of energy and raw materials would be heavily disrupted (China's supply of fossil fuels is very vulnerable). It would be the most disruptive event to the world order since WW2.
The chip fabs are a line item among thousands on that bill.
The US attitude to world conflict now is vastly different to the views of 1941
Artillery would be huge, missiles are great but they're expensive and you run out quickly. Afghanistan/Iraq were already being compared to Vietnam, and while you don't see it on the news so much, most of the kills in those conflicts were with artillery.
Artillery is still, and for many reasons will be, a king. Shells are order of magnitude cheaper than rockets. They are smaller. Easier to manufacture. Missiles are nice if you want to destroy specific targets. Things that move or are so far away that artillery can't reach them.
Things change, organizations and people adapt. Not foreseeing these changes is not a failure.
Believing that throwing predictions at the wall, and only picking the ones that stick in hindsight, is a viable strategy is just plane wrong so.
Likely this was the biggest surprise to emerge. Even Georgia and Armenia did not foreshadow the scale and slogmatch reality of Ukraine eh. The need for stockpiles is real.
> Artillery is still, and for many reasons will be, a king. Shells are order of magnitude cheaper than rockets. They are smaller. Easier to manufacture.
This statement is incomplete without also referencing drones. See for example: https://roguesystemsrecon.substack.com/p/drone-war-evolution...
> That's just not going to happen.
Check out Urgent Operational Requirements [0] in Op HERRICK (UK name for ops in Afghanistan). These led to multiple entirely new platforms, systems and capabilities being developed and deployed in weeks and months, e.g. physical and electronic countermeasures for the rapidly evolving IED threat. The downside is increased logistics / supply-chain burden because you have additional ad-hoc support contracts and staff, in and out of theatre.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urgent_Operational_Requirement
If your defenses are just amazing, and you take out one every three seconds, you're still going to run out of time. You're on the right track with "firm kill" DEWS though. Gotta be a little careful with those, because the engagement range for DEWS is always going to be short, due to attenuation, mist/fog/spray, dust, and good old line of sight. Also, it's quite surprising how little it takes to shield electronics from even nuke-class EMP. But the short engagement range means you have even less time.
The weapons are faster and more lethal now, but similar tactics would probably still work to an extent. The Navy has run some computer simulations but they've never done an all-up fleet exercise of a realistic saturation attack that requires emptying the magazines. So, no one really knows for sure how well the defenses would hold up. There would probably be some nasty surprises.
If a conflict with Russia or China breaks out, I think the first thing that happens is aircraft carriers are going to immediately become obsoleted by antiship missiles as quickly as battleships were obsoleted by air attacks in WWII. Probably even more quickly.
I sure hope I'm wrong. And even more than that I hope we never find out.
No weapon is beyond reach in war, or indestructible. And still, they have their use cases.
but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance
It's ~130 ship-launched guided missiles and ~75 fighter jets. They will not be operating at a stand-off distance relative to the reach of cruise and ballistic missiles launched from Chinese homeland. And the planes are not going to be able to take off and land if the carrier is executing evasive maneuvers because of missile attack.
If you were China, how would you tackle that? Is there any reason you wouldn't just send several waves of several hundred missiles their way?
Carrier strike groups are still useful. 130 missiles and 75 jets is plenty to dissaude most countries on earth. Just not the biggest ones, if they have committed to waging a full-scale war against you.
China would definitely not emerge unscathed. The CSG would be augmented with a lot of longer range stuff such as US fighters/bombers/missiles/subs launched from elsewhere. But I mean, I think the CSG gets effectively deleted in the first few hours of war. Hope I'm wrong.
On paper US anti missile intercepts has been performing well in UKR and Red Sea, but consider the actual numbers. In UKR, 6 Kinzhals, alleged moving at shit tier mach ~3 speed end up damaging a patriot. In Red Sea, shit tier Houthi/Iranian cruise (subsonic) / ballistics, launched in even less coordinated salvos, realistically singles since description of multi missile attacks report these events unfold over matter of hours. Majority intercepted, but few still slip through to hit ships protected by flight IIA/III upgraded DDGs. IMO questionable how well a stacked CSG performs against high end AShMs (Teixeira leak allege US clocked PRC DF27 tests at mach 8+).
That's before considering replenishment fleet, of which US has only 11 fast supply class that can keep up with carrier groups, would also be targetted, leaving non nuclear CSG escorts single deployment assets with days of endurance in high tempo operations. And then what does the carrier do? Operate undefended? Said supply ships would almost be hard not to sink since they have to spend hours restocking in port, in theatre.
I think there's a good reason Navy isn't being recapitalized properly, and it's more than redtape. IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships.
Considering this and Taiwan, it's funny that Congress isn't pushing for more SSGNs and accelerating the SSN(X) program.
VS 100+ B21s with less labour and per unit cost that can deliver around the clock, probably difficult to shoot down unless they're parked in hardened hanger or their midair tanking (if needed) gets degraded, but losing one is a couple pilots and 1/10th the cost.
E.g. cutting off oil...not like that has ever led to unexpected outcomes (perl harbor).
Countries generally react to mitigate your actions. What are some of the potential reactions you could see if the PRC perceived that as an existential threat?
And it's not enough, at least for the next ~decade. The ocean supply route is to large and too strung out for a navy lesser than the USN to defend.
That was fine strategy 10 years ago when he wrote Accidental Superpower / pre PLA modernization. This is the part where we circle back to developing PRC conventional hypersonics and potential to overwhelm US missile defense, and PRC increasingly able to strike CONUS at scale from mainland - PRC's version of prompt (conventional) global strike which they've been telegraphing development for years. A threat vector US planners are slowly acknowledging. Which means PRC can proportionally deny US energy by hitting critical infra like oil/LNG refineries, huge stationary targets with simple kill chain. Fortress America + shale autarky doesn't mean anything if you can't protect energy security (and by connection of fossil industrial inputs, food security), which is PRC's reverse UNO for the the entire blockading PRC oil strategy, except when applied to US, straight to extraction chain because can't blockade US from US. So next best proportional (even if escalatory thing) is just to make US as vunerable as PRC. All the resources in US sovereign soil is no good if they can't be extracted and made useful to sustain US hegemony. Saudi equipped US hardware learned that lesson when Houthis hit their refineries. Sure Us isn't incompetent like Saudi, but PRC isn't Houthis either, unless you think they actually replaced rocket fuel with water, and used said fuel for hotpot.
Zeihan of skips over the politics in geoPOLITICS when convenient, i.e. US has most waterways, but PRC actually engineered significantly more and uses more internal waterways. US has deep coasts, but PRC dredged her to make way for half of worlds top 10 ports, the other half doesn't contain US. PRC has bad demographics, except PRC has the ideal demographics for geopolitical competition in the timelines relevant to us - set to produce and coordinate more high skilled talent in next 30 years (the cohorts that actually build national power) than US is projected increase population from all sources total, AND declining population of non productive peoples (old, unskilled, unproductive) aka less import dependencies. Declining cohort also has high home ownership and savings rate because frankly they don't expect big welfare net like west. Next 30 years, PRC swapping 50 million STEM talent (already born) with tier1 city earning potential for 100m farmers, migrant workers etc (old -> uneducated die first) that earn 1/10 that. IMO PRC demographic trend (if scrutinized beyond naive pyramid reading) is more pros than cons, especially considering PRC geographic/resource constraint - they don't need 3x more people than the US where only 1x can marginally compete with US and 2x are excess mouths to feed. Better off long term with 2x US population that PRC soil can sustain, where 1.5x can out compete US.
Eitherway the point is frequently politics in geopolitics matter more.
Fortress America has always been part geographic fortress and part artificial, technologic fortress. The entire reason US built/maintains the largest high tech expeditionary military is basically to stay on the front doors of any potential adversaries so they can't get close to CONUS. Let's not forget Continental Navy couldn't hold against out British blockade during revolutionary war without French Navy entering picture. CONUS was vunerable with 1800s tech, it's the technology (politics) part that made fortress america and it's the technology (military) that ensure two oceans are moats. High end missiles circumvents that, hence US unlikely to take out PRC without PRC taking out US unless US engages PRC directly. That's without considering PRC can drag US to fight near PRC home court by hitting JP/SKR/PH to trigger security obligation. Those are island with much worse self sufficiency that'll collapse in 2 months that US is treaty bound to defend. The TLDR is entire Malacca delima / SLOC blockade strategy operates on logic from 10 years ago when US can unilaterally fuck PRC at no _existential_ cost to herself (CONUS), once that logic breaks, blockade becomes unlikely / suicide pact. Question then is what will US/PRC commit suicide over.
PRC increasingly able to strike CONUS at scale
from mainland - PRC's version of prompt (conventional)
global strike which they've been telegraphing development
for years.
How does this not trigger MAD?
The US has no way of knowing if the incoming missiles are conventional or nukes. Would the US wait for the missiles to land to figure out if they're nukes or not? Would the US not simply launch a retaliatory (presumably nuclear) counter-strike while China's initial missiles are en route?
I honestly don't understand what value striking the CONUS would have for China. Seems like it would just instantly trigger MAD.
For the actual process, I imagine it's going to be very communicated/coordinated affair to pace escalation. PRC: you stopped 40% of our energy imports, we're going to degrade 40% of your domestic energy infra if you don't stop in name of proportionality. First maybe via cyber, then via kinetic strikes, with warning ahead on list of facilities that are potential targets so they can evacuated ahead of time. Start with offshore rigs, then escalate to territorial targets. Launching X missiles at Y time at Z targets. US can either lift blockade, withdraw from PRC civil war, escalate to total war, or trigger MAD and both go back to stone age. Ideally this game theory gets played before hand, and there's no blockade or US intervention in first place - ability to hit CONUS is as much a deterrence function. But TLDR is PRC isn't going to sit back and take hits if they can dish hits as well. Meanwhile US expeditionary/military game theory has been based on fighting adversaries who can't really hit back. Which is why PRC is pouring so much resources into platforms that can.
So I don't think you're wrong, and I think we've already found out.
A submarine with a nuclear torpedo could take out an entire carrier group.
Nuclear submarines are apparently still hard to detect underwater; but once someone figures out how to detect them, they'll be obsolete.
I think the Senior Service may be doomed.
For any technological advance, the counter technology adapts, so it's not very common for something to actually become obsolete.
Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment.
- A peer/neer-peer adversary can presumably throw a very large number of simultaneous drones at a USN vessel. I don't know how feasible it is rustle up 10 or 100 reliable simultaneous human suicide bombers.
- The jet ski drones can surely be physically smaller than a speedboat that needs to hold a human
- The jet skis can trade some of that size back and armor themselves against CIWS etc in ways that would be less practical for a suicide boat
I don't think I'd be so worried about them surviving hits from the CIWS. On the open ocean I'd be worried about the possibility of encountering so many drones that the CIWS runs out of ammunition. In a port, I'd be worried about the practicality of using the CIWS at all, but I think the Navy can adapt.
The main thing is that the Navy were sort of deemphasizing stuff like the Phalanx on their recent ship designs, and this is the second time the past couple of weeks that I've read something suggesting they'll probably need to reverse that trend.
I still also think the front of a "jetski" drone could probably be hardened to withstand a certain amount of 20×102mm fire but, I am guessing and don't know how to determine how feasible that might be.
I think aircraft carriers are already obsolete, not due to antiship missiles but due to small, quiet diesel subs.
Pretty much any NATO navy operating these has stories from NATO exercises where their small, unimpressive sub managed to score hits on a carrier.
This isn't new. Around two decades ago, the US felt the need to ask Sweden to loan them their HSMS Gotland to learn how to do something about them.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraf...
And then like you said, the engagement range is also going to be quite short - meaning all of this becomes just that exponentially more difficult.
I think the idea of DEW is that you're not trying to literally melt the thing out of the sky, you're trying to penetrate it electrically and scramble something. To that end a very sharp pulse (chirped pulse) is the better approach as then you're more likely to cause damage once you exceed the capacity of (for example) the input isolators on the radar antenna to divert excess energy away from the very sensitive amplifier. Or, to put it a simpler way, you're trying to make sparks jump across gaps.
this protects from lasers, but also makes it glaringly obvious to EW and radar systems.
I did speak to a few missile manufacturers facing the same thing, including DOD's lack of urgency, which I interpret as Congress' lack of urgency. In the nightmare situation of a hot war in the Pacific, that attitude would change on a dime, and I still think Operation Warp Speed is the primary example of how we would respond to direct threats. Similar to COVID, I would much rather deter such a situation with bold action now than wait until we're certain we'll need them, which will cost many more lives.
And I've heard dubious things on Replicator too, but thankfully, smart defense private money is going to truly disruptive dual-use tech that is autonomous, resilient, and ultimately attritable. That combination is the best answer for democratic countries that care about soldiers' lives vs. authoritarians sending human waves.
[0] I keep my sanity by staying grounded in lightweight markup and developer tools - there's really nothing you do in the Big XML world that you can't do in vanilla Asciidoc on standard tooling.
[1] Real hard for me to not put that acronym in quotes. The IETM as a thing is a bit of an open joke. Each IETM implementation is basically a completely nonstandard, homebrewed content browser. Think if you went back in time to Ted Nelson's Xanadu, and then just had every single hardware manufacturer go absolutely nuts making their own idea of what that means. Then you make up "IETM Levels" of capability defined by total non-sequiturs.
I’m not a “team America world police” advocate, much more the opposite. Even as stated in the article, most production is more interested in a deterrent. Hate ‘em or hate ‘em, nukes are a deterrent to open war. Reference our posture toward retaliating against Iran-backed groups this week.
Russia didn’t like a nuclear neighbor, it said. So the US brokered a nuclear disarmament of Ukraine with the interests of reducing the tension (sic) with Russia, and on the assurance of support from the US should they need it.
The stage was set on the thin hope of peace.
We had Soviet nukes stationed in Czechia too. Does that make us a former nuclear power? I thought not...
Slava Ukraini
What do you think, how many hours does it take to remove and jury-rig launch signal electronics for a motivated nation state at the cutting edge of weapons technology? If the Soviet troops had agreed to leave the bombs in situ, Ukraine would have had some sort of nuclear capability within the week. (And even if the Russians had sabotaged it, Iran and NorK prove that obtaining or refining the fissile material is far harder than explosives lensing and ballistic missile delivery.)
For how long?
Nukes need maintenance. To maintain them, you will need to rebuild the entire supply chain on Ukrainian territory. Do you even have the necessary know-how? What percentage of GDP are you willing to spend on it?
Until today, Ukraine has lower GDP than Czechia. In the 1990s, it was even worse. With their economy destroyed by decades of Soviet rule, they were happy to survive somehow.
Tangentially, it is well possible that Russian nukes are actually under-maintained, for the very same reason: it is expensive to keep them in working order, and Russian economy is not very strong. Perhaps most of them would not explode. But we'd better not find out.
You could just rip the PAL out and build a new detonation timing system, but then you'd be re-doing a large part of the trial-and-error phase of the manhatten project.
It's not something that could happen in hours or weeks. Realistically more like months or years.
This is demonstrably false. Nukes have allowed those who have them, to bully (wage asymmetric warfare on) those who don't.
Would the USA have been so cock-sure about murdering 5% of Iraqs population, if it didn't have nukes?
The US was very clear in not attacking Iranians, though Iranian support was the vehicle by which US troops were attacked. Iran got a measured response for its allies because Iran 'carries a big stick'
Air or missile strikes against US territory are very difficult to pull off. Only China or Russia would have any chance to overwhelm US missile defenses. Anything small-scale would be answered by conventional strikes and a ground invasion. No nukes are warranted unless entire cities get slagged or nukes or biological or chemical weapons are used.
And this seems like a perfect example of the first part of that.
The thing I didn’t see was how much it would cost to build a facility that produces x/k rounds a month.
I find it hard to imagine these facilities are that expensive (in the context of US defense spending) so it makes me feel there was a something else going on here…
In the Soviet doctrine, artillery had a much larger role. Both Russia and Ukraine inherited that doctrine, and they went on to fight the war they were prepared for.
A conflict like Russia/Ukraine isn’t happening with the US. A US / Russia conflict would have resulted in US air supremacy or a nuclear exchange.
But anyway, the golden bullet solutions is drones. /s
That might still be a bad tradeoff given that these 155mm shells are apparently $8,000 each, whereas a Storm Shadow is apparently $3,200,000 a pop.
The alternative is guided artillery shells. And those are damn expensive.
Of course he's right that if there is a WW3, the United States will lose. As will every other single major power. And how many artillery shells you have won't matter a lick in this. The goal in WW3 will not be to destroy the other nation's military, but to destroy the other nation, such that it can never recover to pose a threat to you again. Every single juicy high-density economic zone in every single country will end up getting nuked to oblivion. New York City, Moscow, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris - these places will, in all probability, simply no longer exist.
Striving to win an unwinnable war is not only painfully myopic, but also just seems like a great way for humanity to kill itself off.
Having an impenetrable defence is nice, but the US hasn't fought a defensive war in ... I don't know how long. Maybe a century for all I care.
You can game that. Simply give your enemy a way out. Don't press them too hard, just take something, not so much that they would feel threatened. Instead of invading them directly, take over their trading partners. Set up rebellions, insurrections. It's still your bullets in their bodies and their country taking damage. But you have plausible deniability, and nobody is going to break out nukes about it.
Soviet union did that very well. Despite taking over bulk of central and eastern Europe, kicking western interest out of China, and thus most of eastern Asia, ending colonial rule in most of Africa, they never "crossed the line".
Iran is doing the same thing now. Russia too. And others will follow. It's a good strategy.
You fail to mention that the US are the best example for this strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_United_Services_Institut...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ammunition-manufactur...
Sorry? When did Russia became dependent on the Western steel or explosives?
If the US wants that kind of control we have the Defense Production Act to force businesses to build up capacity.
It's like how during the pandemic, pretty much nobody invested in increased toilet paper or mask production in the US, because "if I invest and the pandemic goes away, I will have "wasted" my investment"
Basically its just another failure of capitalism as theorized. Turns out, it's very uncommon for someone to decide to build brand new capacity in an existing market without extreme incentives because it's too easy for them to be burned. If we want businesses to ramp up production, we need to either convince them it will be profitable, by signing expensive, long term contracts that can't be torpedoed by a future administration getting bitchy about the debt, or force them through law.
They would need all kinds of license's and regular inspection from the BATFE and shit.
I was interested in doing some hobby and research chemistry sorta like a combination of the precision projects I see from
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8i-4EpLBXMzekETNXwcZjA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC06HVrkOL33D5lLnCPjr6NQ
And more focused on the energetics stuff combines with just technology and research.
Well I did some digging and the ATF is regulated the industry to hell and back. And while I can recognise the importance of safety, I think that it also creates more additional barriers to entry. Especially considering this would a been a weekend hobby if it would have been possible.
TLDR: a lot of people talk about the logistics or the funds to start doing something like artillery production or silicon chip fabrication....and yes I agree but I think the regulation of everything has created so many barriers....you can't experiment in the backyard like you could in the 90's.
Were the 90's safe? No. But we also didn't know the real risks back then when it came to certain chemicals. Also, the growing population makes it more and more hard to have land where you can safely do things....in the north east coast its hard to find and long gun ranges, some states basically banned all the good fireworks, and all this regulation means having just more and more money to figure out how to navigate this issue....which means its not a hobby but a job.
I see plenty of cool things on YouTube from chemistry to engineering and part of me is not sure if the feds are just ignoring what these people do....because it dosnt seem legal, or if they are just lucky that they live somewhere with loosed regulations.
The artillery production mentioned here reminds me of how scales changed from the beginning to the end of the war. At the outbreak, IIRC Russia produced ~35K artillery shells per month and was using ~25K per day. By 1917, there was a battle where a combined total of ONE MILLION artillery shells were fired (between the two sides) in a period of roughly 4 hours.
Every war seems to have a defining technology that's new and makes it unlike previous wars. This is rarely clear to military leadership before the war starts so tends to mean the calculations are off. For example, the US Civil War was the first war fought with mass-produced, long-range, fast-loading and accurate rifles, which led to >600K deaths. By comparison, the US lost 400k servicemen in WW2.
In WWI, that defining technology was really artillery. To a lesser extent it was machine guns too. Air power became a factor late in the war but the concepts of aerial bombardment, strategic bombardment and air superiority wouldn't really come into their own until WW2. The real solution to artillery and fixed positions ultimately became the tank But WWi ended before this really took off. Like air power, it would become a huge factor in WW2.
Why this is important is because the war in Ukraine is in many ways similar to WWI. Air power isn't really a factor but the most defining factors are artillery, trenches, fortifications and terrain, most notably the Dnipro River.
Russia has built 3 lines of impressive fortifications that mirror German positions in WWI. Russia's strategy is essentially to dig in, use the river as a barrier and wait for the West to get bored or lose patience with supplying Ukraine such that Ukraine sues for peace and Russia gains territory east of the river, creating a land bridge to Crimea.
But in a WWI style war, artillery is incredibly important. It can be used to cover an advance into a fortified position (eg a creeping barrage [2]). These were tactics that were developed and learned through WWI.
Oh and if you want to see how devastating this can be look no further than Verdun, the so-called "Red Zone" (Zone Rouge) [3].
[1]: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_(artillery)#Creeping_b...
[3]: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/zone-rouge.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-produce-million...
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008299178/u...
Freedom is paid for in blood. People forget that after a few generations of peace, and then we have to pay again because we grew complacent.
>You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.
It's sometimes called "The Second Thirty Years' War", although I feel that labelling is misleading, as is, potentially, the core thesis. Careful reading of the diplomatic history illustrates that WW2, despite our popular notions, was not entirely inevitable, but, at least so far as Poland was concerned, was one more in a very long list of NSDAP f#ckups. 30 Year War Part II is a workable paradigm when considering the large scale causes of the 20th century conflicts. It's deeply, bitterly ironic that Europe was done in by the same intellectual framework that allowed them to dominate the rest of the world. Turns out, once you start throwing subhuman labels around, it's just a matter of time before the label lands on your neighbors.
People consisted other nations and ethnicities subhuman as long as they existed. Europe was, AFAIK, the first place on Earth that (1) considered subjugated people equal before the law (if they converted), (2) banned slavery and (3) imposed slavery ban on other nations.
The Mongols and the ancient Persians didn't even make anyone convert.
> banned slavery
If you don't count all the colonies...
> imposed slavery ban on other nations
It is a very admirable thing to do, but who else could do it? They had the most powerful militaries in that era.
Colonies are exactly what I'm talking about.
> It is a very admirable thing to do, but who else could do it? They had the most powerful militaries in that era.
Nobody else even wanted to.
Tell me more about how slavery was outlawed in Haiti - especially during the French Revolution with its "liberté, égalité, fraternité". Tell me about Belgian Congo. Tell me about the close relative of slavery, indentured servitude, in the British Empire.
We see movies where artillery is always just raining down from the sky. It seemed so random.
It blows my mind we had complex patterns and essenstially formations and defensive walls and boxes to protect a position and just wow.
That must have been hell on the receiving end.
Ukraine’s increasing ability to hit deep targets suggests to me this strategy of Russia’s will not work. The offensive pace is too slow for the immense economic costs.
Putin (following Dugin) has expressed the goal of building a Russian empire stretching from Vladivostok to Lisbon. I suppose that's just sabre-rattling; but Leningrad is very exposed, at the end of a long land corridor bordered on either side by NATO members. I'm convinced he hopes to dominate all the land between Russia and the Baltic.
As is the Eastern front during WW2, same thing, the sheer numbers are mind boggling.
No rounds seems like a worse condition than having equal-or-poorer performing rounds.
Author suggests applying a new manufacturing technology, 3d printing, to help alleviate a supply shortage, but then says new mfg tech probably wont work (I'm inferring that it will not work with the existing design).
I'm proposing an alternative - make a 3d printer friendly design (OK, it may not be as good as the legacy version) but you're able to build the munition in plants that can be repurposed as soon as the "peak demand" goes away.
Now the classic way to charge the government more money for the same old gun is to say there’s other benefits like nebulous “performance” and “efficiency” improvements. This also has the added benefit when your deliveries “show promise” but display at best marginal improvements, you can sell carry-on contracts, sometimes for a decade or longer!
So to bring this all back around, the author is correct that it won’t work. Enterprising defense contractors may one day attempt to replace factories to roll and stamp and mass-produce bulk firepower with bespoke 3D printable, multifunctional, agile, just-in-time shell production solutions. But if they do it’ll produce a lot more shareholder value than actual product.
Missiles are extremely expensive and you’ll soon run out of them during a long war of attrition (especially in a symmetrical conflict like in Ukraine)
Culture has nothing to with that.
Disclaimer: I consider leveling cities with the goal to displace people to be disgusting, and a borderline war crime. Regardless of the parties or reasons involved.
However, knowing just how hungry modern warfare is for munitions, not having the capacity already in place to vastly ramp up production seems extremely short sighted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...
Reading that it says 150 tons of explosives and this happened 10 years ago. So, not particularly relevant today.
2017 Balakliia, Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balakliia#2017%E2%80%932019_ar...
2017 Kalnyvka, Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Kalynivka_ammunition_depo...
2011, 2015, 2020 in Bulgaria https://www.thedailybeast.com/bulgaria-accuses-six-russians-...
All in preparation for the eventual invasion, in hindsight.
All told, better to have fewer shells in general, but in particular, one must have at least as many shells as the murderous invaders that want to kill you.
And towards that end, the more that Ukraine destroys Russia's military, the less shells everyone else needs to build to defend themselves. Because if Ukraine falls, one only has to look on YouTube to find the translations of Russian TV that show all the other places their population is geared up to invade, rape, conquer, and subjugate.
But even aside from what happens to Ukrainians, if this goes Russia's way it will embolden many other regimes to solve their problems through fascism and colonial invasions too. Pacifism is very nice and weapons of war are absolutely an evil thing, but if you don't have them your pacifism quickly becomes appeasement and/or submission when someone who's not as nice as you decides they're gonna go ahead and institute a few changes in their neighbourhood.
Pacifism is a luxury of the extremely privileged. A very nice luxury, but a luxury nonetheless.
That the US should be giving bunker busters, predator drones, and other modern long range munitions that can end a war in days instead of years to our allies proactively as a deterrent instead of trying to fund a modern war with 20th century weapons like short range artillery.
Industrialized war is unfathomable to western powers and that's not a bad thing.
I think the interesting parts are everything around how it got there. How decades of focusing on expensive wonder tech and unchecked MIC grift has led to the US to this state where it fundamentally can't deliver materiel it needs. The contradictions of 30+ years of end-of-history neoliberal economics vs. the fact that someone needs to run a big potentially unprofitable factory and keep large excess inventory of if the US expects to respond to long-duration conflicts like this. Whether or not the US ends up like the western colonial empires of old sooner rather than later.
So from that standpoint 155mm shell production is an excellent window into larger trends
Weapons manufacture has an unfortunate overlap with the systems skills computer people possess. It’s easy to get sucked in. He says it best in the first paragraph. “I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of one”
Never build a weapon you wouldn’t want to be on the other end of. The last part of creation is relinquishing control. The person operating it might not be as careful pointing it as you would.
Yes, we'd all prefer peace and leaving each other alone, but if some other nation comes to kill your countrymen and replace your democracy with a puppet, suddenly just relying on pacifist ideals doesn't work well anymore.
Most of the time, these commenters don't want to engage with reality as it currently exists. If you ask them what exactly you're supposed to do without a war machine if some other guy invades, they just have the silliest deflections and hand waving. Ultimately, they just want to say "war bad" from atop their high horse, as if other people didn't believe that war was, in fact, bad.
Ukraine is an obvious example. Ukraine wasn't doing anything to Russia other than choosing to gradually move culturally towards the West, which is their right. Before the big invasion in 2022, there were repeated attempts by Ukraine or by Western countries to try and forestall Russia's invasion by opening up negotiations and talking things out, and Putin didn't give a shit.
Diplomacy didn't work there. What would've worked? Having a stronger military, or even better, being allied with other strong militaries. Putin doesn't invade the Baltics for a reason.
Ukraine is fighting a bloody attrition land war in Russia. They are currently losing and will likely fair worse as time goes on.
Mind you Ukraine could have prevented all of this if they had decided not to break the Minsk agreement which would have ended the conflict in Donbas. Instead the US and EU used it to buy for time so they could further arm Ukraine for war with Russia.
This conflict has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Ukraine. Entire generation of youth killed or crippled. Millions fled the country and may never return.
Whatever comes after the if, unless it's "surrender sovereignty unconditionally", it's wrong. Putin's goal was, and is now, to incorporate Ukraine into his empire as a client state, similar to Belarus. And eventually to take even that decorative residual bit of sovereignty. Of course at this point, taking over Ukraine will mean mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people and an erasure of Ukrainian identity and language.
Just want you to be clear about what outcome you're defending.
https://www.mearsheimer.com/public_talks/why-is-ukraine-the-...
Andrei Kozyrev, the minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation (1990-1996), had this to say about the purpose of the club and people like Mearsheimer:
I ask Kozyrev about a debate that has roiled the American foreign policy establishment in the leadup to this war. Did NATO go too far? On the contrary, he thinks it didn’t go far enough.
“One thing among many I admire about the American character is your ability to look into what you did and to be very, very critical of your mistakes,” Kozyrev says, in what I’m right to assume is a slightly philosophical preliminary to an incoming polemic. “Like when Congress unanimously passed a ban on any kind of lynching. It’s a little late, but it’s important because it’s a form of national repentance. That’s what Russia doesn’t do. Russia doesn’t repent. It hasn’t really for Stalinism or for cutting a deal with Hitler. Instead, it blames Ukraine for Nazism, which is ridiculous.”
As to the pundits and policy mandarins who think the West sleepwalked into this crisis, which now threatens to bleed out beyond the borders of Russia and Belarus and Ukraine, Kozyrev thinks that’s simply nonsense. “Unfortunately, there are many wishful thinkers especially in academia here and intellectuals who have ties to Russia. They go to Valdai [a Russian think tank forum]. They consume caviar and vodka and are treated like kings by those who exist solely to manipulate them. This argument about NATO is just propaganda fed to Americans who then regurgitate it in their opinion and journal essays. The only real analysts who come here from Russia are dissidents. The rest are front people, just like in the Soviet Union, and they manufacture Western champions of the Putin regime, chumps and useful idiots.”
His longer account of Russia-NATO relations is also quite a bit different from how Russian lapdogs try to depict the history in 2024: https://transatlanticrelations.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...
But Ukraine's und USA's way to deal with the revanchists (full confrontation) was reckless and stupid.
Locations and dates, please.
https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/f/b/469734.pdf
"Out of the total 946 civilian casualties confirmed by the Mission, shelling and fire from small arms and light weapons (SALW) accounted for 625 casualties (77 killed and 548 injured). More than 85 per cent of these casualties occurred in Donetsk region."
It is a political question of how to deal with Russia's claims to power in Ukraine or the Caucasus. Georgia was smarter in my opinion. Ukrainian nationalists and their neoconservative supporters from the USA were less wise.
There should be a political discussion.
https://www.rnd.de/politik/krieg-in-der-ukraine-botschafter-...
The situations are not really comparable, given that Russia's designs on Ukraine are very different. Categorically different in fact.
Perhaps in the years 2014-2022 they were somewhat comparable (when Russia was more or less trying to keep Ukraine in an extended "punishment box"). But definitely not since.
---
"They actually hoped until nearly the last moment that they could press us into signing this agreement, adopting neutrality. That was their biggest priority. They were willing to end the war if we took on neutrality, like Finland once did, and gave assurances that we wouldn’t join NATO. That was essentially the main point. Everything else was cosmetic and political embellishments about ‘denazification,’ the Russian-speaking population, blah blah blah"
---
He goes on to elaborate that the main reason they didn't agree to such is because (1) they didn't trust Russia and (2) Boris Johnson told them they should "just fight." And maybe Russia would have "really" invaded with the sort of logic you put forth in your post later on, but that was clearly not their goal in this invasion. Not joining NATO is hardly some Hitler level appeasement as our propaganda spins it.
Russia was paranoid about NATO, which has gradually been working to surround it with nuclear weapons, having a base setup in Ukraine which has a geographically clear path straight into Russia's heartland. And I don't find such paranoia particularly unreasonable. Countries that strongly turn against America tend to find death and destruction at their doorstep soon enough.
And none of this is to justify Russia's invasion, nor condemn Ukraine's decision to fight. Rather I emphasize that we live in a world that's a million shades of gray, even if propaganda from one side or the other invariably frame it as the clearest thing ever. And enough people will believe such unquestionably, ensuring war will be with us til our final days.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davyd_Arakhamia
[1] - https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/11/28/we-had-to-buy-time
Because they live in fear, they cannot afford being trustworthy. And because they are not trustworthy, Russia's neighbors seek protection from other powers. Which in turn fuels the fears of Russian leadership.
Russia could break the cycle by stopping to be afraid. They could find role models in Europe. Germany, France, and the UK are all former major powers that started behaving like normal countries. With varying degrees of success.
But if you accept this then it becomes clear that trust is impossible. You have a power that wants to overthrow you surrounding you with military bases and pointing countless nuclear weapons at you. That, by the way, is also not necessary to maintain mutually assured destruction type deterrence. But it is necessary if you want to consider a rapid first-strike complete annihilation type attack, hitting them before they can return fire.
Of course, vice versa, imagine the US disarmed. They'd be invaded by like 80% of the world within a fortnight. Unfortunately I think the cycle is unbreakable. I don't think there's anybody that actually likes war, but it's been with us since the advent of civilization, and I expect it to remain with us til the end of civilization.
And again, the US cant even be bothered to kill off Russia by supplying some insignificant amount of aid and you think that there would be boots on the ground?
The US is protected from 95% of the world by being conveniently located behind two oceans and having two friendly neighbours.
In truth, absolutely nobody is interested in invading Russia, perhaps China notwithstanding as it is also authoritarian and carries some bad blood from Russia annexing its territory back in the day. Western countries have no such interest and likely would outright reject any suggestions of returning the lands Soviet Union stole within Europe.
Russia would still of course not survive in its current form without military, but that's because it's a colonial empire that would quickly break apart if given a chance.
We in the western world tend to see such conflicts like a game/puzzle where there is always a winning door that leads to happiness for all participants. Since there are only two choices and the current situation is bad, Ukraine must have made the wrong choice and we would be living happily ever after, if they only had agreed to a deal.
Needless to say that Putin loves to play on this mindset by saying all the things all the time. There will always be many groups in the west that will pick out quotes to bolster their favorite narrative and ignore the rest.
Sorry, I find it unlikely that even you believe this line of reasoning.
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. It is delusional to think that Russia is remotely at risk for a Iraq/Libya/Yugoslavia type situation.
Russia might not like its neighbors joining NATO, but maybe they wouldn't feel the need if being Russia's neighbor didn't suck so much?
In any case, Russia's actions in the last decade culminating with February 2022 have essentially convinced all post-1989 NATO inductees that it was the right move.
There's also simply misreading other leaders' intentions. If the US does not believe that Putin would respond to a conventional attack with nuclear weapons, then that also dramatically increases the chances of such an attack. And in fact one could argue that we're currently trying to probe how Russia would respond to slowly escalating types of provocations.
There's also the future. As we enter into a multipolar world it's possible the dollar could collapse, which could create unimaginable chaos. Russia could have some degree of turmoil once Putin permanently leaves office, which could be seen as an opportunity for the US. We might even develop a means of completely mitigating nuclear weapons, and so on. And so Russia is going to be looking at scenarios probabilistically. You're absolutely right the chances of the US trying to directly invade are extremely low, but they are also nowhere near 0. And that's in the current state. Who knows what the future holds? And once a country is right there, in NATO, it's there 'forever'.
----
Like try to take yourself back to WW1. Tensions were of course very high, but try to imagine what you'd think would happen if a Bosnian Serb (with secret state backing) assassinated an Austro-Hungarian royal. Would you expect to see Brits killing Germans over it, and tens of millions of people being killed? It just seems like a highly improbable outcome, to say the least. And in fact we could be living in a timeline where some 0.00001% probability event played out, and has completely shaped our world ever since. Such things can, and will, continue to happen - history makes this clear.
The point remains is that this war was a choice. They could fight now, or not. Ukraine could have, instead, spent the next 5 years setting up an unprecedented series of defense in depth series of barriers around the border, akin to what Russia did when preparing for the Ukrainian counter-attack. This was not an obligatory war for self existence, but a choice - a choice made at the urging of the West.
Ultimately I think the complete catastrophe this war has turned into is largely due to multiple miscalculations. Russia obviously thought they were 'ambushing' Ukraine and would be easily able to impose their demands. And the US/UK, in turn, thought they were 'ambushing' Russia and would be easily able to impose their demands. There's some extreme parallels with WW1, where I think everybody thought they were going to be able to go in and just finish the job pretty cleanly. If those nations could have seen out outcome they were signing up for (win or lose), WW1 would have never happened. And I think the same is true here.
So that leads me to wonder then, what is the future that we're signing up for now 5 years or another decade down the line? Does what sound good today, instead lead to regrets tomorrow? And that consideration is what drives my views, today.
5 weeks. Typical Russian tactics is to invade, then call for peace, then reinforce area, perform ethnical cleansing, solve problem with logistic, then blame other side for something and invade again.
> Ukraine could have, instead, spent the next 5 years setting up an unprecedented series of defense in depth series of barriers around the border
We spent 5 years preparing our defenses, spending 5% of GPD on that, BUT huge border with RF (1974 km) and Belarus + shore (1500 km) are not easy or cheap to reinforce. Ukraine has the largest border in Europe between two countries.
> This was not an obligatory war for self existence, but a choice - a choice made at the urging of the West.
LOL
All that feigned "paranoia about NATO" talk is trivially invalidated by the fact that Finland joined NATO, it was obvious that Finland would join NATO no matter the outcome of the Ukraine invasion, and it's obvious that Putin understood this. The only threat NATO poses is to Russia's ability to re-colonize its neighbours.
But, by all means, keep working on countermeasures.