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The Big Serge has a good overview of the RU-UA war. The TL;DR is that Ukraine has burned through multiple iterations of armaments and is now reduced to begging for active NATO matériel, hence Germany's reticence to send Leopards. One should understand that Europe's and even America's production capacities have atrophied badly over the decades. Losing hundreds of tanks - the number that Ukraine is asking for - isn't something you replenish within a year.
Serge's prediction that Ukraine will lose the war "gradually, then suddenly" seems plausible given Russia's attrition strategy. If we assume that Russia will win this war, then the question needs to be asked.. how much will actually change? Ukraine as a country isn't particularly important and the population is likely to be hostile to Russia, meaning that to integrate it into Russia proper will be difficult if not impossible.
I keep hearing hysterical rhetoric that the West must win this war or... something something bad. It reminds me of the flawed 'domino theory' that was used to justify the Vietnam intervention. While I don't think NATO will ever proceed towards direct intervention á la Vietnam, I can't help but think that too many of the West's elites have trapped themselves rhetorically where Ukraine's importance is overblown for political reasons (so as to overcome domestic opposition towards sending arms) and it has now become established canon in a way that is difficult to dislodge.
If this is the level of analysis on offer, it's beyond worthless. Russia too has "burned through" much of their advanced equipment and is now mostly limited to their own domestic new production or mothballed shit from the '50s and '60s. Of course Ukraine wants good weapons, rather than the outdated military surplus most countries have been dumping on them. This is not an indication that anyone is "winning" or "losing". This is what happens in attritional combat.
Germany isn't reticent to send Leopards because the Ukrainians are losing, they're reluctant to send them because they don't have very many and their politics is incredibly fucked up around military matters, for understandable historical reasons. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/21/what-is-stopping-the-supply-of-german-made-leopard-2-tanks
Here's a technical video about IFVs specifically, what sorts are involved, how many, tactics etc. https://youtube.com/watch?v=UGZi-F3tz-o
What kind of inept denial is this? You seriously believe Russia will run out of tanks before Ukraine? You are wrong by multiple order of magnitudes.
Also the purity thinking that modern military machines transcend the old ones is very common and childish. In fact considering the very strong economic and usefulness diminishing returns of the newer iterations, peak maximally useful military machines are generally from the 70s + a few cheap modernisations on top such as a 1 dollar gps/glonas chip.
Are you actually serious about this? Or is it some joke? Or is it "effectiveness over resources, assuming that soldiers and their training costs nothing"?
Are you claiming that it applies to such types of military machines as planes, satellites, night vision, AWACS, drones and communication gear?
And AT, ASAT, PGM etc?
For what your claim applies? Definitely not for static machine guns (here peak is earlier), maybe for standard issue riffles. Anything else?
Multiple? Can you clarify what you think is the difference of tank count between Ukraine and Russia?
Are you aware of what "order of magnitude" typically means?
Are you claiming that Russia has 100x or 1000x more tanks thank Ukraine? Because that is a quite brave claim.
I was curious about the specific numbers.
If we go by public figures from last year, Russia was supposed to have 12,500 tanks and 30,000 armored vehicles for Ukraine's 2,500 tanks and 12,300 armored vehicles. Those were the optimistic estimates on either side including reserves and old models.
So 5x and 2.4x. Which, while not as crazy as multiple of the typical orders of magnitude is still a pretty extreme military advantage.
How much that's evened out by the West's production and how much has been destroyed on either side I think is impossible to know reliably at this point, for obvious reasons. But if we assume similar levels of attrition that's a lot of difference to make up for.
You might be interested to read my analysis regarding optimal military hardware composition https://www.themotte.org/post/317/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/56897?context=8#context
Right it's not multiple order of magnitudes per se currently, but semantically they are not on the same scale which is my point.
However the multiple order of magnitudes could already be true through attrition,
if we suppose for example that Ukraine has lost 2000 tanks and still has 500, and make no asymetric assumption and therefore suppose ukraine ha lost 2000 tanks and therefore still has 10,500,
10500 / 500 == 21X so one order of magnitude of difference
now the attrition continues 1 year later,
10100 / 100 == 101X, 2 order of magnitudes, see the argument?
adds to that, that russian tanks are more moderns than the Ukraine ones
and that on frozen fronts like bakhmut or all of the last months, the offender has a major attrition advantage supposedly since Russia has 100X more artillery (let alone precision missiles, and drone superiority)
off topic but I find it kinda weird they didn't manage to make Ukraine army totally incapacited by banning their access to GLONAS.
People also fail to realize that Ukraine has better military hardware than France, UK and germany quality wise.
But quantity wise the difference is beyond crazy, the ignorance of the layman is so strong, France has 200 tanks, UK has 300 tanks
Tank wise, Ukraine could have invaded France and UK 10 times each. 10 France
Ukraine has possibly the best anti-air on earth, etc..
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Worth noting is that in both cases unknown part exists only on paper. Many of this 12 500 tanks were stored in Siberian mud, under open air, without maintenance, for decades. For obvious reasons that is not good for tanks. Ukrainian military got better, but was extremely corrupt and Russian military corruption was not much better and has not really improved - so many of this tanks were sold for scrap or only rusting shell remains as someone has stolen everything steleable.
No idea how many of this tanks can be refurbished into something mowing under own power. Maybe half?
Disparity is a bit lowered by fact that for Russia option "we lost every single tank in this war" is worse than for Ukraine.
Note also that some tanks were delivered - for example Poland send 230+ tanks (so far the largest delivery), more may come while Russia has no real resupply options.
On the other hand, Russian factories are producing new ones - though hopefully war will not go for so long that it will change total numbers much.
And yes, overall that is really really bad for Ukraine. But not by multiple order of magnitudes, unless taking base 2 or other trickery.
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