Russia-Ukraine War

[fiksal]

Apparently Russia is using Starlink in occupied areas.Terminals might be bought from non Russian sources?

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-military ... 00300.html

makes sense, he has Putin's fake interview pinned on Twitter

the more times goes on the more we learn of where Musk really stands. Approaching treason soon?

[notaterran]

Russia must really hope that Trump becomes president again: allies must pay up or he will leave them at Russia's mercy.

Link

[Observe]

Russia must really hope that Trump becomes president again: allies must pay up or he will leave them at Russia's mercy.

That's the kind of unhinged statement that will get him elected and he knows it. He also said that any more money we send Ukraine, must be in the form of a loan with strings attached. No more free handouts. His supporters love that idea too. Mainly they hate Europe, which to them stands for socialism and decadence, which somehow equates to the end of America and apple pie.

[fiksal]

if this will get him elected then for majority of Americans who vote for him I hope they get what they want and he does have US exit NATO then.

Who knows maybe it's us who are silly thinking US should be in NATO.

[mr.WHO]

Russia must really hope that Trump becomes president again: allies must pay up or he will leave them at Russia's mercy.

Link

I love that every time there is an outrage about Trump comment about NATO, everyone decide to ignore he just constatly screaming that NATO members should meet 2% GDP spending as per NATO requirement.
Why are we discussing whenever USA under Trump would be reliable ally, when there is plenty of NATO countries that are unreliable, simply by not having any equipment and military reserve due to ultra low spending?

We wouldn't be in troubles right now, if Germany (and other countries) would actually spend 2% (it still doesn't! TWO years after war started), we wouldn't discuss, if we are able to send 100 Leopards to Ukraine, but if we should send 600. Ukraine ammunitions shortages wouldn't be a problem right now. This whole war might not have started, if Russia would be aware that NATO can just give away a few million 155mm rounds without a sweat.

Trump might be an asshole, but he's right on NATO - too many members are riding this train without paying their own share.

[Observe]

Trump might be an asshole, but he's right on NATO - too many members are riding this train without paying their own share.

You make a good point. Perhaps the NATO emperor has no clothes after all? Perhaps Trump is ringing a bell that needs to be rang?

[mr.WHO]

2/3rd of NATO members do not meet 2% spending as of 2023:
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comment ... s_a_share/

Original source:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014 ... 023-en.pdf

[notaterran]

It would be nice if Austria and Switzerland would join NATO, they've been benefiting for decades by the presence of NATO countries around them. There's a funny word in German: Trittbrettfahrer.

[Tamina]

Wouldn't say that too loud as a German.

I think the "money spent" factor is a misguided view on reality. Germany has a hell of an expensive, yet completely non-functioning army. People are making jokes of Russians, having to buy their own equipment, until they start to realize this is the reality here as well.

[mr.WHO]

I think the "money spent" factor is a misguided view on reality. Germany has a hell of an expensive, yet completely non-functioning army. People are making jokes of Russians, having to buy their own equipment, until they start to realize this is the reality here as well.

True - Germany and France spend (in absolute terms) similar amount of money, yet French military is way more formidable.
When French outperform you on military financial management and performance - that a big sign something is not right.

[Chips]

I love that every time there is an outrage about Trump comment about NATO, everyone decide to ignore he just constatly screaming that NATO members should meet 2% GDP spending as per NATO requirement.
Why are we discussing whenever USA under Trump would be reliable ally, when there is plenty of NATO countries that are unreliable, simply by not having any equipment and military reserve due to ultra low spending?

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topi ... d%20States.

NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_8189.htm

For nearly 20 years, NATO Allies and partner countries had military forces deployed to Afghanistan under a United Nations (UN) Security Council mandate. NATO Allies went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, to ensure that the country would not again become a safe haven for international terrorists to attack NATO member countries. Over the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on Allied soil from Afghanistan.

Damn those "unreliable" NATO members who honoured the call to invade a country based on a terrorist attack... and had 20 years of their armed forces dying in foreign lands. SO. DAMNED. UNRELIABLE.

Indeed, you can argue that many don't meet the 2% of GDP requirement; I'd challenge you to prove that anything different would have occurred. UK spends more than 2% of its GDP and yet it doesn't just have 600+ challenger 2 tanks it can gift to Ukraine. Lets use USA as an example; number of Abrahams tanks gifted? 31.

As for what is spent on Ukraine, the US is sending munitions and weapons that get naturally replaced by shelf-life, or old equipment that is being replaced. In other words, it sends old stuff, and the military gets new stuff to replace it. There was a video the other day of some weapons Ukraine have received from various countries. Was it Sweden who'd sent a 2nd world war machine gun as demonstrated by a member of the Ukraine forces on the front line. Literally, unbelievably old gear - but the obvious is no-one can produce remotely near the rate required to actually supply more.

Some members don't spend 2%. True. How does this equate to millions in extra munitions? US produced 14k a month? To send millions of rounds that'd be... oh, 7 years of production? If, by GDP, the rest of NATO produced just as many as the USA - there'd still be a shortfall of epic proportions in munitions at 28k per month - given Ukraine is getting through 250k a month. Likely no-one would have had more in storage ready to go *either*. Everyone became lax over the possibility of potential conventional warfare; no-one has maintained multi-year nation state sized warfare stockpiles. As evidenced by the fact even the US has run stockpiles low supplying the Ukraine - without remotely having the capability to replenish in a timeframe. Nor can the other members (Pre-war Ukraine GDP 150 billion, and a 23 trillion dollar US economy in keeping with approx 20 trillion for the rest of NATO cumulatively, can't supply enough rounds for a 150 billion dollar economy to sustain a fight).

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Army produced around 14,000 155mm rounds a month in government-owned, contractor-operated munitions plants. In December 2022, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the Army was looking to increase production to 20,000 rounds per month by the spring and 40,000 rounds per month by 2025.

https://www.defenseone.com/business/202 ... ar's%20end.

So, an allegation that things would be different if they were and Ukraine would have way more stuff and it's their fault? Unsubstantiated arse gravy.


As for Trump - he doesn't care about NATO spending; he's using it as a political means because it appeals to his (potential) voters. He's entirely right, some aren't paying 2% - that's not something that can be denied and they're dragging their feet badly. But he literally doesn't care. It's about *him*. If there was no political gain for him, he'd never mention it. Just like chanting "Lock her up" about Hillary when she was his opposition - what happened there? Nothing. But during his campaign it was chanted at rallies by his "supporters" and paraded around on news channels, twitter, and all sorts. Smears.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/584 ... %20percent.

[mr.WHO]

a lot of stuff

For relatively longer post, it has solid arguments and I have nothing to bite on except 3 things:

1) 9/11 was 20+ years ago - back then all NATO militaries were way better financially and had much more post-cold war stocks. Principles are nice, but mean nothing, if you can't back them with personel, munition and equipment that won't fall apart after month, due to lack of spare parts.

2) Cost cutting and spending reductions hits Europe militaries way WAAAY more.
Due to fragmentation, production discontinuation and eroding economy of scale - good example are tanks - Challengers and Leclercs were build in miniscule numbers, but even Leopard 2 production was near dead before war. It was death spiral - less stuff you have, less reserves you keep, less spare parts and ammunition, which becomes more expensive due to falling production scale.

This would be perfect moment for standarized European equipment program...if not that there is no production capabilities.
Poland asked for 1000 tanks and this is, in very optimistic scenario, 10 years worth of current global Leopard 2 production.
I don't even want to mention PzH2000 production as everyone in Europe now emergency buy K9.

Maybe this is a delusion from the beginning, since even French and Germans alone, can't a agree on new standarized tank?

3) UK is only spending 2% since last 2 years - before, they were on cost cutting spree as well - it will take several years of above 2% spending to have tangible effect.

[Observe]

Meanwhile, it appears that Russia is beginning to use their Zircon hypersonic missile, which can evade any air defenses. The big question, is how many of these can they produce?

[Falcrack]

Apparently Russia is using Starlink in occupied areas.Terminals might be bought from non Russian sources?

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-military ... 00300.html

makes sense, he has Putin's fake interview pinned on Twitter

the more times goes on the more we learn of where Musk really stands. Approaching treason soon?

Musk is a walking talking billboard for why people shouldn't do drugs.

[mr.WHO]

It would be hard and expensive to block Russians from Starlink (I mean Russian soldiers on occupied territories - I bet Russian and Ukrainian terminals will end very close to eachother).
Updates, encryption and identificatino of terminals would be neccesary.

If someone watch Thunderf00t video, you know that Starlink is barelly break even with US subsidies/gov contracts.

Musk wanted this war to be cheap and quick marketing trick, but didn't accounted for longer hostilities which incurs many more additional problems and costs.

[clakclak]

2/3rd of NATO members do not meet 2% spending as of 2023:
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comment ... s_a_share/

Original source:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014 ... 023-en.pdf

Just today (specifically a few hours ago) there was a report that Germany did spend more than 2% of its GDP on the military in 2023. Apparently the previous spending report Germany submitted to the NATO had to be corrected upwards to 73,41 billion euros instead of the 56,64 billion euro reported initially. If I were to hazard a guess what happened here, as I already looked into Germany's defence spending quite a bit, the previous report did most likely not include the money from the 100 billion "Sondervermögen" allocated to military procurement and when the initial report was submitted it was possibly not yet clear how much of it was spend in 2023.

Edit: And no, as much as I like a good conspiracy theory, this did not simply come about due to Trumps comments.The original plan was to spend 71 billion €, as this article from back in August states.

Source: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nato-d ... n-100.html

English language article with roughly the same content: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/artic ... eports-dpa

That being said I think we are all kidding ourselves if we think that the problems in the German army can be fixed by money alone. The far bigger issue is its bureaucracy and procurement policy.

[Chips]

3) UK is only spending 2% since last 2 years - before, they were on cost cutting spree as well - it will take several years of above 2% spending to have tangible effect.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/298 ... 20military.

Please, just stop making things up. It's been all over the place, but it's never been *too* far either way.

The main critique of any stat, of course, is define what it's spent upon. You can have a huge defence budget, but if it's not actually paying for defence per se... then it's all fallacy.

Bit like USA gifting anything; its running a credit tab. It's lend-lease. Ukraine will pay for everything eventually, just like the UK had to do post 1st and 2nd World War (think the famous stat was UK paid it's last bill from the war to USA in 2007 or something).

*edit*
The first link isn't hugely helpful as everything is above 2%. This may be... well, depends where they got the figures from, but does show it dipping below 2% for about 5 years from 2015 onwards.

https://news.sky.com/story/what-is-the- ... ver%207%25.

So... "figures" all over the place depending on sources. Always above 2%? Only above 2% from 2018 you say? Both sources showing above 2% until at least 2015 with only 1 source saying it dips below before coming back? Still, if they're spending all that money on maintaining a nuclear stockpile at huge expense which they're unlikely to ever need, instead of spending billions on contracts to provide services that the military once did for a fraction of the cost itself... or just paying billions for not much at all.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... er-weapons

(it's like I can't remember if defence budget also covers some form of foreign aid?)

But should people be angry by Trump claiming he'd not honour a treaty? Unsurprising really - he doesn't even honour the constitution nor the legal system. USA will become the unreliable partner. That'll cause some significant problems around the world, and the US will be far worse off for it. Japan? Taiwan? Israel? Let alone NATO on top.

[mr.WHO]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/298 ... 20military.

Please, just stop making things up. It's been all over the place, but it's never been *too* far either way.

The main critique of any stat, of course, is define what it's spent upon. You can have a huge defence budget, but if it's not actually paying for defence per se... then it's all fallacy.

Huh, that's a suprise for me - with how UK was constantly downsizing the army and didn't field any carriers for quite a few years, I was quite sure they must have been below 2%

[burger1]

Another ship sunk

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... ack-crimea

Russia might have launched nuclear platforms into space

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ity-threat

[mr.WHO]

Russia might have launched nuclear platforms into space

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ity-threat

Poland in a few weeks:
Hallo? Military-Industrial Complex?
About those Star Destroyers that I joked some time ago...I need 5 and I need them next year.