Interesting. Wonder why Russia hasn’t been using its own A-50 AWACS to do the same favor for its own jets and missiles.
Not enough functional A-50s to keep one airborne all the time just in case one of the vrry few Ukrainian F-16s shows up.
How does Alex Jones even have any platform at all any more? I thought he had to give up all of that in the Sandy Hook judgement.
And even fewer due to Ukrainian action.
It’s trivially easy for any putz to post things online these days.
Once somebody is (in)famous, that can only be taken away by the audience. Jones’ audience still thinks he’s awesome.
Russia (and Belarus) are experiencing a potato shortage and very high prices, while potato prices are the lowest in years in the rest of the world.
The harvest is bad when the farmers are sent to the meat grinder. And something weather something something, of course.
No doubt their news media is full of how the evil West is causing all these problems.
Here is an article from the aerospace / defense press about the recent Ukrainian drone strike and what it means for everyone else.
This’ll be free access for a month:
Another article here points out that Ukraine is showing the West that the West’s approach of “a few expensive weapons that take a long time to make” rather than “many cheap weapons that can be produced quickly” is potentially disastrous in some future conflict and that the West must retool its defense approach.
Never expected to see Mitch “the Turtle” McConnell getting a little tough on one of Trump’s team.
I gave some of the pro-Russian MAGAs I know two good reasons why supporting the Ukraine was in our best interest. The first was that Russia was our enemy and helping Ukraine bleed them dry just made sense. The second was this was a conflict between near peers with fairly modern technologies, allowing us the opportunity to learn from the painful mistakes made by both sides instead of having to learn those painful lessons first hand.
This was back when I thought we all agreed Russia was our enemy. I didn’t know at the time MAGA thought they were the good guys.
Russia has finally reached the milestone of 1,000,000 KIA and WIA.
On the plus side, that means 1 out of every 67 men in Russia’s total population has now been killed or wounded.
On the negative side, this is a nation that once lost 10-15% of its population in the Second World War and somehow still plugged on.
Not comfortable calling that a “plus”, but it is notable.
A third reason is that it saves us a lot of money. All those weapons we had sitting in warehouses were not only not doing anything for us; they cost money to maintain. By letting the Ukrainians fulfill those weapons’ purpose, we get to stop maintaining them, without having to replace them with new money-sinks.
Not that the current government cares about good money management, but I agree.
I agree with the first half.
But if this war has taught us anything, it’s that each weapon we give to Ukraine ought to be instantly replaced by about 20 more of the same thing. 10 more for us, and 10 more for Ukraine.
The West’s stocks of weapons and ammunition have been shown to be ridiculously inadequate to fighting an actual war with an actual near-peer adversary like Russia or China.
It’ll be the work (and expense) of decades for the West to replace what Ukraine used up in 3 years of half-assed fighting with a fraction of an adversary. I do not for an instant begrudge them our weapons & ammo. But I think we all should recognize that this is an object lesson in how materiel-heavy modern warfare is. And just how much Cheap Charlie the US & the rest of NATO have tried to be with their materiel versus the actual need.
But think of what that would do to economy! 
Although Tom Clancy must be taken with multiple grains of salt, one of the biggest premises of his novel Red Storm Rising was that a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact war would consume fuel and munitions far faster than anticipated - “fuel and ammunition seems to evaporate as soon as it reaches the front,” if I quote right. We’re seeing a mini-version of that with Ukraine.
But the thing is, Russian munitions are evaporating just as quickly. We only need to replace ours at the same rate that they’re replacing theirs, and they have almost no capability to replace theirs.
And even to the extent that we should be re-arming, it shouldn’t be with the same weapons we had before. We’re watching those go obsolete before our eyes.
Russia produces as much ammo in 3 months as all of NATO does in a year, says NATO chief
“In terms of ammunition, Russia produces in three months what the whole of NATO produces in a year,” he said.
“Russia is reconstituting its forces with Chinese technology and producing more weapons faster than we thought,” Rutte added.
…
Rutte said Russia was expected to produce 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 200 Iskander missiles in 2025.