Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Anders Puck Nielsen"
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Wars is about handeling limited resources in the best, most effiecent way.
And for a long time have the west been fighting wars with overwhelming amounts of resources, so much so that we could afford to be lazy and wasteful and still win a war. The war in Ukraine has been a wake up call in this regard. Ukraine does not have the luxury of taking out an enemy with air support and wasteing 10 times more artillery shells than their enemy. One can say that the opposite has been the case. Here can we see how we must fight to win a war when we lack air superiority and have to rely on artillery instead. And a war when we do not have control over the skies but have to rely on SAMs, manpads and AA guns to keep enemy planes away.
As sound technician I think that human creativity works best with limited resources, when you have to be as creative as possible with the little tools that you have. If you only have a limited number of synth sounds in your music program you quickly think out ways you can use those and create music pieces.
Same goes for warfare. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes. It have a very few good artillery pieces which it needs to use effectivly to win against a stronger foe. And attacking the logistical system with HIMARS turned out to be a very effective way of doing just that. They have managed to find a chink in the armor of their much stronger foe and ruthlessly exploit it.
And the Ukrainians have inflicted higher losses on their enemy than they have suffered themselves. How much larger is hard to tell.
But even if they would be close to even, is it still a job well done by Ukraine as Russia have launched a surprise attack, they are stronger in the air, and they have much more tanks and artillery... and access to artillery shells and spare parts for russian made weapons is much less critical.
Ukraine have been clumsy in the propaganda war, and one could say that Russia allowed Ukraine to win it by walk over. Zelensky have been visiting his frontline troops and begging the west for weapons and help saying about the Russians: "they are killing my people".. which they have done at Bucha, Irpin and with all terror bombing. All the daily videos of destroyed Russian tanks, drone attacks on soldiers, exploding ammunition dumps and such have also managed to convince public opinion that Ukraine is doing well on the ground and that Russia suck. All those huge losses on paper that Russia have suffered do have some video evidence to back it up.
The daily unseen and Warthog, are like the modern day version of die Wochenschau.
I think Putin expected his net trolls to be more effective, but it turns out that there are lots of even bigger trolls on the internet - like myself - that can fight back. So their attempts to manipulate western public opinion have largely been unsuccesful. And meanwhile are Ukraine winning the meme war. Comment sections are like a self-playing piano now unlike the first weeks of the war. Now people do not need any encouragement to make jokes on Russias expense.. about "smoking accidents", "vodka related foolishness" and Kremlin hypocrisy. People do that job all by themselves and have fun reading each others jokes. And it does of course feel good to give each other a pat on the back.
For the Ukrainians it have also been important for fighting morale to feel like the world cares about them, and that they are not alone and left out to be eaten by the sharks. They know that the entire free world is behind them. All of Europe and North America. Even Switzerland and Hungary are sanctioning Russia. Iceland with its extremely tiny population send warm clothes this winter. Japan and Korea send military uniforms, hospital equipment. Taiwan send drones. Jordan sends military equipment, and Morocco sends spare parts from their best T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Also Australia and New Zeeland send lots of help.
The war in Ukraine have in many ways picked up the best parts of the world community. And Ukraine is in the worlds spotlight for the moment. And meanwhile are Russias allies getting tired of her brutality, her disrespect for law and the international order, and her clumsy disruptive behaviour. So even Serbia refuses to recognize Russias annexation of the stolen Ukrainian provinces. And also Kazaksthan, Mongolia and Armenia are beginning to speak up against Putin and publicly humiliate him.
And China is less and less interested in backing Russia
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The deal also benefitted Russia. Ukraine could ship out its food to sell and get some cash. But Russia could also do the same and also get some well needed money in the same way by this deal. Furthermore did it get some of the economic sanctions lifted by lifting the blockade of Ukraines wheat.
Russia had also lost the grip of southern Ukraine when this deal was struck. The arrival of Nato anti-ship missiles to this area such as Harpoon, Robot 17, Brimstone and others also made it impossible for Russia to keep up the naval blockade in the western black sea. Ukraines land forces also held the momentum in this area, and the loss of the cruiser Moscow, and the painful pyrrhic victory of taking snake island and the shaky control of the western black sea coast made life very dangerous for the Russian marine.
The original plan of occupying the east and south of Ukraine, blockading all the ports and thereby strangle Ukraines economy had failed. Ukraine got money from the west to stay alive. The landmass was contested, the control over the western black sea would probably have been impossible to upheld in the long run without danger of suffering heavy losses due to new anti-ship missiles and drones.
And the west was angry on Russia. Blocking the ports and cutting off 800 million people from their food source would have caused riots, revoultions, chaos and gigantic refugee waves around the world. This shows what a terrorist nation Russia is, that is prepared to deliberatly starve 800 million innocent people to death. Putin is prepared then to kill more people than Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. But that is another topic for itself, so lets go back to the grain deal...
A refugee wave of a tens of millions of north africans coming to Europe would create large problems for the EU and thereby the war effort in Ukraine. This destabilization of Africa, the middle east and the EU made governments worried and angry. So much so that the west even considered direct military intervention into the black sea if the Russians continued to try to sabotage the grain shipments and cause global starvation.
Those problems were avoided with the grain deal. Russia and Ukraine was allowed to ship their grain. The Russian terrorist state gained concessions by some lifted sanctions by the EU - which for example provided them with some spare parts for all those 500 passanger planes that Russia had stolen from western countries.
Global starvation was avoided and Ukraine got some cash. Russian terrorists had won a small victory. But Putin had probably hoped for much more sanctions to be lifted, but to his dissapointment was there not much change.
As the typical liars and terrorists russians are did they fire missiles on Ukrainian ships the day after the deal was struck.
The purpose was probably to drive up insurance premiums for western ships that transported Ukraines grain to make it economically unprofitable to ship all that grain from Ukraine and to ruin the country.
Had the war turned in Russia's favor again, and the control of southern Ukraine been taken back by Russia, then do I not feel any doubts that Russia would break all its promises - like it always done in the past - and started to attack Ukrainian ships again to try to strangle Ukraines economy to death again.
But now since Russias navy is weakened and the Russian army is losing, do Russia not yet dare to do anything about this Black sea shipping deal. If Russia moves to the west of the Crimea with their ships they will get in range of Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and get wiped out. So they are therefore unable to effectivly make a naval blockade as I sees it.
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Most of those lessons are not new in any way.
Countries underestimate consumption of artillery shells
- No shit Sherlock, havn't that been the case ever since World war 1? The great powers ran out of artillery shells early 1915. And Germany ran out of bombs during the invasion of the Soviet union. And USA had to buy back World war 2 bombs that it had sold off to scrapping, because it had begun running low on bombs during the Vietnam war.
Staffs and ammunition depots needs to be dispersed
Once again nothing new. This is what the Vietnamese did to counter the American air power. They did disperse their fuel and ammunition dumps. And they did it so much that it because economically unsubstainable for the Americans to send up a plane to drop many bombs to hit a very tiny target of for example a small diesel tank.
You must have training capacity
Well captain obvious, we all already knew this. But the politicians just wanted to slash the military budgets after the Cold War and no one forced them to take responsability for their reckless decisions. So now have we all got what we deserve. We have too few conscripts to fight forest fires, too little hospital equipment to deal with a mild pandemic, and our anorectic armies have nearly nothing - and not even basic supplies that they can spare to help Ukraine now once a real war has started.
Indeed the entire idea of running the military according to neoliberalism is stupid.
The military is not like a car company that you run for profit. A car company just wants to make money. And it can make money by for example minimize storage costs for spare parts and products that it rarely uses. Lean production, and slimming down the organization to the bare minimum and having as few workers as possible is a way to cut down waste and maximize the profits for a company.
But for a military would it be a stupid thing to do that way.
A military needs a gigantic ammount of supply in storage. If a big war happens you might need hundreds of thousands extra uniforms and gas masks. And you might need a million artillery shells in storage, so that your troops do not need to die because your guns have runned out of ammunition. But instead will you have enough ammunion in storage that you military can keep on fighting til your industry have managed to gear up for war and increased the production of ammunition so it can fill the monthly demand at the frontline.
So a military should be runned at an economic loss if need be. A military is fighting in a very competative enviroment called a battlefield which puts much higher demands on an organisation, than a little economic competition on a market place.
There is little surprise that the military have created so many innovations and new products, as the military is a very highly competative enviroment that is not obsessed about profits, keeping down costs and other economic constraints like the private sector.
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Battleships ruled the seas. Then came the torpedos and ruined everything, and having ships with big guns and thick armor was no longer fun. Battleships like Repulse, Prince of Wales, Yamato, Bismarck, Tirpitz, USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma were sunk by submarines and airplanes. By 1945 was no country interested in building any more battleships because torpedos on planes and submarines have made them worthless. Instead did countries build smaller ships instead like motor torpedo boats, destroyers and light cruisers.
And if the torpedos had not yet killed all dreams of big warships, would the next disaster soon come to them that would cause their final extinction: The cruise missile.
From now on would no navy in their right mind keep on wasting money on building new battleships or even upkeep old ones. The battleship was a dinosaur that was going extinct.
The Soviet union was first out with mass producing 200 new small fast boats equipped with nothing but anti-ship missiles. And thus had a new class of warships been born: The missile boat.
And since the 1960s have that meant the end of all big warships like Battleships, and Cruisers. At least when it comes to try to gaining naval dominance in the small Baltic Sea.
Now it seems like stealth and a clever use of the terrain are more important for the survival of a warship than what thick armor is.
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I think the continuation war between Finland and Russia in the summer of 1944 is even more impressive by the Finns.
Russia was a great industrial power that was pumping out thousands of IS-2 tanks, 152mm artillery pieces and military planes. Finland on the other hand was the poorest country in Europe and its army lacked everything except uniform buttons . Its industry was non-existent. And even with Swedish help and captured Soviet equipment did their military lack heavy artillery, and it extremely few aircrafts (and most of them were old and outdated) and they had almost no tanks, aside from a handful of StugIII and some captured Soviet junk that was little more than soapbox cars with a machine gun. By 1944 was all captured T-26 tanks and BT-7 hopelessly obsolete if they were to face thousands of T-34/85 and IS2 tanks Russia had put along the border.
The Finns still inflicted gigantic losses on the Russians. But the artillery fire, air bombs and big tanks proved too much even for the brave and skilled finns. The situation was desperate. Hitler thought that he could not afford another diplomatic blow by losing another member of the axis so he did decide to help the finns quickly.
JU87 stuka bombers, StuGIII and thousands of panzerfausts and panzershrecks were sent. And Russian tank losses quickly went sky high. The Finns had no armor of their own, but they were good at using their forests to hide and surprise the russian tanks and using the terrain for taking cover. And the russian military was incompetent and it often got drunk.
So its attacks were not that effective despite gigantic numerical superiority and enormous amounts of heavy weapons.
The climax of the campaign happened when the russians advanved through a narrow corridor. They did not know that the finns had prepared a big surprise for them. Every artillery piece in the finnish army had been massed around the area.
And calculations had been made so all the hundreds of guns would fire in an order so that all shells landed at extactly the same moment to reach maximum surprise.
A finnish officer told a Swedish soldier: "come and see here"... and he handed over some oculars to him and pointed in a certain direction to show him where to look. And then he said: "Now you will see how you will cause much harm and pain".
And a gigantic thunder came. And in the glass he saw things being thrown up into the air... trees, soldiers, horses tanks, trucks everything was randomly thrown around in a gigantic pile of smoke.
Probably many thousands of russians died that moment. And their last push to break through the finnish defences had been crushed.
In the long run did Finland realize that they could not win, so they started to negotiate peace with Stalin.
And Stalin was very eager to make peace with the finns. The country did not have much to offer Stalin if it were conquered.
And its military was good, so it would be good if Stalin could get that army out of the war as quickly as possible so he could focus on the Germans instead. He had learned to respect the finns. And he feared that a war with them would cost him too many losses that he could not afford. The German army was still strong and Operation Bagration which destroyed 100 German divisions had still not yet happened, so the outcome on the eastern front was far from certain. And Stalin was a 100 times more afraid of Germany than of the finns. So making peace with the Finns was a no brainer from Stalins point of view. Stalin quickly agreed to a peace with Finland so he could take his massive army and throw it towards the Germans.
So ironically did Hitlers panzerfausts to Finland probably do more to keep Finland out of the war, than in it.
Without his help would Finlands defensive lines probably been broken, and the Russians would have pushed through and would probably tried to follow through on their success and try to conquer the entire country as a result.
So one can feel a bit pity for the Germans for how ungrateful they were treated.
Stalin also demanded in his peace terms that all German troops on Finlands territory must be kicked out. So the Germans had to flee the country, and those who didn't were fired at by the finns. Stalin now finally feel some relief for Leningrad, and he could not unleash gigantic forces towards the Germans instead.
Once again had the Russian army proven itself to be large and mighty, but also utterly incompetent and careless in how it wasted thousands of men and equipment.
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