War Machine

[Odds]

I wonder why they did that. Your should too.

Perhaps for publicity - allowing a degree of transparency in the press to make sure people are at least aware of the arms race building up between East and West, and ensuring the Communist Bloc knows it's under closer surveillance. I don't think the geopolitical situation has been this tense since the end of the Cold War. Things are hotting up - and i don't just mean Climate Change.

 

[ajohn]

Perhaps for publicity

Russia - Ukraine related. China a general problem for the west. Rather large population = more scope for growth.
Japan moving to war kit. Their economy has problems. There is a lot of money in arms sales. Interesting that the Zero they used in WWII was in many ways the most advanced fighter in the air.

Russia will hopefully finish up on it's knees. China - totally different problem. Some countries don't want to see others as the west do. They just want to get on with whatever suites them. The west applies what pressure it can.

Boost in rocket attacks from Lebanon. Told to do it via iran or decided to do it themselves? Israel has been making deeper hits.

 

[Justin Passing]

With all this tension at sea next thing the Swiss navy will be putting out to sea

Well they have all those knives. The Navy ones are a lovely blue, and stainless.
They have a dozen or so boats on the border lakes, and they cruise up and down the Rhine. Wonder how many applicants they get.

 

[Justin Passing]

I said day 1 that Ukraine would lose. The only way I see Ukraine making any headway is to kill so many Russian troops that there are serious revolts.
Unfortunately for all concerned, they don't mind lots of their people dying, and are rather good at quelling revolt.
Putin is on a mission to secure his destiny as a prominent figure in the history of his country.

They're 20 years behind the ROW in terms of semiconductor tech, but there's a limit on how much that matters, especially with support from CHina. You can measure it in nanometers:
"A longer-term goal is to establish manufacturing using a 28nm node by 2030, something TSMC did in 2011."
(TSMC is Taiwan, curently working on 2nm down to sub nanometer, using equipment which is ONLY made in the Netherlands, not the USA).

Meanwhile Russia is selling more oil than ever, eg to India which is refined to diesel fuel which is sold back to Europe, etc so they have enough forex, but they're forced into becoming more self-sufficient at the same time.

What's to stop Putin taking Kyev, really? A fragile supply of anti missile defences?

Just a matter of time.

 

[Odds]

Ukraine’s military chief on Saturday warned that the battlefield situation in the industrial east has “significantly worsened in recent days,” as warming weather allowed Russian forces to launch a fresh push along several stretches of the more 1,000 km-long (620-mile) front line. According to Syrskyy, Russian forces have been “actively attacking” Ukrainian positions in three areas of the eastern Donetsk region, near the cities of Lyman, Bakhmut and Pokrovsk, and beginning to launch tank assaults as drier, warmer spring weather has made it easier for heavy vehicles to move across previously muddy terrain.

Russia has relied on its edge in firepower and personnel to step up attacks across eastern Ukraine. It has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs — which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance — to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition. Germany announced that it will deliver an additional Patriot air defense system to Ukraine, days after Russian missiles and drones on Thursday struck infrastructure and power facilities across several regions, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without power, in what private energy operator DTEK described as one of the most powerful attacks this year. The German Defense Ministry said it would “begin the handover” of the Patriot system immediately, without providing a precise timeline.

Associated Press

Zelensky will be very nervous right now, as events escalate in the Middle East and few folk paying much attention to his plight. The Russians are on a roll and riding the Spring thaw with renewed energy - Kharkiv could be under direct threat for the first time since the invasion at this rate.

 

[ajohn]

I said day 1 that Ukraine would lose.

Cameron made an interesting comment when he visited the US mostly concerning the $b sent to Ukraine. Blinken out of camera but I bet he frowned.
Cameron pointed out that the Ukrainians fight courageously and all of these extra $b were a bargain as far as the US is concerned. Mind you this thought was pretty obvious to me right at the start. Also emphasised by their defence secretary anyway. And IMHO the choice of weapons that were supplied and the rate of improvements in capabilities sent.

 

[Odds]

As the world's media spotlights Iran, three Russian missiles slammed into a downtown area of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv yesterday, hitting an eight-floor apartment building and killing at least 17 people, authorities said.

“The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore maneuver to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine,” the ISW said in an assessment late Tuesday, adding that “only the U.S. can provide rapidly and at scale.”

Ukraine got some good news Wednesday from Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, who said his country has secured 500,000 artillery shells for Ukraine from countries outside the European Union. The first shells are due for delivery in June. The EU promised a year ago to send Ukraine 1 million artillery shells, but the bloc was unable to produce that many.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with Western countries to provide more air defense equipment, including more surface-to-air Patriot guided missile systems. He said the Chernihiv strike “would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror was also sufficient.” Zelenskyy told PBS in an interview broadcast earlier this week that Ukraine recently ran out of air defense missiles while it was defending against a major missile and drone attack that destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest power plants, part of a recent Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure.

“We need at least seven more Patriot batteries to protect our cities and economic centers from destruction,” Kuleba told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview published Wednesday. “Why is it so difficult to find seven Patriot batteries?”

Associated Press

 

[JonathanM]

Russia is now launching hundreds of massive, satellite guided glide bombs with impunity because Ukraine has no fighters or long range air defences to shoot down the bombers.

They've basically taken Soviet era bombs and bolted on navigation fins. I would guess they have a pretty much limitless supply.

They can be launched from 40km away, or perhaps further.

 

[JonathanM]

I've also been reading that the NATO equivalent, JDAM, is pretty much useless against Russia because they can block the guidance. But we can't block the Russians bombs.

 

[Odds]

An analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, showed that between February and March Ukraine’s interception rate of Russian missiles fell from 60 percent to 50 percent, and suggested it would fall further. In addition to its weakening air defences and what Zelenskyy described as a 10-to-one disadvantage in artillery rounds on the ground, Ukraine also faces hundreds of glide bombs a week. These are massive inertial munitions with payloads of up to 1,500kg fitted with fins for increased range.

[President] Zelenskyy told the German magazine Bild that Ukraine was using domestically produced drones to somewhat make up for the dearth in ammunition, but that these were not a replacement because their range is smaller and their payloads lighter. He also said he could not rule out a broadening of the front with a new Russian assault on the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv, only 30km (17 miles) from the Russian border, which have in recent weeks been pounded by missiles, drones and glide bombs.

Further analysis and video @Al Jazeera

 

[ajohn]

Russia has modified the old idea of glide bombs by adding some form of guidance. I'd guess they make heat seekers useless. Targets - virtually all reports mention power. Retaliation for strikes within Russia.
India has worked on them

DRDO Glide Bombs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

India and Russia have jointly worked on a rather high speed missile.

I noticed Iran also has glide bombs. Also it seems a kit to launch satellites.

 

[Odds]

An article @ Politico.eu asks "Who's the boss when it comes to defense: NATO or the EU?" since both organisations want to spend $100 billion on military defence. Calls are increasing for the next European Commission ( to be formed after the EU election in June and likely again led by Ursula von der Leyen, a former German defense minister ) to have its first-ever defense commissioner. The person in the post would be responsible for allocating billions of euros to Europe’s defense industry to help with the bloc's own needs, as well as those of Ukraine. The Commission has also presented a European Defence Industrial Strategy alongside a cash pot of at least €1.5 billion, aimed at getting the EU to finally begin punching its weight when it comes to defense.

NATO skepticism over the EU's dabbling in defense runs deep ( summed up by a catchphrase popular in military circles: “The U.S. fights, the U.N feeds, the EU funds.” ) Alliance insiders see the EU's plans as potentially usurping powers long considered sacrosanct for the 75-year-old alliance, and say the bloc's regulatory urges could wreak havoc with NATO plans. In a letter Stoltenberg sent to von der Leyen Jan. 26, seen by POLITICO, he warned "I am concerned about the potential overlap with existing NATO activities," adding: "In particular, I would be worried if the EU were to move into standard setting for munitions."

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, however, has defended the EU’s move to do more on defense industry. “Peace is no more a given, unhappily. The war is at our borders,” he said last month. “Russia’s war of aggression has brought a great sense of urgency to step up our industrial defense capacities.” The paradox is, at the highest level you have a pretty good and friendly working relationship between Stoltenberg and von der Leyen in particular. Then you have a lot of informal staff-to-staff exchanges, Grand, the ex-NATO senior official, said. "But the minute we need to get very practical and serious to deliver decisions, we run into a mix of institutional rivalries, a lack of mutual knowledge, and legal-political nitty gritty."

Turkey's territorial dispute with Cyprus ( a non-NATO member in the EU ) is also making things more complicated between the two institutions.
Turkish diplomats at NATO are unwilling to let alliance staff share too much information with the EU, as Cypriot officials would be able to access it.

*It'll be ironic if the EU does find a way to agree on a common defence policy and maintain links with NATO, strengthening the Western alliance against Russian expansion. Putin will have succeeded in bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO and bolstering European defence, while failing to bring Ukraine back into the Soviet Union.

 

[Odds]

The world spent $2.4 trillion on military forces last year, the highest amount ever recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI has been monitoring military expenditures since 1949 and found in its annual report released on Monday that in 2023 they rose to 2.3 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.2 percent the year before. It meant that every man, woman and child on the planet was taxed an average of $306 for military spending last year – the highest rate since the Cold War. The increased spending exactly matched the global rate of inflation of 6.8 percent, so it doesn’t necessarily translate into greater military efficacy everywhere.

The United States remained the biggest spender at $916bn, representing 37 percent of the world’s military outlays. China came second with an estimated $296bn. Russia was third at $109bn although SIPRI considers this an underestimation “due to the increasing opaqueness of Russian financial authorities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022”. India came fourth at $83.6bn.

Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on October 7 and Israel’s war in Gaza led to a massive 24 percent defence budget increase in Israel last year to $27.5bn, or 5.3 percent of its GDP [and] Saudi Arabia also significantly increased spending. The two countries contributed to a 9 percent defence budget increase in the Middle East last year, the biggest annual increase in a decade. The Middle East also bears the biggest military burden in the world as a percentage of GDP. At 4.2 percent, it is nearly double the world average.

Analysis@Al Jazeera

Amidst all this uncertainty one thing is clear - WWIII will be eye-wateringly expensive.