Someone once said: “there is always a well-known and simple solution to every problem; neat, plausible and wrong!”
A Ukraine solution ain”t going to be simple. No amount of artillery shells is going to end the war. A World War 1 French general, when asked what would end the war, stated “Shells, Shells, and more Shells!”, and that answer didn’t work. What is the difference in trench warfare in WW1 France and the trenches in Ukraine?
The simplistic move of a JLOTS pier for Gaza is not going to help without a distribution system inside Gaza (and not controlled by Hamas). Hamas is already dropping mortar rounds on the Gaza reception area. Well someone at the US State Department please take a look at the 1992 Restore Hope Operation in Somalia.
I have said this before; US senior military leadership is responsible to explain to our political leaders that a rigorous war, makes for a short war, and a short war is a merciful war. If they could get that idea across to our politician’s maybe, just maybe, the US would stop losing forever wars strategically with our warriors bleeding to win them tactically. Especially, when strategy trumps tactics every time. Committing our warriors to a conflict must be for decisive results. Our warriors don’t sacrifice their lives, they have to be taken by an enemy. For that reason alone military leaders need to be held accountable.
Elements of National Power, Economic, Political, Sociological, Military…….consider these 2 critical economic factors one by Europeans the other by the U.S. . This proxy war we are funding in Ukraine is failing because and political sociological acts as well, we are funding both sides i.e. Russia and Ukraine…..similarly in the Middle East Biden funds Iran via oil sales etc.. while Iran and its proxies directly attack Israel and in Our Homeland via political sociological acts funded by Iran, Qatar and the US Communist left pay for violent protests at US campuses….just like we witnessed in the Viet Nam war w Communist and their fellow travelers in the US. and in the case of Columbia University the insurrection is occurring in the exact same building as 1968. This is from GPF “Europe is growing reliant on Russia for a critical resource.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Europe sleepwalking. Europe is increasingly dependent on Russian fertilizers, the head of a major producer of nitrogen-based mineral fertilizers told the Financial Times. Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Yara International, said Europe is “sleepwalking into handing over critical food and fertilizing power to Russia,” with the EU importing twice as much fertilizer from Moscow in the first six months of 2023 compared to the previous year. Russian imports this year are lower but still relatively high, accounting for a third of total urea fertilizers.
Sanctions easing. The U.S. Treasury Department has temporarily lifted restrictions on transactions with certain sanctioned Russian banks related to the energy sector. Until Nov. 1, payments through these banks will be permitted if they relate to the extraction, production, refining, liquefaction, transportation or purchase of oil and a number of other energy resources, including liquified natural gas, timber, coal and uranium. The measure also allows for transactions related to the development, production, generation, transmission or exchange of power through any means.”
The Russian Ukrainian conflict is now a war of industrial attrition, the Russians are simply out producing the Ukrainian efforts in men and material. Having listened to Colonel David Glanz US Army (ret) on the Controversy and Clarity podcast, he spends a good amount of the time breaking down how Russian forces fail in early battles and then while not as fast as AI, learn from their mistakes. He outlines wars with Sweden, France, Germany, WWI and WWII. They are a grinding Mass AND Maneuverer force at the moment, picking their objectives and just beating the Hell,out of everything in the way. It’s not pretty and it is slow, but by all accounts they are gaining ground. One contributor here said the Russians would not take Avdilvka, how did that workout? If they want Odessa they will take Odessa, they are fighting for something different and no one in our Intelligence agencies, DOD or State Department can tell anyone, just what the Hell Russia really wants. Hell of a way to fight a proxy war.
This also highlights being nimble, fast, first, having the ability to go from the MEU to the MEF and back again and carry the fight fast and viciously to the combatants on the other side. For all the supposed education, MBA’s, Masters of this and that, joint command experience etc., etc., someone like General Berger stopped reading history.
Ships, arty, tanks, engineers, more MAGTF equipment and logistics. Not sitting waiting for the fight to come to us, rather Marines going to the fight as they have for the life span of the Corps.
One sure fire way to slow the Russians down has very little to do with military might. The great South American freedom fighter San Martn often said that three things were needed to win wars.......money, money, and money! Since Russia derives most of its money from selling oil, the more a barrel of oil costs the more money Putin makes. Had we continued to be energy independent under the current administration the cost of oil would have been half what it is know. Without all that money Putin would have been hamstrung and limited in his illegitimate ambitions. We missed an opportunity by not playing 3 dimensional chess. Hopefully with a new administration in January 2025 we can deny Putin all of his petrodollars.
Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.
Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN.
The US military set a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025 — less than half of the Russian monthly output — and even that number is now out of reach with $60 billion in Ukraine funding stalled in Congress, a senior Army official told reporters last week.
“What we are in now is a production war,” a senior NATO official told CNN. “The outcome in Ukraine depends on how each side is equipped to conduct this war.”
Officials say Russia is currently firing around 10,000 shells a day, compared to just 2,000 a day from the Ukrainian side. The ratio is worse in some places along the 600-mile front, according to a European intelligence official.
The shortfall comes at perhaps the most perilous moment for Ukraine’s war effort since Russia first marched on Kyiv in February 2022. US money for arming Ukraine has run out and Republican opposition in Congress has effectively halted giving any more.
Meanwhile, Russia recently took the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka and is widely seen as having the initiative on the battlefield. Ukraine is struggling not just with ammunition but also growing manpower shortages on the front lines.
Given enough time without effective military opposition, even the Russians can get their act together. We should have learned from earlier experience that a strategy of gradualism is bankrupt, & doesn’t work.
Simple
Someone once said: “there is always a well-known and simple solution to every problem; neat, plausible and wrong!”
A Ukraine solution ain”t going to be simple. No amount of artillery shells is going to end the war. A World War 1 French general, when asked what would end the war, stated “Shells, Shells, and more Shells!”, and that answer didn’t work. What is the difference in trench warfare in WW1 France and the trenches in Ukraine?
The simplistic move of a JLOTS pier for Gaza is not going to help without a distribution system inside Gaza (and not controlled by Hamas). Hamas is already dropping mortar rounds on the Gaza reception area. Well someone at the US State Department please take a look at the 1992 Restore Hope Operation in Somalia.
I have said this before; US senior military leadership is responsible to explain to our political leaders that a rigorous war, makes for a short war, and a short war is a merciful war. If they could get that idea across to our politician’s maybe, just maybe, the US would stop losing forever wars strategically with our warriors bleeding to win them tactically. Especially, when strategy trumps tactics every time. Committing our warriors to a conflict must be for decisive results. Our warriors don’t sacrifice their lives, they have to be taken by an enemy. For that reason alone military leaders need to be held accountable.
Semper Fi
Correction second sentence should have read “is failing because economic ..and.
Elements of National Power, Economic, Political, Sociological, Military…….consider these 2 critical economic factors one by Europeans the other by the U.S. . This proxy war we are funding in Ukraine is failing because and political sociological acts as well, we are funding both sides i.e. Russia and Ukraine…..similarly in the Middle East Biden funds Iran via oil sales etc.. while Iran and its proxies directly attack Israel and in Our Homeland via political sociological acts funded by Iran, Qatar and the US Communist left pay for violent protests at US campuses….just like we witnessed in the Viet Nam war w Communist and their fellow travelers in the US. and in the case of Columbia University the insurrection is occurring in the exact same building as 1968. This is from GPF “Europe is growing reliant on Russia for a critical resource.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Europe sleepwalking. Europe is increasingly dependent on Russian fertilizers, the head of a major producer of nitrogen-based mineral fertilizers told the Financial Times. Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Yara International, said Europe is “sleepwalking into handing over critical food and fertilizing power to Russia,” with the EU importing twice as much fertilizer from Moscow in the first six months of 2023 compared to the previous year. Russian imports this year are lower but still relatively high, accounting for a third of total urea fertilizers.
Sanctions easing. The U.S. Treasury Department has temporarily lifted restrictions on transactions with certain sanctioned Russian banks related to the energy sector. Until Nov. 1, payments through these banks will be permitted if they relate to the extraction, production, refining, liquefaction, transportation or purchase of oil and a number of other energy resources, including liquified natural gas, timber, coal and uranium. The measure also allows for transactions related to the development, production, generation, transmission or exchange of power through any means.”
The Russian Ukrainian conflict is now a war of industrial attrition, the Russians are simply out producing the Ukrainian efforts in men and material. Having listened to Colonel David Glanz US Army (ret) on the Controversy and Clarity podcast, he spends a good amount of the time breaking down how Russian forces fail in early battles and then while not as fast as AI, learn from their mistakes. He outlines wars with Sweden, France, Germany, WWI and WWII. They are a grinding Mass AND Maneuverer force at the moment, picking their objectives and just beating the Hell,out of everything in the way. It’s not pretty and it is slow, but by all accounts they are gaining ground. One contributor here said the Russians would not take Avdilvka, how did that workout? If they want Odessa they will take Odessa, they are fighting for something different and no one in our Intelligence agencies, DOD or State Department can tell anyone, just what the Hell Russia really wants. Hell of a way to fight a proxy war.
This also highlights being nimble, fast, first, having the ability to go from the MEU to the MEF and back again and carry the fight fast and viciously to the combatants on the other side. For all the supposed education, MBA’s, Masters of this and that, joint command experience etc., etc., someone like General Berger stopped reading history.
Ships, arty, tanks, engineers, more MAGTF equipment and logistics. Not sitting waiting for the fight to come to us, rather Marines going to the fight as they have for the life span of the Corps.
One sure fire way to slow the Russians down has very little to do with military might. The great South American freedom fighter San Martn often said that three things were needed to win wars.......money, money, and money! Since Russia derives most of its money from selling oil, the more a barrel of oil costs the more money Putin makes. Had we continued to be energy independent under the current administration the cost of oil would have been half what it is know. Without all that money Putin would have been hamstrung and limited in his illegitimate ambitions. We missed an opportunity by not playing 3 dimensional chess. Hopefully with a new administration in January 2025 we can deny Putin all of his petrodollars.
What does Russia have Artillery……CNN
—
Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.
Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN.
The US military set a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025 — less than half of the Russian monthly output — and even that number is now out of reach with $60 billion in Ukraine funding stalled in Congress, a senior Army official told reporters last week.
“What we are in now is a production war,” a senior NATO official told CNN. “The outcome in Ukraine depends on how each side is equipped to conduct this war.”
Officials say Russia is currently firing around 10,000 shells a day, compared to just 2,000 a day from the Ukrainian side. The ratio is worse in some places along the 600-mile front, according to a European intelligence official.
The shortfall comes at perhaps the most perilous moment for Ukraine’s war effort since Russia first marched on Kyiv in February 2022. US money for arming Ukraine has run out and Republican opposition in Congress has effectively halted giving any more.
Meanwhile, Russia recently took the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka and is widely seen as having the initiative on the battlefield. Ukraine is struggling not just with ammunition but also growing manpower shortages on the front lines.
Given enough time without effective military opposition, even the Russians can get their act together. We should have learned from earlier experience that a strategy of gradualism is bankrupt, & doesn’t work.
Just think, the Marine Corps really doesn't have any artillery now (just 7 batteries)!
Capbility or platform?
In 2018 the Marine Corps had 21 artillery batteries. With FD the Marine Corps now has 7 batteries. A typical battery should have 6-8 arty tubes.