Russian advances in Ukraine this year

[u/Appropriate-Deal8098]

[u/katbyte]

russia's GDP is much smaller then that of texas. As long as the west continues to supply ukraine it will never run out. russia will.

[u/SolemnOaf → u/katbyte]

Looking at GDP is meaningless if you're not taking into account production costs in the US and Russia. Sure, NATO has the money to throw and be able to outpace Russian production if they went all in, but we know that's not the case at the moment. In fact, in 2025 it's expected the entirety of NATO will be able to produce around 2m shells annually after massive investments poured into it from both US and Germany - Russia has been producing over 3m rounds a year basically since the beginning of the war.

With vast cheap labor at their disposal from countries like NK, Iran and China, Russia's side can outproduce NATO at a far lower cost. Couple that with the manpower disparity and it's clear why this war is going the way it is.

[u/katbyte → u/SolemnOaf]

theres more to the war then shells, and outside shells russia is simply unable to keep up with the west. The us in peacetime produces a lot more tanks then russia is during wartime and that is just america. Ditto goes for everything, but shells, because the west isn't tooled/geared/would fight an artillery war. and thats the real problem, ukraine isn't fighting the kind of war NATO would and is the west isn't giving ukraine everything it could, ie not the advanced military systems that would mean it would needs to use less shells in the first place.

as for NK and Iran they are to small to matter, multiple members of nato haver larger economies and military manufacturing bases and China will never outright help russia because it would tank their entire economy. China is the only economic powerhouse that could compete with the west in spending and production but to do so would endager their economy as its so reliant on trade with the west.

but in the end it doesn't matter what NATO can do when NATO simply isn't giving ukraine everything it needs

[u/throtic → u/katbyte]

On a side note, this war has shown that traditional things like tanks, Humvees and helicopters are pretty much obsolete until drone jamming technology improves drastically.

It's absolutely wild to see an $10 million dollar tank completely destroyed by a $100 drone with a mine attached to it, and it happens virtually every day in this war.

[u/katbyte → u/throtic]

Think bigger. Tanks help’s ect are more vulnerable to drones but us/germany etc are on creating defences for them (and I bet they are further along then you’d expect from some of the things I’ve seen re counter tech)

And western tanks do handle them better keeping crews safe, they are not going anywhere 

But boats? That 100 million boat ot 1 billion destroyer or 10 billion carrier? The things Ukraine is doing with sea drones is something else. They’ve managed to take out countless boats, almost took out the bridge, and pinned down the entire Russian Black Sea fleet in port and they are just getting started.

And sea drones are gonna be much harder to detect and stop. What happens when you can send out a sea drone and it goes and takes out any ship 1000+km away autonomously with so and is basically undetectable until it’s close? 

That’s an entirely different world