I remember some alt right twitter people at the start of the war talking about how the russian army was super powerful and was going to create a huge mercenary army full of seasoned ukrain vets and crush the decadent west. Flash back to reality and they've captured only slightly more than they did in the half war of 2014 at the cost of hundred of thousands of lives and thousands of tanks.
Nato didn't get 100% off scot free. Although a lot of the fancy tech paid off the fact that they couldn't supply an ally with enough ammo is embarrassing and shows that they were not prepared for a real war.
Anyways tune in next week for another episode of 10,000 Dead Slavs in a Corn Field.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Empty bin is incredibly hard to wrap your head around. We finally have explanation why west is so slow with 155mm shells. It only took almost 3 years to get root of proplem
But we still have no idea why they are slow with eveything.
For 155mm shells. US switched to new kinda explosive stantard in late 80s. Type of explosives that dont go off on its own. Stantard was decided in 60s but implemented in late 80s. Then coldwar ends. And rest of nato switches to same stantard. Even new nato countries.
But becouse there hasnt been big war since then. Nobody in west invested in explosive plants. Just enough to get by.
Aperently part of reason was also british theory of it doesn't matter what you do at peace time. Becouse if war happens. You can throw all that out in window and just use what ever goes boom.
Like in world wars. Where they used fretilisers or sawdust soaked in explosive liquid.
But now that this war happened. Old cold war stock was depleted. There wasnt explosive factories around. And everyone was using same stantard. West found out. They cant produce enough stuff that goes boom for shells.
Right now. Bottel neck is explosive that acts as propellant. US produces half as much propellant as shells.
And aperently investment in explosive plants has been slow. Partly becouse what few has been around. Are kinda old and bad shape.
Last year. West was saying they will reach peak in 2025 and then ukrain will get everything they need and russia will feel the pain.
Now. They arent even claiming year for when production will catch up.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
900 billion a year and they can't keep up with Russian shell production
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Or even north korean production.
Partly becouse both best korea and russia still use old cold war stantard. Both parties just fired up old production lines.
Real scandal is how entire west still hasent catched up. Not that russia and best korea had better start
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
The more money defense contractors receive, the more money than can throw around to influence congress and people in procurement. Over time they charge more and more for less and less. We are borrowing money to give it to these crooks when the interest on existing federal debt surpassed 1 trillion in q2 of 2024. The comparison to a cancer consuming all an organisms nutrients is too easy lmao.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
It will be really funny US with its massive military force and spending tries to invade iran and it goes badly.
Fun fact. US military spending+plus intrest relative to gpd is now biger then military spending in ww2, relative to gpd. Basically US is in war time economy.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
?
40 % of US GNP in 1943 was dedicated to all military spending
It's 4.3 % now
Excluding 2016-18, the US has not spent this little since 1940
The 21st century peak was 2011, when it was 5.6 %
Was the US a war economy in 2011?
For comparison, Russia is at 6.3 %, the largest portion since 1991 RSFSR
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Why would you say that?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
The west is magnitudes more corrupt, lazy and incompetent than the east? What an unexpected turn of events
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Its called goldplating.
MIG dosent like cheep dumb weapons. They like big flashy and complicated weapons. Where you dont just sell it. You sell live service versio of that weapon.
Thats why there hasnt been investment in dumb weapon systems.
Funnily enough. Russia didnt either invest in dumb systems. They were going toward goldplating fast. Becouse coreuption is more lucrative in that field. But they didnt destroy, sell or make their old soviet manufacutring cababilities or even sell off their stockpiles.
One example of soviet stuff is forge they use to make barrels for 155mm artilery. They are rotational forges soviets brought from austria way back. If i rember correctly they bought 9 or 6 of them.
Now they are running them around the clock to meet barrel demand.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Why?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
It's kind of a misdiagnosis of the problem IMO. It's not really bad that we have low production of stuff like this, we could easily ramp up production if we wanted. The actual problem is that there's no political urgency to do it. At the moment Europe is asleep at the wheel, refusing to take seriously the Russian threat. After all, it's just Ukraine... they aren't an EU or NATO member so support for them is not procured with real urgency and planning for what Putin might do next is approached with the same nonchelance. The bottleneck isn't production of propellant, it's r-slurred leaders refusing to kick their countries in to gear with defence spending, hoping Daddy USA will just pull them out of the shit if it gets too hot. PATHETIC.
Defence spending has increased across Europe, but it's increased by a fraction of the amount it needs to.
10 years ago 3 fricking NATO countries met the minimum but "non-binding" defence spend (as a fraction of GDP) and today there's still 8 who don't meet it despite war threatening to boil over on multiple fronts (China Taiwan, Iran, the Korean peninsula, Russia and Europe). Some countries have comitted to increasing GDP spend but it's not enough, serious analysts say NATO needs to be hitting a 4% of GDP spend and they need to be hitting it TOMORROW, but places like the UK have only comitted up to 2.5%.... by 2030... 20 fricking 30.
Boys we are in the World War 3's equivalent of World War 2s preamble. It's 1936 and Germany has just torn up the Treaty of Versailles and re-militrisied the Rhineland. Britain and France hasn't done anything about it despite it likely promising to be a much smaller scale war than what's to come because they're too blind take Hitlers ambition seriously. Instead, they bury their head in the sand. 2 years later Germany annexes Austria. Still they do nothing. It's not until the full scale invasion of Poland in 1939, that Britain had just formed what is effectively a defence pact, that the allies acted and WW2 officially begins.
Speaking of Poland, those absolute CHADS are currently outspending even the Burgers by 20% in GDP terms. You think the Jews are the only ones who take "never again" seriously? You've never talked to a Pole about the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. How the actual flying frick can Poland pull out 4.5% of GDP defence spending but beacons of the NATO alliance like the UK, France, Germany and Italy can't even break 2.5%. Absoluely pathetic state of affairs.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
You could have done crack instead of this shit
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Aperently its not that easy to increase production of explosives nato uses. There is 2 factories in nato. One in US that was shithole. One in Poland that was top of the line. But productin at max capability.
Type of explosives used makes it just little bit slower to build up new production lines. Whole nato has started to expand production. New lines in US. New line in scandinavia. But it will still take some time for them to become operational.
Alternative ofc would be using different kinda explosive. But when you arent in war. Its kinda hard to sell everyone. We will move to less safe explosives. Espesily when stantard exsist becouse explosion happening unintentionally
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
erm they dont have corn there, it's a wheat field. nice try NAFO !factcheck
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
5th largest producer of corn in 2018.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
ok russian bot
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Why do you hate Ukraine?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I don't get it
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
I don't hate Ukraine
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Ukraine isn't a NATO ally
NATO doctrine revolves around establishing air supremacy, something Russia can't achieve against its "little brother".
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Cope, Germany and Poland want Ukraine to win and would have supplied enough shells if they could.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
One common response when it's pointed out that you can't always tell is "well we can tell 99% of the time", or some other high percentage pulled out of nowhere. This is a clear overestimate of how often someone can tell, but let's charitably assume that that number is true for a moment and do some maths. If you could tell who was trans or not 99% of the time, that would still lead to nearly two thirds of the people you read as trans actually being cis.
The mathematics is clear, using Bayes theorem.
Even if we very charitably assume that the sensitivity and specificity of "we can always tell" in detecting a trans person is both 98% then they are still wrong 50% of the time and accuse a cis person of being trans.
This is because there are vastly more cisgender than transgender people.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context