Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Ukraine’s president said that Russia is now firing 10 times more artillery shells than his country is able to, and has 30 times more aircraft, in a worrying sign for Ukraine’s ability to sustain its military efforts.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-ukraine-outgunned-10-1-112058462.html
“Russia has started to make steady progress against Ukraine as Kyiv’s forces face dwindling ammunition supplies, much to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s frustration.
“There can be no question, Ukraine could be quickly overwhelmed by both men and arms by odds as great as 10 to 1 within weeks without additional U.S. assistance,” Kenneth Braithwaite, a former ambassador and former Navy secretary during the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital.
“This is a critical juncture in the war and time is of the essence for Congress to act on a comprehensive package,” Braithwaite said. “The fact remains that Putin’s only chance to win in Ukraine is if the West loses our resolve.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/zelenskyy-blasts-allies-turn-blind-174603003.html
“Russia’s military has suffered severe losses in Ukraine, but it appears to be bouncing back to what it was before it invaded, says Gen. Chris Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander and the head of US European Command.
“They’ve grown back to what they were before,” Cavoli said in a House Armed Services Committee Hearing on Thursday. “They’ve got some gaps that have been produced by this war, but their overall capacity is very significant still, and they intend to make it go higher.”
The commander’s comments lent support to Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell’s April 3 statement that Russia “almost completely reconstituted militarily.”
The war has cost Russia thousands of tanks and seen the military suffer at least 300,000 casualties, by some estimates, yet Russia, the general explained, has been particularly successful in building back its ground forces, most notably by refurbishing, repairing, and producing tanks.
“They still have as many tanks functioning inside Ukraine as they introduced at the beginning of the war,” Cavoli said.
In addition to tanks, Russia’s army has also grown in size by 15 percent, and the country is currently on the path to “command the largest military on the continent,” he said. The size of Russia’s army has exceeded the size it was when it had first invaded Ukraine in 2022. There are questions of capability and quality though.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-us-general-europe-says-165955190.html
“China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine, according to a U.S. assessment.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-intelligence-finding-shows-china-183204749.html
“The need for such defenses is all too clear for residents of Kyiv. Just an hour before Kuleba sat down with POLITICO at the foreign ministry on Monday, in broad, mid-morning daylight, the Ukrainian capital came under attack from Russian ballistic missiles.
A couple of loud blasts rang out just moments after air raid sirens blared across the city. Kuleba was in the city’s botanical gardens to make a video for an upcoming trip at the time.
The missiles were intercepted by Patriot air defenses. But nine people, including a teenage girl, were still injured from falling debris, including in the district near to where Kuleba was filming.
The foreign minister’s demand comes at a fraught moment for Ukraine in its attempt to repel Vladimir Putin’s invading forces. Western support, strong at the start of the invasion two years ago, has weakened in recent months, with a major new U.S. aid package held up by partisan divisions in Congress.
European allies have struggled to plug the gap in the supply of funding and arms that Kyiv so badly needs. Ukraine’s war of self-preservation is precariously placed. Russia is making advances on the battlefield and Putin, fresh from a distorted election victory, is leaping on every opportunity to intensify the Russian assault.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/give-us-the-damn-patriots-ukraine-needs-air-defenses-now-minister-says/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXQlmpdydPY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkhoWXak4J8
“This gives us a minimum number of civilian war deaths of approximately 15,700. Based on 29,000 airstrikes, this leads to an average of 54 civilians killed per 100 attacks.
How does this compare to other operations? A roughly comparable operation where we have similar data is urban operations in Raqqa, Syria, against the Islamic State. In the Raqqa operation, according to DOD reporting, there were 178 civilian deaths and 10,663 airstrikes—an average of 1.7 civilian deaths per 100 attacks. This number for Raqqa was not considered to be good—never mind a gold standard. In fact, there was so much concern about the levels of civilian harm and destruction in Raqqa that DOD conducted an independent assessment of civilian harm (disclaimer: I was a member of the team that authored the report). The findings of this assessment contributed to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) directed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In the report, we also mention that this DoD estimate is likely low. For example, our study team considered the Airwars estimate of 744 civilian deaths to be more realistic. This yields a higher average of 7.0 civilian deaths per 100 attacks.
Despite the alarm over the high rate of civilian deaths in Raqqa, one finds the minimum equivalent in Gaza—54 civilians killed in 100 attacks—is eight times greater than the Airwars-based estimate and 32 times greater than the DOD estimate. And recall that 54 is a lower bound for the Gaza ratio; it is likely far higher than this. Just as miners in California could see the appearance of iron pyrite—fool’s gold—and think they had struck the real thing, it is possible to look at the IDF’s precautionary measures and at first glance think they are practicing civilian harm mitigation. But whether evaluating the IDF’s performance on its process or its results, it fails to qualify as a gold standard.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/
“Because of the problem with American ammunition and the shortage at a really crucial moment when they were making inroads…they haven’t been able to push that much further…most of the marines..spend all their time in the basements hiding from heavy artillery fire.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVRu9hRy_hk
“The US has long placed its faith in expensive weapons as the key to victory in conflicts, but the Ukraine war is forcing it to revise its assumptions, The Washington Post has reported.
Stacie Pettyjohn, the director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told the outlet the conflict had challenged long-held ideas that expensive, precision-guided weapons were key to winning US wars.
US-made Himars or Excalibur shells, which are guided to their targets using GPS, have proven vulnerable to Russian electronic-warfare units, which scramble their signals and send them off course.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraines-war-shown-us-expensive-113140807.html