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Ask a Vet
Author: TriSec
Date: 02/13/2024 13:56:00
Good Morning.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of this, given how dysfunctional the United States government is today. The US Senate has passed a $95b military aid bill.
While we might not be fighting these wars, we certainly are bankrolling them. The IRS processed somewhere around 165 million tax returns last year, so that's about $575 each for this one. In any case, the package barely passed the senate, so it's on to the Trumpian Reichstag for their rubber-stamp rejection.
I personally have mixed feelings about this. None of these are our war, so in a perfect world, we should be isolationist and aloof. But considering how politically important Israel is, and how globally important smiting Putin is, we can't ignore the fleet of elephants in the room.
But I am wondering about one of those elephants. Incredibly, Ukraine still seems to be holding its own against what used to be a Superpower. Their war has being going on nearly as long as the Siege of Leningrad during WWII. Which does lead to the comparison I want to make today. It's being reported that Russia has lost most of their front-line tanks, nearly 3,000 of them.
And therein lies my concern from a historic point-of-view. The Soviet Union was able to defeat Nazi Germany long ago not from sheer force of arms or tactics. It was purely a war of attrition. The Germans could not keep up with their losses by replenishing the army, while thanks to strategic bombing, they could not continue to build what were technologically superior war machines in any significant numbers as the war continued.
The resources of Mother Russia are in general, vast and limitless, and it was the endless stream of men and materiel that eventually defeated Germany.
So unfortunately this is where Ukraine is today. They have smaller resources that are technically superior - mostly American and ironically German armor, and American aircraft. But how many of those are being destroyed in battle? Russia can easily replace it's losses through conscription and reserves, where Ukraine's resources are quite limited. It's like the Battle of the Atlantic, too. Russia isn't sinking ships on the open sea, but it's politically difficult to ship supplies into the war zone, so things reach Ukraine on a limited and infrequent basis. Nevermind the slowly eroding support on the world stage.
Nobody can predict how this may turn out.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of this, given how dysfunctional the United States government is today. The US Senate has passed a $95b military aid bill.
While we might not be fighting these wars, we certainly are bankrolling them. The IRS processed somewhere around 165 million tax returns last year, so that's about $575 each for this one. In any case, the package barely passed the senate, so it's on to the Trumpian Reichstag for their rubber-stamp rejection.
In a pre-dawn vote, lawmakers cleared the 60-vote threshold to send the legislation on to the House.
Joe Biden has been urging Congress for months to hurry through the new aid to Ukraine and US partners in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. After Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, the US president also requested funds for the US ally, along with humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
Ukrainian officials have warned of weapons shortages at a time when Russia is pressing ahead with renewed attacks.
Both houses of Congress must approve the legislation before Biden can sign it into law.
The bill appears to face long odds of getting to the floor in the House, where the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, criticised it for lacking conservative provisions to stem a record flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border.
“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement late on Monday.
“America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo,” said Johnson.
Sen John Thune, the chamber’s No 2 Republican, said it was not clear what Johnson would do. “The House, I assume, is going to move on something. Obviously, they’re going to address Israel,” he said.
Hardline Republicans predicted that the Senate legislation would be dead on arrival in the House.
“The bill before us today ... will never pass in the House, will never become law,” the Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida said in an early morning speech on the floor.
I personally have mixed feelings about this. None of these are our war, so in a perfect world, we should be isolationist and aloof. But considering how politically important Israel is, and how globally important smiting Putin is, we can't ignore the fleet of elephants in the room.
But I am wondering about one of those elephants. Incredibly, Ukraine still seems to be holding its own against what used to be a Superpower. Their war has being going on nearly as long as the Siege of Leningrad during WWII. Which does lead to the comparison I want to make today. It's being reported that Russia has lost most of their front-line tanks, nearly 3,000 of them.
HONG KONG, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Russia has lost more than 3,000 tanks during its invasion of Ukraine - the equivalent of its entire pre-war active inventory - but has enough lower-quality armoured vehicles in storage for years of replacements, a leading research centre said Tuesday.
Ukraine has also suffered heavy loses since the invasion began in February 2022, but Western military replenishments have allowed it to maintain inventories while upgrading quality, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual Military Balance report.
"Moscow has been able to trade quality for quantity though, by pulling thousands of older tanks out of storage at a rate that may, at times, have reached 90 tanks per month," said the report, a key reference tool for defence analysts.
Russia's stored inventories mean Moscow "could potentially sustain around three more years of heavy losses and replenish tanks from stocks, even if at lower-technical standard, irrespective of its ability to produce new equipment," the report said.
And therein lies my concern from a historic point-of-view. The Soviet Union was able to defeat Nazi Germany long ago not from sheer force of arms or tactics. It was purely a war of attrition. The Germans could not keep up with their losses by replenishing the army, while thanks to strategic bombing, they could not continue to build what were technologically superior war machines in any significant numbers as the war continued.
The resources of Mother Russia are in general, vast and limitless, and it was the endless stream of men and materiel that eventually defeated Germany.
So unfortunately this is where Ukraine is today. They have smaller resources that are technically superior - mostly American and ironically German armor, and American aircraft. But how many of those are being destroyed in battle? Russia can easily replace it's losses through conscription and reserves, where Ukraine's resources are quite limited. It's like the Battle of the Atlantic, too. Russia isn't sinking ships on the open sea, but it's politically difficult to ship supplies into the war zone, so things reach Ukraine on a limited and infrequent basis. Nevermind the slowly eroding support on the world stage.
Nobody can predict how this may turn out.
