In Ukraine, All Of Our Support Is About To Be Worth It

Sweet Jesus, it’s only been 5 months since Russia opened their bombardment, surged across the border, and Invaded Ukraine. And in the days following the invasion, the smart money in the media was that Russia would roll and finish the job in less than a month.

But Putin overreached, and his General Staff is pathetic, and so he basically stalled his own drive from the get-go. I have I have written extensively on Russia’s missteps, and won’t beleaguer the point here.

But the response from the United States and NATO was fast and immediate. And for once in the US, it was free of partisan political bullshit. They immediately supplied the Ukrainians with short range howitzers, heavy munitions, Stinger and Lancet missiles, small arms, and millions of rounds of ammunition. Combined with Russia’s incompetence, Ukraine survived the initial blow.

But after the Russians ran with their tails between their legs like a clutter of kittens back behind the borders of Russia and Belarus, they retooled their plan. It took them over a month to reconfigure their forces on purely friendly ground for a more narrowed assault plan.

But here’s the McGuffin. While they were retooling and resupplying, NATO and the US were still shipping more and more advanced weapon systems into Ukraine, and training Ukrainian soldiers on how to use them. The tide was already turning, simply because the US and NATO have deeper military equipment and technology assets than Putin does.

Let me swerve here for a moment to make something clear. Is the United States reliance on the military-industrial complex expensive? Shit, yeah! And is the system inherently corrupt and inefficient? Again, shit, yeah! But when the US military defense industry quits dicking around, locks into the problem, and produces? Man, they produce some world class shit!

Two examples. In the first two weeks of the war, Russians streaming over the Belarus border overran and took control of an area in the south of Ukraine, basically seacoast with multiple ports.

Today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that a counter attack was underway to retake the region. Zelensty announced that the Ukrainians had already retaken 44 villages in the region, and was pressing forward to clear the Russians.

How? Because of the introduction of US military long range howitzers provided to Ukraine. These bad boys are capable of firing long range shells from 50 miles, and then being gone in minutes without leaving a trace. They are almost indestructible. They are pounding identified Russian positions with impunity and advancing.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the best of the best. These howitzers can fire shells to a maximum range of 50 miles. More importantly, they are produced to fit on the back of a standard US military truck, and only require a 4 man crew to operate. Most importantly, once they fire their shells, within 2 minutes they can be speeding away at 60 mph, making them almost immune to retaliation.

Second, once the Russians recalibrated and concentrated on the Donbas region, they made slow but steady progress. The Ukrainians are now reporting that that progress has stalled. Why?

Again, due to US supplied advanced military systems. They are using the same long range howitzers provided by the US to great effect, devastating Russian lines of advance, and command-and-communications centers with little threat of reprisal.

But more importantly, they’re using another US supplied system. This is a tracking system that captures incoming rounds, and tracks them back to their source. 

Which makes it possible, even while the shells are still in the air, for the Ukrainians to train their artillery on that location and take out the guns. As a result, the Russian advance has stalled, and the troops are sitting ducks for more Ukrainian artillery barrages.

Here’s a bonus for you. Last week the world was horrified when 3 Russian rockets hit a residential area a couple of hundred miles from the front. But it could have been so much worse. Because the Ukrainians, using another highly specialized anti air system that blasted 2 of the rockets out of the sky. That’s a 40% kill rate, which is high on the acceptable side due to limited firing capabilities.

And just a sniglet. On Sunday it was announced that the US and NATO announced that they were jointly taking over the responsibility of air cover for the NATO nation of Slovakia. That frees up Slovakia to send some of their Mig-29’s, which all Ukrainian pilots are trained on, to Ukraine to assist in the fight.

I’ll be blunt. Putin is fucked. The US can continue to supply Ukraine with this military assistance, and even more without even having to ramp up defense military production. We have the shit just laying around. And hell, after the Russian’s original withdrawal from Ukraine, Putin had to recommission mothballed T-72 tanks from the cold war, which are death traps against modern armaments.

The longer this war goes on, the worse it gets for Putin. Forget his economy, he can’t compete militarily with the west. And that’s a shot across the bow to the Chinese. When Ukraine wins, it will be with the help of incredibly advanced US military combat systems. Remember, no US military boots have been on the ground in Ukraine.

In their autopsy of Russia’s failure, China is going to have to confront a question. There’s no doubt that US military equipment turned the tide. Is China that good? And never forget one thing. The Chinese conscript military hasn’t engaged in aggressive military combat against anyone but their own people in more than 30 years. The US volunteer military is fresh off of 20 years of armed conflict in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And in modern warfare, experience is king.