More overview of the entire Russia vs (((the West))), and why Russia and China both have at least a few years to set things as they want. From Slavyangrad. It’s long but instructive, and I think my commentary at the end closes the circle on the present day situation for the foreseeable future of Europe, and less so, for America.
During World War II, 90% of U.S. defense enterprises were state-owned. After privatization, already during the Vietnam War, the majority of enterprises ended up in private hands. Further this trend only intensified, and after the collapse of the USSR, no one saw the need for a large US military-industrial complex. The remaining 5 big giants started to earn money on arms trade abroad and production of new unique, expensive weapon systems, such as F-35, which are accompanied by colossal cost overruns. All this to the detriment of conventional systems that used to be on the assembly line.
In March of this year, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition William Laplante told the New York Times that the U.S. has “let production lines go cold and watched their parts become obsolete.” The Wall Street Journal writes that U.S. Defense Department leaders now estimate that it will take five or six years to reverse former production cuts.
However, the U.S. doesn’t have that time to militarily support Ukraine and Taiwan. In an attempt to make up for lost time, the U.S. Congress announced the creation of a Technical Industry and Government Task Force consisting of civilian and military experts, as well as industry specialists, who will develop recommendations for the early production and transfer of necessary weapons to U.S. allies.
Europe’s military-industrial complex is facing a similar situation, with defense spending in Europe rising 13% to $345 billion in 2022, the largest increase since the end of the Cold War. In April this year, the European Council approved 1 billion euros from the European Peace Fund to supply Ukraine with 1 million rounds of ammunition for a year. In June, the EU Council agreed to allocate another 500 million euros to boost production.
Tommy Gustafsson-Rask, head of the Swedish subsidiary, the UK’s largest defense firm, BAE Systems, said, “In the past, we had time but no money. Today we have money but no time.” At BAE Systems, soaring demand for products and supply chain disruptions, have tripled lead times for some of its combat vehicles. That means an armored vehicle ordered in 2023 won’t be manufactured until 2030 at the earliest.
European countries have depleted their military stockpiles far more than the U.S. by supplying arms to Ukraine. Thus, France has transferred half of its self-propelled artillery units, while the UK and Denmark have transferred all their SAU’s to Ukraine.
However, Kiev is asking for more and more weapons, from artillery ammunition to air defense systems, and allies’ stocks are not unlimited. In addition, NATO has planned to increase its “high readiness force” from 40,000 to 300,000, which means it will also need new weapons.
On June 15, NATO defense ministers met with 25 leading military-industrial companies in Brussels. The ministers asked defense companies to increase production, but the companies asked for clear long-term demand plans to justify investment in new production lines in three to five years.
Governments have reneged on announced plans before, with many European capitals repeatedly failing to meet NATO targets for stockpiling weapons or pledging to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense.
Andrea Nativi, chairman of the defense division of business association ASD Europe said that the industry, which is facing shortages of skilled labor and key components, has already done all it can to optimize or expand production through its own investments, now the sector needs transparency on what government demand will be in the coming years.
He added that in addition to long-term contracts, governments could also take other measures, including direct help to pay for production expansion or prioritizing access to electricity, which is very relevant in Europe right now.
The meeting eventually turned into a scandal after it emerged that French firms Airbus Defense, Dassault, MBDA and Safran, U.S. Boeing and Germany’s Diehl did not receive an invitation. In protest at the fact that no Spanish companies were invited, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles refused to approve the start of work on NATO’s action plan to expand military production.
European officials’ desire to ramp up the MIC faces objective obstacles, such as a lack of critical resources to produce the requested amount of ammunition. Europe’s gunpowder production capacity is limited, although German firm Rheinmetall is the largest producer in the region, but its two production sites operate at full capacity seven days a week.
Also delaying the growth of MIC production are a lack of skilled labor and bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining construction permits. Some banks are reluctant to lend to the sector for fear it could tarnish their reputations in light of their commitment to green energy, and both industry and NATO officials have complained.
According to many industry representatives interviewed by Bloomberg, the reality is that even with more orders coming in, it will take years for Europe’s defense industry to keep up with current demand. Gergen Johansson, head of Saab Dynamics, said his division increased production as recently as last year, but further expansion will take 2-3 years. Only then will the company be able to return to delivery dates that were until 2022.
The situation with Leopard tanks, which are produced by German firm Rheinmetall, is typical, as in the U.S., the firm no longer produces new tanks, but is only engaged in modernization of old ones. The management of Rheinmetall said that this year it will not be able to deliver any more Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Although the concern has 22 Leopard 2 tanks and about 88 Leopard 1. However, no orders for the restoration of these tanks have been received. Rheinmetall itself cannot start such work, as the cost is several hundred million euros. Even if the order were to arrive tomorrow, deliveries would not be possible until early next year.
It is hard to find a more vivid example of the current state of the Western military-industrial complex. At the same time, as RIA Novosti reported in March this year, hundreds of new T-90M “Breakthrough” T-90Ms have been delivered to the Russian army. In the same month, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that the Defense Ministry would receive 1,500 tanks in 2023, and on June 1 he specified that more than 600 tanks had already been produced this year.
Peter Tyukov, director of Kurganmashzavod, said that in the first half of the year 95% of the output for the whole of 2022 was produced and in the second half of the year the company intends to increase the production of infantry fighting vehicles by 30%.
It is quite clear that despite billions of dollars of investment in the Western military-industrial complex, it has already reached the ceiling of its production. Further expansion of production lines will take years, and the unfolding sanctions war over rare earth metals must be taken into account. Russia clearly has a head start of at least a couple of years to achieve all the goals of the SMO in Ukraine and ensure its defense capabilities.
Note: in wars of attrition the economy wins. And the economy of the real sector.
And as you know, it takes more than one year to make a metallurgist out of a girl manicurist.
It turns out that we have the money, but the time is getting shorter.
Russia has the infrastructure in place, and the training of new personnel to create and build the machinery of war will be achieved in the coming few years. The West has neither in place and the people can’t be trained before the infrastructure is in place. Not successfully anyway.
At this point, depending on how Europe reacts on the ground, they might just be better off stopping any war production and inviting all the American military infrastructure and bases already in Europe to return to their homeland.
A sharp ramping up of active manufacturing processes would mean endless war in Europe, and no Europeans want that. Getting rid of clown world and their destruction of Europe agenda with DIES (Diversity, Immigration, Equality and Sexual deviance) is not going to be easy, but starving the pretend governments of Western Europe (clown-world puppets) and their masters of practical resources, is a necessary first step.
Clown world does not respond to classical economic rules, because the aim is not economic stability, but the destruction of heritage European peoples and cultures.
For this reason, mere starvation of the puppets in place as European government officials is not going to achieve a positive result for most European nations. The puppet strings are operated from the USA and the Americans have no intent, ability, or courage to remove their deep-state masters, who, in turn, are only delighted by whatever apocalyptic scenario they can inflict on native Europeans in Europe.
The massive influx in illegal immigration of fighting age men with cultural norms that are criminal activity in old, civilised Europe, is one of clown world’s key achievements. It ensures that even if their stranglehold on the European puppets were to fail completely, the host nations would remain infested with chaos, crime and societal disruptions for years and years to come.
The neoclowns running things have gamed the reaction of civilised people very well. The covid narrative demonstrated the sheep-like obedience of absurd mandates was almost total. The only possible miscalculation is the tipping point at which an exasperated populace, even if beholden to a possibly Satanic, child raping and murdering and thus blackmailable puppet government, might eventually rebel in a spontaneous, unco-ordinated yet massive revolt.
The noeclowns have spent 70 years neutering every warrior instinct of European males by every means possible, from psychological warfare, including the vilification of males by nonsensical bullshit like “toxic masculinity” which is essentially the demonisation of literally the natural instincts of human males that made men be protectors, providers and defenders of their family and loved ones, for millions of years. The destruction and feminisation of the family unit through courts and propaganda to allow the far more emotionally volatile and hormone susceptible female of the species to control a narrative that is logically unsustainable but emotionally appealing to deceived women. The chemical “castration” of males by introduction of additives and various other chemicals, generically modified and chem-sprayed foods that reduce testosterone, increase the spread of female hormones in the water supply, and generally promote sterile sex practices even in heterosexual pairings.
For these as well as other very real and designed reasons, as well as the synergy of all these emasculating processes, the neoclowns are reasonably certain they can keep shoving the Europeans natives off the generational and reproductive cliff that they are now hellbent on bulldozing us over.
The only miscalculation, in my opinion, is that unexpected spark of human spirit that resurfaces, as if from a slumbering tiny piece of ember, that results in a sudden, unpredictable, unprecedented, raging tornado of fire. If that happens, it will not be pretty, it will not be nice, it will not be fun. But… the streets of Davos might just end up having the pedovore class swinging from lampposts, decorating them like macabre, rotting piñatas.
Very interesting to hear that the defense industry, like the Russians, has concluded that the West is agreement-incapable. Even if our “leaders” promise to buy enough armaments to justify investment in new production facilities, will they remember their promises when those facilities come online three years from now? They don’t seem to have that capability any more, simply to remember their plans and see them through to completion.
Indeed.
Excellent points, my first visit to your site. This really makes you think about how impossible it is to function in a traditional manner while living in Clown World. Our biggest problem here in the US has now become “our word.” No one trusts a damn thing we say inside or outside the country. This is the direct result of purposely turning reality upside down. These people that are still under the impression that Russia will negotiate with us crack me the hell up. I suspect they’re (Russia) only getting started. The Russians and the Chinese are playing the long game and they’re playing it quite well. Now they are in process of separating Africa (full of resources) from the West.
The woke culture is infamous for “canceling things/people.” Let me tell you what they cannot cancel; Clown World. Now Western Elites have a real war to fight. One that cannot be won by sanctions alone. This is becoming increasingly clear to them I am guessing. A couple of generations of pussified males and narcissists do not leave a healthy group of cannon fodder. Throw that together with the “Your country hates you” campaign and even if those items the author listed were not an issue you still have no one to do the actual fighting. Unlike 911 which galvanized the masses to join I don’t believe any event will make a difference now.
Europe will most likely lead the way into collapse but the U.S. won’t be too far behind. As soon as the majority of Western Citizenry figures out we are a propaganda paper tiger look out below. I say this knowing full well the average citizen here believes what the MSM feeds them about the war effort in Ukraine. They still believe America can kick anyone’s ass they please and that our monetary system is sound. When that confidence goes south things will move pretty fast from that point forward. Lots of things chipping away at the stone like rigged elections, covid vaccines, national debt interest, botched war effort, etc. Anyone of these things or a combination thereof could finally unravel it all.
Very well said. And I hope you understand that my more “anti-American” posts (see more recent ones) are primarily aimed at waking up the sleeping yankees that think precisely as you have identified.
The average American citizen is a straight up victim of your deep state to a degree that is actually worse than us Europeans. And as the Greeks say of the Turks, we have no problem with your people, only with your government, but as you have clearly understood, so do you guys! Rightly so.
Personally I still think that while Europe may go “hot” more or faster or deeper than at least SOME of the USA, the overall climate is different here. Our immigrant invasion is nowhere near your proportions and the average European is a lot more awake to our freemasons puppet governments than I think the average US citizen is. In short, I’ll take a “hot” (preferably non-nuclear) war here rather than the fake food, fake churchianity and obsession with material goods that is more prevalent there than here. Although I am sure parts of redneck USA will be perfectly fine and unmolested through the troubles awaiting us all. But in general, if in the USA you attract the attention of the government-thug class, you can be droned out of existence or Waco-d more easily than over here.