I don’t think it’s about miracles. It’s about intelligence. I guarantee that the US lacked the intelligence it wanted on Russian capabilities and part of this entire conflict has been about trying to draw more Russian capabilities out into the open so they can be assessed. The US has so much materiel, so much intelligence gathering apparatus, so much ability to hide their capabilities. I think it’s feasible that the US could wait out any opponent in any conflict. The worst thing for all of us would be for the US to fundamental change the state of play, and therefore I think we need to remain skeptical of our own assessments of the ground truth and look for as much evidence as possible of being incorrect. Otherwise we’re going to get blindsided if it turns out we’re wrong.
We obviously can’t dismiss different possibilities, but everything we’ve seen over past two years indicates that US is not having much success. I disagree that US can wait out Russia here because US is increasingly seeing lack of political will to keep going. It’s worth noting that exact same thing happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan where US was forced to pull out in the end when the cost of the war got too high. The cost of keeping Ukraine going eclipses those conflicts.
US also has much tougher logistics situation than Russia, and this I would say is the biggest factor. Russia can just ship weapons and ammunition by rail while the west is not able to disrupt that in any way. On the other hand, US has to ship stuff across the ocean and through multiple countries only to have much of it blown up once it crosses the Ukrainian border.
There’s also nothing magical in terms of what Russia is doing. They have artillery dominance that they use to great effect. They depleted Ukrainian air defence, and now Russian aviation operates with impunity. They use drones to hunt Ukrainian armor. And finally, they have massive mine fields that are effectively impassible.
There’s been no evidence over the past two years to indicate that US has some ace up their sleeve, but I guess we’ll see soon.
I agree with your assessment of the Russian position. I disagree with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I doubt it was a political will situation, nor a cost thing. It seems more likely that it was a useful base of operations for black ops and asymmetrical covert war and influence campaigns against China. US contractors were making a lot of profit. And 20 years in Afghanistan hadn’t managed to get the US to anything resembling Vietnam levels of unrest.
To me, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was either mission accomplished in establishing and embedding asymmetrical capabilities in the guerilla networks and/or a need to remove a weak holding in advance of a war with China to avoid it being a distracting front and/or a need to pull back materiel for redeployment. I am not convinced it was money loss nor political will.
Afghanistan campaign was basically the same playbook US used against USSR, where they hoped that they could spread extremism into Soviet republics. With China they tried to do the same in Xinjiang using Afghanistan as the base for that. China managed to deal with the issue decisively, and US ended up mired in a costly war that ultimately failed to achieve any geopolitical objectives. Afghanistan is now on good relations with China and Russia which is basically the worst possible outcome for the US.
I think the loss of money and political will has to be taken in the context of US ambitions against China. A lot of US hawks started saying that Afghanistan was a waste of money when what they really need to be doing is preparing to take on China directly. Hence the political will to keep pouring money into that adventure evaporated.
Pretty much the same thing is happening with Ukraine right now where there are increasing concerns that this proxy war is depleting US military and they won’t be in a position to fight China. Meanwhile, there’s also a faction that’s deeply politically invested in Ukraine which makes a pull out difficult.
My personal impression is that US is deeply dysfunctional right now, and there’s no cohesive strategy. The whole two years have been US reacting to move China and Russia have been making, and fumbling along the way. Geopolitical outcomes have been even more profound than the actual hot war in my opinion. BRICS has become far stronger, there’s now active dedollarization happening, Russia showed that it’s possible to be cut off from the west and thrive. All of that peels apart global perception of US power and influence. This becomes a self reinforcing cycle where the more countries end up decoupling from the west the easier it becomes for other countries to do so.
Ultimately, the hot war will end on Russian terms because if Russia ever did find itself in trouble, then China would be forced to step in. The worse possible outcome for China would be either destabilized balkanized Russia under western control. This would be an existential threat to China. Therefore, China will do whatever is necessary to ensure Russia continues to have a stable and friendly government. US has absolutely no hope of outproducing China, hence why this can only end one way.
Interesting point. I hadn’t really considered that a US goal, but they very well could be using this conflict in order to assess Russian military capabilities.
I definitely think that was part of the goal, but Russia hasn’t really revealed much so far. We now know that Russia has excellent EW capability that can disrupt western guided weapons and drones. They also showed that they have missiles that western AD can’t handle.
None of this revealed much about Russian overall capability however. One thing Russia made clear is that they have very strong military industrial complex and are not at risk of running low in terms of weapons. The big surprise for everyone, including Russia, was just how effective Russian drones ended up being.
So, far we haven’t seen any really advanced weapons like Su-57 or T-14 used, so Russia is definitely not playing their full hand here. Seems that they’re largely just clearing out their old Soviet inventory for the most part.
So far, we’ve seen a lot more practical tech deployed by Russia than by the west in the conflict. The dynamic with state owned industry and private contractors is very different. The whole set up in the west is a basically a scheme to siphon as much tax money out of the system as possible and transfer it into the hands of the people who own the war industry. That necessarily means making weapons that are expensive to produce and maintain. That’s how you make the most money. On the other hand, a state owned military complex sees costs as a negative and the pressure is to produce things that are cheap and reliable.
Russian military complex is not quite state owned. It’s complicated. For instance, Kalashnikov is a private organisation now. Russian Helicopters (it’s the name of the company) is a joint stock company. Same is Rostec, iirc. Sukhoi construction bureau gets a lot of their systems from other orgs, many of them private. The government is issuing demands to crank up production, but is unwilling to cough some dough for the workers. It’s a mess
I was under the impression that Rostec was state enterprise? And I recall reading that a lot of old Soviet infrastructure such as UralVagonZavod is still around and under state ownership. This kind of stuff seems to be the core of the military industry as most of the fighting is done by the artillery. I get that things are also messy, but it’s pretty evident that the mess in the west is on a whole different scale.
The key here is “enterprise”. It’s basically a stock company, with the control stock owned by the government. It’s still answerable to capital. So is the government. My friend works in a place that got rolled into Rostec some time ago (no details obv). Some of the changes imposed from above are straight up western IT shit. Meanwhile they can’t get the AC fixed, so last year they suffered in +40C indoors.
I think what it comes down it is how quickly Rostec can be streamlined into something that’s actually efficient. Ultimately, the government has the power to force it to change, and I imagine now that there is a need there will be changes. However, there is no possibility of doing that in US right now especially given that US is not directly involved in the war. There is no legal or political path for the government to dictate to the private industry. And same story in Europe where companies simply don’t want to build factories because they expect to lose money on them in the long run.
I get that things in Russia could be a lot better, and that capitalism brought a lot of the worst aspects of the west along with it. I’m just putting this into perspective that the west is inherently in a worse position because capitalism has been operating here for much longer.
Is the Armata actually good? I’ve met tons of tank buffs that all shit on it while favoring the T-34??? (for it’s time), but idk shit about military hardware, like a week ago I assumed being a tanker was like the safest thing to be in the military, but apparently you can only survive or die absolutely terribly
Armata is untested. Therefore it’s “not good”. T-34 was a great tank for its time, but it still had some “teething problems” so to speak. It has taken the designers and engineers a few versions to make it good. Likewise with AKs - what we usually call “AK-47” is actually AKM - modified version of the original design. Untested hardware will inevitably produce issues.
And no, being a tanker is very far from anything resembling safe. Not even if you’re a NATO tanker, bulldozing civvies in the middle East. Much less if you are in an actual conflict with an actual military.
If the US war game against China has a big question mark about Russian engagement, it would make sense to both get them wrapped up in other conflicts and also draw out their capabilities to improve intelligence. Remember Sun Tzu. Direct force comparisons are a lot less useful than intelligence imbalances.
I don’t think it’s about miracles. It’s about intelligence. I guarantee that the US lacked the intelligence it wanted on Russian capabilities and part of this entire conflict has been about trying to draw more Russian capabilities out into the open so they can be assessed. The US has so much materiel, so much intelligence gathering apparatus, so much ability to hide their capabilities. I think it’s feasible that the US could wait out any opponent in any conflict. The worst thing for all of us would be for the US to fundamental change the state of play, and therefore I think we need to remain skeptical of our own assessments of the ground truth and look for as much evidence as possible of being incorrect. Otherwise we’re going to get blindsided if it turns out we’re wrong.
We obviously can’t dismiss different possibilities, but everything we’ve seen over past two years indicates that US is not having much success. I disagree that US can wait out Russia here because US is increasingly seeing lack of political will to keep going. It’s worth noting that exact same thing happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan where US was forced to pull out in the end when the cost of the war got too high. The cost of keeping Ukraine going eclipses those conflicts.
US also has much tougher logistics situation than Russia, and this I would say is the biggest factor. Russia can just ship weapons and ammunition by rail while the west is not able to disrupt that in any way. On the other hand, US has to ship stuff across the ocean and through multiple countries only to have much of it blown up once it crosses the Ukrainian border.
There’s also nothing magical in terms of what Russia is doing. They have artillery dominance that they use to great effect. They depleted Ukrainian air defence, and now Russian aviation operates with impunity. They use drones to hunt Ukrainian armor. And finally, they have massive mine fields that are effectively impassible.
There’s been no evidence over the past two years to indicate that US has some ace up their sleeve, but I guess we’ll see soon.
I agree with your assessment of the Russian position. I disagree with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I doubt it was a political will situation, nor a cost thing. It seems more likely that it was a useful base of operations for black ops and asymmetrical covert war and influence campaigns against China. US contractors were making a lot of profit. And 20 years in Afghanistan hadn’t managed to get the US to anything resembling Vietnam levels of unrest.
To me, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was either mission accomplished in establishing and embedding asymmetrical capabilities in the guerilla networks and/or a need to remove a weak holding in advance of a war with China to avoid it being a distracting front and/or a need to pull back materiel for redeployment. I am not convinced it was money loss nor political will.
Afghanistan campaign was basically the same playbook US used against USSR, where they hoped that they could spread extremism into Soviet republics. With China they tried to do the same in Xinjiang using Afghanistan as the base for that. China managed to deal with the issue decisively, and US ended up mired in a costly war that ultimately failed to achieve any geopolitical objectives. Afghanistan is now on good relations with China and Russia which is basically the worst possible outcome for the US.
I think the loss of money and political will has to be taken in the context of US ambitions against China. A lot of US hawks started saying that Afghanistan was a waste of money when what they really need to be doing is preparing to take on China directly. Hence the political will to keep pouring money into that adventure evaporated.
Pretty much the same thing is happening with Ukraine right now where there are increasing concerns that this proxy war is depleting US military and they won’t be in a position to fight China. Meanwhile, there’s also a faction that’s deeply politically invested in Ukraine which makes a pull out difficult.
My personal impression is that US is deeply dysfunctional right now, and there’s no cohesive strategy. The whole two years have been US reacting to move China and Russia have been making, and fumbling along the way. Geopolitical outcomes have been even more profound than the actual hot war in my opinion. BRICS has become far stronger, there’s now active dedollarization happening, Russia showed that it’s possible to be cut off from the west and thrive. All of that peels apart global perception of US power and influence. This becomes a self reinforcing cycle where the more countries end up decoupling from the west the easier it becomes for other countries to do so.
Ultimately, the hot war will end on Russian terms because if Russia ever did find itself in trouble, then China would be forced to step in. The worse possible outcome for China would be either destabilized balkanized Russia under western control. This would be an existential threat to China. Therefore, China will do whatever is necessary to ensure Russia continues to have a stable and friendly government. US has absolutely no hope of outproducing China, hence why this can only end one way.
Interesting point. I hadn’t really considered that a US goal, but they very well could be using this conflict in order to assess Russian military capabilities.
I definitely think that was part of the goal, but Russia hasn’t really revealed much so far. We now know that Russia has excellent EW capability that can disrupt western guided weapons and drones. They also showed that they have missiles that western AD can’t handle.
None of this revealed much about Russian overall capability however. One thing Russia made clear is that they have very strong military industrial complex and are not at risk of running low in terms of weapons. The big surprise for everyone, including Russia, was just how effective Russian drones ended up being.
So, far we haven’t seen any really advanced weapons like Su-57 or T-14 used, so Russia is definitely not playing their full hand here. Seems that they’re largely just clearing out their old Soviet inventory for the most part.
Makes me wonder if it’s because they’re vaporware, just like yankee Wunderwaffe.
Nah, I just live here and know folks in scientific research and engineering. It’s all very westernised
So far, we’ve seen a lot more practical tech deployed by Russia than by the west in the conflict. The dynamic with state owned industry and private contractors is very different. The whole set up in the west is a basically a scheme to siphon as much tax money out of the system as possible and transfer it into the hands of the people who own the war industry. That necessarily means making weapons that are expensive to produce and maintain. That’s how you make the most money. On the other hand, a state owned military complex sees costs as a negative and the pressure is to produce things that are cheap and reliable.
Russian military complex is not quite state owned. It’s complicated. For instance, Kalashnikov is a private organisation now. Russian Helicopters (it’s the name of the company) is a joint stock company. Same is Rostec, iirc. Sukhoi construction bureau gets a lot of their systems from other orgs, many of them private. The government is issuing demands to crank up production, but is unwilling to cough some dough for the workers. It’s a mess
I was under the impression that Rostec was state enterprise? And I recall reading that a lot of old Soviet infrastructure such as UralVagonZavod is still around and under state ownership. This kind of stuff seems to be the core of the military industry as most of the fighting is done by the artillery. I get that things are also messy, but it’s pretty evident that the mess in the west is on a whole different scale.
The key here is “enterprise”. It’s basically a stock company, with the control stock owned by the government. It’s still answerable to capital. So is the government. My friend works in a place that got rolled into Rostec some time ago (no details obv). Some of the changes imposed from above are straight up western IT shit. Meanwhile they can’t get the AC fixed, so last year they suffered in +40C indoors.
I think what it comes down it is how quickly Rostec can be streamlined into something that’s actually efficient. Ultimately, the government has the power to force it to change, and I imagine now that there is a need there will be changes. However, there is no possibility of doing that in US right now especially given that US is not directly involved in the war. There is no legal or political path for the government to dictate to the private industry. And same story in Europe where companies simply don’t want to build factories because they expect to lose money on them in the long run.
I get that things in Russia could be a lot better, and that capitalism brought a lot of the worst aspects of the west along with it. I’m just putting this into perspective that the west is inherently in a worse position because capitalism has been operating here for much longer.
Is the Armata actually good? I’ve met tons of tank buffs that all shit on it while favoring the T-34??? (for it’s time), but idk shit about military hardware, like a week ago I assumed being a tanker was like the safest thing to be in the military, but apparently you can only survive or die absolutely terribly
Armata is untested. Therefore it’s “not good”. T-34 was a great tank for its time, but it still had some “teething problems” so to speak. It has taken the designers and engineers a few versions to make it good. Likewise with AKs - what we usually call “AK-47” is actually AKM - modified version of the original design. Untested hardware will inevitably produce issues.
And no, being a tanker is very far from anything resembling safe. Not even if you’re a NATO tanker, bulldozing civvies in the middle East. Much less if you are in an actual conflict with an actual military.
If the US war game against China has a big question mark about Russian engagement, it would make sense to both get them wrapped up in other conflicts and also draw out their capabilities to improve intelligence. Remember Sun Tzu. Direct force comparisons are a lot less useful than intelligence imbalances.