re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Interest rate in Russia was raised from 16% to 18% to control inflation. Meanwhile contracts to join the military have increased substantially and pulls Russians from manufacturing workforce while phobias are now stemming the flow of migrant workers from Central Asian nations.

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The economies of the US, EU, UK, Japan and South Korea alone are 35x larger than Russia's.

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Yet Russia produces more shells, and armored vehicles than we do combined.

They have a six to one advantage in drones.

The reality is that we dismantled our industrial base, including the military side, and shifted to a service economy. We can airdrop a Bain consultant on their head, I guess.

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It has one factory that produces about 100 artillery barrels per year. The machines in that factory all came from Germany.

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Annual production is estimated at around 1,500 barrels a year IIRC

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All of its oil refining equipment comes from Asia or Europe. It cannot make ball bearings to modern specs. Its auto manufacturing triumph is the Lada.

Russia makes a few raw commodities in large quantities. But a war machine takes millions of SKUs to keep rolling.

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They’re buying what they need from China, or through intermediaries in neighboring countries.

They’re also rapidly developing domestic production to be more self sufficient.

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Yet Russia produces more shells, and armored vehicles than we do combined.

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True before the invasion, but absolutely false now.

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Annual production is estimated at around 1,500 barrels a year IIRC

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If anything like that were remotely close to true, then Russia wouldn't have just pulled large numbers of M-46 guns out of storage and sent them to the front.

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They’re also rapidly developing domestic production to be more self sufficient.

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Russia lacks the workforce to do any such thing. With a war producing 30k casualties per month, Russian industry can't "rapidly develop" squat.

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They’re buying what they need from China

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Companies buy throwaway equipment from China. Our manufacturing has since returned to purchasing mechanical equipment made in the USA due downtime from Chinese mechanical equipment failure rate.

You have absolutely zero clue about the things you spew.

FWIW, a client manufactures ingredients for water based drilling fluids from corn and potato starch, chemically modified and has been doing this since the mid 1960's. European multinational starch manufacturing has tried to replicate it and failed. China tried copying and failed. India is trying via having major drilling fluids companies conduct QA/QC plant studies with Indian engineering firms to inspect equipment, process and data. Client said "FU" go ahead and buy their substandard substitutes

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If that was true, Russia wouldn’t have been able to grow their force to 600k men.

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What happened to the million man army pre 2022?

Rusia is offering big money to attract rural males, some beyond the age of 65. How much training is required to be part of a meat wave? "This is the gun, this is how you point it and then pull the trigger."

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This won't work because the industrial capacity doesn't exist in the West to achieve anything like parity with the Russians. Russias industrial advantage has increased since the war started. Ukraine's leverage is time and cost, they can offer Russia a cheaper victory if Russia is willing to settle for less

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Russia’s economy is smaller than Texas’.

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Yet Russia produces more shells, and armored vehicles than we do combined

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because this matters in modern conflict

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What happened to the million man army pre 2022?

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The invasion force was 100k men.

The larger figure is total personnel all branches.

It will wear you completely out. You are literally being graded for everything you do flying combat training sorties so your mind is working 10x harder than your body is and your body isn’t taking a day off either. Every muscle is tight as a tick from your eyes to your a-hole until you’re wheels down again and engine shutdown. This is the big difference between these first group of Mig-29 converted pilots that will be in the air very soon in Ukraine with their F-16s and the rest that will be coming in the future. The first 20 or so graduates will be ex fighter pilots that have gone conversion training to the F-16 from the Mig-29 but after that Ukraine is smartly sending new recruits as its way way way easier to train a fresh recruit who has basic airmanship without being ingrained with soviet tactics which are night and day to our own. You have to first wipe out that huge part of these first pilot’s lives and teach them a complete opposite way of doing things. To change that muscle memory is no easy task. The simulators no doubt are great tools to let the pilot refine their skills but it still doesn’t replace actually doing it for real, and it’s not meant to. The one thing Ukraine can do to help themselves, and I believe they are already doing this, is to make sure these new pilots are already proficient with the English language. It’s the 1st and most important leap they must make in order to operate the F-16.

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The reality is Russia is in an all out war and we are not.

Russia is exhausting themselves to win a kilometer here and there; while the US is half arse supporting Ukraine.

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The aggregate of the US and all the other countries supporting Ukraine is > Russia. So even if we are half-assing it, Ukraine has the resources it needs. If Ukraine loses it won't be because of weaponry.