16:23 – MatsExtrude
👍
Can’t find back to the post I saw regarding 39,000/month so it seems difficult to get an exact answer on what they can deliver in total right now (found one from Feb. that mentioned 28,000/month).
But here is a mix of what we can expect:
” The service has even more ambitious plans for this year and has intentions to reach a rate of 80,000 units in the coming months.”
“We are already on a path to [produce] around 70,000 to 80,000 shells a month by the end of this calendar year..””
”The U.S. plans to increase its monthly production rate for 155 millimeter artillery shells to 100,000 in the summer of 2025 Bush told reporters Thursday.”
”According to data compiled by the independent research and analysis group Lawfare, the US 155mm shell manufacturing capacity will probably reach a 60,000 shell/month capacity by the end of 2024 and is on track to close to double that by the end of 2025.”
The last one is probably the most negative regarding deliveries in the near term, but still positive if they can reach 120,000 by the end of 2025.
16:24 – MatsExtrude
2025, of course, I meant..
16:36 – MatsExtrude
Regarding the fact that it seems like the US wants Ukraine to wait until 2025 to go on the offensive.
WESTLEY RICHARDS wrote that it could be domestic politics, that they don’t want to raise any hopes before the election in case it doesn’t go well. There might be some truth to that.
At the same time, one can also see it as a strong incentive for Biden. If Ukraine manages to achieve greater successes before the election, he can capitalize on that.
So it could very well be that they say one thing outwardly, while doing everything they can to support Ukraine so they can push back already this year.
Moreover, it’s not wrong to lull Russia into a false sense of security so they believe they have plenty of time.
13:39 – Johan No.1
The Lions
https://x.com/ukrainiansquad/status/1786880456157217201?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Now we have May 9 to look forward to and then the terrain is suitable for offensive operations until maybe October.
What has already started is deep strike, the northern oblasts are visited every week and attacks on refineries and fuel depots continue.
This should accelerate further and soon include targets in Crimea and along the entire border with Ukraine.
Then we have medium range over 100km in Ukraine and that should also increase going forward, ammunition depots, transport hubs, headquarters, barracks, fuel depots, and airfields.
And finally, front-line pre-attack suppression and when that reaches hurricane strength, a ground offensive is imminent.
We already see local offensives today to position themselves or stamp out threatening breakthroughs.
Then it will probably be just like before, reconnaissance battles that grow in strength and then a window opens for offensive operations on a scale so we can once again confirm that the offensive has started just like May 4, 2023, which is now accepted by the world’s historians.
But…
some ambiguous signals now, first everything was supposed to be delivered within hours from the US and now support is for 2025. Then both ISW and the US (Sullivan) have stated that Ukraine should conduct an offensive in 2025 while Ukraine has said they are preparing for some type of offensive this year.
Is the West trying to steer Ukraine to wait until 2025? That is immediately the question.
It is quite simple by delaying support and especially the aircraft which is presumably the critical line.
https://x.com/secretsqrl123/status/1786802827831935230?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
The fact is that the West still treats Putin and the war as if it is a local/regional conflict but for Putin this is the first stumbling steps towards World War III and unfortunately (for him) he got dragged into this mess a bit faster than he thought. The plan was to topple Ukraine and then continue with the countries in Europe we now know, one calm step at a time.
The only one going against the current now is Macropoleon – ask Ukraine if he sends troops to Ukraine, just call me amigos!
https://x.com/motishort/status/1786880175306641686?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
This one is also interesting, it is really only France that gives 100% of its ammunition production and weapons production (what they need) to Ukraine. The rest of the West prioritizes themselves and even places contracts on new equipment so Ukraine cannot buy it.
https://x.com/deaidua/status/1786728910727610520?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Now that the UK has announced removing geographical restrictions on its weapons – imagine if Ukraine had been allowed to use them against the Iskander platforms just north of the border with Ukraine already in autumn 2023, then this year’s missile rain would have looked different. There is a large dose of cynicism in Western politics here.
Regarding Western arms manufacturers – in a free market you compete for the best weapons so generally the West has competent weapons systems. Not entirely true because many countries promote domestic production and the US always has an all-in package with its contracts that no other country can compete with, but roughly the best wins.
In Russia, you probably get assigned to develop a new tank but it is not a swarm of different manufacturers competing for contracts. It seems quite much one-factory-one-product nowadays and the contracts drip with corruption and the quality is accordingly.
In a broader perspective, Russia’s entire technology platform for weapons has proven inferior to the West’s on a hair-raising level, very little Western equipment is shot down or lost and Russia loses 95% of fired missiles for example.
Russia, China, and Iran have today black on white that in a global conflict they are the losers so we will never see that.
However, they can carry out terrorist attacks and everything else that devastates the West but does not lead to us rising up and here Western signal politics and actual consequences are quite an important ingredient to act as a deterrent.
I am still working on a post about subversive activities but at several universities in the US, it is almost a Marxist revolution now and again the law enforcement does not uphold the law and pursue equal treatment. They allow blatant HMF crimes I never thought I would see in my lifetime. It is my personal opinion that this is an influence operation aimed at destabilizing the West, our time’s ’68 movement which will be followed by our time’s “long march through the institutions.” A revolutionary movement simply and police force after police force reports that after arrests several are not students at the university in question.
Then we have the upcoming huge problem that Russia is now entering Africa in a big way and destabilizing. High risk that several countries on the continent will be plunged into bloody civil wars or interstate wars. The goal is of course to enrich themselves and then start refugee flows towards the EU again. It went well in 2015 so why not try again but with magnitudes more refugees?
The reason the thread does not find it fun to discuss the sexual-sadistic-murder recolonization of Africa is because the thread hears nothing. And that is because the entire media colossus that kicks off on things like the protests in the US or October 7 is completely silent about Africa when the continent is recolonized in the most brutal way possible.
The problem the EU has in the case of Africa is that doing nothing now becomes an infinitely bigger problem later, it is among the world’s most fragile state formations where a spark immediately throws them into ten-year civil wars with unimaginable suffering for the civilian population.
Things are starting to move in Georgia, here the police are fleeing.
https://bsky.app/profile/johanno1.bsky.social/post/3krq2xnjdym2d
Someone asked yesterday 🧐 and it is the Scranton factory that now produces 36,000 155mm shells per month, not total production in the US.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1786626880252059926?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
Then RU is also attacking near Vuhledar and you understand just like me that it is the lack of ammunition that decides right now because 2023 was an absolute massacre of the Russian marine corps near Vuhledar and everything was knocked out a few miles before the attack targets which now must be defended with near PV and KSP.
https://x.com/osintua/status/1786794104728261014?s=46&t=Vah3JXV31B9lXwZOK5gF7w
It is quite possible that we have again overestimated the West here and that ammunition and equipment will not arrive in time during 2024 but it seems like France is actually delivering and the advanced aircraft were supposed to be “a few weeks away” a few weeks ago. As someone often points out, there is training in several countries and several countries sending so it comes in batches – we will simply see.