Seeing as these same missiles and drones are already being used against Israel, covert efforts are almost certainly already underway.
I wonder if someone in the Israeli defense organization is thinking “every weapon Iran ships to Russia is one they aren’t shipping to Hezbollah”.
The drones may be produced by Kalashnikov or a part of the business. They have been producing drones for a while. They may be copies of Iranian ones, licensed or something like that. They are pretty basic devices. Not hard to produce by Russian military contractors. Hitting Iranian production would be a plus for Israel, but probably not hurt Russian capability to produce them. Maybe Russia is buying from Iran, but can still make them too. As I write this. Wonder if Kalashnikov has manufacturing facilities in Iran? Or Iran in Russia?
The MIC is a complex beast. For many countries.
Dynamite?
If it were up to me, I’d send EVERYTHING old that America has. Clean out that storage room. F-16Cs, F-15Cs, every single M-113, every M1A1 Abrams, every Bradley, time to do some not-yet-spring cleaning.
Then the MIC will nicely sidle up to me, snuggle, bat its eyes and say “Now that all that’s gone, can we have a $200 billion check for new vehicles, airplanes, missiles, IFVs?” Which I will gladly give.
Not so sure about the fighter jets. Might just end up ground targets. But sheer numbers of other material can make some difference. But ammo is key. Lots more ammo needed. That is a hard thing to get there in the volume needed. I would hate to be at any level of command there now. All the different stuff from everywhere. Unfamiliar with it. What do I send where? Do they know how to use it? How much support for it? Amazing how well they are doing.
From what I understand, it’s not that the ammo is hard to transport or that it’s incompatible, it’s that the West doesn’t have that huge a stockpile to give.
The rockets only need be in 227mm caliber. The shells only need be in 120mm (for mortars,) 105mm or 155mm (for howitzers.)
Yeah. There are even reports in western media of running out. Portions of some of the packages announced are not for immediate delivery, but up to a year or more to manufacture. I see it as a failing of the western military procurement schemes. So much for shiny new stuff, cuts into the more mundane but still really vital stuff. But they have not fought this style of war for so long. No doubt some changes are being made.
Compared to what? The Glorious Russian ability to produce ammunition instantly?
That’s definitely a factor. This is much more of a ground war than anything the US or NATO has fought in quite some time. Were we fighting this they way we fought in Iraq, air power would have reduced most of the opposition forces quite early on, and the ground forces would be mostly mopping up light infantry units and the like.
Having to blow up all these tanks, APCs, and ammo depots the old-fashioned way is taking a lot more effort and ammunition.
Yeah, the West is accustomed to quick, neat, lopsided wars in which air supremacy is taken for granted. They didn’t stock up for a modern day version of World War I, which is what Ukraine is right now.
I, for one, welcome our Racoon Overlords.
Think of Putin as a shark. Sharks are very good at locating large marine animals and eating them. They’ve been doing this for longer than the planet Saturn has had rings. But they’re never going to do math or make a plan or estimate an outcome. They’re very skilled in narrow ways.
Putin is also like that. Very good at seizing power, corrupting people and institutions, lying and deception, jealously protecting his own interests, figuring out the next step or two in keeping himself at the head of his crime syndicate. But he’s no kind of strategic genius. If he were, he wouldn’t be struggling to keep his population under control while mobilizing elderly pensioners and fat plumbers to stave off a near-rout of his decimated maneuver forces, all in the face of an enemy that he regards as inferior and nearly sub-human. In this sense he’s obviously a complete idiot.
The bright lining of all this is that Putin is very good at manipulating public opinion, given enough time for his propaganda organs to absorb new developments. I’m somewhat surprised to see they’re already setting expectations that Kherson will be lost. Given enough time they can probably figure out how to spin the complete loss of Crimea as well (though that’s a dicier proposition). If that happens, then a likely outcome is simply Russia being pushed back to 1991 borders and existing as a pariah state.
But if the curtain is pulled back too fast, and Russians can see that Putin isn’t in control of events, there’s a real risk he tries to beat back that perception by pulling some spectacular stunt. I’m concerned that this will be some kind of nuclear stunt.
6 weeks ago I was concerned this would be a tactical nuke, now less so. But the Zaporizha nuclear plant is still a wild card. Putin could cause a serious nuclear accident and deprive Ukraine of one of its largest sources of energy, overtly denying involvement (though we’d all know who did it). This is an enormous lever of power that Putin holds. I can’t see him surrendering it without some sort of major concession, and I could easily see him melting it down out of spite and retribution. And he’d probably get away with it because it’s not a tactical nuke. That’s the Russian brand of “I’m not touching you” escalation.