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As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

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Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#151

Post by Zetobal »

tehjoker wrote: post #135
Throw73747 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And shelling Donetsk City is somehow different?

I am also against the Ukraine war and believe a peaceful settlement is possible. NATO (the US) is using Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, though having to fight two wars at once is causing them to rethink their position. ICJ did rule against Russia, and it makes sense since they invaded, but the roots of the conflict go back to attacks on Donetsk like you say since 2014 and various aggressive moves by NA…

gentleman's agreement... what a weird way to say there was no agreement.

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#153

Post by clarionbell »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #68
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #57

I really really enjoyed the piece[0], but boy, you think this is bad, wait until we're exchanging missiles with a peer military. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of missiles[1] in the air at the same time, in a kaleidoscopic dazzle of altitudes, velocities, sensor profiles. Every combat simulation seems to turn into what you might call a "magazine fight" - i.e., who runs out of bullets first. We'll probably burn throu…

Same as for : > My solace is that in a real conflict, all of that red tape would be put to the side and people can get about building things. That's just not going to happen. A real conflict would involve nukes, and the war would be quickly over. I doubt that something close to Vietnam can happen again either. (And even for a 2nd Vietnam, I doubt that any significant artillery would be used when, as you point out, mi…

People thought that war in Europe will be impossible. They were wrong. And now we are paying the price. Turns out large conventional war is very much a thing. Right now we have a big one in Europe, handful are brewing around the world.

Artillery is still, and for many reasons will be, a king. Shells are order of magnitude cheaper than rockets. They are smaller. Easier to manufacture. Missiles are nice if you want to destroy specific targets. Things that move or are so far away that artillery can't reach them.

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#154

Post by roenxi »

somenameforme wrote: post #140
sherr wrote: post #124

Noah Smith (Noahpinion) had a decent post up a few weeks ago about this aspect of war - war production. He titled it "People are realizing that the Arsenal of Democracy is gone" [1]. It was quite a sobering read. The thought that we might ever need this level of commitment in the future is frightening. War is always full of nasty surprises. [1] https://archive.is/Ih3pm

That piece is not well thought out in my opinion. The "magical shield" that's been protecting people in developed nations is simple - nukes. Countries with nukes don't get invaded. Countries without nukes, do. It doesn't matter if you're a democracy (which Iran was until they dared question our control over their oil, and so naturally had to be have... monarchy... brought to them), or a little dictatorship with an af…

The US is a fairly aggressive power that gets involved in a lot of overseas wars. If you backcast the same logic to WWII; the US could have had a nuclear shield then and been perfectly safe from invasion, but what it actually wanted was the ability to get involved in Europe and the Pacific.

Having an impenetrable defence is nice, but the US hasn't fought a defensive war in ... I don't know how long. Maybe a century for all I care.

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#155

Post by maxglute »

hugryhoop wrote: post #150
samus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the attempt to make them again might provoke China to react. Eventually with an invasion, after slagging the facilities with cruise missiles or air bombardment. They will be committed to overwhelm any air defense to accomplish that. What to do with them anyways? Taiwan would need plentiful supply of them and a reliable delivery mechanism. Japan surrendered because the US had total air superiority and bluffed abo…

If Taiwan sees China assembling an invasion force, why not build a nuke then, China already signaled that it's going to attack anyway. A nuke is easy to hide, we are not talking about global second strike capability here, just delivering a couple of them to close coastal cities, even by smuggling them in some civilian transport. Can China be 100% sure that not one slipped through? Taiwan could do a proof detonation o…

It's open secret ROCA is thoroughly infiltrated by PRC intelligence, and Chinese missiles can hit anywhere in TW in 7 minutes. If anything, if PRC wants to unilaterally attack TW, you would expect PRC to manufacture casus belli that TW is pursuing nuclear program to preemptively strike TW before they even start assembling an invasion force. Most of the world would be left shrugging because nuclear proliferation of non recognized UN state is going to be jus ad bellum reason for PRC to start whacking TW indiscriminantly. The entire PRC invasion can be seen months away is stupid for this reason, they're not going to telegraph an amphib build up before destroying TWs military first. And as seen in exercises in response to Pelosi, they can pull that operation together in days, the hardware movement itself indistinguishable from exercise mobilization.

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#157

Post by clarionbell »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #84
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be a hopeless optimist, but I don't think a USN/USAF/USMC vs PLAAF in SCS/Taiwan situation would escalate to nukes. At least, I don't think it's likely . Definitely a nonzero chance, maybe a coin toss, but Taiwan isn't core territory for either Power. Invasion, now . . well, there's the magic power that comes with having 'em. No one invades you, ever. Also,outside factors could change the math here, like a me…

But that only means that the US would give up on Taiwan before the fight would get any serious (from USA's point of view). I also kind of doubt that China is going to try, at least in the next decade or so, because those so far irreplaceable chip factories are almost certainly booby trapped and are a critical piece of the global economy, so China would be sabotaging itself first. (And Xi has probably a long way to go…

People thought the same about Putin, or junta in Argentina. Problem is that they couldn't understand their motivation. Some people, don't care about GDP, well being of their populace or popularity, not to mention media. They don't have to worry about reelections, or retirement.

Just maintaining their power.

And that gives them time to pursue things politicians from liberal democracies consider things of history.

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#158

Post by MagnumOpus »

butterknife wrote: post #131
cameron_b wrote: post #62

It should probably be restated that instead of the conflict in Ukraine catching our production capacity off guard, that rather it was our production posture along with denuclearization and disarmament of Ukraine that set the stage for the conflict. I’m not a “team America world police” advocate, much more the opposite. Even as stated in the article, most production is more interested in a deterrent. Hate ‘em or hate…

Ukraine only housed Soviet nuclear missiles. They (Ukraine) would never ever had access to launch codes. That it is stated in Budapest memorandum along with the rest of the Soviet army leaving does not in any way make Ukraine a former nuclear power. We had Soviet nukes stationed in Czechia too. Does that make us a former nuclear power? I thought not... Slava Ukraini

> would never ever had access to launch codes

What do you think, how many hours does it take to remove and jury-rig launch signal electronics for a motivated nation state at the cutting edge of weapons technology? If the Soviet troops had agreed to leave the bombs in situ, Ukraine would have had some sort of nuclear capability within the week. (And even if the Russians had sabotaged it, Iran and NorK prove that obtaining or refining the fissile material is far harder than explosives lensing and ballistic missile delivery.)

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#159

Post by clarionbell »

somenameforme wrote: post #140
sherr wrote: post #124

Noah Smith (Noahpinion) had a decent post up a few weeks ago about this aspect of war - war production. He titled it "People are realizing that the Arsenal of Democracy is gone" [1]. It was quite a sobering read. The thought that we might ever need this level of commitment in the future is frightening. War is always full of nasty surprises. [1] https://archive.is/Ih3pm

That piece is not well thought out in my opinion. The "magical shield" that's been protecting people in developed nations is simple - nukes. Countries with nukes don't get invaded. Countries without nukes, do. It doesn't matter if you're a democracy (which Iran was until they dared question our control over their oil, and so naturally had to be have... monarchy... brought to them), or a little dictatorship with an af…

Problem is that everybody know that nuclear war is a no win option. So they try to avoid it.

You can game that. Simply give your enemy a way out. Don't press them too hard, just take something, not so much that they would feel threatened. Instead of invading them directly, take over their trading partners. Set up rebellions, insurrections. It's still your bullets in their bodies and their country taking damage. But you have plausible deniability, and nobody is going to break out nukes about it.

Soviet union did that very well. Despite taking over bulk of central and eastern Europe, kicking western interest out of China, and thus most of eastern Asia, ending colonial rule in most of Africa, they never "crossed the line".

Iran is doing the same thing now. Russia too. And others will follow. It's a good strategy.

Re: As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production

#160

Post by sbierwagen »

hugryhoop wrote: post #150
samus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the attempt to make them again might provoke China to react. Eventually with an invasion, after slagging the facilities with cruise missiles or air bombardment. They will be committed to overwhelm any air defense to accomplish that. What to do with them anyways? Taiwan would need plentiful supply of them and a reliable delivery mechanism. Japan surrendered because the US had total air superiority and bluffed abo…

If Taiwan sees China assembling an invasion force, why not build a nuke then, China already signaled that it's going to attack anyway. A nuke is easy to hide, we are not talking about global second strike capability here, just delivering a couple of them to close coastal cities, even by smuggling them in some civilian transport. Can China be 100% sure that not one slipped through? Taiwan could do a proof detonation o…

>Taiwan could do a proof detonation on non-city Chinese soil if things get tense.

Gaodeng is a ROC island just five miles off the mainland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaodeng_Island An atmospheric nuclear test there would be the wildest provocation imaginable that would not actually be on PRC soil.

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