• HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
    ·
    10 months ago

    okay what is the thing about North Korean missiles? maybe it's my western chauvinism showing but I didn't think they had a significant arms manufacturing industry.

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      10 months ago

      The latest Russian missile offensive yes? The narrative here is simple.

      The US wants to escalate and give longer range missiles to Ukraine at the same time there is a struggle against the necessity to divert funding to Israel/ME. So the Ukrainian war hawks still believe their war is the most important and the point here is to create a narrative that if Russia is buying/getting even more help from their allies then we should continue to fund and escalate the supply of missiles for Ukraine.

      Why missiles? Because there is literaly nothing else. The wondershit weapons are all done, be it the Abrams or the F-16s that will take months/years. Artillery? Yes Ukraine needs artillery shells but obviously the west can't supply those. So what is left? Patriots? Already given and obviously barely useful. So the only thing that admittedly had some efficacy was these cruise missiles. Ukraine managed to launch a few successful strikes therefore this is the only path.

      So TL;DR the US wants an excuse to continue supplying missiles to Ukraine and the narrative of Russian escalating through their allies is the "excuse". The reality here doesn't matter, it is merely a public political excuse to keep escalating against the Russians.

      • Kaplya
        ·
        10 months ago

        The only missiles left to send Ukraine are the sub-sonic Tomahawks (the US/UK does not have supersonic cruise missiles), and that really is all they have left. They have nothing else beyond this.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          There are the German Taurus ones, not sure how good those ones are but they aren’t hypersonic.

        • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
          ·
          10 months ago

          You're right about the US specificaly maybe? They want the German Taurus and Germany doesn't want to. This week again another push and the only thing holding it back is the US approval.

          On Friday, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the defense expert from the Free Democrats (FDP), one of the coalition partners in the three-way German government, told the daily Rheinische Post that "Germany must finally deliver it in order to disrupt Russian supply lines" — "it" being a reference to the medium-range Taurus missile. Zimmermann also chairs the parliamentary defense committee,

          Scholz believes that delivery of the weapons would increase the risk of an escalation in the war and of Germany being drawn in. Taurus missiles have a range of up to 500 kilometers (311 miles), meaning that they could, in theory, be used against targets on Russian territory.

          However, Kyiv says it is willing to promise not to use the missile for this purpose.

          "It seems to me that Chancellor Scholz will make Taurus available to Ukraine only when the US supplies it with a similar weapon," Nico Lange, a defense expert and senior fellow at the Munich Security Conference, told DW. This might, for instance, be ballistic Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) with a range of around 300 kilometers. Last fall, the US supplied Ukraine with ATACMS missiles that had cluster warheads and a shorter range of around 160 kilometers.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        You can see it in the NAFOids already, they are using #TaurusMissiles in tweets talking about North Korean missiles used by Russia. They are trying to create an equivalency and a rhetorical justification for more ATACMs and Tauruses

    • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      10 months ago

      The DPRK has had to put a significant proportion of its manufacturing capacity into military detterence, including missiles, rockets, and artillery.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      10 months ago

      I think they're talking about how the DPRK sold artillery shells to Russia. The DPRK has a sizable inventory of artillery batteries. The DMZ is one of the more artillery heavy areas in the world as far as I know

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        No they are now saying Russia is using North Korean ballistic missiles. If Russia is, it’s likely for testing purposes to help DPRK gather intel and not because Russia needs them