Ukraine: Are ya winning yet.

[Kalbear]

55 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I would hope (though not neccesarily expect) that if the US provides missiles that can strike further than ever before, they wouldn't announce it until after those weapons are already in use.  The first week of using those weapons will be when they are at their most effective, and it would be nice if the Russians didn't know it is coming.  HIMARs were devastatingly effective the first month.  Since then they are still a very important tool for the Ukrainians, but the days of ammo dumps blowing up every night are over.

Ish. While there are certain things that Russia can do to mitigate targets a lot of the things that those medium range missiles can hit aren't going to be movable - things like railway depots and junctions, major bridges, and major ammo dumps. Lots of fixed assets in Crimea that become viable targets. 

It's also VERY hard to hide these sorts of things effectively; you have to somehow obfuscate a ton of transport of munitions and vehicles, hide the vehicles moving into place, have no actual talk about it and have no public mention of it. None of that is very easy, especially with the size of vehicles and munitions we're talking about. It could be done, but I suspect the value of hiding it (and that difficulty) is not nearly as big as the value of announcing it. 

[Padraig]

The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl really sold those the benefit of the Abrams in that AP article.  "The Abrams is a complicated, expensive, difficult to maintain and hard to train on piece of equipment".

Hilarious.

Anyhow, hopefully this will make a difference since the war was grinding towards stalemate over the last couple of months..  Germany is going to send 14 tanks.  Poland another 14?  That doesn't sound like huge volumes but I suppose once they start sending tanks, more will inevitably follow.

[Werthead]

33 minutes ago, Padraig said:

The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl really sold those the benefit of the Abrams in that AP article.  "The Abrams is a complicated, expensive, difficult to maintain and hard to train on piece of equipment".

Hilarious.

Anyhow, hopefully this will make a difference since the war was grinding towards stalemate over the last couple of months..  Germany is going to send 14 tanks.  Poland another 14?  That doesn't sound like huge volumes but I suppose once they start sending tanks, more will inevitably follow.

Whilst there are over 2,000 Leopards in service (maybe more than 3,000 but that includes ones in storage and others converted into minelayers), they do seem spread out rather thinly over several different armed forces.

As far as I can ascertain, Germany itself only has 312, Turkey 354, Greece 353, Spain 327, Switzerland 326, Poland 247, Finland 200, Sweden 120, Austria 114, Denmark 57, Norway 48, Portugal 37, the Czech Republic 15, Slovakia 15 and Hungary 12. Giving Ukraine the 300-400 it has asked for should be relatively straightforward (especially for countries unlikely to face a landborne armoured invasion any time soon), but giving them more for spare parts and reserves for a secondary offensive later will probably trigger a lot of arguments between countries over when and where to send them.

This might be why Germany was so keen on Abrams being put on the table. They may be a ballache to operate, but, the US has thousands it could theoretically send in the long term.

[Wilbur]

Scholz' screwing around with the permission for countries to send Leopards to Ukraine will result in one big winner - South Korea.

Now that other countries realize that they are only renting Leopard 2's from Germany, who may or may not be emulating early 2000s music labels in trying to control them, they will look around for other options when it comes to tank procurement.

Buying them from American firms is expensive.  But South Korea?  They make a replica that is both cheap and licensable, so you can even build your own factory!

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Scholz' screwing around with the permission for countries to send Leopards to Ukraine will result in one big winner - South Korea.

Now that other countries realize that they are only renting Leopard 2's from Germany, who may or may not be emulating early 2000s music labels in trying to control them, they will look around for other options when it comes to tank procurement.

Buying them from American firms is expensive.  But South Korea?  They make a replica that is both cheap and licensable, so you can even build your own factory!

Has Germany insisted anyone else send Leopards to Ukraine? They've basically taken the gloves off themselves and other countries who want to do the same. In fact, it sounds like one idea is for every country that fields more than a couple dozen Leopards to send a company to Ukraine, and if just ten did that (plus the UK Challengers and one US Abrams company), Ukraine would have 168 modern tanks. That's enough to do some real damage.

Export licences forbidding resale to third countries are pretty standard in military procurement and have been for decades.

South Korea is capable of really stepping up here anyway. They actually have an arms industry which is on constant standby to produce things at war quantities, unlike almost any other NATO-allied country.

[Wilbur]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

...Export licences forbidding resale to third countries are pretty standard in military procurement and have been for decades...

I understand and agree.

The key point here, though, is that everyone in the West understands that sending tanks to Ukraine is the right and proper thing to do, and to do quickly.  But for [reasons], the German government blocked other countries from doing so through the mechanism of the export license.

That has to damage the reputation of Rheinmetall and other German arms firms.  And in fact, it is my view that it was Rheinmetall going to the government with enough anger and pointing out the damage Scholz was doing to their firm's goodwill that moved him off the zero, far more than any other pressure.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Human wave attacks appear to be continuing:

 

[Zorral]

US sending tanks, and Germany saying it is too, is over all the 'news' media today.

I am wondering if I should be disappointed in self's humanitarian ideas that my immediate response was, "About time."  I thought a while longer about this about time thing and understand there were likely (good) reasons (maybe) until waiting until now, such as the condition of Putin's forces, the weather and training, and o, I don't know what all.

Still, glad that some tanks are arriving, since Zelensky wants them, and I figure he's probably got an informed idea of what Ukraine can do with them for their own defense.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 hours ago, Wilbur said:

The key point here, though, is that everyone in the West understands that sending tanks to Ukraine is the right and proper thing to do, and to do quickly.  But for [reasons], the German government blocked other countries from doing so through the mechanism of the export license.

 

It didn't really block them, as those other countries had not officially requested any export licenses. The Polish goverment's grandstanding was to a certain degree for domestic consumption as there's an upcoming election in Poland later this year.

Having that said, yes, that slow moving pace with which Scholz and his SPD are moving is really annoying. And I am actually in favour of taking a moment to think things through, before sending arms into a war zone. But here the writing for Ukraine asking for tanks had been on the wall for months. (man I really fucking loathe Scholz and the SPD for forcing that moron upon us). Export licenses itself are good, as in, I don't think the African continent actually needs German second hand tanks being shipped there from another country, that has upgraded on its tank fleet.

Rheinmetall itself is for most parts avoiding export restrictions itself, by using its South African subsidiary to do business around the globe.

[Wilbur]

Russia once again dances right up to the edge of the precipice, hitting to Turkish-owned (but not Turkish-flagged) ships in the Port of Kherson.

Missile hit Turkish-owned ship in Ukraine's Kherson port -video, sources | Reuters

Two Turkish-owned ships hit in Russian attack on Kherson - Marine Log

[Wade1865]

89 seconds 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, Wade1865 said:

89 seconds /cdn-cgi/mirage/d3f237fbb3a0c8be1cd37b7ac27199523059f740262dd42c3ec4306fca186d20/1280/https://asoiaf.westeros.org/uploads/emoticons/default_laugh.png

I’ve always found the “doomsday clock” insanely subjective and handwringingly melodramatic.

[Wade1865]

Yes, effectively worthless.

[Jace, Extat]

12 minutes ago, Wade1865 said:

Yes, effectively worthless.

affectively?

[DMC]

First of all, the doomsday clock is expressly symbolic.  That's kind of the point.  Second, yeah, it kind of lost its luster after the end of the Cold War.

[Rippounet]

I dunno, "escalating conflict against a ruthless dictator with tons of nuclear weapons" was always the standard scenario for doomsday, even during the Cold War... 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

First of all, the doomsday clock is expressly symbolic.  That's kind of the point.  Second, yeah, it kind of lost its luster after the end of the Cold War.

And it has always been ridiculous.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

I dunno, "escalating conflict against a ruthless dictator with tons of nuclear weapons" was always the standard scenario for doomsday, even during the Cold War... 

Ripp, I love you man.  You are erudite, well spoken, well read, and interesting.  You make points others don’t think of and are generally a pleasure to interact with.  

I still disagree with you regarding how to deal with the Russians in the war they started.

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I dunno, "escalating conflict against a ruthless dictator with tons of nuclear weapons" was always the standard scenario for doomsday, even during the Cold War... 

I don't think it's the same as during (at least most of) the Cold War.  The world is simply too multipolar to take the "doomsday" description seriously as compared to then -- even as a metaphor.

[kiko]

40 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I dunno, "escalating conflict against a ruthless dictator with tons of nuclear weapons" was always the standard scenario for doomsday, even during the Cold War... 

How often did that happen?