Russia's War Against Ukraine

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, Putin decides that all he was trying to do was push back Uk artillery out of range of Belgorod. Not capture Kharkiv. So he hasn't failed at that, therefore isn't going to fail at that, therefore he remains a master strateNYET STOP LOOKING AT MAP SHOWING REBEL UKRAINE HOLDING UNAUTHORIZED LAND AS FAR NORTH AS OKIP MUCH CLOSER TO BELGOROD TARGETS THAN LAND NORTH OF KHARKIV!

https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1791420518349820302

Hat tip to the Enforcer.

To be fair, Zelensky thinks this was a probing attack with the main thrust being much larger and coming later next month. That doesn't really explain why Putin would be shoveling what sounds like hillocks of copium, but Putin is a master strategist so maybe he thinks if he claims he wasn't trying to take Kharkiv people will believe him and go away...?

[FarAway Sooner]

No one in the west is willing to switch their economy over to war time production to produce 70,0000 arty shells per month, cause that's what it will take to win this. 

The Pentagon states that they'll be able to hit production targets of 100,000 155mm shells per month by Summer of 2025, as funding for that (along with many other things) was included in the $65B spending bill that the US recently passed.

Your basic point still stands:  Readiness costs money, and Western democracies have proven pretty reluctant to make that commitment, even after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The West in general (and the US in specific) has always prided itself on spending money instead of lives.  I think that one lesson from the Ukrainian war is that, while money matters a lot, we might need to rethink how we spend that.

In particular, we might need to recalibrate the mix between quality and quantity.  There's a role for high-value weapons (e.g., F-35s dropping a half-dozen PGMs hundreds of miles behind enemy lines) and low-value weapons (e.g., a battery of 155mm howitzers dropping a curtain of dumb HE shells across enemy troops advancing along a broad front), but I think Western procurement strategies have strayed toward the high end. 

Simple things like rifle ammunition, trucks, and AP rounds for tanks are necessary before the wunder-weapons can do their thing.

I'm more worried that the US won't be able to keep their eye on this ball and Congress will go back to allocating pork to key defense contractors, rather than maintaining the broad industrial base to allow us to ramp up ammunition production quickly. 

It's kind of similar to the plan proposed (and ignored) in 2017 (?) to keep surgical-mask production facilities mothballed but ready-to-roll in the US for $150M a year.  It ain't cheap, but it ain't that expensive either.  It just requires us to pay attention to the important stuff.

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/04/goal-100k-artillery-shells-month-sight-army-says/396047/

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/04/18/us-army-document-details-plan-to-update-wwii-era-ammo-plants-and-depots/

[Gusington]

Paying attention to important stuff seems more and more difficult.

[FarAway Sooner]

Paying attention to important stuff seems more and more difficult.

I think it's grown more and more difficult for policy makers to pay attention to important stuff because money rules American politics these days, and special interests are extremely well-positioned to use money to influence incumbent politicians. 

I think it's grown more and more difficult for the public to pay attention to important stuff because the Internet mass media algorithms have figured out how to serve us a steady diet of confirmation bias and outrage, so it gets easier and easier to live in our own little information bubble.  That tends to make us overlook information that might tell us that the world is changing and new stuff is becoming important.

[JasonPratt]

Paying attention to important stuff seems more and more difficult.

I think it's grown more and more difficult for policy makers to pay attention to important stuff because money rules American politics these days, and special interests are extremely well-positioned to use money to influence incumbent politicians.

I don't disagree, but I'm somewhat amusedly trying to recall if there was a time in US political history when that wasn't ever true.