This is a perfect illustration of how US military industry is optimized for soaking up as much government funding as possible instead of producing reliable weapons that can be manufactured at scale.
When the war started (and I knew jack about this random country) I often wondered why Ukraine wasn't using popular guerrilla tactics a la the NLF against this "imperialist" Russia and instead relying so much on high-tech imported solutions like tanks, planes and drones. Only recently after getting critical sources here, the thought occurred to me that that may be because the contested lands already have very low support for the Ukraine military and Russia has very little interest in marching up to the rest of Ukraine. Is there any public data on the (willing) participation of Eastern Ukrainians in either military?
But since they're now even using cluster bombs, I guess it's clear now which side of the Vietnam war they're more similar to.
Edit: I wasn't aware that "Viet Cong" was used derogatorily in the Northwest. Corrected that blunder there.
I think the breakdown from this lecture from Mearsheimer is pretty telling in that regard. First, we have the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
Showand then the election results from 2004:
Show
and the election in2010:
Show
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Show
Just finished watching it and those predictions wrt to China/Russia/Iran/Syria cooperation are so on point I actually started laughing. Only problem is that apparently the USA politicians didn't watch that one, so all his hopeful predictions for how the USA could avoid that didn't manifest. Their loss lol.
Mearsheimer understood what was happening in terms of geopolitics, and he tried to warn US politicians about it. Unfortunately, it's clear that US is run by ideologues who silenced anybody who disagreed with them. Now we're seeing the results of that.
Yeah, those track. I'll watch the lecture but I was wondering if, for instance, there are many volunteers eastern regions in the Russian military. I already assume that very few would be in the Ukrainian one since they've been at literal war, but I hardly hear much about soldiers coming from the LPR and DPR militias in the Russian military or support among new soldiers from there. Those seem like interesting questions, and with the simple fact that the usual outlets aren't screaming at the top of their lungs that "separatists actually hate Russia," I guess I already know the answer.
Yup, and from what I recall LPR and DPR militias did most of the infantry fighting at the start of the war. I guess technically they were fighting since 2014, but it was a frozen conflict for a while.
What do you mean by "popular guerilla tactics"? They've given out guns to civilians from Teroborona at the very beginning, they've been using civilian vehicles to transport soldiers, they've been using civilian buildings to hide ammunition depots and artillery positions, ans there's been at least one case of civilians attacking Russian armour with Molotov's. Plus the whole drone bombings
Wdym, that's not guerilla warfare, where's all the people hiding in the trees and hole traps in the ground
I'm having trouble parsing whether you are being humorous or not
Isn't that why it's called guerilla warfare? Because the soldiers use tactics that gorillas would use like climbing up into the trees and digging holes
Well, those you listed, yeah. I admit I hadn't looked too much into it beforehand and was going off on the discourse about tanks and planes, and even now I'm no expert on it. It's just I've hardly seen the international observers talking about traps, "cheap" sabotage or insurrections in the occupied regions.
I wonder if future Ameriboos will cope and seethe about Burgerland weapon technology the way modern Wehraboos cope and seethe about the supposedly invincible Panther and Tiger nazi tanks.
They already are. And they are pretending it's everyone else that is coping, just like Wehrbs
Honestly, at least the mid-late Panthers were decent enough tanks, it just doesn’t help when you’re 30-1 against your opponents, your crew are untrained 16-20 year olds, your tank was sabotaged 76 times during the building process due to using slave labour, the steel is weak and poor due to the mill being bombed by a US air raid, your ammunition is shoddy because it was made by a child in a workshop, and you have about 23km of gas in the tank.
The Tiger on the other hand…. It has all the previously mentioned problems and was just a piece of shit to begin with.
Yes that’s all true. Regardless of how German engineers designed the tank, the war was already unwinnable for them by the time those tanks were deployed. They were notorious for having mechanical issues and many broke down before a battle would even start. The tiger was too expensive and too few were produced to make a difference in the war anyways. Nazi admirers are really dumb to boast about “master race” tank engineering when the supposedly inferior Soviets had more efficient tanks than Germany.
Efficiency is what wins wars. To be able to replenish your stockpiles quicker than you burn through them. This war is a prime example. Ukraine has received more than Russia’s entire military budget but are clearly not winning. They are burning through quicker than they can replenish. Russia’s military is far more efficient who are not relying on overpriced and over engineered military hardware.
Remember that Vietnam won their revolution despite the massive equipment difference.
Yeah , the big advantage of drones was that they were supposed to be cheap , but the defense companies fixed that a long time ago.
There's also been bloat from only ever using them in the war on terror, against farmers and shepherds who could never shoot back, but mostly it was the profit margin. Which is why US drones now cost 30 million to 100+ million , so expensive that you can't afford to lose them.
Iirc the drone which was pissed upon by Russian planes over Black Sea was like 32 million and the one destroyed by Iranians in 2019 which caused USA to hard stop their warmongering for a while was like 200 million.
Does that include Bayraktar drones and whatever is used to attack Crimea and Moscow?
I'd imagine they're referring to things like the Global Hawk and the FPV drones. The former basically is useless in contested airspace and the latter probably has such a huge markup for what it is that it's just more economical to use an artillery shell.
It's just another example of how Western militaries are oriented around fighting informal military enemies rather than a peer adversary.
I agree with what the OP said too, I'd imagine the FPV kamikaze drones have a ridiculous markup in relation to what they cost to manufacturer.
I can't speak to the Bayraktar as that's of Turkish make and I'm not sure if the article refers to it. I'd imagine that the US wants their weapons to be used because it adds to the debt trap they're sinking Ukraine in.
FPVs are the ones they've started using to drop chemical grenades, no?
I couldn't tell you, I haven't really kept up too much with the events of the conflict.
Those are small enough and easy to launch. Most are one way tickets as well.
I’d probably assume they they’re referring to heavily armed and extremely large bombers and recon drones like the Reaper and Predator.
You need to refuel and repair them, and you need dedicated flight and maintenance crew.
I mean, one could expect a drone the size of a proper jet to require the same infrastructure as a jet, no?
I really wanted to read the article but that paywall. Seems 12ft.io doesn't work on it.
oh here's the archive, it's pretty short https://archive.ph/HsW9C
I've never understood that site, it seems to work on so few mainstream news sources (the ones that have all the paywalls in the first place) that it seems completely pointless
