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by jonplackett
92 days ago
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Does this just continue the ‘western way’ of spending a crap load of money on each military item, instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply? Ukraine and Iran are both showing it quickly becomes a war of attrition and fancy weapons get very expensive very fast, or run out very fast. |
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But we would be remiss to pick up on some threads from both Ukraine and Iran.
In Ukraine, the VKS is still able to generate substantial damage (both in tactical support of ground forces, as well as part of the civilian bombing campaign) with glide bombs (carrying 500kg+ class bombs, launched by tactical jets from over Russian controlled airspace).
These tactics are effective, and are able to do things that Shaheds aren't quite capable of doing - for example ensuring destruction of certain targets with a single hit. I imagine Ukraine would love to be able to be able to take glide bombs off the table, but it can't.
It can't because it lacks the air force to conduct an offensive counter-air campaign, and it lacks the long range strike capability to permanently disable relevant airfields, or destroy enough airframes on the ground.
European militaries would like to be able to avoid this situation, and therefore certain relatively exquisite capabilities are needed.
In Iran, while Iran has demonstrated its ability to severely tax the much more exquisite forces of the US+Israel and the Gulf States, the reality is that they have NOT been able to meaningfully degrade the US or Israel's ability to bomb Iranian ground targets at will.
European militaries would also like to be able to prevent the VKS from just... bombing central to eastern Europe at will.
European war aims - which would be to able to defeat Russian forces so soundly and quickly that Russia will forever be deterred, requires exquisite capabilities, that are able to strike the Russian war machine from the front line, all the way back several hundred kilometers in high precision, and high density (in time and in weight of payload), in a way that can actually cause collapse (when combined with ground counter attacks). It cannot rely on a Ukrainian style war or Ukrainian style tactics purely because... well, Russia is infact actually fighting that war right now, and hasn't given up yet.
A Europe that has to fight at all, is a Europe that has already lost. A Europe that has to fight for more than a few weeks or months, is a Europe that has deeply lost.