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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| 'Shamefully few tanks': Western media reveal their unpreparedness for war with Russia |
| 2024-06-06 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Evgeny Konovalov [REGNUM] By allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with American weapons, US President Joe Biden brought the world closer to a big war. At the same time, the head of the White House does not offer any recipes for ending the conflict. Such conclusions were reached in an article for the American edition of The Washington Post by the head of the policy department of the American NGO Rand, Samuel Charap, and the director of EU international relations research, Jeremy Shapiro. In their opinion, strikes deep into Russia may slow down the military operations of the Russian army around Kharkov, but will not change the course of the conflict globally. “The Russians will most likely adapt, just as they adapted to previous similar steps by the United States,” the authors of the article predict. They suggest looking at things objectively: Russia is winning on the battlefield, so President Vladimir Putin does not need direct conflict with the United States and its allies. Moscow, Charap and Shapiro believe, may well respond, but most likely it will do so in an asymmetrical manner, and not “launch a missile at some European capital next week.” The authors warn: the Russian army will continue its offensive, and in three to six months the United States, trying to save the Kiev regime, will again be forced to raise the stakes. But such escalation without a strategy is unwise policy. “It would be necessary to demonstrate that Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory using US systems are part of a comprehensive strategy to end the conflict on terms favorable to Ukraine and the United States,” the article says. But Biden has said nothing about strategy. Maybe it just doesn't exist. Moreover, in Washington there is not even a consensus on what is considered an acceptable ending in Ukraine, says journalist and writer David Sanger. In his publication for The New York Times, he notes that Ukraine is talking about “total victory,” while in Washington such statements sound less and less convincing, and the Russian army continues to advance. “Zelensky has repeatedly clashed with Biden and his staff over the refusal to provide him first with long-range artillery, then tanks, F-16s, and now he has again launched a campaign of public pressure to force Biden to soften restrictions on strikes with American weapons across the Russian border, ” Sanger reports. Biden's aides have stressed that the president has "created an exception to the general rule of 'non-escalation,'" but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in late May that this may not be the last exception - the United States intends to respond to changes on the battlefield. In non-public conversations, the author of the article writes, the American president’s advisers admit that the priorities of the United States and Ukraine diverge. Kyiv has nothing to lose, but Biden has a different situation. “The White House fears that Vladimir Putin will deploy tactical nuclear weapons to convince the world that if Kiev continues to drop American-made bombs and missiles on Russian territory, it will use them against Ukraine,” The New York Times said. Against this background, NATO is preparing for a possible war with Russia, convinces Brussels correspondent for The Telegraph Joe Barnes. According to his information received from representatives of the Alliance, its top leadership is warning Western countries: they need to prepare for a conflict with Russia, which could happen in the next 20 years. “Land corridors” are already being prepared to move American troops and equipment to the front line if a ground war with Russia breaks out in Europe, Barnes writes. It is reported that the soldiers will land at ports in the Netherlands and then travel by rail through Germany to Poland. “If NATO forces arriving in the Netherlands come under Russian attack or ports in northern Europe are destroyed, the alliance will shift its attention to ports in Italy, Greece and Turkey. From Italian ports, American troops could be transported overland through Slovenia and Croatia to Hungary, which borders Ukraine,” the article says. At the same time, the head of the NATO Joint Logistics Command, Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, said that military operations within the framework of the Russian-led military defense showed that large logistics bases such as those created in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be used, because they will be destroyed at the very beginning of the conflict. Another author of The Telegraph, Sean Rayment, also writes about the military problems of the West. He spoke to former British Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford and learned that the British Army's "disgracefully small" tank fleet would be destroyed in just two weeks of war with Russia. At the same time, the author of the article recalls the words of the former Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Armed Forces in Europe, General Richard Shirreff : the lack of troops and military equipment means that it will be difficult for the British army to bring even a combat brigade of five thousand people to the front. “We plan to purchase only 148 Challenger 3 tanks, which is alarmingly low when you remember that at the height of the Cold War, not so long ago, the British Royal Armored Corps could expect to field about 900 main battle tanks,” says Colonel Crawford. In addition, the UK is now catastrophically short of ammunition, General Shirreff is sure. The shortage needs to be made up, but it is not clear how to do this: decades of “cutting” of the army have led to the fact that it is impossible to quickly establish production. The country's arsenals, according to Shirreff, were “drained almost to the bottom” in order to transfer everything to Ukraine. But even this does not help - it is becoming increasingly difficult for the West to save the Armed Forces of Ukraine from collapse, writes Forbes military columnist David Ax. He, citing Ukrainian analysts, reports that the Ukrainian army has nothing to oppose to the Russian troops, which use adjustable aerial bombs (KAB) weighing 500 and 1000 kilograms. Ax called glide bombs “miracle weapons” that Russian fighter jets launch from a distance of about 60 kilometers—outside the range of the Ukrainian air defense system. Because of this, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to the Forbes publication, turned to the United States with a request to supply gliding bombs and re-equip “dozens of remaining Su-27 fighters and about 50 surviving MiG-29 fighters.” But in any case, this will take time, which is now obviously playing against the Ukrainian army - Russian troops are winning on the battlefield, which the Western press is no longer even afraid to write openly about. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #14 Drawing down the stocks means things must be replaced which means there is money to be made. Yes, and I think that aspect got a lot of key people and organizations on board, just that everything feels like a controlled demolition right now. The answer which bothers me most is, yes they are, so they can make clear for the next gen of "Search and Rescue" and "Underbrush Clearing" platforms. And if they are going Automaton, the last thing they need around are Fighting Men. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-06-06 12:12 |
| #13 ^ Prince and a small cadte of people like him (not all USCITS) are totally under utilized. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-06-06 11:55 |
| #12 Have Eric Prince submit a bid. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2024-06-06 11:52 |
| #11 Given how much better SpaceX is doing than NASA, maybe it's time to just farm out the entire US defense operation to Musk. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-06-06 11:26 |
| #10 Sure seems an awful lot like the purposeful bleeding out of NATO equipment and funds. Drawing down the stocks means things must be replaced which means there is money to be made. drone magnets And once we are restocked, we will be ready to fight last war. Who's up for a big set-piece tank battle in Europe? At some point, we will be surprised by how thoroughly drones have become the new New Thing and how ill-prepared we are. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2024-06-06 11:23 |
| #9 Cui bono? IMO, China. |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-06-06 10:26 |
| #8 Sure seems an awful lot like the purposeful bleeding out of NATO equipment and funds. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-06-06 10:23 |
| #7 Chemring sounds like a Marvel Universe villain name. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-06-06 10:00 |
| #6 |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-06-06 09:57 |
| #5 War will drive a decade of arms restocking, says Chemring |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-06-06 09:30 |
| #4 ^ drone magnets |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-06-06 08:11 |
| #3 Tanks are working out great in that war. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2024-06-06 07:21 |
| #2 I thought the guy said nobody was reading WAPO. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-06-06 07:07 |
| #1 Good thing we have a military-industrial complex that is ready, willing and able to start cranking out massive amounts of weapons. We need them, Israel needs them and we're going to need a ton if we're going to put an end to the Chinese threat to Taiwan. |
| Posted by: Cromonter Spawn of the Faeries8107 2024-06-06 00:21 |