[georgeecollins]

Let's imagine a hypothetical symmetrical war between two modern countries. One can disable the other's satellites and maintain their own fleet. The other can't get access to any third parties' satellites.

You aren't going to send your steel navy out when one side can see you from space and you can't, almost regardless of the numbers. Your big army of steel tanks is useless against a bunch of drones directed by distribute satellites.

[pjc50]

Everyone in this discussion seems to be forgetting Trident as well. There's a lot of assumption the next war will be helpfully similar to WW2, and some sort of reverse sweet spot where we are subject to naval interdiction but will not deploy the strategic nuclear deterrent, and at the same time have enough time to build things, but not things that require any of the rest of the supply chain than steel (I have bad news about the number of ASIC fabs in the UK).

Back to "dead men dominate UK politics". In this case, we're trying to refight a war from 70 years ago.

[benj111]

Well if trident gets used then what comes next is irrelevant.

It's like planning for your house burning down V dying. If you're dead you don't really need to worry about the after.

So yes the military plans for everyone but global thermo nuclear war, because there's no point planning for that anyway.

I wouldn't say were planning for the next ww2. Look at the number of tanks we have. If anything were over optimised for helping the US fight insurgencies in the middle east at the expense of being able to fight a high intensity war.

[warumdarum]

Beating a exponential curve with a stick. The military never changed

[thegrim33]

The absolute worst case is that it's not advantageous/useful at all in the next war to have the capability, but it wouldn't harm you at all if you do have it, it just wouldn't be useful. In every other case, from the worst case all the way up the continuum to the best case, having the capability is beneficial to varying levels of degree.

[Sabinus]

How many billions have you spent propping up useless industries in the years before the war though? What capacities could have been built with those billions otherwise?

[franktankbank]

We follow a path governed only by the logic chain of previous mistakes. Our next recognition of one could be pretty brutal.

[pseudohadamard]

For Americans wondering why they were making a Judas Priest album public property, it's actually a company based in S****horpe.

[t0mpr1c3]

S tier post

[wongarsu]

In a defensive war, a steel navy sitting in spitting distance of your shores and an army of steel tanks will still do a lot to keep the enemy at bay. And you can swap the tank turrets for Gatling guns on some of your newly produced tanks to help against drones

You wouldn't be able to win the war in your scenario, but you could still do a lot to make sure the other side isn't winning either.

[georgeecollins]

If machine guns were useful against drones Russia would be winning in Ukraine.

Check out Russia's Black Sea fleet to learn the fate of your navy sitting by your shores.

[8note]

russia is currently holding just about all the land it wants in Ukraine

They might not be taking Kiev for a hundred years, but the fortress belt is well within reach in the next couple of years

If they were to negotiate an end tomorrow, Russia certainly wouldnt be giving up territory in ukraine. i dont see how thats not winning

[onlypassingthru]

Russia is not only on the precipice of giving up territory in Ukraine, it's likely to give up so much more because its ability to function as a country is being systematically destroyed.

The only barrier between Russians and anarchy is the last nine meals they’ve had. How's the summer harvest coming along?

[afavour]

If you’re looking at win vs loss you also need to look at what you got in return for what you gave. A ton of casualties and further international isolation aren’t really worth the middling gains Russia could negotiate for peace today. Which is probably one of the reasons they still haven’t, sunk cost fallacy and all that.

[GJim]

> If you’re looking at win vs loss you also need to look at what you got in return for what you gave.

This.

Russia is suffering over 400 casualties for every square km (1036 per square mile!) of territory captured in Donetsk, screwing their own economy and turning themselves into a pariah. Russia certainly isn't winning.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...

[fsuts]

Ukraine taking on rounds after rounds of multi billion euro loans also isn’t winning…

They need a peace deal but external parties don’t want Ukraine to do this. The same ones lending the money

[solumunus]

Is that land worth the costs Russia has endured? Very obviously not, that’s why it’s not “winning”. If they could turn back the clocks they would.

[somenameforme]

The benefit of war is almost never worth the cost. It just tends to scale up from repeated mutual miscalculations. For instance WW1 started from a Bosnian Serb assassinating the Austro-Hungarian heir and the next thing you know Brits are killing Germans over it. Everybody would have certainly turned back the clock there if they could, even moreso given that "The War to End All Wars" directly set the stage for WW2. But that doesn't mean that the Allied Powers didn't win WW1.

[solumunus]

It's nowhere near the same thing.

This was supposed to be an imperialist land grab by Russia. This war did not emerge organically. Russia had a goal, to seize Ukraine - easily and quickly. Russia have failed at that goal. Failing is not winning. Not only have they failed to secure their objective, the attempt to do so has cost several orders of magnitude more than intended. The land they do control is of low value.

Again, spectacularly failing to carry out your goals is not "winning", in any sense of the word.

[wolvoleo]

That guy wasn't important at all. The other countries were just looking for an excuse to start a war. Until then wars were kinda glorified, governed by pretty strict rules and not much attention was paid to the destruction.

WW1 changed all that with the tank, the machine guns, the toxic gas, the trench, the air warfare.

[DANmode]

> If they could turn back the clocks they would.

That’s not my very objective understanding of Russian history.

[mrguyorama]

Russia's explicit and communicated goals for this war were utterly failed by day four of the invasion. Arguably they lost within hours when they failed to take Hostemel airport.

By Russia's own accounting, they lost years ago. It does not matter what the outcome is, Russia has taken massive pain to sustain this war they never planned to sustain. They entirely used up their immense Soviet inheritance, which was something they held in high regard and used to insist made them strong. It's gone now. Used up.

The gas station of Europe can no longer produce sufficient gasoline for internal use. It will take at least months to get that capability back.

They have utterly failed to substitute sanctioned components, having switched back to imported components after their internal substitutions performed so poorly.

Their navy is being taken apart by a country that scuttled it's own navy on day one. Ukraine sunk the flagship of the black sea fleet with supposedly just a few missiles, something which the Moskva by all accounts on paper, should have handled just fine. Except all their craft are in such poor condition that many of the systems on the Moskva were likely just nonfunctional, including defense radars, communications, and anti-missile defenses.

Russia was totally reliant on an American private company for their battlefield communications, and is not coping with the shutdown of their access, which they should have been prepared for long ago. They were also dependent on Discord and Telegram.

Russia is being seriously wounded by a country much smaller than it, which also ostensibly had all the same problems as Russia, like poor soviet doctrine, corruption, a poor economy, and demographic issues.

Russia is failing to compete industrially with a former vassal.

Russia had to import soldiers and ammo from north korea.

Russia's weapons export industry is dead. Nobody wants their trash that has proven terrible on the battlefield. Nobody expects Russia to actually be able to build what they claim to sell anymore.

Russia is so run dry on arms that they couldn't help Venezuela against the US invasion. They sent a single anti air weapon system.

Half a million Russians are dead.

If the war ends today and Russia is allowed to keep all the land it is currently standing on, it still has lost. It's not even a Pyrrhic victory at this point.

[benj111]

>russia is currently holding just about all the land it wants in Ukraine

Based on? The fact it tried to take Kyiv in the first week? That it's still trying to advance?

If Russia were to collapse tomorrow, they would lose everything, I don't see how that's winning.

[t0mpr1c3]

It still hasn't got all of Donbas.

Russia can't even keep what it previously took. Crimea is becoming indefensible.

[AngryData]

Is it that they can't work, or that they are too expensive for Russia to field any appreciable amount that won't just make them valuable targets? Its not trivial to produce the hundreds of thousands of rounds you need for each one to be ready.

[Sabinus]

If there is any nation on earth that is capable of cheaply producing large quantities of simple weapons of war it is the Russians. The issue is not a lack of cheap bullets.

[echelon_musk]

The PM M1910 is used by Ukraine to shoot down drones.