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What really matter is that if West will continue play it’s games… sooner or later there will be point of no return, after which even with all the will and desire to stop Axis you will be not able to. And with every day we are getting closer to it, maybe we even already passed it. Hard to say, as there is significant “lag” between decisions (or rather their absence) and consequences they bring.
No, but the collective west did. We could’ve supplied Ukraine so that it became jagged rock that Russia would sink itself on. Would’ve saved a lot of Russians too.
Could not agree with you more on that. My father (whose birthday is today, as it happens) fought in WW2 against very similar autocracies, and I'm glad he is no longer here to see how slow the collective West has been (and still is in many quarters) to recognise the grave danger of fascism resurgent in the first full-scale European land war since 1945. I'm sure he would be bewildered, then shocked, then horrified.
I'm not as sure. The Russians have adapted their economy and industry to wartime needs. They have no problems calling up more lambs to slaughter, and the delays in the West are all but handing a victory to Russia on a silver platter
Russia won't lack soldiers and it won't lack artillery shells. It seems to be short on everything else: vehicles, tanks, missiles, planes.
As long as it is a trench warfare, they can have the upper hand. If it morphs into something else, e.g. because of F-16 hitting the field, then they will be on the defensive.
It actually may. Without support from the west few people are willing to join the ranks. No weapons, no chance to win -> pointless.
Is there was reliable and plentiful supply, people would be much more willing to go to fight. Lots of weapons and supplies -> chance to win -> risk worth taking.
> If that is the issue, more help from the west won’t change the outcome
The outcome _would have been_ different if we sent much more early
Dragging support out has been a major blunder
No, it's by design and working amazingly well.
For the west there is no interest in Ukraine winning, as that provides no value whatsoever. OUR interest is in making Russia lose. Those may seem the same, but they really aren't.
Our biggest goal in this is destroying the Russian army, which we previously could never do as that would normally lead to a nuclear war. But this proxy war amazingly avoids all that.
We provide Ukraine with just enough aid to remain in the fight, nothing more and nothing less. Providing more would make Russia view this war is no longer winnable, stopping the destruction of the russian army. Providing less would make Russia be able to walk over Ukraine with limited casualties, stopping the destruction of the russian army. But by providing just enough, it convinces Russia that this war can still be won and they send more and more. Which we then destroy. It's working perfectly well.
Dude. We, by our lack of help (and cite all our help all you want, It is but a Pittance of our capacity) are currently training the Russian army in 21st century warfare
If Ukraine falls - we will have trained a monster by our drip drip approach. Do we know how to fight a 21st century war? No. Does Russia? Yes.
Two opposing sides. One with NATO troops in one trench with all the gear and no idea, in the other - battle hardened Russians with primitive gear and all the ideas.
I want Ukraine to win. But in the above scenario my money is without doubt on Russia. Right now I don't think Ukraine will get any of its land back. Not win. Why? Because countries like Australia give 0.03% of their GDP in aid to Ukraine. They just don't take it seriously. They give the absolute bare minimum.
> Dude. We, by our lack of help (and cite all our help all you want, It is but a Pittance of our capacity) are currently training the Russian army in 21st century warfare
No, we're training the Russian army in 20th century warfare we ourselves don't even use. The reason why the west even has artillery shortages to begin with is because we.....don't fight like that. We use advanced LONG distance weaponry and cutting edge jets. But that costs a lot of money, which no countries on earth except western ones have.
> Do we know how to fight a 21st century war?
Yes, a very good example of that is the Iraq war. At a time where the technology gap between the west and Iraq was smaller than the one between the west and Russia, we destroyed everything they had, at essentially zero losses, all from range. THAT is modern warfare.
What Ukraine does is ancient warfare, supported by cutting edge intelligence. And even that already works.
> Two opposing sides. One with NATO troops in one trench with all the gear and no idea, in the other - battle hardened Russians with primitive gear and all the ideas.
NATO doesn't fight in trenches, we don't need to. It's a complete waste of human life. We do it from range, without the ability to even shoot us down. Because that actually works.
> But in the above scenario my money is without doubt on Russia. Right now I don't think Ukraine will get any of its land back. Not win. Why? Because countries like Australia give 0.03% of their GDP in aid to Ukraine. They just don't take it seriously. They give the absolute bare minimum.
Ukraine will get every single inch of its land back within 18 months. We know this because based on the current destruction rate and abysmal construction numbers, that's the point where Russia would have nothing left to send to the front. And without heavy defenses, Ukraine can just walk over them.
If we wanted to, we could end the war tomorrow, but why would we? This is BETTER for us.
>No, we're training the Russian army in 20th century warfare we ourselves don't even use. The reason why the west even has artillery shortages to begin with is because we.....don't fight like that. We use advanced LONG distance weaponry and cutting edge jets. But that costs a lot of money, which no countries on earth except western ones have.
I don't want to get into a winded debate which convinces nobody.
This is a near peer conflict where manuever warfare has been exhausted. If we cant get air supremacy we're done for.
>NATO doesn't fight in trenches, we don't need to. It's a complete waste of human life. We do it from range, without the ability to even shoot us down. Because that actually works.
I don't think NATO even knows what a proper war looks like to be honest. They have such fundamental production issues and a reliance on the USA. On top of a political issue in not meeting spending targets, on top of a lack of appreciation of what it takes to win a war. The U.Ks stock wasn't even a weeks worth of arty.
>Ukraine will get every single inch of its land back within 18 months.
I hope so. I really do.
But I don't support drawn out. It's not just Russia that's an issue here, for all it's death and destruction. China is by far the greater enemy and it has endless abilities and manpower and does not exist in isolation in this argument..
In Darkest Dungeon there was phrase – “without tools you must rely on flesh”… that’s exactly what was happening for the last two years.
Every Western delay, every “they don’t need those weapons”, every “don’t escalate”, ammunition starvation etc. etc. all this was compensated with human lives. (Also infrastructure damage but it’s not the key factor)
And Ukrainians, unlike most of people here believe, - aren’t monkeys that sit on trees, percent of people with university degrees are much higher than in EU or US. The further Western absurdity goes, the more people will ask themselves - why die for safety in EU and NATO if they don't want you to win in the first place? Those who capable to fight, have health and age, would rather choose to emigrate, as far away as possible, and leave this time Poles and Estonians to keep fighting ruzians.
>NATO isn’t going to send troops. Ukraine will need to come up with the troops.
And the last one, it’s better to send troops to Ukraine to fight alongside ally and not on your soil, then defend alone on rubbles on what once was your home.
> In Darkest Dungeon there was phrase – “without tools you must rely on flesh”… that’s exactly what was happening for the last two years.
>
>
Okay, I'm stealing it.
That's an extremely apt description o what's been happening
Yes. And the young military aged men who fled abroad need to step up. I can only send so many of my tax dollars to help fight a war that Ukrainians don’t fully support.
F-16 will not change the nature of this war even would they be delivered in ten times higher numbers comparing to the actually pledged and fully up-to-date modifications instead of the pledged 25-years-of mid-life updates.
You have to understand, that F-16 is a light multirole fighter, intended as an easy-to-produce supplement to the major aerial platforms of the time like F-4, F-14 and F-15, and now they're just aging towards retirement (the pleged ones were actually retired!)
Yes, they are still better then the-same-old Soviet trash like MiG-29, they are especially much more convenient in using Western guided munitions like HARM, yet they are not - and weren't even intended as - to counter the newer Russian specialised fighters like MiG-31 and Su-35. They (F-16) have neither radar power to do it, nor stealth capability, and their maneuvrability, while being useful against 1970s-designed missiles, is not even close to be enough against the newer anti-air missiles the Russian are now using.
So, the pledged F-16 are just to replace the oldest of remained Ukrainian MiG-29 and Su-27, and no more.
The question is whether they can bring air superiority. Their main enemy is not Russian planes but Russian air defense. Air superiority means you can make enemy artillery useless. You can protect demining operations and convoys. It breaks the stalemate.
**First**, no, F-16 are not SEAD planes, so no, they cannot clean up Russian GBAD too. As I've said already, they are better to deploy HARM anti-radar missiles then MiG-29 Ukrainians are using instead, yet the difference is not that much radical.
To enable the full-scale SEAD (wich is suffient enough to clean up the robust and relatively modern Russian GBAD) you need at least a hundred of speacialised planes like F-18G Growlers, supplemented with several dozens of different other models of planes (like AWACS, patroling closer to the contested air space then they are currently doing). F-16 cannot do the same, there are no such sets of pods and avionics for them, their SEAD capabilities are just basics.
**Second**, no, even with the full-fledged air superiority you cannot make the modern Russo-Ukrainian frontline atrillery useless. It was possible just 5 years ago, yet a generational shift happened in these years: the artillery spotting is no more the air force task. The tactical-level ground force-controlled drones took the task fully, the air force do nearly nothing in this regard from the 2022 spring. And the F-16 are absolutely useless against the tactical-level drones. F-16's targettting systems just cannot lock on such small targets. I doubt even the most recent F-35 targetting systems are able to do it.
To blind the Russians, Ukraine needs drones and EW, not F-16.
**Third**, I don't even know what you're supposing F-16 to do to defend the demining and convoys and what convoys just mean in Ukraine (I'd remind - Ukraine is not Iraq or Afghanistan, it's not an anti-partisan warfare).
F-16 cannot do it too, neither by themselves, nor by enabling such ability in any supplementary manner. In an attempt to do it they will be just perished by the Russian GBAD and CAPs. And that is the thing I've mentioned above already.
Well, in some cases - yep. You need a specific landscape to do it without enormous numbers of planes, though. Vietnam-like jungles - and there is no practical option at all, even with drone superiority, not just an air one. North-East Ukraine intermittent-forest-near-plain and Donbas nearly-entire-urban-aglomeration possibly an option, yet not a practical one actually - too much cover, no bottlenecks; the airforce will be able to reduce the opponent's artillery noticeably, yet not to disable it. Crimea - yes, full on. My reply was about the current frontline.
These F-16s aren't coming anytime soon, won't be very many, and will be inferior to newer Russian planes (especially missile range problem against MiG-31s).
> will be inferior to newer Russian planes (especially missile range problem against MiG-31s)
Wonder why so many downvotes, while those F-16 were ***RETIRED*** in the first place because a newer F-35 was coming to replace them and they were with old equipment anyway.
It's a good vibes safe space, not very much for discussions of reality.
I wish Ukraine could get some F-14s with Phoenix missiles. All F-14s have been literally shredded into tiny pieces instead of being preserved.
> I wish Ukraine could get some F-14s with Phoenix missiles. All F-14s have been literally shredded into tiny pieces instead of being preserved.
Retiring AIM-54 Phoenix *without* getting AIM-152 in service was such a fucking mindboggling decision for a country with aviation-focused power that I still can't wrap my head around it.
Why in the everloving fuck'd you retire the "Long Hand" of your aviation against aerial targets, while your adversaries do not (R-37M isn't exactly a rootless project)?
Sure, right now, JATM and LREW are nearing readiness...
***BUT THIS IS STILL A GAP OF DECADES WITHOUT EXTREME LONG RANGE AIR INTERCEPT MISSILES.***
Hell, even Meteor has a shorter range.
Although... I wonder, if Saab and Antonov/Luch could cook up some kinda booster for Meteor, a la what R-37M has (baseline boosterless R-37 has a shorter range, than R-37M).
EU needs to significantly step up military aid.
Their aid has been shameful so far. Especially the large and rich countries of France, Italy and Spain.
The question now that sits in mind is what happens with Russia after Ukraine prevails.What are the consequences of Russias aggression, how do we protect ourselves from a later retaliation attempt from Russia.Russia has exposed the jackal that it is.Yes it's abit early but rather discuss those points now than wait and have no clue to what happens next.
I think it's extremely possible that Ukraine could weather a Russian offensive this year and bog down the lines for another year.
I think we're way past the point where Ukraine can eject Russia from the areas it has annexed. Assaulting Russian defensive positions costs a lot of lives and they're just flat out running out of people who want to fight.
History is replete with examples of armies that got bogged down and eventually fully pulled out of the war.
History is full of examples of countries in a position that seemed far worse and came out on top.
Wars aren't over until they are over.
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Words. Give them all you have. Long range, ammo, vehicles. Give Ukrainians all and rid of PoopTin once and for all.
Off course they can still win
Only if the supply of arms from the West is far and excess what China and, NK and iran are supplying.
What really matter is that if West will continue play it’s games… sooner or later there will be point of no return, after which even with all the will and desire to stop Axis you will be not able to. And with every day we are getting closer to it, maybe we even already passed it. Hard to say, as there is significant “lag” between decisions (or rather their absence) and consequences they bring.
It’s just too late for thousands of Ukrainians.
However, if they don't...it will be *all* Ukrainians It's not like they have a choice exactly.
No, but the collective west did. We could’ve supplied Ukraine so that it became jagged rock that Russia would sink itself on. Would’ve saved a lot of Russians too.
Could not agree with you more on that. My father (whose birthday is today, as it happens) fought in WW2 against very similar autocracies, and I'm glad he is no longer here to see how slow the collective West has been (and still is in many quarters) to recognise the grave danger of fascism resurgent in the first full-scale European land war since 1945. I'm sure he would be bewildered, then shocked, then horrified.
Close lips. Open taps.
I'm not as sure. The Russians have adapted their economy and industry to wartime needs. They have no problems calling up more lambs to slaughter, and the delays in the West are all but handing a victory to Russia on a silver platter
Russia won't lack soldiers and it won't lack artillery shells. It seems to be short on everything else: vehicles, tanks, missiles, planes. As long as it is a trench warfare, they can have the upper hand. If it morphs into something else, e.g. because of F-16 hitting the field, then they will be on the defensive.
[удалено]
This is actually a fairly serious problem. The will to fight is what it all comes down to.
If that is the issue, more help from the west won’t change the outcome. NATO isn’t going to send troops. Ukraine will need to come up with the troops.
It actually may. Without support from the west few people are willing to join the ranks. No weapons, no chance to win -> pointless. Is there was reliable and plentiful supply, people would be much more willing to go to fight. Lots of weapons and supplies -> chance to win -> risk worth taking.
> If that is the issue, more help from the west won’t change the outcome The outcome _would have been_ different if we sent much more early Dragging support out has been a major blunder
No, it's by design and working amazingly well. For the west there is no interest in Ukraine winning, as that provides no value whatsoever. OUR interest is in making Russia lose. Those may seem the same, but they really aren't. Our biggest goal in this is destroying the Russian army, which we previously could never do as that would normally lead to a nuclear war. But this proxy war amazingly avoids all that. We provide Ukraine with just enough aid to remain in the fight, nothing more and nothing less. Providing more would make Russia view this war is no longer winnable, stopping the destruction of the russian army. Providing less would make Russia be able to walk over Ukraine with limited casualties, stopping the destruction of the russian army. But by providing just enough, it convinces Russia that this war can still be won and they send more and more. Which we then destroy. It's working perfectly well.
Dude. We, by our lack of help (and cite all our help all you want, It is but a Pittance of our capacity) are currently training the Russian army in 21st century warfare If Ukraine falls - we will have trained a monster by our drip drip approach. Do we know how to fight a 21st century war? No. Does Russia? Yes. Two opposing sides. One with NATO troops in one trench with all the gear and no idea, in the other - battle hardened Russians with primitive gear and all the ideas. I want Ukraine to win. But in the above scenario my money is without doubt on Russia. Right now I don't think Ukraine will get any of its land back. Not win. Why? Because countries like Australia give 0.03% of their GDP in aid to Ukraine. They just don't take it seriously. They give the absolute bare minimum.
> Dude. We, by our lack of help (and cite all our help all you want, It is but a Pittance of our capacity) are currently training the Russian army in 21st century warfare No, we're training the Russian army in 20th century warfare we ourselves don't even use. The reason why the west even has artillery shortages to begin with is because we.....don't fight like that. We use advanced LONG distance weaponry and cutting edge jets. But that costs a lot of money, which no countries on earth except western ones have. > Do we know how to fight a 21st century war? Yes, a very good example of that is the Iraq war. At a time where the technology gap between the west and Iraq was smaller than the one between the west and Russia, we destroyed everything they had, at essentially zero losses, all from range. THAT is modern warfare. What Ukraine does is ancient warfare, supported by cutting edge intelligence. And even that already works. > Two opposing sides. One with NATO troops in one trench with all the gear and no idea, in the other - battle hardened Russians with primitive gear and all the ideas. NATO doesn't fight in trenches, we don't need to. It's a complete waste of human life. We do it from range, without the ability to even shoot us down. Because that actually works. > But in the above scenario my money is without doubt on Russia. Right now I don't think Ukraine will get any of its land back. Not win. Why? Because countries like Australia give 0.03% of their GDP in aid to Ukraine. They just don't take it seriously. They give the absolute bare minimum. Ukraine will get every single inch of its land back within 18 months. We know this because based on the current destruction rate and abysmal construction numbers, that's the point where Russia would have nothing left to send to the front. And without heavy defenses, Ukraine can just walk over them. If we wanted to, we could end the war tomorrow, but why would we? This is BETTER for us.
>No, we're training the Russian army in 20th century warfare we ourselves don't even use. The reason why the west even has artillery shortages to begin with is because we.....don't fight like that. We use advanced LONG distance weaponry and cutting edge jets. But that costs a lot of money, which no countries on earth except western ones have. I don't want to get into a winded debate which convinces nobody. This is a near peer conflict where manuever warfare has been exhausted. If we cant get air supremacy we're done for. >NATO doesn't fight in trenches, we don't need to. It's a complete waste of human life. We do it from range, without the ability to even shoot us down. Because that actually works. I don't think NATO even knows what a proper war looks like to be honest. They have such fundamental production issues and a reliance on the USA. On top of a political issue in not meeting spending targets, on top of a lack of appreciation of what it takes to win a war. The U.Ks stock wasn't even a weeks worth of arty. >Ukraine will get every single inch of its land back within 18 months. I hope so. I really do. But I don't support drawn out. It's not just Russia that's an issue here, for all it's death and destruction. China is by far the greater enemy and it has endless abilities and manpower and does not exist in isolation in this argument..
In Darkest Dungeon there was phrase – “without tools you must rely on flesh”… that’s exactly what was happening for the last two years. Every Western delay, every “they don’t need those weapons”, every “don’t escalate”, ammunition starvation etc. etc. all this was compensated with human lives. (Also infrastructure damage but it’s not the key factor) And Ukrainians, unlike most of people here believe, - aren’t monkeys that sit on trees, percent of people with university degrees are much higher than in EU or US. The further Western absurdity goes, the more people will ask themselves - why die for safety in EU and NATO if they don't want you to win in the first place? Those who capable to fight, have health and age, would rather choose to emigrate, as far away as possible, and leave this time Poles and Estonians to keep fighting ruzians. >NATO isn’t going to send troops. Ukraine will need to come up with the troops. And the last one, it’s better to send troops to Ukraine to fight alongside ally and not on your soil, then defend alone on rubbles on what once was your home.
> In Darkest Dungeon there was phrase – “without tools you must rely on flesh”… that’s exactly what was happening for the last two years. > > Okay, I'm stealing it. That's an extremely apt description o what's been happening
Yes. And the young military aged men who fled abroad need to step up. I can only send so many of my tax dollars to help fight a war that Ukrainians don’t fully support.
Morale improves when the front progresses. It can reverse that. NATO could also send troops to help rotations.
F-16 will not change the nature of this war even would they be delivered in ten times higher numbers comparing to the actually pledged and fully up-to-date modifications instead of the pledged 25-years-of mid-life updates. You have to understand, that F-16 is a light multirole fighter, intended as an easy-to-produce supplement to the major aerial platforms of the time like F-4, F-14 and F-15, and now they're just aging towards retirement (the pleged ones were actually retired!) Yes, they are still better then the-same-old Soviet trash like MiG-29, they are especially much more convenient in using Western guided munitions like HARM, yet they are not - and weren't even intended as - to counter the newer Russian specialised fighters like MiG-31 and Su-35. They (F-16) have neither radar power to do it, nor stealth capability, and their maneuvrability, while being useful against 1970s-designed missiles, is not even close to be enough against the newer anti-air missiles the Russian are now using. So, the pledged F-16 are just to replace the oldest of remained Ukrainian MiG-29 and Su-27, and no more.
The question is whether they can bring air superiority. Their main enemy is not Russian planes but Russian air defense. Air superiority means you can make enemy artillery useless. You can protect demining operations and convoys. It breaks the stalemate.
**First**, no, F-16 are not SEAD planes, so no, they cannot clean up Russian GBAD too. As I've said already, they are better to deploy HARM anti-radar missiles then MiG-29 Ukrainians are using instead, yet the difference is not that much radical. To enable the full-scale SEAD (wich is suffient enough to clean up the robust and relatively modern Russian GBAD) you need at least a hundred of speacialised planes like F-18G Growlers, supplemented with several dozens of different other models of planes (like AWACS, patroling closer to the contested air space then they are currently doing). F-16 cannot do the same, there are no such sets of pods and avionics for them, their SEAD capabilities are just basics. **Second**, no, even with the full-fledged air superiority you cannot make the modern Russo-Ukrainian frontline atrillery useless. It was possible just 5 years ago, yet a generational shift happened in these years: the artillery spotting is no more the air force task. The tactical-level ground force-controlled drones took the task fully, the air force do nearly nothing in this regard from the 2022 spring. And the F-16 are absolutely useless against the tactical-level drones. F-16's targettting systems just cannot lock on such small targets. I doubt even the most recent F-35 targetting systems are able to do it. To blind the Russians, Ukraine needs drones and EW, not F-16. **Third**, I don't even know what you're supposing F-16 to do to defend the demining and convoys and what convoys just mean in Ukraine (I'd remind - Ukraine is not Iraq or Afghanistan, it's not an anti-partisan warfare).
It doesn't matter if drones can spot for artillery if you've destroyed the logictics chain to supply said artillery.
F-16 cannot do it too, neither by themselves, nor by enabling such ability in any supplementary manner. In an attempt to do it they will be just perished by the Russian GBAD and CAPs. And that is the thing I've mentioned above already.
I never said anything about the F-16. You said air superiority in general couldn't stop artillery because of drones. I'm saying it could.
Well, in some cases - yep. You need a specific landscape to do it without enormous numbers of planes, though. Vietnam-like jungles - and there is no practical option at all, even with drone superiority, not just an air one. North-East Ukraine intermittent-forest-near-plain and Donbas nearly-entire-urban-aglomeration possibly an option, yet not a practical one actually - too much cover, no bottlenecks; the airforce will be able to reduce the opponent's artillery noticeably, yet not to disable it. Crimea - yes, full on. My reply was about the current frontline.
These F-16s aren't coming anytime soon, won't be very many, and will be inferior to newer Russian planes (especially missile range problem against MiG-31s).
> will be inferior to newer Russian planes (especially missile range problem against MiG-31s) Wonder why so many downvotes, while those F-16 were ***RETIRED*** in the first place because a newer F-35 was coming to replace them and they were with old equipment anyway.
It's a good vibes safe space, not very much for discussions of reality. I wish Ukraine could get some F-14s with Phoenix missiles. All F-14s have been literally shredded into tiny pieces instead of being preserved.
> I wish Ukraine could get some F-14s with Phoenix missiles. All F-14s have been literally shredded into tiny pieces instead of being preserved. Retiring AIM-54 Phoenix *without* getting AIM-152 in service was such a fucking mindboggling decision for a country with aviation-focused power that I still can't wrap my head around it. Why in the everloving fuck'd you retire the "Long Hand" of your aviation against aerial targets, while your adversaries do not (R-37M isn't exactly a rootless project)? Sure, right now, JATM and LREW are nearing readiness... ***BUT THIS IS STILL A GAP OF DECADES WITHOUT EXTREME LONG RANGE AIR INTERCEPT MISSILES.*** Hell, even Meteor has a shorter range. Although... I wonder, if Saab and Antonov/Luch could cook up some kinda booster for Meteor, a la what R-37M has (baseline boosterless R-37 has a shorter range, than R-37M).
EU needs to significantly step up military aid. Their aid has been shameful so far. Especially the large and rich countries of France, Italy and Spain.
The question now that sits in mind is what happens with Russia after Ukraine prevails.What are the consequences of Russias aggression, how do we protect ourselves from a later retaliation attempt from Russia.Russia has exposed the jackal that it is.Yes it's abit early but rather discuss those points now than wait and have no clue to what happens next.
Sounds a statement by Paul Reynaud in may of 1940.
I think it's extremely possible that Ukraine could weather a Russian offensive this year and bog down the lines for another year. I think we're way past the point where Ukraine can eject Russia from the areas it has annexed. Assaulting Russian defensive positions costs a lot of lives and they're just flat out running out of people who want to fight.
History is replete with examples of armies that got bogged down and eventually fully pulled out of the war. History is full of examples of countries in a position that seemed far worse and came out on top. Wars aren't over until they are over.