Ukraine is winning — and it is changing

Please keep up the good fight. We need you in NATO.

I wonder if there's going to be some sort of culture crisis across The West when reality hits, or if Western media is strong enough to distract everyone with something new like they did with Afghanistan.

I made a more detailed comment in the "Early Stages of Ukranian" post, approaching the conflict from a tactical position the russian doctrine has shown itself to be superior with a more developed command & control combined with emphasis on smaller unit concentration leadership. The ability to contese a wide swath of ukraine with highly mobile troops supported by a proven equipment advantage (kinzhal, UAV, EW, Artillery)

Then examine the strategic level, particularly the production of referenced artillery which is the lynchpin of this conflict with the russian defensive lines and ukranian anti-artillery efforts

"We know that Ukraine uses a purported 5,000-6,000 shells per day, and that Russia has been estimated to fire as many as 60,000—though that’s a high ‘peak’ amount—the daily average over the course of the war being closer to ~20,000-30,000."

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/on-shells-and-armor-the-war-of-sustainment

"The U.S., self-avowed manufacturing ‘powerhouse’ of the world, produces 14,000 shells a month and have recently announced a “3X production surge” to 40,000 to help Ukraine—which was soon after desperately amended to 90,000 to staunch AFU’s rapidly accumulating losses. Even for the U.S., it’s an effort large enough to take approximately 2-3 years to ramp up to."

"Accepting that Russia mostly depleted usable 152mm stocks by the early 2000’s (not counting aging stocks requiring refurbishment), it’s credible that Russia spent the next two decades producing at a moderate rate equivalent to the U.S.’s 90k a month, which would grant them about 1 million shells per year. And twenty years of such stockpiling, from the early 2000’s, would give approximately 20 million—in line with Estonian estimates.

Russia used an estimated 7-10m so far in the first year of the SMO (20-30k per day multiplied by roughly a year). If the Estonian estimates are accurate that means Russia could have ~7-10m left, which is about another year’s worth of shells.

In WW2, the USSR was said to have produced 100 million shells per year, just to give an idea of what’s possible. Also, as a rule, Russia has several times more arms factories compared to the U.S. per category. For instance, the famed Lima plant in Ohio produces all American Abrams. Russia’s top tank producer Uralvagonzavod alone has roughly 12 factories, though they’re not all committed to tank production. Some produce civilian equipment like train cars, others full-time tank modernization/refurbishments, like upgrading the older T-72’s to T-72B3 standard.

So if U.S. can do 90k shells a month (1m/year) on only one production line by merely increasing shifts, Russia likely has several such production lines, in the famed Tula Arms plant and elsewhere, and should be able to comfortably triple that, at the minimum. And tripling 1m shells gets us to exactly what Estonian intel reportedly estimated Russia manufactures per year; or this source which claimed Russia was assembling 2 million shells per annum comfortably:"

Who wants to bet a hundred bucks?

Written by Denys Shmyhal

That's Ukraine's current prime minister writing this opinion piece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Shmyhal