Thread 63819728

Ukraine argues that it’s better to have lots of inexpensive but good weapons rather than a handful of expensive weapons, against an opponent that possesses sufficient mass to absorb extreme losses.


Quantity & cost control, while retaining an acceptable level of quality, to survive a prolonged war.

>>63819728 (OP)
For Ukraine? Sure. If you're forced to fight a prolonged war of attrition with your enemy, then you want good but reasonably inexpensive weapons. But for enormous economies like the US with combined arms, SEAD and a military with enough manpower to more or less match or exceed anyone except nork zergrush in their heartland. The price really doesn't matter.

>>63819728 (OP)
>Ukraine argues that it’s better to have lots of inexpensive but good weapons rather than a handful of expensive weapons
They're only right because they cannot afford to mamufacture enough expensive weapons to make them cheap.

The lack of air supremacy gave the enemy time to dig in. A dug in enemy makes it increasingly more difficult to move the front line.

>>63819728 (OP)
ANSWER: HIMARS
If the Tsar knew he would do something edition.
/pol/= Fake Flag VPN /Russianpropagandaboard/
Reminder Russia has lost
12.06.2025
Tanks — 10933 (+6)
Armored fighting vehicle — 22786 (+3)
Artillery systems — 29063 (+47)
MLRS — 1413
Anti-aircraft warfare — 1184 (+1)
Planes — 416
Helicopters — 337
UAV — 40435 (+138)
Cruise missiles — 3337
Ships (boats) — 28
Submarines : 1
Syrias : 1
Trucks and Fuel Tankers — 51715 (+136)
Special equipment — 3914
Military personnel — aprx. 1000340 people (+1140)
>Russia's chronic vehicle shortage has a companion chronic artillery shortage, leaving daily increasing areas of reduced artillery in Russian front lines. Russia can only use air power ,or shorten its lines to retain the same of artillery cover. I expect it to try and use air power, the consequence will be increased air combat and looses of Russian air frames and an escalating artillery crisis in the Russian forces

>>63819728 (OP)
Everysingle componnent and technology on dones was invented by the west, so was Patriot, HIMARS, HARM and superior artillery, tanks and APCS let alone western tech like GPS, Wifi etc. Your move kremlin loving thirdie.

>>63819728 (OP)
No they're not right and this is just reformer nonsense dressed up in new clothes.

>>63819728 (OP)
See the issue with that statement is that the west doesn't have a few very good weapons, they have ALOT of very good weapons. I don't know where this idea that the west doesn't have quantity, the US military is about as large as the Chinese military despite the us population being a fourth the size.

They might be talking about the fact the us has mostly just been giving ukraine a fer very good weapons instead of a bulk amount of crappy ones but that's a political issue not a military strategy.

If Ukraine had 50 F35s and proper AWACs theyd shit up about their bumfight being a new paradigm.

>>63819728 (OP)
Depends entirely on what war you are planning for and who you might be fighting.
If you are going to be facing thousands of T-72s then you don't nee anything special to knock them out but you do need huge numbers.
If you are going to be facing a small military with MBTs from this century then you are going to want a small force of contemporary kit so you don't get slaughtered at night or in rain thanks to their better optics.

The west has treated the MIC as a jobs program for too long and we do need to restructure with price controls or nationalization but great kit and kill great kit and shit kit while shit kit can only kill shit kit.

Literally no one says the west is approaching weapons procurement that way.

OP is bullshitting.

>>63819728 (OP)
No. They are retards.

That's a valid opinion if you can't destroy the enemy's factories and logistics. USA can.

>>63819728 (OP)
The US focuses on procuring expensive, complex stuff during peacetime and switches to quantity & cost control during war like most western countries, ie general wartime economy.

>>63819789
>the US military is about as large as the Chinese military
The European and EU NATO nations military stength is 1.9 MILLION troops all professionals all trained all armed with systems like Eurofighter, Grippen, F16, F35, Leopard, IRIS T, Caesar, HIMARS, Panzerhaubitze 2000, mowag, along with the best small arms manufacturers on the planet, glock, steyr, lapua, bretta, benelli, anschultz, H&K, CZ etc. Every single nation in Europe with more than a million fields elite units and regiments, from the French Foreign Legion through to parachute and mountain warfare regiments. They have nuclear forces including nuclear missile armed nuclear submarines and esxtremely advanced missile systems like Tarus, Stormshadow along with a massive industrial and research base.

The only posisble rival to the US on earth militarily and economically is the EU. The only rival to the EU on eartn is the EU. Both lead the food export rankings jointly and both have serious naval and air capability. The EU has a larger population by 100 Million.


In 1999 the EU had over THREE MILLION troops in service. The worst mistake the US has made in modern history is not just letting Europe rearm but actively encouraging them too. The current administration of the USA has handed Europe the world back. They don't just have quality they have quanity. They send the equipment they don't need to Ukraine, they remain fully operational and in the cases of some nationns like Poland hilariously over armed and over militarised.

>>63819728 (OP)
Ukrainians are simply putting a good face on a bad game. After all, where are they going to get heavy, modern weapons in sensible quantities from?

>>63819728 (OP)
its a spectrum.
-ukraine is currently in a multi-year war with a long front, they need scale for cheap because every resource they have is being actively depleted
-most western countries are currently in no war. if you're not burning what you have, it makes sense to make good shit that'll last a few decades, stockpile it, and know it'll give you a short term advantage at the start of a conflict. Many conflicts are very short so that's enough.

If you think its likely you'll get into a long term war, scale and cost is a huge factor, and you should at a minimum maintain the capability of quickly scaling up production of cheap shit. Otherwise, you focus on what will give you the biggest immediate chance of subduing your enemy in a short timeframe however much it costs.
Every country is making a choice of where to be on that spectrum. there's probably no point estonia going all out on cheap local production with their threat environment because they're not expected to last that long, but the USA should be more balanced

>>63819884
Something we should do that we don't is develop the dirt cheap options, test and refine them so they are good to go if SHTF.
We don't need to make a heap, just work out any bugs and have the plans sitting there ready to go if needed.

>>63819728 (OP)
High-low tactics. You use high performance, high cost weapons strategically, hitting supply depots and C2 elements. Meanwhile, low cost, low performance assets focus on taking and holding ground.

The Poor Bloody Infantry win the war but the fancy Stealth Jet should pave the way for them.

>>63819869
You're going a bit overboard with the Eurowank, things are still way worse than they could (or should) be. But I agree that the idea the the EU is some sort of weak pushover is absolutely idiotic.

Yeah, if you’re a broke bitch slavic shithole I guess that makes sense

>here's a bunch of cool shit so you'll live longer than a year, no questions asked
>STOOPID AMERIKANSKI

Forcing a thank you out of Zelensky was the right thing to do

>>63819933
Can you source Zelenskyy saying it?

>>63819933
Their position makes sense when you're handed 40 year old kit and told to work with the scraps fed to you. In that situation you'd probably rather have thousands more working tubes.

>>63819728 (OP)
Do they? Ukraine seems pretty high on the HIMARS and Bradleys we've given them.

>>63819946
Also consider that most of the arguments against sending more weapons to Ukraine is "We won't have enough for China!". So if the Ukes are being handed scraps, told that "This is all we can spare, we don't have anymore weapons" and then they look at your multiple billion dollar military budgets; they're probably going to say that it might be worth getting more, lower quality items in case of an actual hot war.

>>63819728 (OP)
The reason they need that mass in the first place is because they can't dislodge or starve the Russians sufficiently. In a no holds barred war, the stealth planes begin by clapping the AA and then the others can bomb troops, logistics and defenses with impunity, making land forces job easier. Ukraine's current setup for their air force is basically about limited frontline strikes and air defense.

>>63819728 (OP)
It's best to have lots of expensive weapons. Anything else is a skill issue.

>>63819728 (OP)
Every army is different, every country is different and every war is different

Ukraine fights for survival, but in the west, most armies are not in that position and instead employ expeditiomary forces, which are smaller

But for countries bordering russia, like Poland and Finland, yeah they probably should get a shitton of equipment just in case

Also the west usually operates under air supremacy, so they can just bomb the enemy into submission before the ground forces push in for cleanup

Economy of scale can give you reasonable quality at a low cost.
Problem is that most western countries took the peace dividend.

>>63819869
You are not wrong but consider this
All that is of different countries. Europe needs to standardize more (more than NATO standards), get a common command and train together more. common deployments.
Yes, it'll be big, it'll be quality, but the organizational thinking needs to be figured out first.

>>63819768
Wow cool! I just happened to be here for the 1,000,000th reported casualty. I've been waiting a few months for this day.

>>63819728 (OP)
>handful of expensive weapons
They never really got those

>>63819933
What is Budapest Memorandum

>>63819869
The only problem with your little EU fantasy is it requires France and Germany to work together

>>63819728 (OP)
>>63819767
This. If Ukraine had even [one] F-22 they could had wrestled air superiority and been on their way to seizing Crimea by now. They're stuck thinking like the reformers of the 80s.

>>63819933
Why are you MIGAtards constantly lying?

>>63819933
>here's a bunch of Cold War hand-me-downs
>actually, no, that's too much, we'll send less
>eventually
>maybe
>actually, pay us now instead of lend-lease
>and we'll hold the shipments if you start pushing zigger shit in too much so vladdy comes crying
>and say twhank yuo (in addition to a couple hundred times you've said it already)

>>63819869
The EU is a bunch of little countries, they aren’t one military

Reminder this whole thing started because Russia had missile factories in Ukraine, the areas they're trying to reclaim.

>>63820218
>The EU is a bunch of little countries, they aren’t one military
Are you the result of American public school education or are you fro the third world. Consider this. The USA negotiates tariffs not with
>>63820218
>a bunch of little countries
But with the very big (and competent) EU. It's a democratic insitution as well by the way and has done immednse good in places like Ireland, the former East Germany, Romania, Poland as well as stabalising Greece, Spain Portugal and Italy durinng the financial crisis. .

American states are far nearer being a
> bunch of little countries

The US military was funded by the Europeans use of the dollar as a trade and reserve curtency. They can switch off the US economy like a lightswitch any time they want. Everything you know is wrong.

>>63820060
>Wow cool! I just happened to be here for the 1,000,000th reported casualty. I've been waiting a few months for this day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHC9HE7vazI

>Ukraine argues that it’s better to have lots of inexpensive but good weapons rather than a handful of expensive weapons,
I dunno, maybe they're right?
It doesn't really matter, because the US has the most expensive weapons AND it has shitloads of them. The F-35 stands a full head taller than all other foreign "5th gen" fighters and there are ~1,200 of them.

>>63820333
Europe stopping using the USD as a reserve currency would be the best thing for the US economy since WW2

>>63820333
Yes because the EU is an economic bloc, and was made to streamline economies in Europe.

Unifying the military is a different beast, especially in the context of "giving the world back to Europe." The citizens in each nation have different geopolitical goals and outside of a non-European empire invading the continent, there will be contention between the individual European states and peoples that undermine this scary military bloc you're chicken little'ing about.

Russia won't be able to keep up those kind of losses forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6mXqOk63Ss

>>63819728 (OP)
Sure if you stuck in a grinding war of attrition defined by static lines. But in full scale wars without politically defined borders it's better to look for ways to flank and encircle those massed troops.

>>63820377
It's militaries are all standardised and carry out regular exercises together and the EU goverments are more tightly integrated than the US states. It's far more than an economic block it's a standards benmouth and created both gsm mobile telephony, texting and mobile data, as well as EU wide laws on everything from divorce to animal welfare like most american/kremlin/pol/far4age educated people you know literally nothing about the EU.


https://www.frontex.europa.eu/

https://www.europol.europa.eu/

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20190612STO54310/defence-how-the-eu-is-boosting-its-security

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/sv/statement_25_673

"The first part of this ReArm Europe plan is to unleash the use of public funding in defence at national level. Member States are ready to invest more in their own security if they have the fiscal space. And we must enable them to do so. This is why we will shortly propose to activate the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact. It will allow Member States to increase significantly their defence expenditures without triggering the Excessive Deficit Procedure. For example: If Member States would increase their defence spending by 1,5% of GDP on average this could create fiscal space of close to EUR 650 billion over a period of four years.

The second proposal will be a new instrument. It will provide EUR 150 billion of loans to Member States for defence investment. This is basically about spending better – and spending together. We are talking about pan-European capability domains. For example: air and missile defence, artillery systems, missiles and ammunition drones and anti-drone systems; but also to address other needs from cyber to military mobility for example. It will help Member States to pool demand and to buy together. Of course, with this equipment, Member States can massively step up their support to Ukraine.."

>>63820422
Russia can't keep up those losses now. Putinns got one throw of the dice left and he's out of money and weapons. Everything they have worth a shit is deployed and even then there are massive shortages of everything from artillery to SUVs. Russia is done and so is Putin and now the Russian public get no pay cheques or hyperinflation.

>>63819728 (OP)
>inexpensive
>good
Pick one.

>>63819728 (OP)
I mean, this is an obvious fact I thought everyone learned in ww2
>soviet tanks are greatly inferior to German tanks, but outnumber them by a lot
>allied tanks are somewhat inferior to German tanks, but outnumber them by a lot
>the Japanese thought that a small number of good ships and skilled aviators would win but they got outproduced and got their shit pushed in on the sea and in the air

>>63820568
Good. The EU has never opposed American military endeavors. Even now Denmark opens up new bases for the US.

>>63820606
Well the EU nations viewd the USA as an ally with shared values regarding supporting democracy and rule of law until quite recently. Denmark is doing that in order to defuse the nonsense in the USA over Greenland, however if America were to actually try annexing any EU territory by force, it would become a hostile nation. The USA is walking along that line and having fun hurling insults and demeaning nations who fought for America in afghanistan.

The European nations did not support the US in Vietnam, they had a cold war border in Europe to deal with.
Your kids will collect the bill your mouths ran up though. The US as a tusted or respected nation or a superpower is finished for good. The USA has only ever fought a war against Germany. What makes you think it has a hope against Europe if Europe remilitarises ?

>>63820364
It would reduce the lower 25 states to subsaharian african teir conditins within a couple of years and brinng widesperad accute poverty and hydperinflation to middle class America. You are economically illiterate.

>>63820606
>The EU has never opposed American military endeavors
France opposed the invasion of Iraq (they were right)

>>63819768
THEY DID IT!
>>63819728 (OP)
Labor-saving technology is just as useful on the battlefield as it is in the factory, anon. This Reformer mindset only guarantees that you need a lot of men and will end up with a lot of casualties.

>>63820636
Lower value of the USD = more American exports and more Americans buying American goods. If Europe tried to tank the USD they’d just end up even more reliant on the US economy since they’d have nobody to sell to and would be buying American goods.

>>63819728 (OP)
>Quantity & cost control, while retaining an acceptable level of quality
This was literally the American strategy of production during WW2

>>63820652
We already know your financially illiterate, you don't have to convince us further.

>>63820662
Holy shit you actually don’t know about how monetary value works. Why do you think China is trying to tank their own Yuan right now?

>>63820671
A weaker currency is good for an export economy.
A weak currency does not magically create an export economy, otherwise Zimbabwe would be one of the biggest exporters in the world.

>>63820679
There are ways to weaken your currency without hyperinflation. Europeans don’t really understand this cause they tend to focus on the short term instead of the long term.

>>63819913
Iirc they already do that, except instead of standalone platforms it involves hypothetical simplifications of existing systems.

>>63820689
That's not relevant to what's being discussed, though.

>>63820702
America has everything it needs in place already to have a strong manufacturing base, the weakening of the dollar is the final touch to make American goods competitive, Rhodesia has none of that shit and was following the European strategy.

>>63819728 (OP)
It's common knowledge to defend a country against land invasions by filling all the gap with the bare minimum to prevent unlimited penetration by similarly bare minimum attacker. The attacker need something good to repeatedly identify and pry open gaps. Without it to aid attackers, there is only attrition warfare that gets worse as everything builds up day by day to enable control, protection and movement.

>>63820578
two weeks.

No and this is retarded cope by slav(e) idiots who never had an advanced manufacturing base in their shithole countries. The US has the power, right now, to put the most advanced weapons of war in nearly every household in the nation. The American civilian consumer is, arguably, better equipped than the rank infantryman of any nation with a standing army on the planet and that does include the American military.

It’s poorfag cope.

>>63819768
>million man march get
What a day. Let's go for another million?

>>63819728 (OP)
UKRAINE DOESN'T ACTUALLY ARGUE THIS RETARD. They're not morons. They're talking about their specific situation, what they need given the point they're at and their resources. It's sensible and grounded.

But it's also not new, and the entire fucking point of a huge amount of US R&D and spending over decades is precisely:
>to survive a prolonged war.
to ABSOLUTELY NOT have a "prolonged war". If the US is fighting a nation seriously we'd instantly go after all their CNC, defense, production facilities, launch facilities, aircraft etc in that country itself with our thousands of high precision long range strike weapons, stealth bombers etc. Assuming it didn't go nuclear or if it did we survived (which takes yet more expensive weapons) that'd be the end of that.

Ukraine has been forced into a World War situation by a mixture of lack of capability and politics, where they had to spend a long time letting Russian territory be a magical "you can't touch me!" zone and not being able to secure air dominance in their own country due to insufficient SEAD/DEAD capability. This isn't ragging on Ukraine at all, they'd just barely managed to start reforming their country from all the soviet and post soviet shit and chase out their dictator and got immediately attacked for it, they had zero navy, minimal air force, etc. They've done their best. But artificial restrictions put on western weapons and getting a trickle instead of a flood is not how the US fights wars.

>>63819768
>Syrias : 1

every single time kek

>>63820652
why in the fuck would we buy shit from the US that is of subpar quality and price in comparison to european or asian competitors?
the US struggles with making basic tooling for fuck sake and that isnt a skill you just get enmasse out of nowhere
Goodluck making those manufacturing costs go down when most of the raw materials are refined goods that are imported which has tariffs on them

>>63820636
>The European nations did not support the US in Vietnam
Kinda fucked up when you think about since we were only there because of the frogs.

>>63821601
>have a stare down with the soviets across the inner german border
>yes belgium you have to ship out a couple thousand men to go fight in the jungle on the other side of the world
as to the frogs and vietnam
the frogs where asking for US aid for years before the US started giving it because the US didn't want the Europeans holding on to their colonies. Only when it became clear that the french losing would have meant a commy victory did the US start to bail them out but it was far to late at that point.

>>63819728 (OP)
They want good weapons and mass production. Before 2022 most of the West wasn't producing weapons on large scale, just sporadic lots.
Shells aside Russia couldn't increase production of the 'old military' ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and the stockpiles werent infinite.

>>63819768
>over a million already
Nice.

>>63821593
>that is of subpar quality and price in comparison to european or asian competitors?
Because it would be a better price than them. Europe does expensive and sometimes quality, but not cheap.

“Ukraine's defense industry says the fight against Russia has shown it that the West's approach to weapons is wrong“ is the article name on Business Insider.

>>63819728 (OP)
Yes, they're 100% correct.

You'll see a lot of seethe and cope here, half by retards and the other half by paid MIC shills with bad intentions. But the US is completely unprepared for a longer term war and is far too risk averse to tank the kind of losses that would be required to win a war against China or even Iran. Retards seem to think that we'd be immune to IADS or having our air defense munitions depleted by drone swarms but if an enemy even approaches near peer we'd get a very rude awakening. When you spend more than a billion and have to pull out after fighting an Iran-backed rump state with an entire carrier fleet it's not a good sign. Our MIC has become corrupt and incredibly bloated, and defense companies charge absurdly over inflated prices because we've normalized grifting the US taxpayer for boutique weapon systems that offer a 20% performance advantage for 2000% of the price. It's good to dream big but we've leaned way too hard into low intensity counter terrorism ops instead of cost-effective long term attritional warfare against a near-peer adversary. China is close enough to us to where they are a serious threat. Our decisive strategic weapon systems will not end a war quickly because there's rapidly diminishing returns after a certain price point and because our enemies can absorb losses and replace them faster.

I'm tired of jingoistic retards saying that we're immune to the same patterns that have defined warfare for millennia. We're not. The most dominant period of our military history was fought using weapons that were just good enough and could be stamped out in massive quantities, backed by an equally huge defense industrial base build on manufacturing capacity that no longer exists. The sole exceptions are strategic bombers and stealth fighters. If you disagree you're just high on MIC shill propaganda and are one of the retards who will lose us the next war.

>>63821969
The US ended the last war against a Russia-tier enemy in a month.

>>63821519
>If the US is fighting a nation seriously we'd instantly go after all their CNC, defense, production facilities, launch facilities, aircraft etc in that country itself with our thousands of high precision long range strike weapons, stealth bombers etc. Assuming it didn't go nuclear or if it did we survived (which takes yet more expensive weapons) that'd be the end of that.

Oh it must be that easy then. That worked so well against the Viet Cong, the Taliban, and the Houthis, didn't it? This isn't Iraq in 1991. We do not have the attritable mass to absorb the losses of our incredibly expensive weapons and equally valuable personnel. It might work against low tech adversaries when we have literally every advantage, it won't work against countries that have even the barest modicum of competence. We no longer have a monopoly on long range precision munitions, effective air defense, drone warfare, and ISR. Any decent peer adversary WILL inflict losses that are irreplaceable.

Keep acting like being wrapped in an American flag will make us immune to massed ballistic missiles, swarms of thousands of drones, and a sophisticated integrated air defense network. Especially with dipshit in chief gutting the military of everyone with two braincells to rub together based on political loyalty. I hear hubris is great for winning wars.

>>63821997
>That worked so well against the Viet Cong, the Taliban, and the Houthis, didn't it?
The Viet Cong, Taliban, and Houthis pose no threat to the US proper. If the US is effectively immune to all foreign threats, and it only somewhat struggles with insurgents, then that's good enough, nobody wants to fight insurgents anyways.

>>63821997
Ah yes, all the pitched battles that the insurgent forces beat the US in. You're totally not conflating two very different problems, political will vs capability.

>>63821976
1) Iraq was Russia tier in quality but has a pale fraction of its manpower and landmass
2) we had a coalition at the time, which certain retards seem intent on backstabbing
3) I'm not talking about Russia and you know it. China has even more manpower, much better tech, the same callous disregard for the lives of their people that make Russia dangerous, and an ocean to protect them.

>>63822006
Russia has very little in the way of manpower, we beat Iraq the second time without the coalition in a month still, and the US has an ocean to protect it from China.

>>63822001
>The Viet Cong, Taliban, and Houthis pose no threat to the US proper.

Cost is a factor in both unconventional and conventional warfare. If fighting the Houthis for a month was enough to substantially impact our operational readiness, how do you think we would fare in a years long war expending the same amount of munitions every week?

Both the Europeans and US chastised Ukraine for being wasteful of artillery munitions, they couldn't believe how much they would go through in a few weeks of combat, but meanwhile Russia was outproducing both. The truth is, that's just how a full scale war works, and I think we forgot how insane your production and replacement needs to be to sustain it over a long period.

Hey, maybe I'm wrong and we'd win in a month. But anything longer than that and we'd be completely fucked. We used to be the king of military logistics, what happened?

>>63822033
>how do you think we would fare in a years long war expending the same amount of munitions every week?
They have no capacity to invade the US so the question is moot.

>>63819728 (OP)
They are just whining that the US won't give them anything anymore.

Our biggest problem is that America is fixated on infighting, purges, approved directives, grandiose schemes, government ideologues, sycophants, gulags, palace intrigue….

We’re so busy cosplaying as faux-Soviets, we might collapse the same way.

>>63822039

Telling someone their way of fighting is wrong isn’t the act of a whiner. Whiners kiss their arms suppliers’ butt.

>>63821997
It's astonishing how fucking stupid some of you are.
>That worked so well against the Viet Cong
Hey anon? Want to point to the "thousands of high precision long range strike weapons, stealth bombers etc" we had in the 1950s? Or 1970s even for that matter? Do you think they were dropping JDAMs then? Without looking it up, can you even tell us what decade the Global Position System became active?
>the Taliban
We beat the Taliban without the slightest effort and conquered Afghanistan. Then we let the remnants live in Pakistan through a mixture of retarded leadership, history (Pakis being allies vs India back when) and Pakis having nukes. Then we were retarded about the whole "nation building" thing, and then we decided to give up and go home because it was a waste of money even if it was costing at most a couple of US lives per year.
>and the Houthis, didn't it?
lol at claiming any real effort has been made against the Houthis, or that any of them represent any sort of peer threat to the US.

>>63822051
"Whiner" not "winner".

>it’s better to have inexpensive but good weapons than expensive but good weapons
uuh okay
-if you lack some high end weapons there are things you just can’t hit while they can hit yours. ukraine shows this.
-you need to remember ukraine is literally africa tier poor. of course they can’t afford… pretty much anything.
-about fighting insurgencies: the goal of high end weapons is to take a country with a regular military and economy, and reduce it to stone age. if they turn china for example, into vietnam war conditions, that’s a job well done. so by looking at insurgencies and then thinking about high end weapons, you’re thinking in reverse.

the west needs to increase munition and unmanned production while also working on the software integraton of them. if they can fill the skies with fighter sized drones that shoot missiles and bombs, that’s pretty good.

>>63819728 (OP)
Legit question: when was the last time a "quantity" army beat a "quality" army in a conventional war?

>>63821997
>Please ignore the many thousands of AFVs in active service, the thousands more used by the National Guard, and the yet more thousands sitting in warehouses and reserve depots, the fact that the world's two largest air forces both have names beginning with "United States", that our surface navy comes close to out-massing the rest of the world's combined, that we have the third largest military by number of warm bodies, the biggest defense and aerospace sectors, and a 24% share of the planetary GDP
>We simply cannot sustain attrition.

>>63820578
NK and China can keep him armed indefinitely while he crawls closer to Russia's pre-WWI population. Russia has a century of demographic growth to exploit.

>>63822006
The manpower advantage doesn't really mean much in a technological air/naval war. Even so, soldiers need to be trained and equipped.

>>63822336
Whenever the last conventional war was. Quantity wins in a death match, but there hasn't been a western one of those since WW2. So probably Rwanda or Congo or something.

>>63819728 (OP)
Ukraine has proved right on this in one way: Munitions reserves

It's been continually proven that you end up using more weapons than you ever thought possible in war, and the low numbers/production of expensive MUNITIONS is a bottleneck the West is in the process of dealing with.

Another aspect is the Ukraine is fairly unique:
They have had a long war at a very high tempo/high spectrum of warfare.

Most long wars since WW2 have been fairly low spectrum/intensity (insurgencies, border conflicts in the 3rd World, etc) or very HIGH intensity/full spectrum, but very short (Arab-Israeli Wars, Gulf War, Russo-Georgia War, etc), or it transitions from high to low over its lifetime (Korean War, Iraq War)

>>63819728 (OP)
We have tons of examples of this in the past.

Conflict starts taking longer and longer
= more man and equipment losses
= more manufacturing and training required to fill the gap
= less materials left to produce replacements
= simplifications start happening to speed up the process and make stuff cheaper.

In case of the Russia's assault on Ukraine, the war could've been stopped years ago had the hypocritical Westoid politicians not banned the use of the weapons they gifted to Ukraine, outside the Ukrainian borders.
The global community also has done jack shit to punish Russia / Putin for all its countless war crimes and breaches of international pacts, including but not limited to the 1994 Budapest Pact.

>>63820711

like a large manpower pool .... oh wait record low unemployment (shit jobs, sure, but still)

a stable legal and trade franework you can plan around for years ahea.... oh wait nvm

supplier networks built on decades of cooperation and mutual trus.... hang on

an educated low to middle class focused on apprenticeships in actual middle to small businesses while still studyin oh snap...

>>63825608
>like a large manpower pool
Over 340 million people so yes.

>a stable legal and trade franework you can plan around for year
Yep.

>supplier networks built on decades of cooperation and mutual trusT
Correct.

>an educated low to middle class focused on apprenticeships in actual middle to small businesses
Yes.

>>63819728 (OP)
Link related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_1TuopglOE

>>63819728 (OP)
Ukraine is a corrupt shithole borrowing all it's money and equipment from the West.
They can't afford anything, hence their perspective.
Russia historically bum rushes an objective and folds like a cardhouse when this bum rush fails, retreating and relying on it's terrain, climate and sheer disregard for human life as second option.
The West knows this and made quality armies that hit where it hurts and push onwards, while Ukraine folded in the Summer offensive before hitting gold against the advice of Western general staff.

>>63819728 (OP)
Ukraine has taken 3 years and is still at war with Russia, the US would've wrapped this war up in the span of a month, why would we listen to them?

>>63819728 (OP)
Didn't the start with eastern weapons? Curious idea

>>63827699
>US would've wrapped this war up in the span of a month
It most certainly wouldn't have. The USA would have spent at least a month destroying the Russian air force then at least three months systematically destroying every AA, radar and military installation of note with naval and aircraft launched munitions before a slow heavy armoured push all under aircraft cover. Just like they did in Iraq, twice. That's assuming they don't have to go all over Russia to do it.

Even if you meant 'just kicking Russia out of Ukraine to pre-2014 borders' would take months. The USA has no reason to rush it. It would be methodical and as detailed as possible to make sure losses were as low as they could be. There would be losses, but much fewer than if they just bumrushed in infantry and vehicles.

>>63819728 (OP)
The USA has 2,000 Bradley's give or take in storage. Which is one of the main reasons why supporters of Ukraine are so baffled by the lack of proper support from the US. That's not even going into other stockpiles of say M113 which which is roughly 8,000 in storage with about 4,000 active. The USA has lots of certain things in stock. Which, again, is why 1,000 M113's (usually the most poorly maintained) donated by the USA is quite small in comparison to what the USA could do if it wanted.

>>63819728 (OP)
Ukraine also doesn't have an Air Force or Navy.

>>63828868
Technically it has a navy but it can't be active because of the strait being closed, but Turkey built them a corvette and the Bongs are building them some frigates.

The real money is made in developing "systems" and "platforms", not actually mass producing weaponry. So that's where the focus is.

>>63828839
>Just like they did in Iraq, twice
It took month for the US to do all that in Iraq, both times.

>>63828918
No it didn't. The air campaign in Operation Desert Storm lasted five weeks, that's over a month. The ground campaign that followed was four days. The air campaign in 2003 lasted three weeks but this time it was joint with ground forces.

>>63822074
Bruh...

>>63828868
>ukraine doesn’t have an Air Force
Lol wut?

>>63819728 (OP)
>that it’s better to have lots of inexpensive but good weapons rather than a handful of expensive weapons,
No

>against an opponent that possesses sufficient mass to absorb exteme losses
No

A single PGM can replace a hundred dumb shells
And if you can hit your target with only a single shell, then you reduce the odds of the enemy returning fire and the enemy has less chance to dig in
There is literally no reason not to use dumb shells when PGMs are available