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My guess is this comment is not going to age well. Fundamentally the point this article is making is: how many of those weapons / missiles do we have in the ent

by themgt 4y ago

My guess is this comment is not going to age well. Fundamentally the point this article is making is: how many of those weapons / missiles do we have in the entire NATO stockpile? What's the annual production rate? How fast can that be scaled up? The numbers are not all public, but from what I can tell the answers are really surprisingly bad. e.g. it looks like Ukraine conducted a first HIMARS strike: https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1540859211814502405 https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1540859211814502405 "one of their salvos killed two and wounded several" and destroyed some vehicles - now multiply that times how many missiles the US and NATO has in their total stockpile and total annual production, and see if it that will win a war against a fully mobilized Russian army, much less China.

topspin 4y ago
The flaw in this thinking is the "fully mobilized Russian army" part. The full mobilization of Russia remains a hypothetical and until it actually happens Ukraine doesn't have to contend with it; all they have to do is keep bloodying the forces at hand and bleed Russia white. Can Russia undertake a full mobilization without destabilizing the Putin regime? That's not a given and time is against Russia in this regard. Regarding stockpiles: First, Russia has its own stockpile problems. They've depleted their PGMs and they can't get the components they need to make more. They've had to resurrect laughably obsolescent armor to backfill their losses. Second, the "low rate production" scheme the West has employed to replenish stockpiles between conflicts has worked well for us and so a working supply chain exists to be scaled up. Time is against Russia here as well. Aside from political will there is no reason we ultimately couldn't supply Ukraine with thousands of M31Ax rockets every month.

by themgt 4y ago

topspin 4y ago

The flaw in this thinking is the "fully mobilized Russian army" part. The full mobilization of Russia remains a hypothetical and until it actually happens Ukraine doesn't have to contend with it; all they have to do is keep bloodying the forces at hand and bleed Russia white. Can Russia undertake a full mobilization without destabilizing the Putin regime? That's not a given and time is against Russia in this regard. Regarding stockpiles: First, Russia has its own stockpile problems. They've depleted their PGMs and they can't get the components they need to make more. They've had to resurrect laughably obsolescent armor to backfill their losses. Second, the "low rate production" scheme the West has employed to replenish stockpiles between conflicts has worked well for us and so a working supply chain exists to be scaled up. Time is against Russia here as well. Aside from political will there is no reason we ultimately couldn't supply Ukraine with thousands of M31Ax rockets every month.