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U.S. Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

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  • Albany Rifles
    replied
    The next tranche of US military aid is on its way to Ukraine.

    Biden administration announces new $1.7 billion lethal aid package for Ukraine | CNN Politics


    Biden administration announces new $1.7 billion lethal aid package for Ukraine


    By Michael Conte, CNN


    Published 12:33 PM EDT, Mon July 29, 2024



    Valeriy, vice commander of a self propelled howitzer division with the 63rd separate mechanized brigade, prepares a self propelled howitzer position on July 27 near Lyman, Ukraine. Ethan Swope/Getty ImagesCNN —

    The Biden administration announced on Monday a new lethal aid package for Ukraine totaling about $1.7 billion and largely consisting of missiles and ammunition for missile, artillery and air defense systems the US has previously provided to Ukraine.

    The US is committing $1.5 billion in new weapons and equipment to Ukraine through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which will include “capabilities to augment Ukraine’s air defenses, fires, and anti-tank weapons, as well as funding to sustain equipment previously committed by the United States,” according to a Defense Department news release.

    The Defense Department is also sending Ukraine up to $200 million worth of weapons and equipment directly from US Department of Defense stockpiles via Presidential Drawdown Authority, which includes “air defense interceptors; munitions for rocket systems and artillery; and anti-tank weapons,” according to the news release.

    The administration says this is their 20th “USAI package and sixty-second tranche of equipment to be provided from DoD inventories for Ukraine and since August 2021,” according to the release.

    The USAI package includes missiles for Ukraine’s National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), a key air defense platform.

    It also includes ammunition for Ukraine’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a weapons platform that Ukraine has recently been using to strike effectively in Russian territory.

    The package also includes artillery ammunition, one of Ukraine’s top requests.

    Leave a comment:


  • Albany Rifles
    replied
    While this article centers on AI use in weapons for Ukraine the use of AI and drones on the battlefield have come. And the US Army has heard. The Army is going through its largest reorganization in 2 decades. Air defense units are expanding and beefing up with new systems to counter AI/drone threats. And they are working with industry partners like in the this story to stay ahead of the curve.

    He created Oculus headsets as a teenager. Now he makes AI weapons for Ukraine : NPR

    He created Oculus headsets as a teenager. Now he makes AI weapons for Ukraine


    JULY 9, 20242:34 PM ET
    HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

    Greg Myre
    LISTEN· 7:457-Minute ListenPLAYLIST

    Palmer Luckey, 31, founder of Anduril Industries, stands in front of the Dive-LD, an autonomous underwater drone at company headquarters in Costa Mesa, Calif. Anduril recently won a U.S. Navy contract to build 200 of them annually.



    COSTA MESA, Calif. - It’s easy to spot Palmer Luckey. He’s the guy with the mullet and the goatee, almost always dressed in khaki shorts, flip flops and bright Hawaiian shirts.

    As he gives a tour of Anduril, the artificial intelligence weapons company he founded just south of Los Angeles, he’s in his standard business attire.

    "This is one of my Dungeons and Dragons Hawaiian shirts," he explains. "You've got an elder dragon. You've got a fighter, a couple of wizards. I wear a lot of Hawaiian shirts because I like them, and I can get away with it.”

    Sponsor Message
    He can get away with it because he's been a billionaire since his early 20s.

    When still a teenager, Luckey launched his first tech company, Oculus, the virtual reality headset for gaming. He sold it a couple years later to Facebook for $2 billion.

    Now 31, Luckey took that fortune and founded a new company, Anduril, that’s making AI intelligence weapons like drones and submarines.

    The Pentagon is buying them, keeping some for itself and sending others to Ukraine. Seven years after it started, Anduril says it's selling its autonomous weapons to about 10 countries worldwide.

    In a showroom with its weapons on display, Luckey describes the company's ALTIUS drone.

    "It's a drone that fires out of a tube into the air and then unfolds itself, extends its wings, extends its tail, unfolds the propeller and transforms itself into a small airplane," he says. "It can carry up to a 30-pound warhead. So you've got a lot of punch in this thing.”

    Palmer Luckey walks in the showroom featuring Anduril's artificial intelligence weapons. The company says it can build AI weapons much faster and cheaper than traditional military contractors who make large weapon systems, like fighter jets and tanks.

    Anduril has taken a new approach to making weapons


    Anduril is among a growing number of tech companies making artificial intelligence weapons — and boldly proclaiming they’ll change the way the U.S. and its allies wage war.

    In short, the aim is more tech doing the fighting and fewer troops in harm's way. The revolution hasn't happened yet. But these companies are shaking up an industry long dominated by massive firms such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, which build large, traditional weapons, from fighter jets to tanks, designed to last decades.

    Sponsor Message
    Anduril, named after a sword in Lord of the Rings, has a very different approach.

    "I had this belief that the major defense companies didn't have the right talent or the right incentive structure to invest in things like artificial intelligence, autonomy, robotics," says Luckey. "And the companies that did have expertise, like Google, like Facebook, like Apple, were refusing to work with the U.S. national security community."

    Anduril’s pitch is AI weapons, built in less time and at a lower cost than traditional defense contractors.

    The man spreading this message is an iconoclastic figure in the largely liberal tech community for his work with the military, and his outspoken politics, including long-standing support for Donald Trump.

    But Palmer Luckey is hard to ignore.

    Anduril is helping arm Ukraine


    Just days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Luckey made his way to the capital Kyiv, and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

    "Anduril has had hardware in Ukraine since the second week of the war. So we immediately got involved," Luckey says.

    A Ukrainian soldier operates a drone in the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine on June 14. Ukraine has been using cheap, civilian drones that it buys off the Internet. But Russia has responded with electronic jamming, often rendering such drones useless. Ukraine is now making its own drones and is looking for autonomous systems that are difficult to detect and stop.


    The Ukraine war has become a laboratory for an array of high-tech systems.

    Most striking is Elon Musk's Starlink satellite network that provides critical communications for Ukraine’s military.

    However, in this emerging industry of AI weapons, critics say a lot of bugs still need to be worked out.

    In several off-the-record conversations, people working closely with Ukraine’s military say many new weapons, from a range of companies, still have flaws, are vulnerable to Russian counter-measures, and simply have not yet performed as advertised.

    So far, they add, these weapons have had a limited impact and have not changed the war’s trajectory.

    Anduril’s CEO Brian Schimpf acknowledges the difficulties, but sees them as surmountable.

    Brian Schimpf, the CEO of Anduril, stands next to a a launch system for the Altius drone at company headquarters. Schimpf acknowledges that operating in Ukraine is a challenge, but says Anduril's AI weapons are designed to be updated quickly to adapt to changing conditions.

    "Ukraine is a very challenging environment to learn in," he says. "I’ve heard various estimates from the Ukrainians themselves that any given drone typically has a life span of about four weeks. The question is can you respond and adapt?”

    Sponsor Message
    Jacquelyn Schneider, who studies military technology as a fellow at the Hoover Institution, says the war has dramatically increased the pace of innovation.

    "Technologies that worked really well even a few months ago are now constantly having to change," she says. "And the big difference I do see is that software changes the rate of change."

    Weapons systems in Ukraine need to be updated frequently, just like the software on a phone or computer.

    "If you're buying a weapons platform that cannot be very easily modified for these software innovations, then the weapon system will become useless or not as effective in a very short period of time," she adds.

    P.W. Singer, an author who writes about war and tech, says, "There's this mythology of innovation as if it happens in one place."

    The reality is "there's a lot of cool, exciting stuff happening in the big defense primes. There's a lot of cool, exciting stuff happening in the big-tech Silicon Valley companies. There's a lot of cool, exciting stuff happening in small startups," he says.

    He also says AI weapons like drones should be seen as an addition — not a replacement — for existing weapons.

    "No one is saying, 'Well, that means there's no need for our traditional military. There's no need for manned airplanes.' Of course, you need both," he says.

    Anduril's Altius 600 drone hangs in the showroom at company headquarters in southern California. Most drones are remotely controlled by a pilot. The Anduril drones can be programmed before takeoff to to search, find and strike a target without being guided by a remote pilot.

    A constantly evolving battlefield


    In the face of Russia's big offensive two years ago, Ukrainians turned to small, cheap civilian drones made in China and available on the Internet. The Ukrainians attached grenades and other small explosives, then dropped the weapons down the open turrets of unsuspecting Russian tanks.

    In many instances, a $1,000 drone was taking out a multi-million-dollar tank or other expensive Russian weaponry, as well as inflicting casualties on Russian troops. But it's getting much harder for the Ukrainians to carry out these kinds of attacks.

    Sponsor Message
    The Russians have responded with electronic jamming, blocking the signal the drone was sending to the Ukrainian soldier operating it. This renders the drone useless.

    This is where Anduril is trying to step in. The company's AI drones can be programmed before takeoff to search on their own for Russian tanks or other targets.

    Once launched, these drones don’t need guidance from a Ukrainian soldier — making them very hard to detect and stop, says Luckey.

    "The autonomy onboard is really what sets it apart," he says. "It's not a remote controlled plane. There's a brain on it that is able to look for targets, identify targets and fly into those targets."

    Of course, this raises questions about who’s responsible if something goes wrong — like hitting civilians.

    In a recent report submitted to the United Nations, Human Rights Watch called for "the urgent negotiation and adoption of a legally binding instrument to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems."

    The organization says more than 270 groups and 70 countries have now joined its Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

    However, Anduril’s Brian Schimpf says AI weapons are "not about taking humans out of the loop. I don't think that's the right ethical framework. This is really about how do we make human decision-makers more effective and more accountable to their decisions."

    Drones aren’t just in the skies anymore. They’re also in the seas.


    Ukraine now makes its own sea drones — essentially jet skis packed with explosives — which have inflicted serious damage on the Russian navy in the Black Sea.

    Luckey puts on a virtual reality headset to show an augmented reality model of Anduril’s Dive-LD underwater drone at Anduril headquarters.

    Philip Cheung for NPR

    Luckey shows me Anduril’s version, an underwater drone called Dive-LD, in an old, largely vacant industrial building that’s part of Anduril’s otherwise shiny campus.

    We put on virtual reality headsets — an updated model of the one Luckey created — for an augmented look at the sub.

    Sponsor Message
    "It's an autonomous underwater vehicle that is able to go very, very long distances, dive to a depth of about 6,000 meters, which is deep enough to go to the bottom of almost any ocean," he says.

    Last month, Anduril won a U.S. Navy contract to build more than 200 of them annually.

    Luckey has pursued his interests in tech, business and politics since his teen years. Way back in 2011, Luckey wrote to Donald Trump and urged him to run for president.

    "I said, 'Hey, consider me one of the people who thinks it's good to have a businessperson in office, somebody who's familiar with signing both sides of a check.'"

    He still supports Trump today.

    "In general, yeah, I think he'd make a good commander in chief," he adds.

    Yet from a business perspective, he says he’s not that concerned about who wins in November.

    "We made a lot of money under Trump. We made even more money under Biden. I think we're going to continue expanding whoever is in office next," said Luckey.

    More AI weapons are coming, he says, no matter who’s in the White House.

    Leave a comment:


  • TopHatter
    replied
    What Trump 2.0 Would Mean for Ukraine
    Sorting through the mass of conflicting signals, what’s left is dire.


    Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin arrive for a meeting in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018.

    LAST WEEK’S PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE in which a frail, stumbling Joe Biden got bulldozed by a thuggish, swaggering Donald Trump understandably sent shock waves not only through the United States, but also through Ukraine—which according to a recent poll sees Biden as the friendlier candidate by a seven-to-one ratio—and through the mostly exiled Russian opposition, which tends to view Trump as a Vladimir Putin wannabe. As uncertainties swirl about whether Biden will remain his party’s candidate, and as Trump’s path to victory looks clearer, the question of what Trump’s return to the White House would mean for Ukraine acquires a scary new urgency. Meanwhile, the Kremlin regime, which has long tended to regard Trump as nash—“our guy”—is watching very closely.

    The actual Russia/Ukraine section in the debate was fairly short (and with detours such as Trump going off on a tangent about how the military “can’t stand this guy”—i.e., Biden—and regards him as “the worst commander-in-chief”). On this occasion, Trump refrained from overt Putin love and instead fell back on his standard claim that Putin never would have invaded Ukraine on his watch. He asserted that Biden invited the invasion by demonstrating weakness in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—not mentioning that it was Trump himself who started that withdrawal—and just generally by being too weak to keep Putin in line.

    Trump also served up the MAGA-base-pleasing kick at Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a clever operator who siphons money from the United States: “I don’t think there’s ever been anything like it. Every time that Zelensky comes to this country, he walks away with $60 billion. He’s the greatest salesman ever.” Trump then backpedaled—“I’m not knocking him, I’m not knocking anything, I’m only saying the money that we’re spending on this war, and we shouldn’t be spending, it should have never happened”—and reiterated his promise to have “that war settled between Putin and Zelensky” in the eleven weeks between Election Day 2024 and Inauguration Day 2025.

    When Trump was pushed on whether he considered the terms of Putin’s recent “peace proposal”—which would allow Russia to grab four Ukrainian regions and keep Ukraine out of NATO—to be acceptable, he said that they were not. However, he also repeated his claim that he would quickly get it all settled.

    How all this will play out in reality if Trump gets elected is anyone’s guess. But one can look at Trump’s record of words and deeds as president—and his words since leaving the presidency—to try to get a sense of what he will do in office.

    The perception of being pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine has trailed Trump, with good reason, ever since the 2016 election. (No, “Russiagate” wasn’t the hoax Trump supporters and many anti-anti-Trump pundits confidently assert it was.) The disclosure that Trump’s campaign orchestrated a change in the Republican party platform to remove the commitment to supplying Ukraine with weapons, not just nonlethal aid, in its ongoing war against Russian intervention in the country’s eastern regions was one of the alarm bells that got people talking about Trump’s possible Russia connection. In 2017, there were reports that Trump was personally involved in making that change; while the former campaign aide to whom this information was attributed denied it, he acknowledged that it reflected Trump’s position of favoring “better relations with Russia.”

    Nevertheless, in 2017, the Trump administration approved the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, reversing the Obama administration’s policy of not providing Ukraine with lethal weapons. Since then, Trump has sometimes touted this fact as evidence that he was the one who was tough on Putin in the Ukraine conflict: “I was the one that sent the Javelins, not Obama. Obama sent blankets,” he told a rally in March 2022, soon after Putin’s war in Ukraine escalated into a full-scale invasion. But this claim—which Republicans also made in 2020 when Trump was impeached for holding up another aid package because Zelensky wouldn’t do him a “favor” and falsely implicate Biden and the Democrats in corruption and hacking in Ukraine—leaves out some important details. According to an undisputed Foreign Policy report published in November 2018, Trump initially resisted the sale of the Javelins and went along with it only “when aides persuaded him that it could be good for U.S. business.”

    This episode shows that Trump’s “transactional” approach to foreign policy could sometimes help Ukraine—a view taken by some pro-Ukraine conservatives who are at least open to the idea that a second Trump term would not be so bad and, in particular, that Trump would not throw Ukraine under the Kremlin bus as is generally believed. But is there a cause for such optimism?

    It’s true that Trump’s statements on Ukraine, as on many other difficult and polarizing issues (abortion, for example) have been all over the place, making his position almost impossible to pin down. See if you can make sense of this mess:
    • On February 22, 2022, when Putin formally recognized the independence of Ukraine’s two separatist regions, the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, Trump praised the move as a brilliant and “savvy” pretext for going in.
    • A month later, on March 21, Trump told Fox Business that the United States needed to do more to help Ukraine and even accused Putin of “killing thousands,” once again taking credit for having given Ukraine lethal weapons and kept Putin in check during his presidency.
    • On May 13, he excoriated congressional Democrats for “sending another $40 billion to Ukraine” while there are struggling families in America.
    • In 2023, Trump repeatedly flogged the theme of supposedly ruinous U.S. spending on Ukraine on the campaign trail while $60 billion in military assistance to Ukraine was agonizingly stalled in the House.
    • In April 2024, Trump stood aside and did not oppose the aid bill after a portion of the funding was repackaged from grants to forgivable loans (an earlier Trump proposal); he even declared on his Truth Social site that “Ukrainian Survival and Strength” was important to the United States, though urging Europe to do more.
    • Last month, on his visit to Capitol Hill, Trump ripped into the aid package once again. Militantly anti-Ukraine Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida gloated on Twitter that it was “epic” to see “Trump trashing the Ukraine Aid to [House Speaker Mike Johnson’s] face.” Gaetz also quoted a Trump comment about Ukraine that remains unconfirmed, but is perfectly in character: “They’re never going to be there for us.”
    • On June 21, on the podcast of venture capitalist and self-styled Ukraine expert David Sacks, Trump accused Biden of provoking Putin’s invasion of Ukraine not by showing weakness, but by affirming that “Ukraine will go into NATO.” This is, of course, the Kremlin rationale for the invasion—one of them, at least.

    Incoherence? Opportunistic pragmatism? It’s anyone’s guess. The only two consistent points in Trump’s pronouncements on Ukraine have been that (1) the war would not have happened if he had still been in the White House, and (2) if re-elected, he could get it settled in one day by deploying the art of the deal. The deal, according to Trump, is that either Russia and Ukraine sit down to negotiate for peace, or the recalcitrant party will be punished: aid to Ukraine will be cut off if Zelensky refuses to play ball, or boosted to the max if Putin says no.

    The problem with that idea should be obvious. Given that Ukraine is the party that officially takes a stance against negotiating with Putin—and that Putin periodically floatspeace” proposals that amount to a demand for Ukrainian capitulation—it’s difficult to see this position as anything other than a signal that Ukraine will indeed be thrown under the bus.

    As Tamar Jacoby writes this week in The Bulwark, the “peace planreleased by two former Trump national security staffers now at the Trump-friendly America First Policy Institute—which would involve cutting off aid to Kyiv unless it agrees to negotiate a peace deal with the Kremlin, indefinitely postpone NATO membership for Ukraine, and allow Russia to maintain de factocontrol of currently occupied Ukrainian territory under an indefinite ceasefire—would amount to the same thing. Strong critics of the plan include former Russian dissident Yuri Yarim-Agaev, whose sympathies lean Republican (and who even argued shortly after the 2020 election that Trump had done much that was “constructive”). In a Radio Liberty interview, Yarim-Agaev notes that not only would the Trump “peace plan” give Russia a pause it would use to rearm and shore up its military, it would also give Putin an incentive to grab as much land as he can before the U.S. presidential election, since the ceasefire would freeze the battle lines. And it is worth remembering that when we talk about letting Russia keep occupied territory, it’s not just a question of land but of millions of people forced to endure the horrors and indignities of occupation—including not only economic deprivation and propaganda bombardment but terror against pro-Ukrainian residents and forced conscription of young men.

    TRUMP’S CLAIM THAT HE WOULD HAVE kept Putin from invading Ukraine had he been re-elected in 2020 is obviously a hypothetical that cannot be tested. But the claim that he curbed Putin’s aggression against Ukraine during his time in the White House is worth examining. That claim has been repeated by such pro-Ukraine Trump supporters as Washington Post columnist Mark Thiessen:


    It’s true that Putin invaded neighboring countries under George W. Bush (Georgia in 2008), Barack Obama (Ukraine in 2014), and Joe Biden (Ukraine again in 2022). But while there was no new invasion of Ukraine between 2017 and 2021, Russian aggression against Ukraine remained a continuing fact. Localized but often intense warfare continued in Eastern Ukraine, with Russia-backed “separatists” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions attacking Ukrainian troops and towns; it was an open secret that they were reinforced by Russian military personnel. (Since the capture or death of Russian servicemen couldn’t always be kept under wraps, the Kremlin claimed, with a straight face, that these were soldiers on leave who had decided, completely of their own free will, to spend their vacation on a war safari in Eastern Ukraine.) Just a week after Trump’s inauguration, pro-Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka in violation of the ceasefire agreement signed in 2015; the fighting raged for days, causing the town to be evacuated.

    Also during the Trump presidency, in March 2018, Russia completed the unlawful construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait connecting the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland. In subsequent months, Russia stepped up its military presence in the Sea of Azov and used it to disrupt Ukrainian and international shipping. Cargo vessels going to and leaving from Ukrainian ports were harassed with stop-and-search operations that, the British Foreign Office noted in a strong statement, were “damaging Ukraine’s economy and undermining its sovereignty.”

    In July of that year, Trump met Putin in Helsinki for the infamous summit where his conduct was so obsequious that even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made critical noises, warning that Putin would interpret this as “a sign of weakness”—while Fox News pundit Neil Cavuto echoed John McCain in calling Trump’s performance “disgraceful.”

    And yet Trump now expects us to believe that his tough love deterred Putin from grabbing Ukraine—a claim he has made repeatedly in recent months.

    SOME COMMENTATORS DID zero in on one remark from Trump during the debate: While explaining that the American fiasco in Afghanistan made Putin feel that he could go in and take Ukraine, Trump added, “This was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.” This was a truncated version of a story he has repeatedly told in the past year, in interviews and campaign rallies: that he and Putin discussed Putin’s lusting for Ukraine and that Trump stopped Putin from acting on his “dream” of invasion with a carrot-and-stick combination of “good relationship” and macho swagger. In most versions of this anecdote, Trump tells Putin, “Don’t do it” and points out that there would be “hell to pay,” or even threatens specific acts of retaliation. (For the record, Trump never said that he was the apple of Putin’s eye, as some reports wrongly implied; he said that “it” as in Ukraine, not “I” as in “Donald Trump,” was “the apple of his eye.”)

    The safest assumption is that this story in all its variations is standard Trumpian bull. If it isn’t, some have suggested that Trump’s failure to warn Ukraine and other allies if he had advance knowledge of Putin’s aggressive plans could be treasonous.

    Historian Heather Cox Richardson discusses another interesting possibility: that Trump may have been obliquely referring to a plan his campaign aide Paul Manafort was hatching with his Russian partner. The Mueller report described it as “a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine,” involving the return of disgraced pro-Kremlin ex-president Viktor Yanukovych to Eastern Ukraine. According to the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee’s massive, five-volume report on Russia and the 2016 election, discussions of this plan continued into “at least 2018,” though with Manafort out of the picture by then.

    If Putin was aware of these behind-the-scenes efforts, it could be one explanation for why he didn’t invade earlier: He may have believed that, with the Trump administration’s connivance, he could get a large chunk of Eastern Ukraine without going to war.

    TRUMP’S EVER-SHIFTING STANCE on Ukraine gives pro-Ukraine Trump supporters enough cover to claim that, actually, a President Trump will be good for Ukraine. Given how mercurial Trump is, making predictions is near-impossible. It may be, for instance, that if Trump gets elected and Putin is seen as losing the war (or at least in a bad position) by Inauguration Day, Trump will decide that he doesn’t want to back a loser and will ratchet up the bragging about being the first American president to give Ukraine lethal weapons.

    But overall, the odds that a Trump 2.0 administration would be pro-Ukraine are pretty low. One thing to remember is that in 2024, the MAGA caucus in the Republican party and in the right-wing media has gotten both far more powerful and far more rabidly anti-Ukraine compared to 2016. When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, there was no Marjorie Taylor Greene and no J.D. Vance in Congress. Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, and Tucker Carlson were not on a full-time anti-Ukraine crusade. MAGA may be a “follow the leader” cult, but today, Ukraine hate is such a core part of the MAGA identity that it may be hard even for Trump himself to sell a pro-Ukraine turn. Nor would Trump 2.0 have the old contingent of Russia hawks like John Bolton or Fiona Hill in the White House.

    The fact remains that for those who support Ukraine and its defense, a Trump victory remains an extremely bad bet. To insist otherwise is an exercise in gaslighting.
    ___________

    Still plenty of gullible assholes out there claiming that Trump was "tough on Putin".

    Leave a comment:


  • Ironduke
    replied
    Originally posted by Gun Grape View Post

    It wasn't about where the targets are.
    It was a post about having more than one system capable of engaging the target.
    Then not engaging with the ones that have no restrictions.
    Then complaining that you couldn't because your big bad evil supplier refused to let you use the one with restrictions.

    They are doing the same thing with M-1 tanks and Excaliber/MLRS/and the new SDB MLRS round.
    Sorry, wasn't my intent to characterize your post. I was just commenting generally.

    Leave a comment:


  • Albany Rifles
    replied
    Originally posted by astralis View Post

    I really think this is an issue of them trying to negotiate in public for stuff. I agree this is a really bad look for the Ukrainians, I just wish we had a more decisive, pro-active decision-making process on our end so that this sort of thing didn't happen so much.

    it also frankly doesn't look good on our end when after the WH caves, we provide bullshit "operational" reasons or ex-post-facto justifications. the latest one being that the limited authorization the President cleared on was just "common sense".

    I'm aware of some of the DoD processes, so I know long-range planning and pro-activity does exist in SOME part of the USG.

    SOME is doing some heavy lifting there!

    Leave a comment:


  • troung
    replied
    But the question is, Why was use of ATACMs in Russia such a pressing subject?
    They have demonstrated repeatedly that they can fire into Russia with their own weapon systems, BM-30s, OTR-21 and Neptune to name a few.
    And there is no risk of escalaition. They don't need US permission

    Same as Why do they demand F-16s? MIG-29s are more current. The MISIP/MLU packages that F-16s went through brought the fleet up to 1996 standards. The UAF updated their MIG-29s in 2014. Nad they know how to fly and fight with them

    Seems like the whole point of this is to get the US/NATO to put boots on the ground. And that should never happen
    The Ukies MiG29s are limited to obsolete SAHR R27s, are payload limited for air and ground work, and the radars suck. The F16MLU and Mirage 2000s are all around better planes to shoot back at Russian planes and conduct strikes.



    Ukrainian sources have discussed building underground bunkers to protect the planes from long-range missile and drone strikes by Russian forces.

    Modern, Nato-standard aircraft need clean runways, free from “foreign object debris” (FOD), especially the F-16, which is particularly sensitive because of its under-belly air intake.

    The Mirage 2000 is more resistant to FOD than the F-16, and capable of using rougher surfaces, but it will still be difficult to find suitable locations to house fleets of both aircraft

    ===
    But its Mica air-to-air missile, while highly capable, falls short of the Amraam fired by the F-16.

    “Mica is by no means a bad missile… it’s a fairly agile missile that can be pretty unpleasant to defend against if you’re inside what is called the no escape zone. But it is fundamentally, significantly shorter-ranged than Amraam,” Prof Bronk said.

    Mica missiles boast specifications claiming they can hit targets up to 50 miles away, compared to the Amraam’s range of 75 miles.

    To achieve such ranges, shots would have to be taken at high altitude, where the air is thinner, and with the launching aircraft travelling at supersonic speeds

    ====
    Paris is building a coalition of countries that operate the Mirage 2000, with the ultimate goal of having an unspecified number of the planes in the war-torn country by the end of the year.

    The programme mirrors the scheme by Nato allies to provide Ukraine’s air force with dozens of F-16s.

    France’s access to Mirage 2000-5 models is extremely limited – its air force only has around 26 of the dash five version in service, and they are set to be replaced entirely by 2029 – but it was an export success.

    Leave a comment:


  • astralis
    replied
    Then not engaging with the ones that have no restrictions.
    Then complaining that you couldn't because your big bad evil supplier refused to let you use the one with restrictions.
    I really think this is an issue of them trying to negotiate in public for stuff. I agree this is a really bad look for the Ukrainians, I just wish we had a more decisive, pro-active decision-making process on our end so that this sort of thing didn't happen so much.

    it also frankly doesn't look good on our end when after the WH caves, we provide bullshit "operational" reasons or ex-post-facto justifications. the latest one being that the limited authorization the President cleared on was just "common sense".

    I'm aware of some of the DoD processes, so I know long-range planning and pro-activity does exist in SOME part of the USG.

    Leave a comment:


  • S2
    replied
    "I want them to be a professional army. One that doesn't move off the line when they are scheduled to be replaced, even though their replacments are held up. Leaving a gap for the Russians to move in..."

    Something like what happened with the 47th Mech Bde at Avdivvka? Yeah, shitty if we heard right. This, however, would also probably lead to a formal investigation in our army. Let's hope the Ukrainians aren't too busy to find value in hard lessons learned the wrong way.

    Pro armies aren't created on the fly. You know that. They've shown remarkable resilience fighting the so-called "World's second best army". This combat environment offers real-world training lessons that a training environment simply can't replicate. Assuring dissemination of lessons-learned throughout the rank and file might not be as thorough, easy and consistent that a peace-time environment offers.

    As such, they're fighting with the army they have. Imperfectly. They're doing well despite their imperfections. They'll do better given time and resources for self-improvement.

    If their nation survives.

    To that end-

    "I want them to quit giving excuses on why they cannot use equipment "The M-1 wasn't designed for fighting in this part of the world" Thats why we have problems with it. The gun doesn't allow us to take out buildings".

    I saw Hertling's response and I saw the troops who were bitching. I was reassured by troops bitching. That's what troops do and it's rarely the definitive description of an issue. I saw Hertling's response and he also noted that they were "troops". As such, a damned small sample size (one tank crew caught on camera). Sabot isn't the preferred munition of choice for buildings. That's obvious. Don't know why they wouldn't have HEAT onboard. He further noted that the Ukrainian General Staff hasn't reached the same conclusion about the M-1 and absolutely wants more of those tanks.

    So...shit happens when troops are sometimes placed near cameras and microphones. Personally, I had a hard time recalling a soldier ever advising me about how easy they found their jobs. Usually a heroic effort on their part to unfcuk some mistake made by an officer like me.

    "...I want the US to be cautious so we don't get drawn in..."

    After 28 months, it's clear we won't bleed in this war. If you want that to remain the case, winning in Ukraine is critical. It won't be the same in the Baltic states should Russia win.

    "...Why didn't they do that with the troop staging areas after they were denied ATACMS...?"

    What's your preferred munition for engaging an assembly area? A drone swarm of discrete munitions attacking a row of discrete targets in convoy seems a great choice but if I'm hitting an assembly area, give me DPICM of some type or tungsten berries. I have zero fears of Ukraine engaging red-line targets (for me civilians and nuclear weapons storage) within Russia. I have every hope they'll use the best munition available for their target sets. What those are, however, remain unknown (as do the available munitions) so I won't pass judgement. You engage based upon the needs of the moment and what you've got lying around.

    It's always been that way.


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  • Gun Grape
    replied
    Originally posted by S2 View Post
    "Then complaining that you couldn't because your big bad evil supplier refused to let you use the one with restrictions..."

    Maybe this goes deeper for you?

    Nothing else makes sense. You can't be worried about providing overmatch because the fight wouldn't be "fair". The Ukrainians will use anything they can get their hands on.

    Yes it does go deeper for me. I want them to be a professional army. One that doesn't move off the line when they are scheduled to be replaced, even though their replacments are held up. Leaving a gap for the Russians to move in.

    I want them to target better. "I cant use "A" but I can engage them with "B" "C" or "D". So hit them with what we can not complain about what we want.

    I want them to quit giving excuses on why they cannot use equipment "The M-1 wasn't designed for fighting in this part of the world" Thats why we have problems with it. The gun doesn't allow us to take out buildings". Finally Gen Hertling couldn't take anymore and reminded the world that the M-1 was designed for just that area. And has a great record over 40 years of service, but only if you PMCS the thing and pick the right ammo to engage targets with.

    The GPS weapons are not effective because of jamming. But read the articles, Excaliber SDB MLRS and JDAM started losing effectivness steadly after a few weeks. But aircraft launched SDB isn't haveing the same problem. Thats not a jamming problem, that a lack of updating their GPS feed



    "...Then not engaging with the ones that have no restrictions"

    Witness the drone swarm attack on the Russian military convoy in Kursk. They'll throw sticks and stones if they must. Must they?
    And it worked. Why didn't they do that with the troop staging areas after they were denied ATACMS?

    "You fight with the Army you have, not the one you wish for"

    In short I want them learn to fight smart, mobilize troops, go all in 18 yr olds and above not 25. The avg age of their front line troops is 43. We drafed 18 year olds to fight in foreign countries, they need to do the same to save their own. Or start negotiations.

    I want the US to be cautious so we don't get drawn in. And on a personal level I want Young Gungrape (Staff Sgt USAF) to get less AFEMs than his Dad.

    (rant off)




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  • S2
    replied
    "Then complaining that you couldn't because your big bad evil supplier refused to let you use the one with restrictions..."

    Maybe this goes deeper for you?

    Nothing else makes sense. You can't be worried about providing overmatch because the fight wouldn't be "fair". The Ukrainians will use anything they can get their hands on.

    "...Then not engaging with the ones that have no restrictions"

    Witness the drone swarm attack on the Russian military convoy in Kursk. They'll throw sticks and stones if they must. Must they?

    "...They are doing the same thing with M-1 tanks and Excaliber/MLRS/and the new SDB MLRS round."

    Imagine that! They really want stuff designed to kill Russians. Cheeky bastards, though. Eh?

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  • Gun Grape
    replied
    Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
    According to the Russians, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhia, Kherson, Crimea are all part of Russia. There were those "referendums" and "annexations" in fall 2022. So what's the difference anyways between firing an ATACMS against Crimea vs Belgorod? Or a HIMARS strike against Donetsk vs Kursk? From the Russians point-of-view, this should be a distinction without a difference. ;)
    It wasn't about where the targets are.
    It was a post about having more than one system capable of engaging the target.
    Then not engaging with the ones that have no restrictions.
    Then complaining that you couldn't because your big bad evil supplier refused to let you use the one with restrictions.

    They are doing the same thing with M-1 tanks and Excaliber/MLRS/and the new SDB MLRS round.

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  • Ironduke
    replied
    Originally posted by Gun Grape View Post
    But the question is, Why was use of ATACMs in Russia such a pressing subject?
    According to the Russians, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhia, Kherson, Crimea are all part of Russia. There were those "referendums" and "annexations" in fall 2022. So what's the difference anyways between firing an ATACMS against Crimea vs Belgorod? Or a HIMARS strike against Donetsk vs Kursk? From the Russians point-of-view, this should be a distinction without a difference. ;)

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  • Officer of Engineers
    replied
    Originally posted by S2 View Post
    "I know that we're on the fast-track to boots on the ground in Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania/Poland if Ukraine doesn't win"

    Guys,

    The point from this comment is simply we'll be AT WAR if its Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia/Poland. American blood on the ground-not boots. Those countries are next on Putin's grand tour. Further, treaty mandated (unless we decide to ignore that lil' article 5).
    A little thing about Article V. It was to be approved by the various NATO member's legislatures. The US is well within its rights as a treaty member not to invoke Article V if she chooses.

    But that being said, I fail to see any Ukrainian victory that would get rid of the Russian threat. Kiev is not marching to Moscow. The Russian Armies will not be destroyed beyond repair. The best Kiev can do in peacetime is to keep Moscow's focus on her, and not on the Baltic States but that still does not eliminate the threat to those Baltic States.

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  • Officer of Engineers
    replied
    Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
    I suspect Zelensky would crawl over broken glass naked to get a fraction of those numbers openly operating in Ukraine in comparable roles.
    And I suspect Zelensky would have done everything to avoid the bloodbaths of Khe Sanh, and LB I & II.

    Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
    The soldiers might have gone home, but the arms kept flowing in vast numbers. More importantly, the 'blank cheque' lasted long enough to limit US action & break US resolve, which is ultimately what it needed to do.
    No,the arms did not kept flowing. A big drop occurred when China and the USSR was getting ready for WWIII. More over, LB I & II decimated North Vietnam's AD net beyond repair. Hanoi had to resort to diplomacy rather than military resupply to counter the US air threat. There was no resupply.

    That being all said, the point remains that Vietnam was willing to bleed everything, lives and machines, to win. Putin is showing that resolve, not Zelensky.

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  • Bigfella
    replied
    Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
    That blank cheque stopped when those two started getting ready to fight each other.
    The soldiers might have gone home, but the arms kept flowing in vast numbers. More importantly, the 'blank cheque' lasted long enough to limit US action & break US resolve, which is ultimately what it needed to do.

    Leave a comment:

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