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weremensh
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Post Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2024 11:14 am |
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Joined: Thu May 30, 2002 12:00 am Posts: 15913
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I suppose it's obvious, but Russia is basically out of useful (self propelled 152mm) guns and their ammo. Yes, they can scrape together some crap grade towed artillery tubes and mortars, old SP mortars and light (122mm) guns, and substandard shells for them in a siege operation; but a more mobile fight like the one in Kursk takes brigades of SP 152mm guns with new barrels (50-60 guns each), and properly made new shells by the kiloton, in order to really have a prayer when fighting like Russians.
That said, so far no one has seen so much as batteries of those SP guns (6 each) showing up at that salient; nor is there much chance left that we ever will. If they had them, they wouldn't be using hundreds of towed Stalinist era AT guns and T-62s as artillery in a desperate attempt to have anything on the line at all. Ok, so far Oryx only documents the combat loss of a fifth of their entire paper pre-war stock of SP 152mm guns; but even if that were complete and accurate, the best Russian gun barrels wear out after maybe 1,500 shots. So everything has long since worn out, and Russian industry is too worthless to fix them except in trivial quantities.
Which means a significant counter attack will require masses of meat cubes; but they've only been raising those about as fast as they've been losing them (if that). Which makes the existence of a massive and unused Russian reserve of actual trained infantry unexpected, to say the least. So unless they strip the rest of the front and abandon all other offensive operations, the Ukrainians will probably be in Kursk for a while.
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weremensh
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Post Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2024 1:08 am |
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Since the last post, Ukrainian cruise missiles (still popularly called 'drones') have destroyed tens of thousands of tons of Russian owned munitions. I put it that way because much if not most of it was probably North Korean or Iranian to begin with; but when they were visited by Ammo Dump Jesus they were in Russian hands. From what I've read, a significant amount of this was artillery rockets and missiles of various kinds; domestic surface to air, Iranian and Korean ballistic missiles, that sort of thing. The rest would have involved a lot of aerial bombs and shells of various kinds.
If they had to replace all of it themselves, it would take the Russians considerably over a year to do it. In terms of consumption, it's several months worth at current rates. This is going to put a significant dent in their usable military power going forward.
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Passiflora
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Post Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2024 3:24 am |
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Three years into the war, I'm not sure that we fully understand the Russian war economy, there have been multiple predictions of them running out of vehicles, missiles, materials, and they somehow keep going. I know that Hong Kong has become a major transshipment point for Russia to evade international sanctions. So have several of the former Soviet republics ending in -stan. They're getting stuff, and it doesn't seem to be adequately tracked.
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weremensh
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2024 7:56 pm |
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They are, but it's not terribly useful except for terror weapons. They've got no modern armor and very little modern artillery, the obsolescent ones are disappearing from the battlefield, and they can't really launch an attack until and unless they get in a shipment of third rate shells from North Korea. So long as Ukraine can't shoot down or blow up Russian bombers on the ground, then they can kill civilians and properly support roughly one small attack at a time with their own equipment; but that's about it.
This election in the US may prove interesting. Trump will abandon the Europeans in a heartbeat, while Harris may very well be less terrified of the results when Putin is slaughtered along with Russia should she gives Ukraine license to do what they should have been doing all along.
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Passiflora
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2024 1:34 pm |
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Joined: Tue May 21, 2002 12:00 am Posts: 12444
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Well, the Europeans are getting abandoned. And the German government just imploded.
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weremensh
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2024 8:02 pm |
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I suppose that could be helpful; if Germany can assemble a government without the free-market types, which still actually wants to do something. But Europe's days of 'we can get the US to protect us from Putin without paying full price for our ticket' are definitely over; they've got to make some unpleasant choices, and fast.
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