Posts Tagged ‘Military’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Ukraine Update for April 27, 2022

Wednesday, April 27th, 2022

It’s been almost a month since we did the last general Ukraine-Russo War update, so let’s catch up. The biggest change is that Russia has given up on trying to take Kiev and has withdrawn all their forces in the northwest:

And here’s a timelapse map of the ebb and flow of the war:

Keep in mind the usual caveats (the map is not the territory, the difficulty of sifting truth from propaganda, etc.), but it does appear that not much has changed in the overall contours of the war since Russia’s withdrawal from the northwest. But ISW is reporting that Russia has instituted combined arms offenses, something we didn’t see much of during the opening stages of the war, and have reported minor but steady advances by Russian forces.

Here’s a roundup of war news, some of it several weeks old but potentially still of interest.


  • An awful lot of Russian infrastructure seems to be blowing up all of a sudden.

    Storage tanks at a major oil depot in the Russian city of Bryansk exploded early on Monday. Was Ukraine responsible?

    Before you answer, consider first that this is only the latest disaster to afflict Russian critical infrastructure near the Ukrainian border. Another oil depot on Belgorod was targeted by a Ukrainian helicopter strike in early April. Prior to that, Russian railway lines near the border were sabotaged. A Russian missile research center and a chemical plant also recently suffered explosions.

    These incidents all appear to fit well with Ukraine’s military strategy.

    Bryansk, 62 miles from the Ukrainian border, is beyond the range of most drone systems in Ukraine’s possession. Unconfirmed video from the Bryansk incident indicates the sound of a missile in the terminal attack phase. Considering this noise and Bryansk’s relative distance from Ukraine, short-range ballistic missiles may have been responsible. Regardless, the explosion will disrupt energy replenishment efforts for Russian military forces in Ukraine.

    The explosion also dilutes Putin’s credibility in claiming that his war on Ukraine is not a war, but rather a limited “special military operation.” When stuff keeps blowing up in Russian cities, it’s hard to convince the residents of said cities that Russia isn’t at war.

    That takes us to Ukraine’s evolving military strategy. With Russia forced to scale back its goals in the conflict, Ukraine has escalated its offensive operations in what’s known as the “deep battlespace.” This involves targeting of Russian logistics and command and control units deeper behind the front lines. Employing Western-provided drones and highly mobile small units, Ukraine is degrading and demoralizing Russia’s war machine.

    It’s not a wild leap to expect that Ukraine is now applying these same tactics over the border inside Russia. This is likely a result of British training of the Ukrainian military.

    Don’t start none, won’t be none…

  • More structure hits inside Russia:

  • On the same theme:

  • Are Belarussians also sabotaging rail lines used by Russia?

    The slickly produced video opens with an unlikely scenario. The year is 2023. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is the president of Belarus. And Belarus has been invited to join the European Union.

    “Fantasy? Not at all. The war Vladimir Putin started against Ukraine gives us a unique chance to change history,” the narrator says. “Russia is already losing. And without our bases, railways, and borders, Putin’s defeat will be significantly hastened.”

    The video calls on Belarusians not only to demonstrate against the war, but also to deny Russia the assets they need to prosecute it from Belarusian territory. “Blockade the aggressor at bases and supply routes. Deny them food, fuel, and freedom of movement,” it says.

    In fact, this is more than a call for action. It is actually describing something that is already happening. Since Putin’s Ukraine War began on February 24, at least 52 Belarusians including 30 railway workers have been arrested on charges of treason, terrorism and espionage for disrupting the movement of Russian troops and military hardware, according to the Belarusian human rights group Viasna.

    Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s autocratic regime in Minsk is so concerned with what has become known as “The Rail War” that it has also declared the Telegram channel of the “Association of Railway Workers of Belarus” an extremist organization.

    This railway rebellion is the most dramatic example of how Putin’s war against Ukraine is changing the political dynamic in Belarus. Lukashenka’s slavish submission to Putin, allowing the Kremlin leader to use his country as a staging ground for Russia’s assault on Ukraine, has unnerved and angered this nation of 9.4 million people.

    The only thing being Mussolini to Putin’s Hitler is going to get you is being strung up by your heels.

  • This is one of those “too good to believe” headlines: “Ukraine Now Has More Tanks Than Russia and Things Look Worse In the Future.”

    The Ukrainian battlefield of Putin’s War is incredibly lethal. In the sixty days since Putin’s three-to-four day invasion of Ukraine started, Russia has had 1,700 vehicles or major pieces of equipment destroyed and another 1,200 captured. Tanks losses numbered 560 destroyed and 214 captured, while losses of infantry fighting vehicles/armored personnel carriers come to 930 destroyed and 330 captured. These are not estimates; these are floor numbers that have been counted and geocoded. By the same methodology, Ukraine has lost at least 200 tanks destroyed and 70 captured, along with 790 infantry fighting vehicles/armored personnel carriers destroyed and 90 captured. No one really knows how many vehicles have been lost to combat damage or wear-and-tear….

    By way of scale, Russia entered the war with about 120 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG)) representing approximately 75% of the Russian Army’s combat power as well as the cutting edge of that power. Keep in mind that this is not a Russian Army affair; there is Naval Infantry from as far away as Vladivostok as well as troops of the Rosgvardiya, or the National Guard of Russia….

    The tank losses alone represent all the tanks in 70 BTGs.

    This lethality is why the Ukrainian government has been screaming for more weapons from anyone who has them. Not just munitions, like Javelin or Starstreak, but tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery.

    Snip.

    As incredible as it may seem, Ukraine now outnumbers Russia in the number of tanks on the battlefield.

    Thanks to European resupplies, Ukraine’s military now has more tanks on the battlefield than Russia does two months into the war, according to the Pentagon.

    The delivery in recent weeks of Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Kyiv from the Czech Republic and other European Nato allies has effectively eroded Russia’s advantage, experts have claimed.

    “Right now, the Ukrainians have more tanks in Ukraine than the Russians do, and they certainly have the purview to use them,” an unnamed senior US defence official told reporters on Thursday.
    Ukraine’s armed forces have previously claimed Russia has lost more than 680 of its tanks, the majority of which were destroyed, while some changed hands after being found abandoned.

    So that’s from the Pentagon. May be true, may not be true. It’s possible Russia has cannibalized other units or (some two months into the conflict) refurbished mothballed tanks.

  • “Young Russian conscripts complain they have been given 1940s guns and are suffering heavy losses against Ukraine.” (Hat Tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit)
  • Talk about timing! This piece, published April 10, argues that Ukrainian anti-ship missiles will make the Black Sea unsafe for Russian warships.

    The way I see it (and I am in good company), the Russians will not only be lucky not to be routed from all their gains made since February 24, but are at serious risk of losing the Donbas—Luhansk and Donetsk—and Crimea, as well as having most of their current army destroyed. Talk of some sort of possible Grand New Russian Offensive in the east seem fantastical to me and others who put the big-picture together: with which troops, and of what quality (what elite unites haven’t sustained significant casualties?), and with what equipment? Will it be the remaining equipment that has already proven ineffective and easily destroyed especially by Ukraine’s western-supplied anti-tank and anti-air missiles? The units shattered and barely functional or not functional that managed to escape from Ukraine’s counteroffensives? Non-shattered but non-elite units that have also been deployed for months and are still exhausted? Conscripts almost finishing their terms? New conscripts who have never seen combat??

    Yet as major Russian ground fronts have collapsed, attention is drawn away from an area where, with not much additional assistance from the West or perhaps even with aid already just now promised, Ukraine can easily achieve a resounding victory that would combine massive substantive defeats for the Russians with tremendous symbolism and loss of prestige for Russia in addition to greatly affecting the way ground combat plays out in the south and east.

    I am talking about the near-annihilation of the Russian Navy presence in the Black Sea, including almost the entirety of the Black Sea Fleet.

    Snip.

    Russia has cannibalized its other three fleets (Northern Fleet, Baltic Fleet, and Pacific Fleet) and its one flotilla (the Caspian Flotilla) to reinforce the Black Sea Fleet and support its Ukraine effort, and, with Turkey closing the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to the Mediterranean in early March to incoming military vessels under the 1936 Montreux Convention, that Caspian Flotilla is the only possible source of reinforcements to what is in the Black Sea, coming in though canal from the Caspian Sea, as other possible reinforcements coming in from the Mediterranean are now blocked.

    As far as sizable surface ships in the Black Sea, by mid-March there were only twenty-one, according to a “senior defense official”: just twelve naval-combat-focused ships along with nine amphibious assault ships, accompanied by numerous far smaller patrol and support boats and, of course, submarines that are harder to track.

    But that total was before the daring Ukrainian strike on the morning of March 24, which mysteriously destroyed a large Russian amphibious ship, the now sunk Alligator class Saratov,docked in the eastern Ukrainian Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk. Two other large amphibious ships, the Caesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk, were damaged and fled the port.

    So scratch one, Russia is down now to just twenty major surface vessels.

    That is not a large number.

    I had finished a version of this section before yesterday’s information that the UK and U.S. would be sending anti-ship missiles to Ukraine. But, for now, keep that low number of major Russian surface ships in mind when considering following:

    For starters, as my old War Is Boring editor David Axe notes in detail, Ukraine has been developing its own anti-ship cruise missile, the Neptune, since 2013. It began testing in 2018, and has since tested successfully repeatedly. The system has a range of 174-180 miles (280-300 km) and operates as a sea-skimmer, flying low and close to the water to make it almost undetectable until just before it hits its target. It was scheduled to be deployed this month with a full division of six launchers, seventy-two cruise missiles (more than three for each remaining major Russian surface vessel), and accompanying radar systems. But Russia’s seems to have derailed this timetable, and it is unclear when it will be able to safely deploy its system and have it and its crews be operational. Details are few and far between as Ukraine obviously would want to keep Russia guessing.

    Secondly, this must have been part of the discussion over the past month between Ukraine and NATO nations, and taking into account the issues with the Neptunes, NATO has been working to arm Ukraine with anti-ship missiles for weeks. Reports from early April indicated United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been keen to arm Ukraine with anti-ship missiles, that these would most likely be truck-mounted versions of its U.S.-supplied Harpoon missiles, its version having a range of 80 miles (128 km) and also capable of hitting land targets (Ukraine has actually been asking for these for some time).

    Snip.

    Russian Naval forces are hardly concentrating along the Turkish coast of the southern Black Sea: they are mostly, perhaps virtually all, off the coast of Ukraine to varying degrees in the northern half of the Black Sea or Sea of Azov, trying to offer support and, presumably, debating whether or not to launch amphibious assaults, particularly on Ukraine’s main port in its West, Odesa (the fact that they have not yet shows how confident they are in such an assault’s chances of success; Putin may not care much about throwing his soldiers’ lives away recklessly, but his larger naval vessels are expensive and take time to construct)…

    Ukraine would have excellent coverage with many of these systems. For most of these systems, many, perhaps even all, of Russia’s twenty remaining large warships in the region—including Russia’s most powerful naval ship, the Slava class cruiser Moskva—are well within striking range from Ukrainian-controlled territory. Even if Ukraine will receive only Harpoons, though they have much smaller range than the Neptunes, they should effectively prevent any Russian naval assaults if the Russians are smart (but they are not). After such Harpoons would arrive, they would still secure Ukrainian coastline and push Russian naval operating areas far from Ukrainian-controlled coastal territory (unless Russia is stupid and keeps its ships within range, inviting their destruction) all while, presumably, the Neptune rollout, training, and deployment finishes, possibly in just a few weeks if the invasion has not derailed Ukraine’s timetable.

    At this crucial moment, when Russia is desperate to turn the tide in the face of its massive failures, the soon-to-arrive unspecified anti-ship missiles have effectively killed any realistic Russian hope of a successful naval assault on Odesa or elsewhere on the Crimea-to-Moldova (where Russia illegally has some military forces in another breakaway region, Transnistria) corridor. These missiles will either prevent any assault from happening or virtually doom any would-be assault. This new round of aid with these anti-ship missiles has, thus, basically closed the gap between the Russians collapsing on three fronts and the Neptunes’ presumed deployment.

    If (and hopefully when) Neptunes can be eventually deployed, a large portion of the entire Black Sea, including both the west and east coasts of Russian-occupied Crimea—where many of Russia’s naval vessels are based and resupplied—as well as the Sea of Azov, would be vulnerable.

  • And then, five days later, this happened.

    A Russian warship that was damaged by an explosion on Wednesday has sunk, Russia’s defence ministry has said.

    Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was being towed to port when “stormy seas” caused it to sink, according to a ministry message.

    The 510-crew missile cruiser was a symbol of Russia’s military power, leading its naval assault on Ukraine.

    Kyiv says its missiles hit the warship. The United States says it also believes it was hit by Ukrainian missiles.

    Moscow has not reported any attack – it says the vessel sank after a fire.

    The blaze caused the explosion of the warship’s ammunition, Russia says, adding that the entire crew were later evacuated to nearby Russian vessels in the Black Sea.

    How bad is the truth when the lie is “No, we screwed up and sunk our own ship through gross incompetence!”

  • Ukraine not only shot down a Russian Su-35 fighter, they recovered the long-range targeting system and are turning it over to the U.S. for analysis. And the Chinese use the same system…
  • Thread: “Where is the Russian Army artillery ammunition they are fighting their “Donbas Set Piece Battle” with?”
  • The Javelin is pummeling Russian armor. Can production keep up?

    Congress is asking the Pentagon whether the Defense Production Act, or DPA, should be invoked to ensure supplies of Javelin anti-tank missile systems, as well as Stinger surface-to-air missiles, continue to flow to Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have used both of these weapons to great effect in their ongoing defense against Russia’s onslaught. At the same time, questions are growing about the U.S. defense industry’s ability to meet increased demand for these missiles, not just from Ukraine, but in the event that the U.S. military needs to acquire more of them quickly during a major future conflict.

    “To produce more of the Javelins, Stingers – all the stocks that we are using and diminishing and running low on and our allies, as well – shouldn’t we be applying the Defense Production Act?” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing today.

    This is a stupid question. Production for high tech weapons is dependent on a wide variety of high tech components, any of which might be from outside the country, and which might or might not have considerable production lead times. If they used custom, MilSpec chips, the wait time right now is about 26 weeks on average, and the fab may or may not be based in the U.S. Optical components may also have long lead times.

  • Another day, another Russian general whacked. “The authorities confirmed the death of the deputy commander of the 8th Army, Major General Vladimir Petrovich Frolov. About it informs press office of the governor’s office.”
  • Russian troops demoralized?

  • They certainly seem to have been lied to.

  • And some are apparently refusing to return to combat.

    Putin’s call for more troops has not had the desired effect so far of inspiring Russians to enlistment offices. It’s certainly not convincing veterans to return for more of the “special military operation” non-war that Putin’s not winning, even if he isn’t quite losing it yet:

    Yelena’s son, Pavel, was serving in the Far Eastern Amur region when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Almost immediately, his unit was sent to the front, and he served almost 40 days in combat. Then his unit was sent back to Russia to regroup, Yelena told RFE/RL’s North.Realities. When his unit was preparing to return to Ukraine, Pavel refused.

    “If he doesn’t want to go back, am I supposed to push him, to tell him, ‘Grab your weapon and go,’” Yelena said. “Those who haven’t been there have no right judge those who have.”

    Yelena’s son is one of a significant but unknown number of Russian contract soldiers who have refused to either fight in Ukraine in the first place or who have fought and do not want to return.

    Lawyer Pavel Chikov, founder of the Agora legal-aid NGO, has written on Telegram that more than 1,000 military personnel and National Guard troops from at least seven regions have refused to go to Ukraine.

  • Did Russian troops massacre over 300 civilians in Bucha?

    Monday’s front pages are dominated by stories of alleged atrocities carried out by the Russian military on civilians in Ukraine.

    Under the headline “Horror in Bucha”, the Guardian reports mass graves have been found in the town north-west of the capital Kyiv, as well as evidence of the killing of civilians in the nearby towns of Irpin and Hostomel.

    The attacks have led Ukraine’s foreign minister to brand Russia being as being worse than infamous terrorist group Isis, the Metro reports.

    The paper says the atrocities were “evidenced in pictures too horrific to print”, including the public execution of handcuffed people and civilians who had been driven over by tanks.

    The Daily Mirror leads with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s accusations that the deaths amount to genocide and that the Russian military was attempting an “elimination of the people” of Ukraine.

    The paper adds the executions apparently carried out by retreating troops led to 300 civilians being killed in Bucha alone.

    The Times reports world leaders have demanded Russian President Vladimir Putin should face more stringent sanctions and be prosecuted for war crimes.

    The paper says its reporters visited the sites of two “execution-style” massacres in Bucha, where Russian troops were also accused of rape and of booby-trapping dead bodies with explosives.

    Historically Russian soldiers have never been known for their tender sensibilities and strong sense of self-control…

  • More atrocity reports here.
  • Thread on Russia changing its tune Bucha massacre.
  • Russian column of tanks near Donetsk destroyed.
  • How various air cargo carriers have reacted to the Russo-Ukrainian war.
  • “Exiled oligarch calls on other Russian tycoons to break with Putin. Mikhail Khodorkovsky says they must denounce the invasion of Ukraine if they want to be above suspicion of collaborating with the Kremlin.” Good luck with that, but I wouldn’t bet the hastily privatized collective farm on it…
  • Especially when they turn up dead.

  • Though he’s not the only one calling for reform:

  • It’s good to have wealthy friends.

  • File this one under “possible but skeptical”:

  • “Russia’s 331st Guards Parachute Regiment is considered ‘the best of the best’, but BBC Newsnight has been tracing the casualties as the unit battles through Ukraine.”

  • You know my summary above about how Russia has abandoned Ukraine’s northeast? Well, they reportedly plastered Sumy with an artillery barrage today, so take all generalities with a grain of salt.
  • I totally want these:

  • The Red Dawn “Wolverines!” tank is real:

  • When France 24 does a profile on how sanctions are hurting average Russians, of course they’re going to include the shop that sells French wine.
  • Heh:

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 2 Comments »

    Why Are Russia’s Arms Sucking So Badly?

    Saturday, April 23rd, 2022

    So why is Russian miltech performing so badly in Ukraine? In addition to some of the reasons we’ve already covered, this video provides additional answers (skip to 1:35 in to avoid the sponsor blather).

  • Russia has 2.5 to 3 million people in arms manufacturing, “20% of the country’s industrial jobs.”
  • “We all thought Russia had the military muscle to be able to take over Ukraine in a matter of days. However, the real way to test a country’s military power is not in a parade but a war. And with the invasion of Ukraine we are seeing something that has become the norm in the Russian economy. Something like an Expectation vs Reality meme.”
  • 60% failure rate for some Russian missiles?
  • “After a month of the Ukraine invasion, we can say it clearly: Russian armament falls far behind the expectations and hype they had created.”
  • Modernization of the armed forces was supposedly a priority for Putin, with up to 5% of GDP spent on defense.
  • Russia should theoretically have military equipment better than anyone but the U.S.
  • One reason they don’t: Attempted capitalism without privately owned arms companies.
  • “The Soviet military industry was full of unprofitable State enterprises, obsolete factories and, above all, a great deal of corruption.”
  • The U.S. bids out contracts. The Soviets depended on state monopolies.
  • “Russia has never embraced free market capitalism.”

  • According to Vladimir Putin, the problem with communism was not the centralized economy but an economy based on ideological principles. In other words, if you want to improve the efficiency of the system, it is enough to change the managers and put technocrats in charge. Technocrats who have been forged in the bosom of the KGB and who have a pragmatic mentality, totally free of the romanticism of communism or any other ideology. This type of person has a name: “SILOVIKI”. And so, just what was Putin’s formula for bringing his military industry into the 21st century? Very simple: To put Silovikis in all managerial positions. This is how Rostec was conceived in 2007, a conglomerate of companies designed to be the great umbrella of Russian defense. Under this umbrella are more than 700 armaments companies: all of them State-owned. By grouping companies together, a lot of duplication can be eliminated. All following purely technocratic criteria. And who is the CEO of Rostec? None other than Sergey Chemezov, who was a colleague of Vladimir Putin himself when they were both in the KGB offices in East Germany. In other words, a textbook SILOVIKI.

    Yes, in this, as in many other areas, Putin is a complete dumbass.

  • “By acquiring more and more companies, Rostec has ended up consolidating even more monopolies. For example: fighter jets. The United States works with four major manufacturers: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Airbus (Yes, Airbus is European but it also has contracts with Washington). In the case of Russia, practically all fighter jets are manufactured by the same company: UAC which, of course, is under the umbrella of Rostec.”
  • “Another major Russian defense company is Almaz-Antey. This company does not depend on Rostec but is directly owned by the Russian Ministry of Finance. The CEO of this company is another textbook Siloviki. In this case we are talking about Viktor Ivanov, another former KGB agent. Almaz-Antey is the giant where NPO Novator, the manufacturer of almost all Russian precision missiles, is located. Yes, those very missiles that are proving to be so flawed in the invasion of Ukraine.” Try to contain your shock.
  • “In 2017, NPO Novator could only produce 60 Kalibr missiles in six months. As you can imagine, these figures are ridiculous if we take into account that, in just one month of war, Russia has launched more than 1,200 missiles.”
  • I know you’ll also be shocked to learn that Yevgeny Prigoshin, another friend of Putin’s, was in charged of the company responsible for providing expired food to Russian troops. “As Alexei Navalny reported, Prigozhin dodged all public tender systems to become the army’s caterer. Today, Navalny is in jail and Russian soldiers are receiving expired cans of food.”
  • Russia hasn’t achieved air supremacy because Russia doesn’t have enough precision munitions for its planes to use, which is why they do stupid things like hit hospitals with dumb bombs and fly low enough to be shot down. “Russia’s best planes are dropping like flies because they don’t have adequate ammunition.”
  • “Are you really saying that the Russians are stupid and have gone to war without ammunition? Well, no: the problem is not that the Russians are stupid. The problem is that a political system with bad incentives generates nothing but failure.”
  • In closing, he wonders just how well-maintained those nuclear weapons and ICBMs are.

    • All this accords with what we have observed in Russia’s operation failures, and with what we know about the basic incompetence and economic misallocation of command economies.

    (Sorry about the delay in getting this up. BlueHost was down earlier today.)

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Communism, Military, video | 18 Comments »

    Narco Tanks of Mexico

    Thursday, April 21st, 2022

    Time to do a report on a war theater where heavily armored vehicles shoot it out with each other in city streets: Mexico.

    (You were thinking Ukraine? Probably an update on that next week.)

    Cartel violence waxes and wanes, and regular readers know that the cartels are heavily armed. Even so, it may come as a shock to many that Mexican drug cartels have their own “tanks” (AKA “Monstruo”), i.e. up-armored civilian vehicles more accurately described as technicals or armored cars.

    Mexican police recently captured one in Jalisco.

    Mexico’s Guardia Nacional in Jalisco have captured a homemade ‘narco tank’ thought to be used by one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels.

    The officials shared the news to Twitter after it was found in the area of Jalisco on 12 April.

    According to the Mexican police, the vehicle was harbouring 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

    In Texas, we call that “a good start.”

    The heavy metal plated vehicle is thought to be owned by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion [CJNG], who operate in the area, as reported by The Star.

    Painted green to blend in with surroundings, the tank is heavily armoured, with protective metal casing around the driver’s sider.

    Publication Borderland Beat noted that the tank was discovered while being transported inside of a trailer.

    The trailer limitation is probably why it seems unusually narrow.

    Here’s a video covering various captured cartel narco tanks (though the voice-over isn’t the best).

    Here’s a shorter video from several years ago showing various monstruos, mainly from the 2010-2011 timeframe.

    This video shows still more footage, including (about 1:50 in) modern CJNG vehicles that not only look more professionally constructed, but have red-blue flashing lights and a cartel logo on the side, which does rather suggest they’re not trying to keep a low profile. Also includes combat footage of CJNG blowing away Northeast Cartel (CDN) rivals through their own gunholes.

    Here’s a tweet that shows video of two other captured Nueva Generacion vehicles in 2019:

    And here’s one with a handy diagram:

    Some enterprising hobby company could probably sell models of these things…

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Military | 5 Comments »

    Is China Screwed?

    Thursday, April 14th, 2022

    Here are two videos where Peter Zeihan argues that China is screwed for many reasons, not least of which is demographics.

    Takeaways:

  • One child per couple means that China is “the fastest aging society in human history, with the largest sex imbalance in human history.”
  • “They’ve run out of people of childbearing age.”
  • They were going shrink in half by 2100. “Then they realized that they had been overcounting people for some time.” Then new data moved the date moved up to 2070. And now they’re saying it will be 2050. “For that to be true, the Chinese would have overcounted the population by 100 million.” And all of those missing people are of childbearing age.
  • Their population actually peaked 15 years ago.
  • “We’ve seen a 12-fold increase in Chinese labor costs since 1991.”
  • “China isn’t getting rich, it’s getting old.” They’re facing demographic collapse within a decade.
  • Xi’s instituted a cult of personality, and silenced anyone capable of independent thought. “He knows that the country’s current economic model has failed. And he knows he can’t guarantee economic growth, and he knows he can’t keep the lights on, and he knows he can’t win a war with the Americans.”
  • Xi’s solution? “Naked, blatant, ultra nationalism. Ethnocentric ultranationalism of the Nazi style.”
  • At the top, they don’t care about keeping the lights on. “A third of the country is facing power rationing.”
  • “These are the sorts of things that you do if you know that the bottom’s falling out and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you have to shift the conversation to remain in power.”
  • “In China, money is a political good. It exists to serve the needs of the CCP.”
  • “All of the economic growth we have seen in China since 2006 is because of debt.”
  • Corporate debt is 350% of GDP, “making China the most indebted country in human history in both absolute and relative terms.” Every country that’s come within half of this has collapsed under the debt load.
  • I’m omitting discussion of how China is screwed on semiconductors (covered enough here), and also the possibility of invading Taiwan (this video was released late last year, before Russia invaded Ukraine).
  • “The Biden administration in bits and pieces is redefining strategic ambiguity, and it’s not clear to me what the endgame is here.” Well, there’s a whole lot that isn’t clear about the Biden Administration…
  • Zeihan thinks Biden might recognize Taiwan for a foreign policy win. Zeihan also thinks that both China and Russia are so weak we can wait them out. (Remember: Pre-Ukraine invasion.)
  • Zeihan dismissive of both Obama and Trump foreign policy.
  • “Joe Biden has been on the wrong side and the right side of every foreign policy decision the U.S. has made in the last 45 years, because he doesn’t have any core beliefs he tacks with the wind.”

    • Now let’s forward to March 24, where Russia’s colossal failure in Ukraine has actually made China even more screwed.

    Takeaways:

  • The biggest damage that we are seeing from the Ukraine war (outside of Ukraine, obviously) is in China. Because in one month the Russians have pulled back the blinders on what has been a 50-year strategic program, the idea that China can come to global power with American sponsorship, with American indifference, that it can take Taiwan, that it can intimidate Japan, that they can dominate all of east Asia and yet not suffer economically at all. It was always ridiculous, but now it’s been shown to just be absolutely stupid.

  • No one can escape the power of global markets because of trade.
  • “The yuan is only traded internally because it’s the most manipulated currency in history. The euro confiscates bank deposits to pay for bailouts.”
  • Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporter, and it can’t export more to China because the pipes that go east don’t interconnect with the ones that go west. “The rail lines are already beyond capacity.”
  • In the west: “One way or another, those pipes aren’t surviving this year.” (Not sure that’s correct, but I’ve long thought that we should be seeing more structure hits inside Russia than we’ve seen thus far.)
  • “The stuff that goes to the Black Sea is in a war zone, so insurance companies will not give the indemnification that is necessary for vessels to operate in that area. So the only way a ship can go and dock it overseas right now is if a country gives its sovereign indemnification and takes all the risk.”
  • Primorsk, on the Baltic, is open. However: “Ship captains for the most part are refusing to go, and European dock workers are refusing to unload the cargo when it arrives. So that is still in use but not nearly as much, maybe a quarter of what it used to be before the war started.”
  • To get more oil to China: “You would have to build a fundamentally new infrastructure from the fields in northwest Siberia to Chinese population centers that is greater than the distance from Miami to Anchorage, most of which is through virgin territory that is very rugged. That’s a 10-year program minimum even with the Chinese building it.”
  • “We’re looking at the single largest removal of crude from the market ever, and in proportional terms it’s going to have a shock somewhat similar to World War II.”

  • We have insurance companies not doing it, shipping companies not doing it, dock workers not doing it and now Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger have pulled out, and they do the technical work that makes a lot of this possible. All the super majors are gone, and we even have a couple of major projects out in Sakhalin that are probably just going to die because the Russians can’t make those projects work by themselves. Most of the oil and gas out of that goes to China, so we’re actually looking at an environment where the Chinese see reduced flows rather than increased, as Russia is just melon-scooped out of the market.

  • When the Russians fell under sanctions, everything that the Chinese thought was true about their future was laid bare as, at best, wishful thinking and bad analysis. So they are now looking east to the United States and west to the Russians in a little bit of a panic, because they are being tied indirectly to what’s going on in Ukraine. And they have now found out not only does the west’s and specifically the United States’ financial tools work very well, they now know they would work much better against China than against Russia, because at its core Russia is a commodities exporter, most notably oil, natural gas and food. China imports all those things, so if an equivalent sanctions regime was done against the Chinese, you’d have 500 million dead Chinese in less than a year from starvation.

    Here I think he overstates the case, as there are a lot of emergency avenues a communist government could pursue to stave off starvation. Like invading Mongolia and turning it into emergency farmland. Which is not to so they wouldn’t have some starvation, especially in worse-case scenarios…

  • “The Chinese have always seen themselves as anti-American [well, the commies, anyway -LP], they’ve always seen themselves as anti-Western, anti-democracy and now they’re realizing that the mood of the man in the White House determines whether their country exists.”

  • As tight as the sanctions are, as big as they’re getting, they’re nothing compared to the corporate boycotts. Almost every single company that left Russia was under no legal requirement to do so, they just didn’t want to be associated with the war. And we’re talking about those ESG, social goody two-shoes mammoth companies like Exxon and Halliburton, who are now gone, and everyone else followed. So if that happened to China, you know that’s all of their investment that matters. That’s all of their technology transfers, that’s all of their end markets. This system, if it turned against China, would be far more damning than anything we’ve seen out of Russia so far.

    • I think Zeihan overstates the case a bit, and probably immanizes the timeline of crisis more than warranted, but the demographic and economic challenges China faces are very real.

    Also keep in mind that no one in 1988 expected the Soviet Union to collapse as quickly as it did, either…

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy, Military | 36 Comments »

    Russia Reorients

    Friday, April 8th, 2022

    Just because Russia is obviously retreating from Kiev due to getting mauled doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in the argument that their biggest aims lie in eastern Ukraine. This video suggest three main remaining goals for Russian forces:

  • Restore and control the flow of water to Crimea (Ukraine dammed up the Dinappa river following the seizure of Crimea, which has put them in a world of hurt).
  • Gain control of “the Yokosuka Gas Field, which was discovered in 2010 and it has about 42 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, that could threaten Russia’s oil dominance in the region.”
  • Controlling all Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

    • More details on each in the video.

    If they can achieve those goals, if Russia can achieve capturing those three goals they will have landlocked and absolutely wrecked Ukraine’s entire economy. So when they say that the main war is in the east, they’re actually, on some level, telling the truth. The problem for Russia, though, is that without having captured Kiev their chances of holding on to those objectives is greatly reduced.

    (Between getting my house cleaned, relatives visiting (Yes, those two are related), and tax season, no time to put up a LinkSwarm today. Tomorrow is not looking good either…)

    Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 2 Comments »

    Know Who’s Bummed About Russia’s Military Failure In Ukraine? China

    Wednesday, April 6th, 2022

    A goodly part of the world is pleased about the manifest failure of Vlad’s Big Ukraine Adventure, some are indifferent to it, but only Russia, client-state Syria, and puppet-state Belarus really seem upset about it.

    Know who else is bummed? China.

    Operation Desert Storm was a turning point in modern Chinese military history. As military planners with the People’s Liberation Army watched U.S. and allied forces make short work of the world’s fourth-largest military (on paper), equipped with many of the same systems as the PLA, it became obvious that China’s quantitatively superior but qualitatively lacking massed infantry would stand no chance against the combination of modern weaponry, C4ISR, and joint operations seen in Iraq. The result was new military concepts and over two decades of often-difficult reforms, which produced the modern, far more capable, “informationized” PLA of today.

    Today, the PLA is no doubt closely observing its Russian contemporaries in Ukraine as they under-perform in multiple areas, from failing to take key targets or claim air supremacy to running low on fuel and supplies and possibly experiencing morale collapse, and surely taking away lessons that will shape its own future. Of note, Russia’s experience appears to have confirmed many of China’s recent assumptions behind its investments, such as the utility of unmanned aerial systems in high-intensity conflict, as well as the necessity for the PLA’s 2015 reforms, which aim to fix many of the issues driving Russian failure that the PLA recognizes in itself.

    Of the many issues that have contributed to Russia’s physical battlefield woes in Ukraine, one of the most important has been the lack of effective joint or combined arms operations, widely considered essential to any effective modern fighting force. Russia’s poor level of coordination between its various services and branches can only be generously described as incompetent. For example, it has repeatedly failed to provide effective air support to its ground forces or deconflict its air and air-defense forces to avoid friendly fire.

    The PLA has long had its own serious issues with joint operations. Traditionally dominated by the Army, the PLA had little success developing a truly joint force until a series of sweeping reforms in 2015 that replaced the former Army-dominated system with a series of joint theater commands. The PLA is thus aware of its own shortcomings and taking steps to fix it, but likely remains far off from being able to conduct truly effective, seamless joint operations. Efforts to conduct joint exercises are becoming more common, but most senior PLA leaders are still relatively inexperienced with joint operations, and even new officers typically do not receive joint education below the corps level. Further, it remains to be seen how far these reforms will go or to what extent they will “stick;” indeed, one reason the PLA did not attempt these reforms until 2015 was because of strong institutional pushback from the Army, whose leaders wished to retain their dominant status.

    To China, the Ukraine invasion will reinforce the importance of joint and combined arms operations, while also making clear that such operations are highly difficult to conduct in practice. Russia’s stumbles may give the PLA pause as to whether it is truly ready for all the joint elements that a successful Taiwan seizure would require, including close coordination between sea, air, and land forces.

    As well they should be. Russia shares a giant land border with Ukraine, was able to through something like 150,000 troops into the fight, and still got mauled while failing to meet their initial objectives. A giant land border is world’s away from having to conduct fiercely contested landing operations against the heavily defended island of a sophisticated, technological peer foe who’s had over half a century to prepare.

    Also, it can’t be encouraging that Russia was unable to hold control of Hostemel Airport during the early stages of the war, since airport seizures for an airbridge into Taiwan has played a large role in many wargamed invasion scenarios.

    Some paragraphs on conscript armies and information warfare skipped.

    China has also taken note of Russia’s disasterous logistics:

    Another ongoing issue has been Russia’s serious problems with poor logistics. The sight of broken-down or abandoned vehicles has become common as Russian forces run out of fuel and other vital supplies. To its credit, the PLA has also been rapidly reforming and modernizing its logistical system as part of the same broad set of 2015 reforms. As part of these reforms, the PLA has emphasized its logistics organizations and created the Joint Logistics Support Force. This force’s training has focused on cooperation with other branches of the PLA, and it has cut its teeth training to establish supply lines during natural disasters. In 2018, the JLSF launched its first major exercise, dubbed “Joint Logistics Support Mission 2018,” featuring medical drones, helicopter-dropped refueling depots, and operations in harsh and remote terrain.

    Hey, remember all that stuff I said about long land borders vs. amphibious and airborne invasion? It applies double (if not quadruple) for logistics. China can’t assume it will have complete air and sea control of the Taiwan strait, and it’s really hard to run an invasion if you’ve run out of ammo, food and fuel.

    However, while the outward manifestation of many of the issues faced by the Russian military appear to be logistical in nature, the true heart of the issue may be corruption. There are reports that before the invasion Russian military officers sold off their fuel and food supplies, and that these corrupt practices may be responsible for the stalling of a Russian tank column outside Kyiv. In this regard, the PLA has much to fear. Corruption has plagued the PLA for decades, with some PLA officers bluntly stating in 2015 that it could undermine China’s ability to wage war. Reportedly, more than 13,000 PLA officers have been punished in some capacity for corruption since Xi Jinping took power, including more than a hundred generals. This was a particular problem in the logistics sector, where there are more opportunities for corruption and links to the civilian economy.

    Yet, despite the reorganization of the PLA and widespread prosecution of corruption cases, it still appears to be a major issue. Anti-corruption efforts are ongoing, with Chinese Gen. Zhang Youxia recently calling for innovative measures to keep up the fight. But the fact that Fu Zhenghua, the man brought in to take down the corrupt former security chief Zhou Yongkang, is himself now under investigation for corruption does not bode well for the long-term effectiveness of China’s efforts. The troubled invasion of Ukraine provides a stark real-world example to Xi, the CCP, and PLA about the impact corruption can have on military effectiveness, and will no doubt cause them to redouble their anti-corruption efforts with a newfound urgency. However given its similar authoritarian system and emphasis on career advancement through patronage, systemic corruption may be baked into the system.

    China without corruption is like Norway without snow.

    But not everything is that’s made life difficult for Russia will apply to China.

    While China will benefit from Russia’s increasing reliance on its goods and services, Beijing can be expected to retool its geo-economic strategy to reduce its vulnerability to a similar nightmare scenario. For example, it will likely redouble its efforts to promote its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System—an alternative to the SWIFT international banking system—among its strategic partners and foreign aid recipients in the developing world.

    Likewise, China’s recent “Dual Circulation” economic strategy appears to be aimed at countering a decoupling from China’s trade partners. Further, Beijing has surely observed how easy it was for corporations to withdraw from Moscow. If China is to be exposed to the risk of global sanctions and corporate withdrawal, so too are countries and corporations exposed to dependence on the world’s second-largest economy, and thus the government will likely take efforts to make any sanctions or corporate turn against China as painful a prospect as possible. Either way, policymakers in Washington need to understand that the sanctions being used today against Russia are unlikely be as effective the next time around, as China is not just a different economy, but also will learn from the current conflict and adjust accordingly.

    This is undoubtedly true, and China has a much broader and more modern economic and industrial base with which to wage war. All the more reason for America to bring critical manufacturing and other economic business outsourced to China back home.

    For all these valuable lessons, there is little doubt that China has been watching the ongoing conflict with no small amount of chagrin. Chinese leaders are reportedly surprised and unsettled by the poor military performance of its Russian partners, Ukraine’s resistance, and the level of solidarity from the international community. The image of a much smaller state, against all odds, successfully resisting a larger neighbor surely sits uneasily in the psyches of CCP apparatchiks and PLA officials. It also counters the narrative of overwhelming force and grim inevitability Beijing has sought to instill in the psyches of the Taiwanese people. It is notable that early attempts by Chinese state media to capitalize on the Ukraine invasion in precisely this fashion, illustrating how the United States will surely abandon Taiwan when the chips are down, quietly ceased after the initial days of the war, when it became apparent that the U.S. was not, in fact, abandoning Ukraine. Beyond purely psychological factors, Ukraine also offers a blueprint for successful resistance via asymmetric warfare very similar to Taiwan’s proposed Overall Defense Concept, perhaps giving a jolt to a plan that most analysts agree offers Taiwan its best chance of success against the PLA but has stalled out in the face of bureaucratic resistance.

    While China and the PLA will surely watch Ukraine closely and try to take away the correct lessons, there is one uncomfortable parallel which China may be unable to avoid by the very nature of its authoritarian system. The runup to the Ukraine invasion featured multiple strategic miscalculations by Putin, driven at least in part by him surrounding himself with the yes-men who inevitably cling to authoritarian leaders, eager to please and afraid to speak truth to power. This was obvious in the visibly uncomfortable reaction of Russia’s SVR (foreign intelligence) chief as he was publicly pressured to agree with Putin in the days leading up to the war, as well as in the sackings and arrests of multiple military and intelligence officials after the war turned poorly. Authoritarian leaders have systemic problems in gaining reliable intelligence, oftentimes magnified by their overconfidence in their own singular understanding of a situation. As China continues its slide away from a system of intra-Party consensus toward a one-man cult of personality in which dissenting views are increasingly unwelcome, Xi is bound to encounter the same problem. It is unclear whether Xi will learn this lesson from Putin, or make his own similar miscalculations in the future towards China’s own neighbors.

    Dictatorships (especially communist dictatorships) greatly increase the possibility of a “Thermocline of Truth” building up between bad news and fawning yes-men fearful of making the dictator angry. There’s very little reason to believe that Xi Jinping’s chain of command suffers from the problem any less than Putin’s.

    In war, comforting lies will get your ass kicked.

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, Military | 6 Comments »

    Is Russia Running Out Of Troops?

    Monday, April 4th, 2022

    Ukraine is often depicted as David up against Russia’ Goliath, but this analyst argues the situation is closer to the reverse when it comes to in-theater manpower:

    Some takeaways:

  • Russia didn’t anticipate Ukraine undertaking mass mobilization, and now finds itself outnumbered. “There’s a fair chance the number will get even more lopsided.”
  • Estimates for losses on each side are hard. Guestimate: 11,000 Russians dead, 9,000 Ukrainians.

  • Add in captured troops and those wounded enough to be out of combat yields about 39,000 Russians out of action. “That’s a lot. It’s about 21% of the Russian starting force.”
  • Not referenced in the video, but: “Pentagon officials say a 10 percent casualty rate, including dead and wounded, for a single unit renders it unable to carry out combat-related tasks.” Though I’ve seen higher numbers (20-30%) elsewhere.
  • Ukrainian losses are probably around 6%.
  • “Russian losses have a higher percentage of professional soldiers.”
  • Offensive operations produce higher casualties than defense.
  • “Ukraine is vast. It’s bigger than France. [It] had more than 40 million people before the war.”
  • By March 15, Ukraine had hit its planned reserve call-up troop level of 130,000. Add in volunteers, foreign fighters, National Guard, etc., Ukraine may have as many as 400,000 troops (with various levels of training) under arms.
  • Ukraine could potentially have 750,000 troops under arms by July.
  • “Russia is unable to seriously increase the number of its troops in Ukraine. That is because Russia is evidently fearful of sending its conscripts into battle.”
  • After a small number of conscript units got mauled, Putin promised that no more conscripts would be sent.
  • The “Russia has a million man army” figure is misleading. Ground troops only total some 360,000 troops across the entire country, many of which are conscripts.
  • Russia can’t afford to pull every single competent ground troop from every corner of its country and send them to Ukraine. He could maybe get another 10-20,000 professional troops, but those would only be compensating for existing losses.
  • Russia has 35,000 local fighters in Donbas, but they’re not equipped to go on big offensives.
  • Belarus is unlikely to get involved, and may be more trouble than it’s worth, because their army is heavily made up of conscripts. “Fewer than 10,000 troops.” And the political repercussions could be costly.

  • But for Russia to have some chance of continuing to push inside Ukraine under the present conditions – where arms aid is flowing into Ukraine, and where morale issues are widespread within the Russian army – many more soldiers are an absolute must. If Russia does decide to send in conscripts or even the national guard, those would likely be kept back, to keep securing the taken areas. But for that the frontline needs to fully consolidate, without so many Ukrainian pockets of resistance. And still, the domestic political fallout of such a move might be deeply destabilizing.

  • Russia currently seems to be unwilling to increase its numbers in Ukraine above 200,000.
  • “For Ukraine, this war IS what the great patriotic war was for the Soviet Union in 1941.”
  • “With time, further troops and more weapons, Ukraine’s army may try to pressure even those consolidated Russian positions in the east and south.”

    • If there’s a flaw in this analysis, it’s that Putin could change his mind about using conscripts in a heartbeat. But Russia has had huge problems feeding and resupplying it’s existing army. Until that problem is fixed. more conscripts would mean throwing more badly-trained and ill-equipped troops into the meat grinder.

    Tags:, , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 8 Comments »

    Is Russia’s Military Running Out Of Equipment And Spare Parts?

    Sunday, April 3rd, 2022

    Is Russia’s military running out of the equipment, spare parts and supplies necessary to maintain their war in Ukraine? Some reports say so, suggesting it’s because the parts are made in Ukrainian factories.

    Vladimir Putin is said to be running out of missiles, tanks and aircraft, because the parts they rely on are made in Ukraine.

    The engines of Russian military helicopters and key components for warships, cruise missiles and the majority of the nation’s fighter jets are all made in Ukrainian factories, the Telegraph reports.

    The factories, which also produce parts for tanks and ground to air missiles, no longer supply Mr Putin’s army.

    I’ve got to take this report with several grains of salt, because I assume those same factories must have stopped supplying Russia with spare parts after the seizure of Crimea and invasion of Donbas back in March of 2014. Are we to believe that Russia has failed to find alternate manufacturing sources for key military equipment for eight years? Russia’s invasion has displayed multiple levels of manifest incompetence, but it’s hard to believe they would be that incompetent for that long. (Now, could spare parts not exist due to massive corruption? That seems plausible, but it’s not the kind of thing you can count on your opponent suffering from.)

    The army is also understood to be running low on arms following five weeks of sustained bombardment of Ukrainian cities.

    This, on the other hand, seems quite plausible, given the well-documented logistical difficulties, and the furious rate at which Russian forces expended munitions during the initial assault.

    The T-72 battle tank is one of the Russian army’s main armoured vehicles but, parts for it are understood to be manufactured in Izyum, an eastern Ukrainian city that Mr Putin’s forces have failed to capture.

    The T-72 has been around since 1969. I can believe some of the high tech components for the most modern variants are in short supply, but surely they’ve have multiple source for the vast majority of mechanical parts for a long time now. And even if not, they built some 25,000 of the things, so I can’t imagine they don’t have enough mothballed tanks to provide spares, though it’s going to take time to get cannibalized parts out to field repair centers. (I’m assuming Russia has some sort of field repair capabilities, and I know Russian tank recovery vehicles were spotted on trains en-route to the theater before the war began.)

    Open-source intelligence estimates suggest that Russia has lost at least 2,000 tanks and armoured vehicles, although true figures are suspected to be higher.

    This I just flat out don’t believe. And indeed, when you go to what appears to be their primary source, they’re including a whole lot of trucks in that list, which aren’t counted as “armored vehicles.” The lesson here is “don’t believe anything that sounds too good to be true” and “always check the primary sources.”

    Speaking of primary sources, that Oryx blog list does look pretty useful, though the nature of the methodology (adding up all pictures of destroyed equipment) is certainly suspect to manipulation.

    Their summary line for Russian equipment losses as of this post “Russia – 2360, of which: destroyed: 1190, damaged: 41, abandoned: 232, captured: 897.”

    Here are the individual type breakdown lines:

    Tanks (405, of which destroyed: 190, damaged: 6, abandoned: 42, captured: 167)
    Armoured Fighting Vehicles (274, of which destroyed: 129, abandoned: 32, captured: 113)
    Infantry Fighting Vehicles (392, of which destroyed: 216, damaged: 2, abandoned: 31, captured: 142)
    Armoured Personnel Carriers (81, of which destroyed: 21, damaged: 1, abandoned: 17, captured: 42)
    Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles (17, of which destroyed: 9, abandoned: 3, captured: 5)
    Infantry Mobility Vehicles (76, of which destroyed: 43, damaged: 2, abandoned: 5, captured: 24)
    Communications Stations (15, of which destroyed: 4, abandoned: 5, captured: 6)
    Engineering Vehicles And Equipment (78, of which destroyed: 23, abandoned: 13, captured: 37)
    Heavy Mortars (11, of which destroyed: 3, captured: 8)
    Towed Artillery (47, of which destroyed: 9, damaged: 4, abandoned: 5, captured: 29)
    Self-Propelled Artillery (72, of which destroyed: 25, damaged: 3, abandoned: 14, captured: 29)
    Multiple Rocket Launchers (45, of which destroyed: 18, abandoned: 5, captured: 23)
    Anti-Aircraft Guns (3, of which captured: 3)
    Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Guns (11, of which destroyed: 5, abandoned: 3, captured: 3)
    Surface-To-Air Missile Systems (42, of which destroyed: 22, damaged: 1, abandoned: 7, captured: 12)
    Radars (4, of which destroyed: 1, captured: 3)
    Jammers And Deception Systems (6, of which destroyed: 2, damaged: 2, captured: 2)
    Aircraft (19, of which destroyed: 18, damaged: 1)
    Helicopters (38, of which destroyed: 33, damaged: 3, abandoned: 1, captured: 1)
    Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (21, of which destroyed: 14, captured: 7)
    Naval Ships (3, of which destroyed: 1, damaged: 2)
    Logistics Trains (2, of which destroyed: 2)
    Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps (698, of which destroyed: 401, damaged: 16, abandoned: 59, captured: 210)

    (An aside: You’ve got to hand it to those Russian miltech geeks who look at this:

    And confidently declare “Oh, those are two destroyed 120mm 2B11/2S12 heavy mortars!” That’s some #DavesCarIDService level obsession there…)

    Keep in mind that Russia only had some 2,500 tanks assigned to active units at the start of the war (though other estimates are considerably higher). But given well-documented Russian maintenance problems, I can well believe several units have sustained losses in excess of that necessary to impair combat effectiveness.

    Keep in mind that the Soviet Union lost 83,500 tanks between 1941 and 1945 in World War II. Of course, that was a much broader theater, using much more widely-produced, low-tech tanks. Hell, two-way radios didn’t become standard Soviet equipment until 1944.

    For high tech munitions like smart bombs and guided missiles, I can well believe that Russia is running low on stock that can’t easily be replenished under the current sanctions regime. And we see ample evidence that field resupply has been negatively impacted by severe logistical difficulties. But “T-72s lack spare parts because the original factory was in Ukraine” doesn’t pass the smell test.

    Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 7 Comments »

    Is The Army Finally Ready To Pull The Trigger On 6.8mm TVCM?

    Saturday, April 2nd, 2022

    The light recoil of the 5.56 NATO round has helped make AR-pattern rifles a favorite of the civilian market, but the military has been looking for a rifle round with more punch for a while. Now they’re evidently moving forward with the replacement:

    Buried deep within the DoD FY23 budget request by weapon system, the US Army has officially chosen the contractor(s) for the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program.

    NGSW is a prototyping effort by the Army that consists of a new rifle (NGSW-R) and automatic rifle (NGSW-AR), chambered in a new high tech 6.8mm cartridge, set to replace the aging M16, M4A1 Carbines and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, chambered in a 5.56 NATO round.

    The NGSW has been in competitive prototyping testing with three defense firms, including SIG Sauer, General Dynamics – OTS, and Textron Systems.

    On page 53/106 of the budget request, the Army expects to procure 29,046 NGSWs in 2023.

    “Starts funding for the procurement and fielding of 1,704 NGSW-AR, which is the planned replacement for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) within the Close Combat Force; Procurement and fielding of 15,348 NGSW-R which is the planned replacement for the M4A1 Carbine within the Close Combat Force; and procurement and fielding of 11,994 Next Generation Squad Weapons Fire Controls,” the document read.

    If I’m reading that correctly, the “new high tech 6.8mm cartridge” would be the 6.8mm TVCM, which uses a polymer case rather than brass.

    Supposedly the round is compatible with a wide range of current weapon platforms with just a barrel swap.

    The hybrid polymer-cased cartridge, developed by Texas-based True Velocity as part of the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program, is compatible with legacy firearms as well.

    The 6.8mm TVCM composite case design, coupled with the Army’s 6.8mm (.277-caliber) common cartridge projectile, was originally developed and optimized for use in the NGSW-Rifle and NGSW-Automatic Rifle submissions submitted to that military program by General Dynamics-OTS.

    However, using what True Velocity characterizes as a “switch barrel” capability, they have demonstrated it can work with much of the Army’s currently fielded small arms including the M240B belt-fed machine gun, the M110 semi-automatic sniper system, and the M134 minigun.

    Here’s a video of test-firing the ammo in an Assault Machine Gun.

    Next Generation Squad Weapon will also be using an on-weapon ballistic computer integrated into the optics:

    “The new optic has a integrated laser range finder, wind sensor, temperature gauge, elevation sensor, and ballistic computer all rolled into one.” That is likely to be a huge boost to troop capabilities, assuming it works as planned. Like any piece of technology, expect a shakedown phase where they work out all the bugs.

    True Velocity hails from Garland, so mark that down as another win for Texas.

    If there’s a downside for the civilian market, I’m pretty sure polymer ammo is not reloadable, and certainly not with current reloading presses. On the plus side, if the army makes a big move to 6.8mm TVCM, maybe 5.56 NATO ammo will come down in price…

    Tags:, , , , , , ,
    Posted in Guns, Military, Texas, video | 7 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 1, 2022

    Friday, April 1st, 2022

    Russia pulls back, inflation soars, and the Biden Administration is all in on grooming your kids. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    Don’t forget it’s April Fools Day, so don’t take any wooden NFTs.

  • Russia has reportedly withdrawn its forces from Hostemel Airport outside Kiev.

    Russian forces have retreated from a Ukrainian airfield that was key to their original plan of overthrowing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.

    Hostomel airport, just oustide Kyiv, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Ukraine war, as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, sought to establish an air bridge to the capital.

    Control of the airport, 20km from Kyiv, changed hands several times, as Ukrainians at first defended fiercely and then attacked the Russian occupiers.

    Five weeks on, the Russians have moved out having failed in their mission, according to a senior US defence official, as it abandons plans to take the capital and shift forces to the east.

    This is a huge win for Ukraine, but it also means that surviving Russian forces can shift over to east Ukraine where the war is still hot.

  • Also: “Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.”
  • “Key Inflation Gauge Reaches 40-Year High.”

    A key inflation metric monitored by the Federal Reserve soared 6.4 percent in February compared to a a [sic] year ago, reaching a new 40-year high.

    The latest price surge, which affected the price of fuel, groceries and other consumer essentials, represents the largest year-over-year increase since January 1982, according to data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.

    Not taking into account food and energy fluctuations, which tend to be more erratic and can overemphasize inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve, jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year prior. Including gas and groceries, PCE surged 6.4 percent.

    It’s gonna get worse…

  • The Biden Administration is evidently all-in on tranny madness and grooming your children:
    
    

  • As is Disney.
  • DeSantis to Disney: You want to complain about teachers no longer being allowed to talk to kindergartners about anal sex? Fine. How about we just remove your special self-governing status? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of DeSantis, he has some pretty sweet talent lined up for this:

  • What’s behind this creepy push for foisting transexualism on pre-teens? A long, creepy history of Marxist indoctrination.

    Through brand names like “comprehensive sex education” and one of its parent programs, “Social-Emotional Learning (SEL),” our government schools have been turned into Groomer Schools, and parents are beginning to notice. What many will not understand, however, is that this isn’t just a fluke of our weird and increasingly degenerate times. It is, in fact, a long-purposed Marxist project reaching back into the early 20th century. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, join James Lindsay as he explains the long history of the sexual grooming that has come into our schools through Critical Gender Theory and Queer Theory as they have crept into educational programs.

    There’s an hour long video there I haven’t watched all of yet…

  • Speaking of groomers:

  • Just how bad is the graft, waste and fraud in that $1.5 trillion porkulus bill? This bad. Look over that vast list of special subsidies and ask yourself “How many of these programs are designed to channel taxpayer money into the pockets of Democratic activists.” The answer seems to be “Most of them.”
  • “8 Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit.” China, Ukraine, Russia, etc.
  • Republican lawmakers would like to see emails between Hunter Biden and the Obama White House.
  • White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is leaving for MSNBC. So many angles: A.) Rats, sinking ship. B.) That revolving door between Democratic staffers and the MSM continues apace. C.) I hear she has an offer to star in Chairman of the Board 2.
  • Flu Manchu update: Asymptomatic spread is bunk.
  • “BuzzFeed News union votes to strike as job cuts loom.” I suppose that would be Amalgamated Listicle Crafters Local 106…
  • Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the supply chain: “22,000 Union Workers At 29 West Coast Ports May Strike…West Coast union dockworkers may strike if they don’t come to an agreement to replace their existing contract with marine terminals. The contract is set to expire at the end of June.” Labor strikes are yet another part of the classic winter of discontent formula the Biden Administration is using to bring back the worst of the 1970s.
  • Another part of that classic 1970s discontent record is soft on crime polices, just like those pursued by George Soros-backed DA’s like Larry Krasner.

    Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner has presided over a surge in violent crime, and his new policy promises more of it. Krasner recently announced plans to de-prosecute crimes for offenders aged 18 to 25, ignoring how this age group tends to contain the most violent of criminal defendants.

    Krasner’s office has established a new unit that will move some 18-to-25-year-old defendants into “rehabilitative programming” instead of seeking criminal punishments. As Krasner’s data dashboard demonstrates, “rehabilitative programming” is just a euphemism for dismissing charges. Krasner promises that the program will be limited to nonviolent offenses, including drug trafficking and other offenses. (The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that gun crimes will not be included, but Krasner has previously stated that prosecutions for illegal gun possession are “not only ineffective but unjust and racially discriminatory.” The link in the district attorney’s office data dashboard about Philadelphia’s Gun Violence Task Force takes the reader to a page that states “Article Not Found.”)

    This new program reflects Krasner’s determination not to think like a prosecutor, but instead to think like the criminal defense lawyer he was. The program was developed by Sangeeta Prasad, a fellow with the district attorney’s office who previously served as a public defender in New York, New Mexico, and Philadelphia. Before assuming her current post, she had no prior experience as a prosecutor, just like Krasner. The chief public defender for Philadelphia has called the new unit “an incredible initiative,” but Philadelphia courts were not invited to the press conference announcing the plan and stated that they were not aware of the experiment.

    The new initiative comes at an awkward time. In 2021, Philadelphia experienced the highest number of homicides in its history, and the violence is continuing in 2022. Indeed, Philadelphia homicides have risen every year that Krasner has been in office, as carjackings, shootings, and drug overdoses soar. What makes the policy more bizarre is that it runs counter to decades of criminological research. One of the iron laws of criminal conduct is the so-called age-crime curve, which demonstrates that the majority of serious crimes are committed by defendants between the ages of 15 and 25. This finding obtains around the world and has been replicated time and again.

  • Speaking of repeat offenders, Millen, Georgia police Officer Larry “Ben” Thompson quit after being caught on tape having public sex while on-duty. Fair enough, but his lengthy record of misdeeds makes you wonder why he wasn’t fired long ago, since he managed to shoot another officer in the arm (“negligent discharge”) and killed a guy in a traffic accident in route to a call. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Nevada/Utah Ponzi scheme leads to FBI shootout. “The alleged $300 million scheme, run by a lawyer named Matthew Beasley, came to a head when FBI agents went to his home earlier this month and Beasley drew a gun on himself, before pointing it at agents, prompting them to shoot him.”
  • “[Fort Worth Superintendent] Kent Scribner will leave the district this August instead of in 2024, when his contract ends. In response to recent outcry from parents regarding Superintendent Kent Scribner’s support of CRT-based policies, Fort Worth ISD’s school board voted 7-0 to move up Scribner’s last day as superintendent to August 31, 2022.”
  • Ouch! Texas “Taxpayers’ Property Appraisals Rising 20% to 50% as Supply Chain Disruptions Meet Population Growth.” Austin-Round Rock is slated for the biggest increase, some 35.4%.
  • Don’t look now, but there’s another big Zero Day Internet infrastructure exploit out in the wild. “Spring4Shell is a remote code execution vulnerability in Spring Framework that can be exploited for remote code execution without authentication.” Spring is a Java framework that’s almost 20 years old, so the issue could potential be lurking in a lot of places…
  • Another week, another hate crime hoax. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of false accusations of racism, Gibson’s Bakery win over Oberlin in court yet again. “A three-judge panel on the Ninth District Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision to uphold a 2019 ruling by Lorain County Judge John Miraldi, who initially awarded the bakery more than $40 million in punitive and compensatory damages, Cleveland.com reported. However, the sum was later reduced to $25 million, though the bakery was awarded more than $6 million for lawyers’ fees.”
  • Bullet vs Newton’s Cradle at 100,000 FPS.
  • Final Destination: Schuylkill County edition:

  • The Lock-picking Lawyer fills his wife’s Beaver.
  • Huskeys be crazy:

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Austin, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | 1 Comment »

    « Older Entries
    Newer Entries »