It's also faster to set up and pack up and move. Which makes it more likely to win an artillery battle. When you fire it, the enemy detects where the missiles are coming from, and fires back. The faster system wins, because by the time the enemy missiles arrive, it's been packed up and driven elsewhere.
Although, since the missiles are also guided in flight, that makes it a non-trivial task for Russian tracking to trace it exactly back to source - artillery shells follow a ballistic course which is traceable, a missile which can change course, even slightly, mid-flight is a great deal less traceable.
www.forbes.com
Does the US not have a warehouse full of HIMARS they could just ship to the Ukraine now? Otherwise the Russian tactics of shelling the places, sending in the Wagner group and then mopping up wth regular troops is going to succeed right? They need these longer range more accurate systems now it seems. If the US delays it’s just going to create a longer and more destructive war for no reason surely?
I think the benefit it's doing to the American arms industry is hardly no reason
Fair point but if Ukraine loses the cost for world political stability will be high…which will benefit the arms industry (damn
).
We've all lost already for every day that passes without climate action due to the war - or with negative action like more coal being burnt - drives us closer to a collective beachy headFair point but if Ukraine loses the cost for world political stability will be high…which will benefit the arms industry (damn
Yep. I used to have a speculative sci-fi book imagining what the future might hold (this was in the 70’s when i was in single figures). In it there was a bit on the climate on two pages facing each other. On one side was a utopian vision with clear skies and people in white robes hanging out playing the lute (i made the last bit up). Nice really. The other page had a rainy city scene. Black clouds, gas masks, etc. Blade Runner before Blade Runner and I thought as a naive child that obviously the adults in charge would choose the path to the nice version right? Wrong.
NATO in general, and the US in particular are not major artillery forces in the way that Russia and Ukraine are. NATO doctrine is based around air supremacy. Prior to this year, Ukraine was easily the second largest artillery force in Europe, which makes it difficult for NATO to replicate that sort of power. Certainly NATO equipment is more effective, but that only goes so far.
A happy accident of history/military doctrine, then, that NATO turned out to have long-range ground-based weapons that could do what Russia was trying to do, but better/more accurately/over longer range. Albeit not in such quantity.
I work in a machine/welding shop and I've seen some head shaking skrewups. But wow, this actually made it to the front line?
Someone whose job makes me think they know what they're talking about says the embargo since 2014 has really hurt them on this. Essentially the market for machine tools only has a very high end and a very low end. The high end kit is so good these days, that if quality matters at all to you you cough up the change and buy it. Otherwise the cheap kit is the absolutely bare minimum and you get things like that above.
Top work brother metalworkers.
www.telegraph.co.uk
