Yes that’s what I was referring to. Zaluzhnyi might be giving an under-estimate, but who knows? If Ukraine reports too-low then (the perception is that) the West will think they don’t need as much help, and if they report too-high then a) it will damage morale in their armed forces and b) the West will think they are soon going to collapse so why send them weapons?
The extra dimension is that only some countries in the West are fully behind Ukraine. US at the top of the list, of course, in terms of both talk and action. There are plenty of others which are hoping this will soon blow over, Ukraine will collapse, the “USSR” expands a bit more, and they can do business with Putin again. All that matters is the remainder if your term before the next election 
I would be surprised if Ukraine lost as many as Russia. It was losing similar numbers at times but only for brief periods, in the east, due to Russian artillery – until they got the HIMARS and started smashing up the Russian ammo dumps. There is good stuff online on IR imaging showing the activity. Also defenders always lose several times fewer, unless they do something very badly, and Ukrainians a) aren’t stupid and b) attach a lot more value to lives than Russia ever did.
Had a family get together this weekend. My brother is an officer in the Army. Talked to him about the war between Russia and Ukraine. He just laughed and said this is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. It’s Russia on one side, and the entire NATO ammunition/weapons industry one the other side. Most of it is ammunition though, and several national western defense budgets worth. Ukraine will never run out of weapons or ammo, quite the opposite, but Russia will at some point.
LeSving wrote:
Ukraine will never run out of weapons or ammo, quite the opposite, but Russia will at some point.
Yes and if that happens, we will see how serious Putin’s nuke threat was. Or rather a while before that happens.
Ukraine is right now smashing up Russian hardware at about 10x the recent rate – presumably due to the offensive in the south. There is a news blackout on it, which is the right thing to do.
I think it’s long past the “if” at this point in time. It may take some time however, as Russia has an insane amount stored. The whole situation is rather insane actually. Nammo, a Norwegian/Finnish producer of ammunitions of all kinds, missiles and rockets, is also the sole producer of M72s. The demand for M72 LAW has increased by a factor of 18 this year Today Nammo’s factories are running at full capacity 24/7, and it’s not enough. They need to expand. It’s not all going to Ukraine though. Lots of western countries have looked at their almost empty ammo bunkers and though OK, maybe a good idea to fill them up with actual ammo
According to this the M72 LAW is not much good…
The best anti tank missile in Ukraine is their own Stugna P. It has a number of unexpected advantages. One is the 5km range, and another is the 50m cable between the laser operator and the launcher, which makes it a lot safer to use (the enemy fires back immediately to where they see the smoke coming out of).
The famous NLAW and Javelin are great if you can get close enough, which is difficult in open country.
Russia is not going to run out of artillery and artillery shells. It will run out of soldiers (30k-50k killed, depending on who you believe) and anything more advanced, not just because it uses American chips and gyros
HIMARS is the real story. Totally amazing.
Peter wrote:
According to this the M72 LAW is not much good…
I think you will find lots of better weapons than the M72 to shoot up big tanks if that’s what you mean. Who is this “blactail” anyway? The thing with the M72 is it’s light, easy to use and cheap. And at the moment it’s in extremely high demand due to experiences in Ukraine It’s a personal general purpose weapon, like a rifle, Glock or a hand grenade, and can be used to shoot up those things that a rifle will not damage. For instance a light armored vehicle, airplanes sitting on the ground, trucks and so on. It will also take out heavy tanks if you are good and know where to hit. Nothing better of similar capacity has been designed, which is why it’s still in (extremely high) demand. It’s not like a Karl Gustav and similar, which is more specialized and complex.
Yes I am sure you are right. I’ve just seen a video from there showing soldiers walking through woods and shooting up APCs they find hiding in there, with these “RPG” type weapons.
Modern shoulder-launched anti-armour weapons can be broadly divided into two categories:
1) Relatively cheap point-and-shoot affairs which just about anyone can learn to use with a quick briefing.
2) The expensive and highly capable precision-guided stuff, the use of which requires serious training and probably practice.
Both are highly effective in the right context. In both categories modern western examples have potency way in excess of the more traditional shoulder-launched stuff such as the ubiquitous RPG-7.
I know there is a lot of media management going on, but I get the feeling that most armoured vehicles are being destroyed by artillery, and smaller numbers with drones dropping little bombs.
Artillery is pretty accurate and they often get a hit 1st time at say 10km. The little drone bombs don’t damage tanks but there are some big DIY drones which can carry ~10kg and those are dropping shaped charges.
The Javelin and NLAW one hears less of nowadays, and I suspect the Ukrainians are not getting close enough to use these. The Stugna P is still the best but they probably don’t have many. All these are too heavy to walk around with for hours, whereas anybody can walk around with a “modern RPG” like an M72.
