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Much was made of the fact that, once modern western equipment arrives in UK, it will wipe the floor with soviet union relics that serve in the Russian army. Instead, it has hardly made a difference.

The difference in price, even of simple non-mobile artillery pieces, is huge. Because they are so expensive, we cannot field as much equipment, and we've been telling ourselves that our modern equipment is worth multiple unit of the other side. Now I am starting to think we've just been deluding ourselves, and in reality we are just outgunned and the military complex is a huge graft.

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It has made a huge difference. Loss rates and survivability of western hardware in Ukraine are vastly better than the Soviet equipment, and the Ukrainians will say as much.

There are caveats, like: a tank that hits a mine is going to be disabled one way or another, and a disabled tank won't survive too long if it's anywhere near the front.

The problem isn't the quantity of equipment, it's the quantity of munitions. For example, Ukraine has only 30 or so HIMARS units but that's more than enough to fully consume every GMLRS munition we can provide them.

The crux of it is that the weapons have improved very fast (range and energy density and targeting and rate of fire and other functionality all improving very fast) but protective systems like armour are not nearly keeping pace.

It's looking a bit like the struggle between armoured knights and guns. The place where the rubber really meets the road on this, the Big Problem, is surface navy: what's the lifespan of a floating metal castle in the age of hypersonic missiles?

Nobody wants to talk about that.

Donald Cook tried but was silenced. I think around 2013.

This was mostly said about tanks, and by few serious commentators. In a static war like this, a tank is a tank pretty much regardless of how fancy it is. NATO does not expect to fight a static war. Partially because it has access to copious amounts of the real force multiplier, air power - vanishingly little of which has been given to Ukraine!

In this context, by UK do you mean Ukraine? Because I can't see how the United Kingdom would make sense.

Anyway, assuming it was Ukraine, then, yes, the western equipment made a lot of difference. In the first months of the war it was the Javelins, and the NLAWs. Then it was the HIMARS. Then the anti-air defenses, like the Patriot. All these things absolutely made a difference.

The problem is that there was not more of those. But that was by design. You could say that not in a thousand years would Putin actually use nukes. But I bet you said he would not invade Ukraine until the day he did.

Right now Ukraine is still standing, and Putin did not use nukes. It could be better, but it could be worse, much worse.

Let us not forget: before this war, Russians went on holiday in Odesa. Ukrainians went on holiday in St. Petersburg.

It's not a genocidal war of annihilation. It's not WW2 redux. It's not Holodomor 2.0. I do not think everybody realises how low the stakes of this conflict really are.

That’s a very cavalier way of looking at things. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have died already, and millions of people live now as refugees. What does it take to make something high stakes in your view?

Most of the people who have died in this conflict are Russian soldiers aren't they?

The point being?

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