19879

The predictions of the poorly equipped, untrained conscripts turning into pure cannon fodder seems to be coming true. These huge daily losses are starting to stack up

19880

Seems to be fake and India Today doesn’t care enough to check it.

19881

Another mobilisation story:

Big surprise…

The usual tactical equation, as demonstrated by Ukraine at the start of the war, is trading space for time. I guess this is the phase of the war in which Russia trades men for space. And winter is coming.

A repeat of 1917 has to be on the cards here.

19882

Ukrainian Military command is claiming 800 Russians killed in combat yesterday, and close to 5000 over the past week. They have been surprisingly conservative/accurate in their assessments of casualties inflicted - so I would take it seriously.

19883

Cannon fodder being fodder for cannons, I guess. How unexpected!

19884

These seem to be pretty effective against drones:

19885

Sure, but the “within range” is doing a lot of work. There are like 30 Gepards in all of Ukraine.

19886

Unfortunately, Switzerland is blocking the transfer of the rest of Germany’s stock of ammo for them per the update I posted above. Sounds like other countries are able to manufacture it though?

WW1 comparisons continue to work all too well with Russia.

19887

What is Switzerland’s actual leverage here? If Germany just ships the ammo anyway, do they refuse to sell to Germany in the future? Try to sue the government?

19888

That is my understanding.

Also, it’s super weird to me that a major nation would outsource military production to a country so neutral that they dictate how you use said things. But also it’s Germany, so I assume they didn’t want to produce their own stuff for weird political reasons.

19889

More importantly, why on Earth does Switzerland persist in this myth of neutrality. There is not neutral. You are either on one side or another, period. And the sides are pretty clear here. The idea of neutrality might have had some value in the Cold War era, but today? Nope.

19890

They maintained it with Nazi Germany.

The Nazis had plans to take them out too, they just never got around to that part.
And of course someone had to keep their loot safe for them.

19891

I don’t believe Switzerland has any say on how Germany could use the ammo themselves, but they can block transferring those items to another country. I’m pretty sure every import of military equipment comes with a similar agreement on sales/donations to a third country. Just look at all the hoops countries have to jump through to be part of the F-35 program.

I agree that Switzerland is on the wrong side of this one by blocking the donations, just need to keep the perspective that the actual agreement isn’t all that weird or unique.

19892

It’s weird in that a major European power doesn’t have the ability to make it’s own ammo for it’s weapons platform.

It would be like if JDAMs were made in Mexico.

19893

The US does import a lot of arms actually. But the US being the US, I imagine that we just laugh if someone tries to get us to ink a deal about what we can use them for or who we can resell them to.

19894

Lots of countries use HIMARS and M270, does anyone but the US produce the GMLRS rockets for them?

It takes a lot of different equipment to equip a modern military. Not many countries have or even desire to have the defense industry required to produce all of that. With the close alliances of the west it makes a lot of sense to specialize production to some degree.

Ammunition is probably one of the easier things to rapidly spin up a production line for a type you don’t already produce. But in this case I don’t believe Germany uses the Gepard or that size ammunition for anything anymore.

19895

Well the Gepard uses NATO-standard ammo, so one would think it would be available someplace.

A lot of stuff uses the same ammo. I would presume the issue is just with Germany’s supplier, but maybe the Swiss make all of it.

19896

Does it? It thought it was originally an East German system?

Edit: should have checked wikipedia before posting, not after.

19897

No, the Gepard was NATO. The Warsaw Pact equivalent was the ZSU.

19898

I don’t know if there is a “NATO” round for that machine.

It uses bullets specifically made for it, it seems.

According to the last thing I read, the HEI (high explosive incendary) rounds they are using are being made in Norway by NAMMO