Sunday, September 11, 2022

Being Skeptical Over The Russian Ammo Story

 This came up today via N-24/WELT.

The story is....via US intelligence/Pentagon folks, and another source or two.....the Russians are running out of ammo, and the end will occur by early January (so the story goes).

How true is this?  I'm skeptical.

First, because of the Oligarch management, I do believe that factories that would have produced ammo on a yearly basis.....have mostly shut down, and there's marginal resources in Russia to get the job done.  Same for Belarus.

Second, they could make up for this by going to India, China and North Korea.  Costly episode?  You could pay them in oil or natural gas.  But you tend to need lead time and there's probably a limit to ammo production per month with either of the three.  

Third, if you went to some US Army captain and said you will get fresh and newly manufactured ammo....from a quick supply situation....maybe North Korea....he'd be hesitant to accept the ammo and use it.

If the Russian generals figure out the shortage coming?  There would be zero new counter-attacks, and limited offensive action in September, October or November.  If the conscripts figure this out?  Well....conscript-Iven getting a box of forty rounds and being told to hold fire, because that's it for three days.....would scare the crap out of him.  

If this were true, I'd say that the war is in a definite end stage and no matter what Putin says.....it's chaos coming in the next hundred days.

Me skeptical?  Yeah......it's hard to imagine they'd use up so much ammo in 150-odd days, and lose a war because of this.  

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