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	by pydry 1183 days ago
	And they could ramp up again, but it's not going to make a difference in the next six critical months especially without putting the economy on a war footing and suppressing civilian production like they did last time. If China decides to supply Russia, it'll make even less of a difference. Russia already outproduces the US in steel (key input into shells, and a bottleneck in both wars). China outproduces by a factor of 10.

2 comments

kspacewalk2 1183 days ago

Nothing is "critical" about the next six months. In fact, it's possible nothing much will happen in the next six months, if Ukraine opts to spend it training the >100k troops it just called up during the late fall and winter, waiting for the armour from the West to be delivered, and building up a stockpile of ammo. Ukraine has this choice because Russia just exhausted its offensive capability in a mid-winter offensive that didn't accomplish much and has stalled out. Russia is spent as an offensive force until the mid-summer at the very earliest.

If China decides to supply Russia, it won't be in the quantities sufficient to make much of a difference, because they don't wish to trigger significant retaliatory sanctions, certainly not right now when the Chinese economy is in a vulnerable state of coming out of the COVID-era funk. China significantly underproduces Western countries in terms of military industrial complex, quantity but especially quality. I don't want to pull numbers out of thin air but it's Nx, N > 1.

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b112 1183 days ago

China outproduces by a factor of 10.

You mean Chinese steel, which is terrible, barely passable junk?

Yes, great for mission critical stuff.

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pydry 1183 days ago

Ukraine doesn't need artisanal, hand crafted shells. It needs 10x more than it already has.

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b112 1183 days ago

Russia doesn't need shells exploding early, or combat gear parts snapping under load.

And that's what Chinese steel does. Fail.