The War in the Ukraine

[supersnoop]

There's certainly a lot of talk of increasing weapon production @Intrepid , but to be honest, I haven't seen anything substantial. Not in terms of actually "making" the weapons. There's deep issues in the industrial base that need to be addressed before a large amount of weapons can be delivered.

Happy to be proven wrong though.

I think the key problem is actually lack of skilled workers
They have enough workers to maintain a slow production rate, but to ramp up, you must train more.

To train more, you have to pay and make guarantees to both the worker and company in terms of compensation/contract length/buyout etc.

When CRRC opened their metro (subway) car assembly plant in Massachusetts, they sent all the American workers to China for training.

 

[tankphobia]

I think the key problem is actually lack of skilled workers
They have enough workers to maintain a slow production rate, but to ramp up, you must train more.

To train more, you have to pay and make guarantees to both the worker and company in terms of compensation/contract length/buyout etc.

When CRRC opened their metro (subway) car assembly plant in Massachusetts, they sent all the American workers to China for training.

On paper both the EU and US have a massive industrial base, even the car companies alone have enough expertise, workforce and equipment between them to quickly pivot to military production.

Politically that won't happen because they are not at war with Russia and cannot simply commandeer civilian enterprise for military use. Furthermore even if they did, with the complexity of modern military equipment by the time they actually rolling out tanks and missiles for Ukraine it'll probably be too late.

What they CAN do is empty out decades of warehouseed equipment then increase their military budget for the next 10 years to refill the stockpile, which some EU states are already doing.

 

[taxiya]

Although it seems obvious, but nobody has pointed this out as far as I remember, so here it goes.

It is a war that Vladimir is fighting Vladimir, isn't ironic?

 

[Chevalier]

Guess we will finally get to see what Abrams are worth against Russian AT weapons:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1617901436863676417

Then and again the US has a surplus of tanks due to the Pentagon being legally obligated to purchase tanks every year so this is a good way to offload military surplus as well as increase influence over the Eastern Europeans at Germany's expense.

 

[HighGround]

The thing is that not every firing gets a footage.

Of course not, but there is a reason why you see a lot more footage of one vs the other. Helicopter operations have been tough for Russia, there's a reason why they mostly do strike missions at night.

RuAF needs to learn SEAD, but more than that, they need a lot more ISTAR in general.

 

[pmc]

Russian attack choppers mostly operate at night from what I've seen. When they are used during the day, I've only seen them being used as mobile MLRS.

The issue with Russian attack choppers, is that they've never really had a good fire-and-forget PGM in large quantities. Izdeliye 305 has only been seen a few times in this conflict. I don't really see a pressing need for Ka-52M tbh, I think the original version was just fine.

That we cannot assume they operate at night or day. Even Russian transport choppers have rockets attached to it.
They dont need to show every weopon attached to chopper. This Ka-52M will give them ability of modular missiles like Kh-38MLE or that new cruise missile of extended range.

 

[Stealthflanker]

Of course not, but there is a reason why you see a lot more footage of one vs the other. Helicopter operations have been tough for Russia, there's a reason why they mostly do strike missions at night.

and there are many more reasons than just "lack of missiles" Like why Russians does not publish every launch of Orlan.

RuAF needs to learn SEAD, but more than that, they need a lot more ISTAR in general.

Maybe but.. SEAD is hard when your target is doing EMCON. Soviet SAM's have been designed with that in mind and with proper training as in 1999's demonstrated by Serbians.. Very hard to kill even when you practically have unopposed ISTAR. Add phased array.. like one in S-300P's you only detect it when you are the one got illuminated.

 

[supersnoop]

On paper both the EU and US have a massive industrial base, even the car companies alone have enough expertise, workforce and equipment between them to quickly pivot to military production.

Politically that won't happen because they are not at war with Russia and cannot simply commandeer civilian enterprise for military use. Furthermore even if they did, with the complexity of modern military equipment by the time they actually rolling out tanks and missiles for Ukraine it'll probably be too late.

What they CAN do is empty out decades of warehouseed equipment then increase their military budget for the next 10 years to refill the stockpile, which some EU states are already doing.

Politics has very little to do with it, it's all economics.

If you aren't trying to build new capacity, then the issue is Just-in-Time/Lean manufacturing means there is no excess workforce or production capacity.

If you use GM's workers, every Javelin made by them, is one less car. How do you expect them to make money?

They won't sacrifice a customer since they have a great opportunity with their EV production ramping up ahead of the Japanese competition.

Has nothing to do with complexity. You have computer aided design, you know what equipment you have on hand. You don't have to make Bradleys or M1s. Rather, you might quickly push through a new design that you know the equipment can handle like an MRAP/APC based on the GMC TopKick (like the presidential limo which GM already made). It even has a hardened DuraMax Diesel.

The problem with your other suggestion is that the conflict is clearing out even the warehoused equipment. Sending out things like 105mm howitzers, Aspide, iHAWK, those haven't been state of the art for decades. Aspide was able to be built by 90's China and even the PLA quickly moved on. For all the laughing at Russia sending T-62s, it's hard to not draw the parallel here.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Guess we will finally get to see what Abrams are worth against Russian AT weapons:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1617901436863676417

Then and again the US has a surplus of tanks due to the Pentagon being legally obligated to purchase tanks every year so this is a good way to offload military surplus as well as increase influence over the Eastern Europeans at Germany's expense.

That seems like a mistake. By the time the tanks arrive it will be spring in Ukraine, and Western tanks are in general much heavier than their Eastern counterparts. If you thought that T-72 getting mired in mud is bad I shudder to think what will happen to a 60 ton tank.

 

[Biscuits]

That seems like a mistake. By the time the tanks arrive it will be spring in Ukraine, and Western tanks are in general much heavier than their Eastern counterparts. If you thought that T-72 getting mired in mud is bad I shudder to think what will happen to a 60 ton tank.

NATO have throughout the conflict just given equipment reflexively, and usually in doses that are maintenance only.

Ukraine is running critically low in tanks, so they will get some tanks, enough so US can keep the war going for a while longer. If Abrams might lose in reputation, this was probably a major concern for the US MIC, but the likely option is that the government assuaged their fears by guaranteeing that negative reports will be swiftly censored, as has been done with the performance of western tanks in the Syria conflict.

America is not going for a win, you can see that based on the sporadic, old and lackluster stuff Ukraine gets. What US wants is to drag the conflict out long enough so that they can say at the end of the day "well, we tried our best, we gave it our best, the Ukrainians were cowards and incompetent".

US has more important claims than trying to fight Russian claims to the last Russian by fully involving on Ukraine, they have their own territorial ambitions where they're gonna need 100% of their forces. US is paying a "we are doing something" old equipment tax to Ukraine.