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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

#31

Post by Bud »

zmgsabst wrote: post #11
shiroiuma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think everyone should just allow Russia to take over any country it wants?

No — but perhaps we could have negotiated a peace during a conference at Minsk a decade ago or in Feb 2022 at the outbreak of hostilities, rather than frantically send Boris Johnson to subvert it. Russia has consistently angled for Ukraine to be a neutral border between two blocs to facilitate trade — and that clearly would have been better for Ukraine than a senseless slaughter which destroyed a generation, by maimi…

[dead]

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

#32

Post by robviren »

jmyeet wrote: post #6

This reminds me of the excellent series "Blueprint for Armageddon" in Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast [1]. It's about the First World War. WWI tends to get less attention than WW2 and while there are good reasons why we focus on the atrocities of WW2, in some ways WWI was far more devastating. The artillery production mentioned here reminds me of how scales changed from the beginning to the end of the war. At t…

That podcast absolutely plunged me into history in a way I never had experienced. I was astounded at how much death and horror we are capable of tolerating before the average person does something about it. WW1 history helped me get through the pandemic because no matter how bad that was I was sure living a better life than those who lived in the trenches. Cannot recommend enough.

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

#33

Post by icegreentea2 »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #25
iso8859-1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? The first computer (the Antikythera mechanism) had nothing to do with the military.

Off the top of my head, in this space DOD invented: CPUs/registers, random access memory, packet switched networks, internetworking, TCP/IPv4. I’m sure there’s more.

More directly, ENIAC was literally designed and commissioned to calculate ballistic trajectory of shells.

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

#34

Post by khokhol »

zmgsabst wrote: post #11
shiroiuma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think everyone should just allow Russia to take over any country it wants?

No — but perhaps we could have negotiated a peace during a conference at Minsk a decade ago or in Feb 2022 at the outbreak of hostilities, rather than frantically send Boris Johnson to subvert it. Russia has consistently angled for Ukraine to be a neutral border between two blocs to facilitate trade — and that clearly would have been better for Ukraine than a senseless slaughter which destroyed a generation, by maimi…

The only "peace" settlement Putin would have accepted by Feb 2022 would have required the permanent secession of the then-occupied regions (and likely then some) to Russia.

That clearly would have been better for Ukraine

As if you know better than the Ukrainians themselves as to what's best for them.

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

#35

Post by HideousKojima »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #14
schainks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of us tech people have the military to thank for the creation of this industry, lest anyone forgets.

What do you mean? The first computer (the Antikythera mechanism) had nothing to do with the military.

Steel was made in India thousands of years ago, that doesn't mean the development of the Bessemer process didn't create the modern steel industry.

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

#36

Post by TulliusCicero »

duped wrote: post #16

I don't think it's a "problem" that we don't have enough munitions to launch at other humans. It's a testament to our time that there aren't incentives for manufacturing death.

So should countries like Ukraine just sit around and sing Kumbaya then? What exactly are you suggesting?

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

#37

Post by hash872 »

zmgsabst wrote: post #11
shiroiuma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think everyone should just allow Russia to take over any country it wants?

No — but perhaps we could have negotiated a peace during a conference at Minsk a decade ago or in Feb 2022 at the outbreak of hostilities, rather than frantically send Boris Johnson to subvert it. Russia has consistently angled for Ukraine to be a neutral border between two blocs to facilitate trade — and that clearly would have been better for Ukraine than a senseless slaughter which destroyed a generation, by maimi…

>but perhaps we could have negotiated a peace during a conference at Minsk a decade ago or in Feb 2022 at the outbreak of hostilities

Ukraine negotiated nonstop with Russia from 2014 (when Russia first seized some of their territory) until literally 1 week before the invasion in 2022. It was 8 years of nonstop negotiations, brokered by France & Germany. I'm always amazed more people don't know about this. How did negotiating work out for Ukraine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements

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

#38

Post by Icingdeath »

Dig1t wrote: post #13
morkalork wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now in Ukraine FPV kamikaze drones have gone from a makeshift novelty to the government aiming to produce 1M in 2024: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-produce-million...

I saw a video of these things in action killing somebody on the battlefield, it was truly disgusting. Seeing videos like that has made me feel like I don’t care who wins the conflict anymore, it just needs to come to an end.

Appeasement doesn't work with this aggressor; it only emboldens them and increases the likelihood of another landgrab in a few years. The only thing they understand is force.

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

#39

Post by seo-speedwagon »

duped wrote: post #16

I don't think it's a "problem" that we don't have enough munitions to launch at other humans. It's a testament to our time that there aren't incentives for manufacturing death.

I don’t think it’s a “problem” either; I think it’s good the the US is incapable of producing some of the most basic 100-year-old tech that forms our war machine.

I think the interesting parts are everything around how it got there. How decades of focusing on expensive wonder tech and unchecked MIC grift has led to the US to this state where it fundamentally can't deliver materiel it needs. The contradictions of 30+ years of end-of-history neoliberal economics vs. the fact that someone needs to run a big potentially unprofitable factory and keep large excess inventory of if the US expects to respond to long-duration conflicts like this. Whether or not the US ends up like the western colonial empires of old sooner rather than later.

So from that standpoint 155mm shell production is an excellent window into larger trends

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

#40

Post by TulliusCicero »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #26
more_corn wrote: post #7

That was well researched. Weapons manufacture has an unfortunate overlap with the systems skills computer people possess. It’s easy to get sucked in. He says it best in the first paragraph. “I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of one” Never build a weapon you wouldn’t want to be on the other end of. The last part of creation is relinquishing control. The person operating it might not be as careful pointing it as y…

A fine pacifist attitude to have when someone else did the fighting and the dying and the building up a military industrial complex for you. Ukrainians, for example, don't have that option, which is why a ton of IT guys there are starting and joining all sorts of miltech startups, volunteer groups, etc. Their families and their future depend on using their talents to build yucky weapons they don't want to be on the o…

Yeah, these pacifist-style comments are really tone deaf and out of touch.

Yes, we'd all prefer peace and leaving each other alone, but if some other nation comes to kill your countrymen and replace your democracy with a puppet, suddenly just relying on pacifist ideals doesn't work well anymore.

Most of the time, these commenters don't want to engage with reality as it currently exists. If you ask them what exactly you're supposed to do without a war machine if some other guy invades, they just have the silliest deflections and hand waving. Ultimately, they just want to say "war bad" from atop their high horse, as if other people didn't believe that war was, in fact, bad.

Ukraine is an obvious example. Ukraine wasn't doing anything to Russia other than choosing to gradually move culturally towards the West, which is their right. Before the big invasion in 2022, there were repeated attempts by Ukraine or by Western countries to try and forestall Russia's invasion by opening up negotiations and talking things out, and Putin didn't give a shit.

Diplomacy didn't work there. What would've worked? Having a stronger military, or even better, being allied with other strong militaries. Putin doesn't invade the Baltics for a reason.

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