This would have been categorically true circa-1970s.
Unfortunately, US industrial vertical integration now includes foundations placed in global low-labor-cost countries.
The crash vaccine manufacturing scaling program was possible because we were rich enough to throw mountains of money (of which we have the most) at any international supply problems.
If the Atlantic or Pacific had been hostile to commercial shipping, or countries hadn't cooperated, it would have had a very different result.
> We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
"We" are not. Ukrainians are dying and holding their own against a much larger country, with the help of NATO surplus equipment.
20,000-50,000 Ukrainians now have at least one limb amputated as a result of the war. [0] [1]
And Russia's military is not being decimated. It's holding its own with an elastic defense, that's making progress difficult and costly for a Ukrainian army that's trained halfway between Soviet mass doctrine and Western maneuver warfare.
At some point the Ukrainians will hopefully manage to exhaust Russia's logistics sufficient to break through their defense, but that's in no way a sure thing.
Russia's military is being decimated, just not at the line of contact currently. You're watching a protracted battle play out all across the world right now between Russian interests and Western interests. Some of these include:
1. Russian/Wagner (now admitted to be the same) neocolonialism in African states, most recently Niger. Within days Niger stopped trading Uranium to France. Conveniently, France is the least dependent on Russia for energy and will force the French to buy outside of Niger and then refocus on Russia.
2. The latest naval drone hit on a Russian oil tanker in the Black Sea took place well beyond the expected range of Ukrainian capability, which likely means someone else (Turkey?) helped at least get it into launch range. This coupled with the Ukrainian position that all russian ships, and all ships trading with russia are now targets in the Black Sea is also big for the area.
Currently Russians may not be dying in droves defending their positions. However, the knock on effects for russian military capacity, industrial capacity, and naval capacity are incredible. The longer they flounder and the more they commit to Ukraine, the more their traditional enemies are able to take advantage of their weakness.
If russian gas and oil cannot flow out of the black sea safely, their PMC backed interests in Africa and South American become less effective, and the corresponding governments will look elsewhere for influence/protection/trade.
It'll be fascinating to learn whatever grey/black ops details come out after the war hopefully ends.
The naval drone question is especially fascinating.
IMHO, they have to be transported closer to impact site by some other vessel.
Ukraine doesn't have submarines, and Russia has 6(?) Kilo's in the Black Sea, so traditional submarines would be insane in that environment anyway.
And whatever transport method would need to be stealthy with respect to Russia's sensing methods: acoustic, radar, to a lesser degree visual.
Given Ukraine's technical capabilities and traditional shipbuilding expertise, I'd hazard there's a somewhat-stealthy drone carrier boat (probably also unmanned).
They could also be hiding/launching the drones directly from commercial shipping, but that's an awfully big risk for the flag country/ship owner with respect to Russia boarding and searching, or even back tracing launch points.
Unfortunately, US industrial vertical integration now includes foundations placed in global low-labor-cost countries.
The crash vaccine manufacturing scaling program was possible because we were rich enough to throw mountains of money (of which we have the most) at any international supply problems.
If the Atlantic or Pacific had been hostile to commercial shipping, or countries hadn't cooperated, it would have had a very different result.
> We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
"We" are not. Ukrainians are dying and holding their own against a much larger country, with the help of NATO surplus equipment.
20,000-50,000 Ukrainians now have at least one limb amputated as a result of the war. [0] [1]
And Russia's military is not being decimated. It's holding its own with an elastic defense, that's making progress difficult and costly for a Ukrainian army that's trained halfway between Soviet mass doctrine and Western maneuver warfare.
At some point the Ukrainians will hopefully manage to exhaust Russia's logistics sufficient to break through their defense, but that's in no way a sure thing.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-ukraine-a-surge-in-amputatio...
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/ukraines-amputee...