Somewhat edited/redacted .... but still interesting
"Generals and Ukrainian Gains
Since there will be large changes for the future of the war I thought I should write a bit about that. And even though I do not really wish to write about the US, the election will affect a lot of things, and I feel that I should write about it from the perspective of the War against Ukraine, and from a EU perspective.
Ukraine
Russia had really planned things well. Trump wins, Russia throws in all of their reserves with 10 000 North Koreans on top in an all out offensive to take as much ground as possible before Trump forces Ukraine into a ceasefire agreement.
As overarching plans go it was really not a bad one, I will have to give Putin that. Sadly, for Russia it didn’t work out for them. Yes, they got their beloved Trump, but hey did not succeed at all with the offensive stuff, quite the opposite.
The last week has been the deadliest for Russia, and still they got nothing to show for it. This on its own is bad enough, but they somehow lost 3 battles in a single week, and it is Ukraine making gains.
And it is not small stuff either. First out was the offensive towards Pokrovsk, they lost an entire Armoured Brigade in a single engagement.
Next up they achieved a breakthrough in Kupyansk, but then Ukraine looped off the entire thing, and out of the entire Armoured Brigade that made the breakthrough a single soldier survived.
And then came perhaps the most devastating blow. Russia had after enormous losses taken the Town of Terny, their main goal on that stretch of the frontline. Terny is close to Kreminna, and it is up against a natural barrier in the form of a hydro dam and a river.
It is not a place that you normally lose after having taken it, but Ukraine succeeded still to pincer the entire place from North and South and evicted the Russians from their town.
And up in Kursk Tank Girl is holding down the fort while massacring a buttload of North Koreans, she has opinions about both the prowess and endowment of her North Korean counterparts. She is even complaining about them being shorter and more lightweight than she is.
Regardless, the week have been filled with a fist pumping general uttering Happy Zyrskyi Noises. I will return below to how this was possible.
US Generals
This is sort of important for us in Europe and for Ukraine right now, but this will be a massive issue for the US moving forward, for us it is more of temporary thing.
I had a few beers with XXXXXXX .... And he literally spilled the beans. Being a US general is currently a very dark place to be at.
First of all, all trust between them is now gone. The reason is that Trump is going to force them to swear an oath directly to the President, instead of to the constitution. This has never happened in US history.
1/3 rd of the Generals is outright about to refuse that order and will be fired or retire. 1/3 rd is sitting it out somehow hoping stuff will not go to ****. The final 1/3 rd are diehard Trumpers salivating over the idea.
To make things even worse. Former general and nazi-lunatic Flynn is to set up shop as the judge and jury about which generals are subservient enough to the cause to remain. And he has a list of 3 active and former generals that are to be arrested for treason.
XXXXXX himself have filled out his paperwork to retire before Trump takes office and intend to stay with his family in XXXX.
For us it is just a bit of headache to administrate things with a bunch of seriously depressed US Generals moping about doing bare minimums. On top of that we do not know which of them we can trust with any secrets anymore, because if they are Trumpers they are seen as enemies to not trust.
For the US this is basically the end of them as a superpower. US has so far led on troop numbers, equipment, but that is changing and Europe put together is about to overtake US on troop numbers, and equipment in about 5 years. But, where the US would have had the lead for at least a decade is in upper management.
US Generals are seriously good at what they do, and I have the utmost respect for their abilities. We are not even close on average quality and numbers. This is the true strength of the US; they can rapidly expand without losing average quality in leadership.
All of this will now be gutted due to Trump not trusting the generals to do his perfidious bidding. This will drastically weaken the US Army and its ability to defend US and let us not even speak about going to war abroad.
It is like if all of a sudden the Reigning World Champion in some sport would decide that smoking crack is better than hard training.
The effects of this will be far reaching. Not so much for Europe and Ukraine, we got that covered. But, for more far-flung parts away from us it spells either outright disaster and/or hardship.
And it does not really matter if we are talking about Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zeeland. Taiwan is most likely ****ed, South Korea and Japan will most likely remain, but unable to do a few things to avoid angering China, and even Oceania will be under increased Chinese influence unless we somehow can get strong enough to help Oceania out across all of that distance.
Because, after this enormous brain drain the US will not be able to help out, even if it was so inclined, which it will not be for a very long time. For now, the Pacific is lost for the Western Democratic World. (OPINION)
Obviously I would love to snatch up said US generals after some thorough vetting. But currently the rules do not allow me to do it. Only EU Citizens together with Norwegians, UKians, Moldovans and Ukrainians are allowed to serve in the EU Army.
We are looking at a workaround though.
Ukraine
Ukraine now has choices to make, and those choices are entirely up to Ukraine to decide. Do they wish to continue to fight with European support only, or do they wish to enter into some sort of Trump led initiative.
EU would very much prefer if Ukraine choses to continue fighting, that is more beneficial for our security and would stop a future war in Ukraine. And with a bit of luck, it could bring about the breakup of Russia into stamp-sized micro-nations, which is the goal of Europe.
Obviously I know the answer, Ukraine wishes to continue fighting, but they have pointed out that then EU + Friends must step things up. We are after all having an open and very frank dialogue
about what we can do now, and what we will be able to do later as we in EU continue to grow our abilities.
Ukraine will after all lose 20 percent of the arms inflow and 10 percent of the financial aid, the latter is obviously not a biggie, and that slack we can pick up directly. And the arms part is not either a big problem.
Have you noticed that Ukrainian Field Commanders have stopped grumping about lack of ammo? And that even Zelenzkyy stated that Ukraine now has an unexpected amount of resources arriving at the frontline.
This is not due to US deliveries, it is due to the factories being able to deliver more, since there are more factories in operation. This is also why Ukraine is faring well, even though under the largest Russian offensive to date.
On top of that Blinken has promised that all of the allotted aid remaining will be delivered prior to Trump taking over, with increased shipments about to start arriving in a fortnight. I also finally got the answer from Blinken to why only 1/3rd of the US military aid has arrived.
They did not expect to get any package through until the new Congress is sworn in, and with a months of delay. So, they had planned for that eventuality and slowed things down to not leave Ukraine hanging like the last time.
I like that sort of caution. And I also learned that Biden/Blinken didn’t believe that Kamala would win, so they slow crept it even more. And, I learned about a few other nice sneaky things they have prepared now as parting gifts to Ukraine, but those are not my news to give out.
This means that Ukraine will receive a heck of a lot of stuff in a very short time. With a bit of frugality, it will give Ukraine a years’ worth of US supplies, and in a year we will be more than able to pick up those 20 percent in military aid ourselves.
Obviously not everything is sunshine, as if it ever is that. Even in the desert it rains if I go there to get away from rain. Trust me, I once did just that, on the other hand it was impressive watching Sahara blossom.
Missiles is a problem for Ukraine. Especially replacing the Patriot batteries will with time become a problem. And we do not have a missile option to replace the GMLRS and ATACMS for the Himars launchers.
The Patriots is the lesser problem, we are slowly replacing those with SAMP/Ts for the long-range stuff. And medium range is already IRIS/T, intermediate we produce NASAMS and RBS-90 batteries and missiles ourselves.
It is just a question about how fast we can produce batteries, radars and missiles. The answer is as per usual, more factories. And we might pull that one off, if not the amount of civilian deaths will increase.
On Missiles we are less fortunate. We are though able to pick up quite a bit of the slack with high precision long-range barrel artillery now. And some parts can be picked up by air power. It is still troublesome that we still lack enough missile production.
Next is that we in EU need to take up the slack of US leaving NATO effectively in February. Our original plan was to drown Russia in EU + Friends produced arms in 2025 and 2026, and after
that arm our own new armies for the next few years before we started to go into tickover mode on the factories just to keep them operational around 2035.
Now instead we will be competing with Ukraine for the same arms and munitions, a situation that is obviously not good for either of us. This means that the drowning out part is now a more drawn-out process, but the focus will remain on arming Ukraine.
Just as a pointer, over the next 5 years I need 400 000 automatic carbines, plus 100 000 submachine guns, plus 500 000 sidearms (pistols). Good luck with that now. And so, on and on. I have 1 200 CV90s and Lynx’s on order. I will never be alive when the last one arrives at the going rate. You know the mantra by now, more factories needed…
Thankfully the Member States have quite a bit of weapon systems, and all the rifles they will ever need. We are not in **** creek, but the EU Army is having troubles in getting **** that we need.
The Happy Place
The Ukrainian Plan for Victory is the key to solving our troubles, if we beat Russia in Ukraine all the rest will be solved after all.
And thankfully the Coalition of the Willing is coming together nicely. Today I was in Poland, and they have now officially joined. They wanted to be the Lead on it, but the rest have vetoed that. For the same reason they vetoed each other. Hence why it landed on my desk, EU is after all the sum of all of us, well with the exception of Norway and Iceland, but those do not really count in the leadership debate.
They did though see the wisdom in this, better to foist it up to EU than to have a 3-month long argument and ******* contest between France, Poland and UK. And, if Germany changes their chancellor it would turn from being a happy threesome discussion into a full-on dogging contest.
And then we have the bothersome lot known as the NB8, who’s collective lack of patience is taking on epic and conniving proportions of sneakitude.
So, obviously they jumped the gun, in the specific form of the usual suspect. In a very dry and short notice published on the Government Homepage Sweden stated that they are sending a “Coast Guard” Border Protection Force to help Ukraine to gather intelligence and to help maintain and guard civilian shipping in Ukrainian waters.
It was about 3 sentences long, gave no details, written in the most extreme case of bureaucratic Swedish that I’ve seen for 20 years. Note, this is how we publish some minor correction on parking space regulations. It is the barebones legal minimum.
No press release, and the Swedish Press as per usual omitted to make it into a story. And as per usual it was notification after the fact as per the usual Swedish way. And as per usual, not even close allies was informed about it.
All I could find out was that it would located in XXXXX, so I know expect to find that the “Coast Guard Cutter” is a stealth corvette bristling with missiles and whatnots, and that it is already bobbing about in Port with the words Coast Guard duct taped somewhere to the sides.
Sigh… "
.
"Generals and Ukrainian Gains
Since there will be large changes for the future of the war I thought I should write a bit about that. And even though I do not really wish to write about the US, the election will affect a lot of things, and I feel that I should write about it from the perspective of the War against Ukraine, and from a EU perspective.
Ukraine
Russia had really planned things well. Trump wins, Russia throws in all of their reserves with 10 000 North Koreans on top in an all out offensive to take as much ground as possible before Trump forces Ukraine into a ceasefire agreement.
As overarching plans go it was really not a bad one, I will have to give Putin that. Sadly, for Russia it didn’t work out for them. Yes, they got their beloved Trump, but hey did not succeed at all with the offensive stuff, quite the opposite.
The last week has been the deadliest for Russia, and still they got nothing to show for it. This on its own is bad enough, but they somehow lost 3 battles in a single week, and it is Ukraine making gains.
And it is not small stuff either. First out was the offensive towards Pokrovsk, they lost an entire Armoured Brigade in a single engagement.
Next up they achieved a breakthrough in Kupyansk, but then Ukraine looped off the entire thing, and out of the entire Armoured Brigade that made the breakthrough a single soldier survived.
And then came perhaps the most devastating blow. Russia had after enormous losses taken the Town of Terny, their main goal on that stretch of the frontline. Terny is close to Kreminna, and it is up against a natural barrier in the form of a hydro dam and a river.
It is not a place that you normally lose after having taken it, but Ukraine succeeded still to pincer the entire place from North and South and evicted the Russians from their town.
And up in Kursk Tank Girl is holding down the fort while massacring a buttload of North Koreans, she has opinions about both the prowess and endowment of her North Korean counterparts. She is even complaining about them being shorter and more lightweight than she is.
Regardless, the week have been filled with a fist pumping general uttering Happy Zyrskyi Noises. I will return below to how this was possible.
US Generals
This is sort of important for us in Europe and for Ukraine right now, but this will be a massive issue for the US moving forward, for us it is more of temporary thing.
I had a few beers with XXXXXXX .... And he literally spilled the beans. Being a US general is currently a very dark place to be at.
First of all, all trust between them is now gone. The reason is that Trump is going to force them to swear an oath directly to the President, instead of to the constitution. This has never happened in US history.
1/3 rd of the Generals is outright about to refuse that order and will be fired or retire. 1/3 rd is sitting it out somehow hoping stuff will not go to ****. The final 1/3 rd are diehard Trumpers salivating over the idea.
To make things even worse. Former general and nazi-lunatic Flynn is to set up shop as the judge and jury about which generals are subservient enough to the cause to remain. And he has a list of 3 active and former generals that are to be arrested for treason.
XXXXXX himself have filled out his paperwork to retire before Trump takes office and intend to stay with his family in XXXX.
For us it is just a bit of headache to administrate things with a bunch of seriously depressed US Generals moping about doing bare minimums. On top of that we do not know which of them we can trust with any secrets anymore, because if they are Trumpers they are seen as enemies to not trust.
For the US this is basically the end of them as a superpower. US has so far led on troop numbers, equipment, but that is changing and Europe put together is about to overtake US on troop numbers, and equipment in about 5 years. But, where the US would have had the lead for at least a decade is in upper management.
US Generals are seriously good at what they do, and I have the utmost respect for their abilities. We are not even close on average quality and numbers. This is the true strength of the US; they can rapidly expand without losing average quality in leadership.
All of this will now be gutted due to Trump not trusting the generals to do his perfidious bidding. This will drastically weaken the US Army and its ability to defend US and let us not even speak about going to war abroad.
It is like if all of a sudden the Reigning World Champion in some sport would decide that smoking crack is better than hard training.
The effects of this will be far reaching. Not so much for Europe and Ukraine, we got that covered. But, for more far-flung parts away from us it spells either outright disaster and/or hardship.
And it does not really matter if we are talking about Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zeeland. Taiwan is most likely ****ed, South Korea and Japan will most likely remain, but unable to do a few things to avoid angering China, and even Oceania will be under increased Chinese influence unless we somehow can get strong enough to help Oceania out across all of that distance.
Because, after this enormous brain drain the US will not be able to help out, even if it was so inclined, which it will not be for a very long time. For now, the Pacific is lost for the Western Democratic World. (OPINION)
Obviously I would love to snatch up said US generals after some thorough vetting. But currently the rules do not allow me to do it. Only EU Citizens together with Norwegians, UKians, Moldovans and Ukrainians are allowed to serve in the EU Army.
We are looking at a workaround though.
Ukraine
Ukraine now has choices to make, and those choices are entirely up to Ukraine to decide. Do they wish to continue to fight with European support only, or do they wish to enter into some sort of Trump led initiative.
EU would very much prefer if Ukraine choses to continue fighting, that is more beneficial for our security and would stop a future war in Ukraine. And with a bit of luck, it could bring about the breakup of Russia into stamp-sized micro-nations, which is the goal of Europe.
Obviously I know the answer, Ukraine wishes to continue fighting, but they have pointed out that then EU + Friends must step things up. We are after all having an open and very frank dialogue
about what we can do now, and what we will be able to do later as we in EU continue to grow our abilities.
Ukraine will after all lose 20 percent of the arms inflow and 10 percent of the financial aid, the latter is obviously not a biggie, and that slack we can pick up directly. And the arms part is not either a big problem.
Have you noticed that Ukrainian Field Commanders have stopped grumping about lack of ammo? And that even Zelenzkyy stated that Ukraine now has an unexpected amount of resources arriving at the frontline.
This is not due to US deliveries, it is due to the factories being able to deliver more, since there are more factories in operation. This is also why Ukraine is faring well, even though under the largest Russian offensive to date.
On top of that Blinken has promised that all of the allotted aid remaining will be delivered prior to Trump taking over, with increased shipments about to start arriving in a fortnight. I also finally got the answer from Blinken to why only 1/3rd of the US military aid has arrived.
They did not expect to get any package through until the new Congress is sworn in, and with a months of delay. So, they had planned for that eventuality and slowed things down to not leave Ukraine hanging like the last time.
I like that sort of caution. And I also learned that Biden/Blinken didn’t believe that Kamala would win, so they slow crept it even more. And, I learned about a few other nice sneaky things they have prepared now as parting gifts to Ukraine, but those are not my news to give out.
This means that Ukraine will receive a heck of a lot of stuff in a very short time. With a bit of frugality, it will give Ukraine a years’ worth of US supplies, and in a year we will be more than able to pick up those 20 percent in military aid ourselves.
Obviously not everything is sunshine, as if it ever is that. Even in the desert it rains if I go there to get away from rain. Trust me, I once did just that, on the other hand it was impressive watching Sahara blossom.
Missiles is a problem for Ukraine. Especially replacing the Patriot batteries will with time become a problem. And we do not have a missile option to replace the GMLRS and ATACMS for the Himars launchers.
The Patriots is the lesser problem, we are slowly replacing those with SAMP/Ts for the long-range stuff. And medium range is already IRIS/T, intermediate we produce NASAMS and RBS-90 batteries and missiles ourselves.
It is just a question about how fast we can produce batteries, radars and missiles. The answer is as per usual, more factories. And we might pull that one off, if not the amount of civilian deaths will increase.
On Missiles we are less fortunate. We are though able to pick up quite a bit of the slack with high precision long-range barrel artillery now. And some parts can be picked up by air power. It is still troublesome that we still lack enough missile production.
Next is that we in EU need to take up the slack of US leaving NATO effectively in February. Our original plan was to drown Russia in EU + Friends produced arms in 2025 and 2026, and after
that arm our own new armies for the next few years before we started to go into tickover mode on the factories just to keep them operational around 2035.
Now instead we will be competing with Ukraine for the same arms and munitions, a situation that is obviously not good for either of us. This means that the drowning out part is now a more drawn-out process, but the focus will remain on arming Ukraine.
Just as a pointer, over the next 5 years I need 400 000 automatic carbines, plus 100 000 submachine guns, plus 500 000 sidearms (pistols). Good luck with that now. And so, on and on. I have 1 200 CV90s and Lynx’s on order. I will never be alive when the last one arrives at the going rate. You know the mantra by now, more factories needed…
Thankfully the Member States have quite a bit of weapon systems, and all the rifles they will ever need. We are not in **** creek, but the EU Army is having troubles in getting **** that we need.
The Happy Place
The Ukrainian Plan for Victory is the key to solving our troubles, if we beat Russia in Ukraine all the rest will be solved after all.
And thankfully the Coalition of the Willing is coming together nicely. Today I was in Poland, and they have now officially joined. They wanted to be the Lead on it, but the rest have vetoed that. For the same reason they vetoed each other. Hence why it landed on my desk, EU is after all the sum of all of us, well with the exception of Norway and Iceland, but those do not really count in the leadership debate.
They did though see the wisdom in this, better to foist it up to EU than to have a 3-month long argument and ******* contest between France, Poland and UK. And, if Germany changes their chancellor it would turn from being a happy threesome discussion into a full-on dogging contest.
And then we have the bothersome lot known as the NB8, who’s collective lack of patience is taking on epic and conniving proportions of sneakitude.
So, obviously they jumped the gun, in the specific form of the usual suspect. In a very dry and short notice published on the Government Homepage Sweden stated that they are sending a “Coast Guard” Border Protection Force to help Ukraine to gather intelligence and to help maintain and guard civilian shipping in Ukrainian waters.
It was about 3 sentences long, gave no details, written in the most extreme case of bureaucratic Swedish that I’ve seen for 20 years. Note, this is how we publish some minor correction on parking space regulations. It is the barebones legal minimum.
No press release, and the Swedish Press as per usual omitted to make it into a story. And as per usual it was notification after the fact as per the usual Swedish way. And as per usual, not even close allies was informed about it.
All I could find out was that it would located in XXXXX, so I know expect to find that the “Coast Guard Cutter” is a stealth corvette bristling with missiles and whatnots, and that it is already bobbing about in Port with the words Coast Guard duct taped somewhere to the sides.
Sigh… "
.
