Russia - threadbanned users in OP

There is always this tension in the thread, people with various bias arguing whether Ukrainian resistance is successful or not or whether it is futile going forward or if they can get outright victory. For me it's not important because they have no choice anyway, the choice is death on the battlefield or death under occupation or enslavement and possible death under occupation for a Ukrainian. From a western perspective the calculation is even easier, a Russia that hates you and is confident or a Russia that hates you and is weakened. The prospect of victory seems irrelevant.

Kramatorsk has been shelled again today by Russia after striking an apartment block last night ,

The previous day they shelled a grave yard in the same area , killing Ukrainians in their homes ,in their schools and their hospital,and now attacking the already dead

Well unfortunately the US support is inadequate and highly qualified. And that's not just my opinion, it's also that of several formerly senior US military commanders.

The HIMARS were geo fenced and their range limited.

The Abrams to be supplied are not from US stocks, they are coming from the manufacturer. This means getting tanks from allies, shipping them to the US, fully dismantling them and rebuilding them from scratch, minus any capabilities the US wants to hold back, like their secret armour (if the tanks have it). This is why it's going to take so long. They can do two tanks a day and the process including checks, callibration and testing, takes two weeks.

The GDLSB long range munitions are not coming from US stocks, they will manufacture them frrom scratch because the US wants to limit their useful capability by leaving out normal features like the laser guidance. Also they will likely geofence them as they did with the HIMARS

And Biden helpfully said 'no F-16s.' and cluster munitions.

The Orcs are supposedly assembling a 500,000 strong invasion force. When it crosses into Ukraine, I suspect they will finally commit a significant proportion of their large aircraft fleet to a swamping and destruction of air defences in an all or nothing effort. I think all this time, they probably have been fixing a lot of aircraft that were unusable.

So the US supply chain is deliberately slow because they first have to spend time manufacturing most of the sophisticated stuff because what they are sending is all special Ukraine specific versions that have been suitably neutered and with secret bits left off them.

Pilots should be training in F-15s now, not F-16s. The lead time is so long that if the training isn't done, 'just in case', instead of 'no F-16s', Ukraine could be in deep trouble if the Orcs have been fixing their planes and commit to using most of them in an aerial and ground blitzkrieg.

The US said it will do everything necessary for Ukraine to defend itself and prevail, and IMO, they are a very long way off from doing that because their manufacture from scratch approach means the lead times are excessive and artificially extended. If something happens rapidly, the stuff needed to counter it needs to already be in the country or Poland and Ukrainians need to be trained, not on a spec sheet on the computer screen of a purchasing officer in some US factory.

I have to give a shout out to Poland for possibly being worried and on to this problem. They now seem almost desperate to train Ukrainians on the Leopards and want to accelerate the trining regime and shorten it to just two weeks.

If they are worried, I'm worried. We might have fallen ito a trap of underestimating the Orcs in the same way they underestimated the west's resolve and response and Ukriane.

This is a summary from a week of topics on a Telegram channel, the gist of which is that something's up:

Reason #387 for Russia invading Ukraine, but not being responsible for it. Religious gobbledegook.

@cnocbui

The Abrams to be supplied are not from US stocks, they are coming from the manufacturer. This means getting tanks from allies, shipping them to the US, fully dismantling them and rebuilding them from scratch, minus any capabilities the US wants to hold back, like their secret armour (if the tanks have it). This is why it's going to take so long. They can do two tanks a day and the process including checks, callibration and testing,

That's not true,

Export Abrams and older Abrams don't come with the depleted uranium mesh in it's armor,they won't have to be stripped and rebuilt minus any capabilities,

Where are you reading that

I said 'if they have it'. It's not even remotely close to being the main issue.

Can you imagine how long it's going to take to get allies to consider, debate, legislate and then act, just to get hold of the tanks in the first place? That is going to be several months alone, if done really quickly.

And here's a piece on what 'from the manufacturer' really means: https://www.cnet.com/culture/before-the-battlefield-making-the-armys-abrams-tank/

If the us wanted they could ask Poland to transfer a few of theirs which can be replaced in a later order,

The Abrams was used to get the Germans on board to allow the transfer of leopards to Ukraine from themselves and elsewhere

That article is dates 2013 ,and sales of Abrams to foreign allies is at all time high,it's likely that the 30 tanks already exist ,but the Americans don't want to send them, instead they baithed the Germans to allow export of their tanks directly to Ukraine saving the US from having to send any tanks

Tbh I think the discussion of Abrams is kinda moot. It was a political step to unlock the Leopards. The Germans not wanting to be seen as aggresive warmongers in any way shape or form. Which is understandable. So the Americans pledge some Abrams and then supply them in the slowest possible manner since the details of how they're provided is of little political importance compared with the declaration that they'll be delivered. I'd honestly be surprised if we see a single Abrams rolling around Ukraine this year.

The GLSDBs "not coming from stocks" is a bit misleading though I think. Since the Americans have thousands of the M26 rockets lying around then a special adapter is added to snap the small diameter bomb to it. So it shouldn't take that long. They've been announced as being in the next package so clearly there are some already made. They were only proposed to the Pentagon by Saab/Boeing last November so it seems they can be produced relatively quickly. This is just me speculating though.

With regards to the Americans hard coding a range limit to their Himars. Yeah thatss worrying. Supplying Ukraine with 150km missiles then neutering their ability to use them like they were supposed to seems like the height of stupidity to me but who knows. However I can think of a few things that could counter that.

1. The rocket component itself with the GLSDB does not actually fly the full distance. It carries the warhead high and far enough at which point the bomb detaches and glides the rest of the way. A possibility for it to bypass this hard limit on the other GMLRS rockets.
2. The Ukranians also have several MLRS systems from the germans brits and Italians I believe. M270's and MARS. It's possible these units don't have this limit applied to them I guess?

The words "absolute fucking gibberish" are thrown around a lot these days...

Right I'll avoid the ableist perjorative, but say that this interpretation of me is based on imagination, a kinda slotting people into preconceived boxes, and not based on anything I actually said or expressed.

Some say it's all a plot by the CIA to discredit putin,

And putin is fighting Nazis in Ukraine only after a year he hasn't been able to find a single Ukrainian Nazi

Would you have a link for this 10:1 outshelling? The Ukrainians are using 90,000 a month, so, yeah, a link?

Add to this the fact Ukraine have set up their own factory for mortars and soviet calibre shells and the US is increasing their manufacturing by six fold, eventually making 90,000 a month, but only after a year or so, and the 300,000 shells the US is taking from stockpiles in Israel and South Korea, hopefully they will have enough in the short term. I'll bet that with their greater range and accuracy and sophisticated drone targeting and fire correction, every Ukraine fired shell is probably worth multiple from the Orcs in terms of effectiveness.

Apparently France has also set up an ongoing supply program for Ukraine to the tune of $200 million.