Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[grumbler]

I wonder if the cost of weaponry is a strategic weakness.  On the one hand, quality matters much more in 2023, but on the other hand, quality without any quantity is meaningless.  Maybe there is a niche for much cheaper good enough armament that you can readily lend lease without concerns about either quantity of your own stocks or leaking military secrets?

That's a debate that has gone on pretty much forever.  It's hard to argue that the B-29 program (the most expensive procurement program of WW2) was worth the cost.  On the other side of the spectrum, the US development and use of the cheap but "good enough" Sherman tank was surely a better option than pursuing one of the many programs that tried to replace it.  The low-budget British Swordfish stayed in production longer than either of the programs designed to replace it. 

Was the German Tiger I worth the cost of three Pz IVs? 

The USN has been locked into the production of Arleigh Burke class destroyers (at roughly a billion dollars each) for decades.  A lot of other programs have stalled because of the cost of the DDG-51 class program.

[Josquius]

I've been thinking that for a while too.
Not just for lend lease stuff but in eg Afghanistan. Did you really need these super duper cutting edge jets? Wouldn't a vintage ww2 plane have in theory been just as capable of doing most of the jobs pretty much just as well?
When it comes to drones the slightly lowered survivability becomes far more palettable too.

Turns out it was someone trying to win an argument on Discord - truly we live in the stupidest timeline

It is mystifying they don't do more to tag top secret docs with the person who checked them out to stop this lunacy.

Not surprising when you think of it. In minor Internet arguments people will often reveal stuff about their job they shouldnt. This is just stepping that up. I guess the first discord share was a private room akin to the backroom here.... But one person proved to be less than trustworthy and used it to enhance their own arguments.

[Legbiter]

Turns out it was someone trying to win an argument on Discord - truly we live in the stupidest timeline

In October 2021, for instance, classified design details about the French Leclerc tank were posted to win an argument about turret rotation speed. In July 2021, a user claiming to be a tank commander in the British army posted documents about the armour structure of the vehicle to win an argument. In January this year, design documents covering at least five separate fighter jets were posted by four different users.

It makes you yearn for the days of microfiche

 

[Razgovory]

I wonder if the cost of weaponry is a strategic weakness.  On the one hand, quality matters much more in 2023, but on the other hand, quality without any quantity is meaningless.  Maybe there is a niche for much cheaper good enough armament that you can readily lend lease without concerns about either quantity of your own stocks or leaking military secrets?

That's a debate that has gone on pretty much forever.  It's hard to argue that the B-29 program (the most expensive procurement program of WW2) was worth the cost.  On the other side of the spectrum, the US development and use of the cheap but "good enough" Sherman tank was surely a better option than pursuing one of the many programs that tried to replace it.  The low-budget British Swordfish stayed in production longer than either of the programs designed to replace it. 

Was the German Tiger I worth the cost of three Pz IVs? 

The USN has been locked into the production of Arleigh Burke class destroyers (at roughly a billion dollars each) for decades.  A lot of other programs have stalled because of the cost of the DDG-51 class program.

Doesn't equipment get cheaper the more you make of it?  I thought the big cost was development.

[grumbler]

Doesn't equipment get cheaper the more you make of it?  I thought the big cost was development.

Yeah, and that's the difference between an aircraft's "flyaway cost" and it's "program cost" (let's not get into "lifecycle cost").  Equipment also gets cheaper the more of it you make in a given time span; 200 airplanes will be much cheaper if bought 20 per year for 10 years than if bought 10 per year for 20 years.

[The Larch]

Shades of Sir Hockey on those leaks being linked to internet arguments about equipment. 

[Threviel]

If we go back 80 years from 1943 we end up in 1863 and I would wager that the armies of WWII were insanely more expensive than the armies of the civil war and also insanely more effective. It's a historical process going back as far back in history as I know of and it is only accelerating. The creation of the modern state is after all an effect of how the costs of war were sky-rocketing in the 1600s.

Similarly I think a modern army is about as much superior to a WWII army as a WWII army is superior to a civil war army. I just hadn't actually thought of the consequences of that for us today.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's a complicated question because of how one defines and compares expense over time. We can try to make monetary comparisons across centuries but in a real sense it is incommensurable because the economies and social structures are so fundamentally different. Early modern states regularly bankrupted themselves trying to pay for even middling size wars.  But in spending/GDP terms, the percentages would likely seem small compared to modern wars because early modern states couldn't mobilize "GDP power" at that level - both for lack of the instruments to do so and because most of "GDP" consisted of agricultural production needed to provide basic foodstuffs.  In such economies, 90% or so of GDP simply can't be accessed or converted into effective military power; it is effectively inert.  So a spending/GDP comparison can't be meaningfully made across long periods of time.

In the 20th century, France peaked in WW1 at spending over 40% of GDP.  In WW2, the US was in the 30s and the big European powers in the 40-50 range.  50% is probably a practical limit although a more thoroughly automated economy could probably get a lot higher.

The other dimension is relative capital intensivity - i.e. how much spending represents "capital" in the form of equipment and specialized training and how much represents "labor" in the form of manpower.  I haven't found hard data for this.  However, I don't think there is a clear linear increase in capital intensivity over historical time.  For example, some late mediaeval and early Renaissance era armies may have been fairly capital intensive - army sizes were small, but the costs of armor, equipment and siege equipment would have been significant.  Compare to say a Napoleonic era army raising large numbers of men fighting short campaigns and living off the land.

In 1914, armies were probably not that capital intensive on this measure given the huge numbers of men mobilized.  But over the course of the war it became more capital intensive (more sophisticated and greater numbers of artillery, planes and motorized vehicles per soldier)  and there has been a clear trend towards more capital intensive military structures over the ensuing 100+ years. However, I would not assume this must continue indefinitely.  Indeed it literally can't as it would eventually lead (reductio ad absurdum) to a nation's entire military spending consisting of a single ship or plane.  But more than that, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has shown the limits of this approach.  Relying on finite numbers of difficult to produce high tech machines doesn't work if the other side can hold out until inventories are wasted out.  Absent a true "wonder weapon" and the will to use it, the qualities of quantity may return to the fore.

[Hamilcar]

Russia is now entering the "ISIS" phase by publishing beheading videos.

[Grey Fox]

Russia was doing that back in 2nd Chechen war. Isis copied Russia.

[Legbiter]

Russia is now entering the "ISIS" phase by publishing beheading videos.

Ukraine will spend this entire century quietly and creatively killing Russians held to be responsible for either planning or prosecuting the current war while they're on holiday, business travel, taking a shower...

Long, long after formal hostilities have ceased.

[Sheilbh]

Truly the stupidest national security leak:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents/

It's serious but really difficult to take seriously when the documents start leaking onto the "wow_mao" Discord

[Hamilcar]

Truly the stupidest national security leak:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents/

It's serious but really difficult to take seriously when the documents start leaking onto the "wow_mao" Discord

There were some photos of a Ukrainian command center and they use Discord to coordinate operations.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - although that definitely doesn't sound like what happened here. Plus the 300 other classified docs the WaPost has seen but haven't yet been public.

Suspect this story still has some to run.

[Admiral Yi]

I think your theory of the case is that a Trumpist analyst in the CIA made the drop to discredit Biden.