Military analysts who for years were downplaying the importance of Ukraine getting ranged weapons, saying they would be no game changers, would not make a major difference, etc--now are desperately trying to row back. Its a sign of just how dreadful the analytical community is.
Economists enter the chat...
After all... Russian military planners predicted 3 days....
Is it not more a result of the dynamics and unpredictability of conflict?
Dawned idiots forgot the one thing about range: longer range means more options for hitting your enemy.
They were lying mostly
Much like equity analysts, they are largely arbiters of conventional wisdom rather than synthesisers of data into actual wisdom.
the problem is that most military analysts don't know anything about Russia, they look at a map and think Russia is big, it must be unbeatable, which is nonsense, 100 Million impoverished Russians live mostly in the European part of Russia, the rest is empty, it is only slightly bigger than Germany🤡
Le PIB Russe est à peine au dessus de celui de l'Espagne pour une population 4 fois + grande et un territoire 17 fois plus grand. La Russie est un pays pauvre et non développé qui exporte des matières premières et importe des bien industriels. Elle ne peut pas gagner la guerre!
russia needs thousands of nuclear missiles, because it sees the whole world as a threat. The West only needs a couple of nuclear missiles, because the only threat comes from russia and only moscow and st. petersburg need to be targeted. It’s that simple 🤷♂️
Russia makes everybody believe they have thousands of nuclear missiles, it works well on American cowards, in Europe people suspect that Russia is lying, they have stopped all international inspections, they have invested no money in maintaining the large nuclear arsenal they inherited,recent tests👇
Whatever they claim, it’s important to remember: russia lies. Always!
My impression was that it was just self serving reasoning. They didn’t want to provide ranged weapons, so they said the weapons wouldn’t be a game changer.
It was just an excuse not to send them to Ukraine The US said it about Jets too Biden had Milley go out and tell Ukraine and Russia Kyiv would fall in 3 days Zelensky should leave egging Putin on As the excuse for not wanting to lift a finger to stop it
💯
Most of these analysts are stuck in dogmatic thinking. I do wonder how many were in the military. Unless you've been to a war zone & seen the realities on the ground, you can never fully understand the nature of human endeavour, ingenuity, & strength of resolve to fight off an enemy. #SlavaUkraïni
Russia has a lot of air defense on paper that is more like paper air defense
Before the year ends Ukraine will be mass-producing its own domestically made, long range missiles.
Still waiting for analysts to explain why the second biggest air force couldn't gain air superiority over Ukraine in 3 years. Even the the answer is obvious, its endless corruption in Russia. But somehow this was and is fully ignored in all fields that analyse Russia. 7000 nuclear war heads, sure.
Gotta wonder how many of those are functional, considering the cost of maintenance. A couple hundred warheads and their delivery systems take up some 10% of the French and UK military budgets. There's no way corrupt Russia can maintain 15 times as many warheads for the same amount of money.
La Russie est constamment dans le bluff, ils ne peuvent à la fois enrichir Poutine et sa cour et faire les dépenses nécessaires, c'est un pays de faux semblants.
Exactly this. As comparison the US: "If carried out, DoD’s and DOE’s plans to operate, sustain, and modernize current nuclear forces and purchase new forces would cost a total of $946 billion over the 2025–2034 period, or an average of about $95 billion a year, CBO estimates."
The military "experts" that ruled out russian invasion in early -22, and later assured us that Ukraina would fall in two weeks - are those "experts" still employed - as experts? If so, why do anyone still listen to them? They've repeatedly proven their utter incompetence and should be ignored, IMO.
The good people of Langley also seemed to agree with the assessment of fast capitulation, the issue is that Ukraine genuinely had information not available to others.
Some knew. Retired general Mark Hertling @markhertling.bsky.social wrote a few days after the invasion that russia will not be able to defeat Ukraina. He knew, because he had been guest observer at both russian and Ukrainian military excersises during his years as commander of US forces in Europe.
The issue was credibility. Bracketing off the quirks of Biden and closest associates, presumably if the US intelligence had assessed Ukraine's fortune higher, Biden et al. would have committed more resources to its aid. Private individuals do not enjoy such a cachet.
I had a similar conclusion based on worse knowledge base and was a contrarian about the Ukraine 2023 offensive as well. Some people get lucky and it's difficult to assign credit for predictions in the fog of war. The collapse of Assad regime was a direct result of the Ukraine war, a real surprise.
Clip from CNN February 15th 2022 where Hertling was convinced russia was going to attack when almost everybody chose to believe putin. Not a strike of luck: edition.cnn.com/videos/world...
Asymmetric information is a predictor of both war (as a form of bargaining friction) and Ukraine exceeding expectations. These practically belong into the same bundle of beliefs and are not enough to discount luck. The basic issue of assigning praise and blame remains intact.
By 2045 we will have much better assessment of the events leading to the war, if we have a future historical establishment intact.
Well, a military general had observed both parties and came to the correct conclusion. "Experts behind desks inside USA believed russia's propaganda about their invincible military, and made shitty predictions. They were unlucky, and the general was lucky? Simple as that? Come on!
The US intelligence was remarkably good about the Russian intentions, there's no need to presume they had drank the propaganda Kool-aid but rather constructed their views otherwise.
Intentions aside, the predictions that Kyiv would fall within 3 weeks was correct? And the view that russia's military was invincible was correct? And Ukraine's will and capability to fight was non-existant? I'm sorry sir, you are not making any sense - just excuses...
I fear that the topic is taking its toll on your reading comprehension ability as you seem quite incapable of accurately interpreting my position. I see no reason to continue the exchange.
Thank you for at least pretending to make an effort of understanding my position. Impressive array of complicated wording, though. You must take pride in feeling superior to others, I gather.😂😂
The argument that long-ranged weapons don't play a role was proven wrong at least 20.000 years ago, when a guy with a pointy stick encountered another guy with a slightly longer pointy stick.
They probably didn't consider the economic warfare aspect, but only the tactical use. The Russian population doesn't care about battlefield losses, but messing with its petrochemical industry and economy really hurts them.