NATO would have air superiority and not need as many stingers.
So many politicians blathered on about the peace dividend but the bear was hibernating, not dead. I was repeatedly ridiculed for saying so. Fortunately, it turns out the bear rotted from within pretty badly during it's hibernation.
A week of not hearing anybody actually use the only official language of the country, that Russian would conclude that Ukraine is mostly fake.
Of course that led Russians to underappreciate the willingness of Ukraine citizens to actually fight for it.
Now, yes, of course.
This is Russian propaganda and not even true all Ukraine did was introduce a bill to make all offical communications be provided in Ukrainian.
Nothing stopping people providing it in Russian too.
The bill does a lot more than that, and is quite obnoxious actually.
Can you provide a link all I’ve seen from sources is that it required all offical information to be in Ukrainian.
If they have the social and political awareness of a 12 year-old, perhaps.
Nobody actually talks in Ukrainian around them.
Absolutely not true for (and a very weird thing to say about) Kyiv.
In Odesa/Kharkiv Russian is clearly dominant, but it's not like you'll never hear Ukrainian spoken.
NATO is first and foremost a military alliance setup to contain the western expansion of the USSR. It’s a strategic alliance. It’s defensive in as much as a military alliance can be.
What the US is using NATO for now that the USSR is no more and what is the EU getting out of it are actually very valid questions.
They were very valid questions up until the Ukraine invasion revealed Russia to be the mustachioed villain we were always told they were. Now nobody questions the need for NATO. Good job, Mr. Putin, your "Recruiter of the Year" plaque is on the way.
Countries still need protecting from the remnants of the USSR's aggression, mainly Russian aggression.
If NATO didn't exist you can be sure that Russias ambition would not stop at countries like Ukraine.
Countries don’t need protecting. Countries should aim to protect themselves. The EU doesn’t need the US for its protection and should have invested in a proper army decades ago.
It’s obvious that the main benefit for the USA is that NATO dissuades the EU to actually be a power. That some countries in the east are happy to play lapdogs is a major issue.
It's simply not possible from some countries to protect themselves for other larger aggressive countries (such as Russia) that can both out spend them and have many more bodies to throw at the problem.
A collective defensive alliance in this cases makes sense as both a deterrence to any possible belligerents and as a practical measure if someone does try something.
I am not very keen on having American protectorates part of the EU personally (I think every EU extension from 2004 was a terrible and probably fatal mistake and have serious doubt about the 1995 ones) but I don’t think we are going to agree on that. I view it as one of the reason the current EU is so uninspiring.
Politically I despise the current EU. It has no ambition. Its social and economic policies are misguided and ineffective, its strategic vision sorely lacking, its ability to reform inexistant. It’s entirely possible that I’m projecting my utter disgust for my own country political life on the EU here however.
No one is NATO is a 'protectorate' this is absurd on the face of it.
Why do you think its bad that smaller countries in Europe that have historically been invaded and dominated by Russia should not be in a alliance that allows themselves to effectively protect themselves from threats like Russia?.
If you can’t defend yourself and have to rely on a foreign power to do so, you are de facto a protectorate like it or not. That’s the case of at least the Baltic states in Europe and could probably be extended to other former USSR republics in the east.
This implies that _anyone_ who receives any military aid is a protectorate which imply that states like Russia are a protectorate of Iran
I don’t mind the fairly honest debate and disagreement we are having. I understand your view on NATO even if I think it’s wrong and fail to acknowledge the actual effect the alliance has on its members. Still there is little point in going further if you are not interested in a modicum of intellectual honesty.
> I don’t mind the fairly honest debate and disagreement we are having but there is little point in going further if you are not interested in a modicum of intellectual honesty.
I feel like you are the one being intellectually dishonest. To claim someone is a protectorate because they enter into a defensive alliance for their defence is absurd and does not follow.
No one is entirely reliant on NATO for survival but theres plenty of armies that wouldn't survive an insane from Russia without the extra material.
Not to mention that Russia has had a land border with NATO since 1948.
NATO is absolutely zero threat to Russia, and Russia knows it. Finland joined and Russia shrugged, and has since even removed many troops from that border because it knows NATO will not attack.
What matters is the national security interests of Ukraine.
Russia is a massive threat to the national security interests of Ukraine, and Ukraine really wants to join NATO to be safe from Russia. Russia knew that if it wanted to invade and conquer Ukraine, a souvereign country, it would have to do soon because it would not be possible anymore after Ukraine joined NATO.
Russian security interests, fuck off. Neither Ukraine nor NATO is a threat to Russia.
Ukraine's security interests, those are very obviously threatened.
They've removed them because they need to avoid any possibility of a provocation. The merest hint of a wrongful look at Finland will not go well for them.
We’re talking about the US here, not Ukraine.
Yes, if you are a third-party citizen and observe a woman as well as a group of men who you suspect to be absolutely predatory scumbags, you can make predictions about what might happen.
Yes, if you are a third-party citizen and observe ...
This is just spin and narrative to suggest that the war isn't really Putin's fault.
Mhm.
The whole topic here is about how America could/couldn’t have anticipated the invasion. The very comment that you replied to says “The Pentagon should have”… that’s not Ukraine.
Not my problem that you are off-topic.
The topic here, at least where it started to veer way off course from the original thread, is the essentially pro-Kremlin narrative in the GGGP comment and its GP ("The proxy war started in 2014 with Euromaidan"). In this context - US calculations as such are a red herring. What matters here is the clear (and basically rather crass) implication in these comments of core Western responsibility for Russia's military actions.
Which implication your words definitely seemed to be (if obliquely) echoing and supporting. Or at least playing footsie with, for some reason known only to you.
I’ll note that you can’t even accuse me of doing anything even remotely concrete. “Seemed to.” “If obliquely.” “Playing footsie.” All just accusations of association. Not a leg to stand on at all.
Take your control round over who is batting for the correct team elsewhere.
> US calculations as such are a red herring.
Then just say that. My God. No one cares.
Probably because you're throwing up such an ink cloud that it's difficult to see what point you're trying to make. Let along for which "team".
> The Pentagon should have recognized that the Eastern expansion of NATO
This is your mock-quote:
> "The so-called victim must have realized that going out dressed like that
Clearly you are mocking this statement on what the Pentagon “should have realized”.
Then I come along and point out that the mock-quote doesn’t apply since The Pentagon is not the victim in this war.
It’s not my fault that you want to find my spooky ulterior motives.
What matters as far as planning is concerned is analyzing likely outcomes given your own actions. We can for the sake of the argument just take as a given that the Russian government is bloodthirsty and expansionist and wants Ukraine.
Event: Euromaidan
Likely long-term outcomes: ?
There’s not more to it than that. No need to moralize over who did what or who is culpable. This is all about one entity (America) analyzing likely outcomes given a series of events.
No, actually. I do not think it should have been taken for granted that Russia would be stupid enough to do this invasion.
The fact that they were willing to make such insane strategic bludders is a bit of a surprise.
Should have been: given any kind of event.
Considering Us behavior when the Soviet Union installed assets on Cuba, there isn’t a whole lot of ethical ground to be found here. Just Great Power politicians playing stupid games with innocent lives.
If the US had put nukes in Ukraine and pointed them at Russia, and did so before the Crimean invasion, your comparison might be more fair.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-protest_laws_in_Ukraine
No one in Ukraine believes this narrative. Why do you?
None of this is true, what happened in reality and not in the fever dreams of FSB, GRU and SVR agents is that there where protests when Yanukovych went back on a number of election promises and started aligning himself with Russia instead of joining the EU Like he promised he would.
After that happened he was removed from his seat of power by the parliament and he fled back to his handlers in Russia.
How, exactly?
Then jets like the F-22[3] would be used to establish command of the airspace.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_military_parachu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor
It doesn't need to be singularly successful since it's part of a collective of redundant systems[2]. Air isn't working then increase missile strikes, missiles can't attain good effect on target then increase covert operations with local insurgencies, etc.
That's just some of the possible angles of attack. There's leaving out things like drones and cyber attacks that would also be employed to some effect.
Eventually the enemy loses the ability to fight since it's critical points are weakened to such a point it can no longer wage an effective resistance.
Another example: why attack heavily defended artillery positions when you can blow up the logistical route and starve them of rounds to attack with?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare
How is Russia establishing air superiority over Ukraine now? Or is going to change the tempo of the war into their favor?
How does this pertain to them denying NATO+allies from probably eventually attaining air superiority in a hypothetical full conflict?
How many helicopters can Russia sustain to lose? They've lost several over the last few weeks.
Supply routes have be successfully attacked by Ukraine with estimates of slowing logistics by 50% in certain areas.
And again how many AA batteries can they sustain to lose?
Meanwhile Ukraine has made slow but steady advances forward gaining ground.
Where's Russia changing the direction? Is that by terrorizing civilian targets (your bombing campaign) and blowing up hydroelectric dams? So essentially they're just using the tactics of terrorists.
Yet they still can't freely fly over Ukraine because they still lack control over the skies.
When's Russia regaining the momentum in their favor? Last week one of their best units tried to storm Moscow and hang their top military leaders.
AND now Russia is more weakened to a full confrontation with NATO than they were before starting their war in Ukraine. So all the more likely to lose air superiority to NATO+allies.
I dunno know about this part of the statement, the fact that we are still seeing long range deep strikes into important Russian territory (sometimes killing hundreds of soldiers at a time), tells me that maybe Russias EW and AA against semi modern cruise missiles isn't as good as people think.
Yeah but these missile strikes have been hitting high value targets like air fields and troop barracks.
Regardless of if they can’t defend these areas because they don’t have the systems or the systems cannot intercept them it doesn’t bode well.
I guess they might have been Russia's best airborne units, but both at Hostomel and in other engagements, they've been shown to be overrated. Then again, Hostomel was a shitshow of poor planning/intel. I bet the VDV would have loved to know that there was a UKr unit right next door with heavy artillery before they kicked off the assault.
What happens when the enemy has exhausted it's supply of AA ammo?
Or lost use of its radar?
HALO is for opponents lacking AD and radar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Invasion
Edit: If you're objecting to HALO insertion as a measure against AA then fine but even describe as a way around AA:
"The technique is used to airdrop supplies, equipment, or personnel at high altitudes, where aircraft can fly above surface-to-air missile (SAM) engagement levels through enemy skies without posing a threat to the transport or load. In the event that anti-aircraft cannons are active near the drop zone, the HALO technique also minimizes the parachutist's exposure to flak...
... The combination of high downward speed, minimal forward airspeed, and the use of only small amounts of metal helps to defeat radar and reduces the amount of time a parachute might be visible to ground observers, enabling a stealthy insertion."
1. Round the clock bombing. We saw how F-117, flying the same route day after day in Serbia was shot down by an S-75 Dvina (first deployed in 1957) in optical mode. You will never see a B-2 flying in daylight any more than you would see an AC130.
2. What US artillery can outrange an S300/S400? US artillery is already outranged by Russian artillery.
3. Missile strikes are the only thing you list that are even doctrinal against a modern A2AD system. And those are limited, as NATO found out when several members ran out of smart munitions when overthrowing Qaddafi. But yes, that's what we'd use. JASSM, Tomahawk, SCALP, etc.
4. Using Iraq as a measure of how we'd fight a near peer opponent is ridiculous. While Iraq had a large standing army, it was never a match for the US in 1991, much less 2003. There are numerous things we did in Iraq that we'd never have attempted in the Fulda Gap.
5. Finally, back to HALO. Sure the operator jumping out using HALO might have a minimized signature, but remember that big, lumbering transport that he's jumping out of? The one with the ginormous radar signature? Flying high (so the H in HALO) can occur, meaning every radar in the world can spot it? BOOM. Shot down as soon as it's in range of an S400. Which is roughly between 300 and 400KM. So if you're expecting a team dropping in by HALO to survive, you're delusional.
So you can’t refuel, your home runways are trashed and the carriers are sunk. Then what.
Range and logistics matters and the Ruskies have it in that neck of the woods.
Stingers are inexpensive comparatively cheap surface-to-air missiles that allow an individual soldier on the ground to pick off an aircraft that happens to fly sufficiently low; it's useless if air superiority is actually being contested or if aircraft are bombing away from high altitude and mainly functions to whittle down the size of the edge the opposing force's air superiority gives in the ground combat.
These are questions the US has been working on since Vietnam - they’ve gotten pretty good at it by now.
From what I can tell based on western sources, Russia is running circles around NATO tech when it comes to EW, integrated air defense and missile offense.
The US lost in Vietnam, btw. Especially after the MiGs and Russian artillery showed up.
So no, other than one old missile, they're not using US gear, nor US tactics, nor US ISR for SEAD/DEAD.
They don't have the modern aircraft, or missiles that would make SEAD missions against modern Russian AA effective.
Despite the narrative most of the stuff Ukraine is getting is super old.
- Leopard 1's. - M113 APC's - Mig 29's - Sukhoi 24's - Mi-28's - Mi-8s
The HARM's that you speak off, we don't know what variant they are but they won't be super effective because they cannot be effectively integrated with the aircraft Ukraine has so they are probably older variants using pre programmed fixed coordinate attack modes.
That should hopefully change once the F-16's arrive and they can start more effectively using more modern air borne weapons especially for SEAD.
The air defences are probably some of the most modern pierces of equipment that Ukraine has.
HIMARS are a good example of modern equipment with relatively modern munitions but they still haven't gotten any PrSM's or ATACMS.
Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)? Who will maintain them? How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back). How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
> Where are the F-16s going to take off from (they need pristine runways)?
Probably relatively far from the action.
> Who will maintain them?
Ukrainians its one of the reasons why its taking so long for them to get them.
> How will they refuel without airtankers (they don't have enough range to make it to Donbas and back).
They don't have to fight at the front line, they can be used effectively as missile trucks to throw long range weapons like Storm Shadow and other long range weapons at Russian lines.
If a SU25 and Mig29 can survive doing that a F-16 will have no problem.
> How will they avoid the R37M (300km range) when the AMRAAM is not even 200km? And what about Russian SAMs and EW?
The same way that the SU25 and Mig29 do, the F-16 will survive much better.
And how is Russia going to pummel NATO airbases? This isn't 1985 when the Soviet VVS had thousands of fighter bombers tasked with taking out the airfields. They're not next door to Germany/France/UK anymore since NATO has expanded East. The RuAF might have 500 flying aircraft for their entire nation. They have no stealth aircraft in service (the Felon isn't in production yet if ever).
While behind with aircraft, Russia has objectively outclassed the West with missile tech (and defense).
Do yourself a favor and read this book:
Let's just look at AA gear. Pantsir has been shown to be ineffective against most drones, Storm Shadow, etc. Same with BUK. S300 and S400 have really good range, but I think that Patriot and SAMP stand up well in comparison. The Ukrainians are using older Patriot missiles and are successfully engaging Khinzal and any cruise missile the Russians can throw at it. NATO has THAAD and better versions of Patriot in their arsenal, so even being generous, I think this is a draw.
For offensive weapons, the Russians have nothing in the class of SCALP/Storm Shadow, much less JASSM/LRASM. They would even have a hard time coping with Tomahawk.
So what weapon system are the Russians going to use against Lakenheath and Mildenhall? A Kalibr is going to have a very hard time making it across the Baltics to the UK, and I doubt any aircraft doing a suicide mission would make it either. How about Aviano? Same problem. Ramstein and Spangdahlem as well.
And Russia sure has done a great job "pummeling" Ukrainian airbases, right? I mean, they've utterly failed at this. The Ukrainians are still flying Fencers, Fulcrums and Frogfoots from their bases.
Indeed it is and the proof shows that Ukraine intercepts a large number of Russian missiles with air defence.
Whilst Russia intercepts a lot of Ukrainian weapons with the intended targets.
The Russians have maybe shot down a single stormshadow out of all the ones that have been fired.
They don’t seem so good at intercepting modern western cruise missiles.
This all ignores that Ukraine managed to get TU141 drones that look like they have the radar signature of a truck past Russian air defence to hit targets within Russia.
Your true believer enthusiasm is endearing, but it doesn’t win wars.
They have a single photo of a single storm shadow.
Because they haven't shot down anymore, I presume they will move it to 100 different sites to try and claim they have shot down more like they did earlier with the downed drones.
And all I'm saying is, plan to be able to start the dang factories again.
A broad section of Americans, from the 1970s (roughly post peak Soviet power) through today (albeit declining), has called for dismantling our military-industrial complex. That production capacity is the military-industrial complex. The peace dividend of the 90s was a direct result of reörienting military production to civilian use, making fewer guns and more butter.
Crucial electronic components for a piece of equipment designed in 1978 and last manufactured in 1987 are no longer manufactured, and replacing them will require a redesign and a requalification? Who could have understood that, besides anyone with a EE degree.
And when you are: “wow the MIC is leeching the country dry!”
I’m glad this realization is making its way to the knowledge of the general population.
People have been seduced by cheap foreign goods, and balked at the idea of something costing more than the lowest cost.
Come to think of it, I am wondering if making cheap industrial labour generally available was a “soft power” exercised by some countries. This enabled the dismantling of flexible Western production capabilities, increased reliance on these countries, and dissuaded aggression towards them.
Also see the reliance of Europe on Russian fossil fuel imports.
Of course it is. But US and Global Capitalism fought tooth and nail to get into China. The manufacturing base in the US was dismantled (literally) on purpose by American billionaires and the politicians they owned.
Tiananmen square made it clear China wasn't going to change and the idea that "improving economy leads to democracy" has literally never happened unless that nation was occupied by the US military like Germany and Japan
Not sure about the implicit attempt to address power imbalance: if you invest your IP in some "underdeveloped" country and then they decide to sell chips to all comers, or not to sell to you and sell exclusively to your global competitors something is going to give... or break. Or get broken.
But that's literally how it was sold: give up your industrial base for a safer world. (We thank you for your patriotism, former industrial worker of the western world.)
Not having a way to increase production of Stingers is acceptable, but they've apparently done nothing since 1987 to make sure they have a viable blueprint for scaling production of a critical part of any modern military. That's the real story here, because it shows a fundamental problem in how the US military procures things and there is most likely similar issues all over the place for other critical things(artillery shells have similar shortages). How does the military not have a plan for war breaking out and needing to scale production? That's supposed to be their core job
The Russian-Ukraine War, with no direct US involvement, is a weird edge case we weren't prepared for.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-pric...
https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages
this whole situation shows deep issues in how the US military does procurement and also basic forecasting/planning
The US only has a shortage of Javelins because they have sent so many into Ukraine. In the past half a century the US hasn't had to supply a military conflict as it has with Ukraine v Russia, and almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion. The notion of literally planning for every possibility is absurd, and if the US military tries to do that regarding a budget, it'll just get that much more flak for spending policies.
Armchair Internet users will proclaim the US military should know all and see all and know exactly how many Javelins it will need based on knowing every single conflict that will happen before it happens. And if they make a mistake, and spend a lot of money on weapons they don't need, then they must be attacked for the ridiculous spending. The armchair crowd can't have it both ways.
I’m surprised by this. There were articles and discussions on it for years. The water supply to Crimea was sore point. In the immediate lead up to war the troop build ups were in the news.
If the US Army or Marines needs to defend against air attack, they expect to have their own air support available.
Keeping this production line hot would be extremely expensive, and since none of our allies were buying any and the US military expects to have air superiority/supremacy in any conflict they fight, this is a tempest in a teapot.
Ukraine isn't an edge case, Ukraine is what you would expect from anything less than a turkey shoot. It's just we haven't been in anything other than a turkey shoot since the Stinger came out.
The US Air Force is the largest one in the world. The second largest? The US Army. 4th largest? US Navy. I think the USMC is #7 or so.
That doesn't mean the US will have air supremacy in every situation or even air superiority, but it's unlikely to be close to even for long, if it ever is.
> ... despite a world-class air force’s best effort against a second-rate defense, the United States never gained air supremacy. High-value intelligence platforms such as the E-8 Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System were prohibited from flying over land where their sensors were most useful and instead had to stand off outside the threat region.
(c) https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-dangerous-allure-of-th...
A military that cannot send stingers to allies, right now, is objectively not very capable; focusing on air superiority might be the best choice after all, but it cannot be an excuse for late stingers.
Nuclear powers feared conflict between each other not because one or the other's conventional army (or arms) were superpowered, but because it dramatically increased the chances of a conflict escalating to the nuclear level - which could well be the end of both civilizations, if not the better part of the entire human species.
Anyone planning for that war needs to stop whatever the hell they are doing and start planning for how to avoid it instead.
IIRC Russia is at 99% air defence effectiveness vs the start of the Ukraine war; i.e. it has not been materially degraded at all, despite HARM anti-radar missiles and so forth given to Ukraine.
Though I don’t full agree with Russia only using ground based air defense as the few newer generation jets Russia have are shooting down a lot of Ukrainian jets. They fly higher, faster, and can both lock and engage Ukrainian jets before the Ukrainian have even detected them.
I think that the USAF will have its hands full overcoming Russia's A2AD environment, assuming it's set up and competently managed. The range on S300/S400 makes it hard to use anything other than Tomahawks and stealth aircraft to target. It definitely won't be like Baghdad during DS.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/first-marine-corps-tom...
- old C versions from early 90s - only working on pre-programmed target mode - no targeting pods like AN/ASQ-213
And nobody flies aircraft at "treetop level", with the possible exception of the A10 which is designed to and actually has flown home successfully after a missile hit. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/a-10-pilot-explains-how-the-...
Also there is no such thing as a "MANPAD", it's not a plural -- it means "Man-portable air-defense system".
Helicopters fly this low all the time.
I can understand not having full production facilities due to expense, but at least plans for those facilities if they need to be built in a hurry?
We have allies to do that for us.
Before the Russia-Ukraine war escalated in 2022, Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany, and combat training from Canada and the UK.
If we began directly providing offensive weaponry to Ukraine before 2022, we would have ended up escalating the conflict much sooner.
By allowing our allies to handle procurement we were at least able to buy Ukraine enough time to rebuild their army after it collapsed in the aftermath of 2014.
Don't you mean artillery from Deutschland? :)
Probably that suggestion/rule is followed by some parts of the UN and perhaps some documents from a few foreign ministries. I certainly hadn’t ever seen it in the wild until the GP comment. It made me chuckle…not at the commenter but at the country.
But what the hell, yes I wrote (and will continue to write) “Turkey”, but I won’t call Istanbul Constantinople, much less Byzantium.
Not sure why these absurd dictatorial tendencies are being taken seriously...
Also it's 2023 and people know how to deal with tricky alphabets and stuff now.
Not saying it's wrong to not deride someone for using the proper spelling but the existence of the French forms shouldn't inherently require forms from languages without significant influence on English.
They asked for it to be changed, and got what they asked for. Both the UN (https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-türkiy..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey#Presidential_ci...) and the USA (https://www.dw.com/en/us-officially-changes-spelling-of-turk...) decided to change that spelling.
I think I may have mixed up some of the post-2022 arms exports to Ukraine with pre-2022 with earlier reporting about Ukrainian weapons imports.
Everyone in the military did indeed have their "doctrine and practice" in mind, the status quo, and suddenly the world rushed up to the military's front door, knocked furiously at the door saying "we need 20,000 Stingers, fast!" And hopefully they had the introspection to realize 'wow, we failed. We can't supply this. Our doctrine and tactics are wrong."
Do you seek air superiority via spending money to create an air-superior fighter jet, or do you seek air superiority via spending money to give every infantry soldier a manpad? Two different tactics with the same goal. Except that the former is a wasteful illusion of superiority, the latter is meat-and-potatoes common sense superiority.
Begs the question what's going on with the lack of common sense in the military.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Stinger type MANPADS are designed for short range point defense, no greater than 5km range and limited by cloud cover. It's a completely different ballgame to have air superiority fighters with radar guided missiles covering you from above. US doctrine is based entirely around this fact; that winning a war means being the side which is able to maintain that.
The only way to achieve air superiority is with a fighter aircraft and its associated support aircraft. You can deny air superiority with a full spectrum AD program (which a MANPAD is but a small part), but you can not impose it.
Poland plus Romania plus Czechia plus Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, and potentially Ukraine and Bosnia and Central Asia with Georgia and Azerbaijan, where these could be used.
It was totally not obvious that Russia (an important but quite small subset of Warsaw pact) will keep its military production capacity but the rest of collective will not - eventually running out of it and often without meaningful replacement.
They supplied significant number of these to Ukraine where it performed well.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.armyrecognition.com/polish_...
Estonia and Norway also likes them https://www.technology.org/2022/12/01/piorun-manpads-goes-ma...
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/558342-america...
The lack of basic weaponry seems to be a failure in that regard. Imagine if the US and Russia were fighting directly. The US may not have air superiority because of Russian jamming and air defense systems. Neither side wants to use nukes. So a long term ground and air war is a possibility, and the same seems possible with modern China. The Pentagon was not prepared for this as shown by what is happening in Ukraine. Instead they seem to have assumed that there will be no more big wars (not unreasonable until Russia decided otherwise and the US decided to "diversify supply chains" away from China) and they spent all the trillions on ever more advanced weaponry, never making large quantities of anything, but always starting the next new program. It is apparent they were caught by surprise, as was the EU who underinvested in defense for a long time. Now everybody is putting out contracts for new arms, but the manufacturers are going to take years to ramp up production. I expect this is partly caused by Congress in the US who tend to assume money solves everything, but in this case money can not buy time. Much of the material needed to make gunpowder and rocket motors comes from China, good luck ramping up production of those quickly if the US is fighting China. Part of the problem is outsourcing of manufacturing to other countries such that the US no longer has the ability to quickly switch industry to a war footing. US car makers rely on thousands of parts from other countries. That happened slowly over time, but even so the Pentagon wasn't keeping their eye on the ball and let capabilities slip away; car factories today could not make a tank, they are not set up for handling the heavy sheets of armor, all the robots would be useless, and there are no workers still trained in the old manufacturing methods. Yet another factor is secrecy, the US can't/won't give its most current weapons to Ukraine because that would reveal them to Russia and China. So all our super weapons can't even be used because of secrets. This shows a lack of foresight that not everyone fighting on our side in a war is going to have access to the most current US weapons. If it was NATO fighting Russia the EU do not and would not have the most advanced versions of the F35 and F22 for example, they'd have the export versions. There are factors unique to the Ukraine war, such as the time needed to train the Ukrainian military to use Western weapons (where the assumption was the US and EU already knew how to use them, so no problem for us) and the fear of escalation to nuclear war, but it seems the US military really was not ready for a long drawn out war in a remote location and they are obviously scrambling to adjust to that. A big concern recently is the realization that it would be very difficult for the US to fight against China (say to protect Taiwan) because it is so far away and we have few bases in the area. F22's and F35's can be refueled mid-air, but mid-air refueling planes can be shot down. Aircraft carriers are really vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. Basically it seems the world has changed (or perceptions of it anyway) and the US military has not adjusted (yet) to the that and didn't seem to see it coming. Maybe their hands were tied by Congress (for example demands to keep old planes flying instead of stocking more ammunition), we'll probably never know. The US has not fought a war against a near peer power in a long time, much of its planning for such a war has to be guesswork by people with little experience. If the US was attacked by Russia or China in a conventional war current munition stockpiles would probably be plenty, the long distance would work against the attackers. A war on the other side of the world is a very different set of logistical problems, yet may be considered just as crucial as defending home territory. If US military strategy says that is not worth considering, that's a decision to intentionally limit what kinds of wars can be fought. History would then judge whether that was a mistake or not.
The “game changing weapons” that the US has been providing are very old. And we’re still not giving them the good stuff. Secrecy is not the reason.
Ukraine wants ATACMs for the HIMAR units and F16s.
The storm shadow missiles which have been making headlines lately are fired off of Ukrainian Soviet era planes
It’s true that surface to air missiles are very good these days. But that’s not very useful against long range missiles precision weapons. Which Russia largely does not have. See their recent use of an iskander ballistic missile to take out a company of infantry under a bridge out of desperation and lack of alternatives.
1) Poorly trained (by highly motivated) Ukrainian soldiers are fighting successfully against the best the Russian Federation can offer, using both old Soviet era that they owned and manufactured (Most of the good Soviet gear was made in Ukraine), and old US and NATO gear. Old HIMARS, old M113, old Leopard tanks, etc etc. The best stuff being provided is Javelin, M777, a few Patriot batteries, etc. Even the Abrams and Bradleys are old versions.
So the Russians aren't doing well, and are no threat in conventional terms.
2. The US wasn't surprised at all by the invasion, though the IC was surprised at how poorly the revamped Russian military performed.
3. The EU has been underinvesting in defense for 50 years, so their lack of deep inventories is no surprise.
4. This isn't WW2 where Detroit can switch in a month from building Studebakers to Sherman tanks. The only tank factory in the US is in Lima, OH, and has been building Abrams since 1980. The idea that defense items can be built quickly and cheaply ignores the complexity of the gear US forces use.
5. NATO members who have purchased the F-35 have the same capabilities as the USAF etc. There's no "export" version, and some purchasers are even part of the manufacturing process. And none of them have the F-22 as you imply, since it's not available for export (and the production line has been shut down for decades).
6. It's not "a big concern recently" about the tyranny of distance in fighting a war against China. This has been discussed for decades.
7. Finally, you say that the US has not fought a war against a near peer power in a long time. Well, duh. The US has had the most powerful economy since 1916, two oceans to keep enemies away, and hasn't had it's homeland significantly touched by an enemy since the War of 1812.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-america-bro...
Modern military equipment is incredibly expensive, complex, bespoke, and made in small batches. Even in cases when that is not true, as with artillery shells, peacetime supply chains cannot meet wartime demand. Ramping them up takes time, and maintaining them in a constant scaled state of readiness entails an opportunity cost that most societies are not willing to pay.
HN readers should know that military supply chains are not like global commercial supply chains. The supply chains that say Apple or Walmart have built are global scale and quickly responsive to demand. That simply does not apply to many military components from manufacturing through assembly and deployment. The timelines are much longer.
There are things Ukraine needs that money cannot immediately solve. These bottlenecks are an example. (Fears of escalation are another…)
Ukraine is fighting a poor man’s war with a lot of second-hand Cold War equipment and Stingers that served the mujahedeen just as well decades ago.
This is partially due to US funding mechanisms. It’s very easy for Biden to exercise discretion in what he sends (and therefore regulate the intensity of the war) through the mechanism of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which can only draw upon existing DOD stocks. He relies heavily on PDA, thus the nature of the second-hand stuff.
What’s interesting is the dual-use piece of the equipment used in Ukraine. By paying frontline soldiers some 5x what they would normally earn, Ukraine has created a market driven by the demand of infantry, usually pooling their purchases in small groups.
They are buying all sorts of equipment, notably power banks, satellite ground terminals, mobile devices, from much more responsive supply chains.
That is, we have strong revealed preferences of the kind of equipment soldiers buy when their lives depend on it, and it looks very different from the bloat purveyed by primes to the Pentagon.
Disclosure: I work with Ukraine Defense Fund to send dual-use tech to the AFU.(Ukrainedefensefund.org)
That’s how completely mismanaged the defense industry is in the US.
Businesses barely do any contingency planning because there is no money to be made in it and it takes away from making money. so when a contingency finally hits, they're all caught with their pants around their ankles
The thing is, in IT it's a common saying "a backup ain't a backup unless you regularly validate it". The US MIC clocks in at many hundred billion dollars a year in budget - seriously it can't be that hard for the government to select every five years a couple dozen small metalwork, electronic and other companies needed to make arms parts, give them all the blueprints and instructions and look if they can make parts that meet the specs?
Had they done that instead of allowing the weapon manufacturers to gobble up small competitors left and right, they wouldn't be stuck with the current clusterfuck. Because what I just said is precisely what would happen should the US be forced to enter a full blown war with China instead of just steamrolling over some poor guys in deserts armed with Kalashnikovs.
Does the traditional idea of "supply chain" actually apply here? There isn't a "market" for these parts. There's a single buyer and a single supplier behind an exclusive government contract. The single-use equipment has no intrinsic value, can't be put to any other use, and can't be sold after it's shelf life has expired.
In the case of military goods, especially of the more expendable type like all kinds of ammunitions but also complex systems like tank or fighter jets, it is even harder since there is, in piece time at least, no continious demand. That means as soon as the large initial production runs are delivered, production capacity sits there unused. And gets ultimately dismanteled, technology becomes obsolete, people change jobs and retire.
All that is left at some point is maintenance capabilities, which only gets you that far in terms of building new gear, and low level production to replenish stores or conduct retrofits. Increasing that lost capacity is expensive and time consuming.
Generally, a supply chain is everything that has a supplier and a customer and moves physical goods. And the general, underlying principles haven't really changed since the days of the first silk road, or heck, since as early as the bronze age.
Though I imagine there are valid criticisms if we had all the details. “They didn’t think to preserve X specimens.” “Y software was lost on a tape drive somewhere.” “Z blueprints got improperly stored inside the Ark of the Covenant.”