The UK is suppsoed to have enough ammo for `nato standard` daily firing rate of 300 rounds per tube ; given the numbers thats about 400,000 rounds. However, intensity in Ukraine is going up to 1000 rounds per tube per day, which will use our entire stock in 8 days.
Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar
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The UK is suppsoed to have enough ammo for `nato standard` daily firing rate of 300 rounds per tube ; given the numbers thats about 400,000 rounds. However, intensity in Ukraine is going up to 1000 rounds per tube per day, which will use our entire stock in 8 days.
Man of Honour
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Fire it today, stop a Russian killing 10 farmers or children in 5 years time and the needless losses due to Russian defences. Ukraine clearly deem it the best option.
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Just seen a Ukrainian attack get decimated by mines, really don't understand why they carry on after the first or next couple get hit, nearly every single one hits a bloody mine!
There can't be a single inch of Ukrainian territory without these on now.
There can't be a single inch of Ukrainian territory without these on now.
Point me to the post where you complained about russian use of thermobaric, incendiary, and cluster munitions etc etc etc.
You can't fight with one hand tied behind your back like you suggest.
Soldato
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Yes, but, the Ukrainians are choosing to use it inside their own country. Their decision. Their responsibility to clear the mess up later.
I mean, lets face it, there are probably thousands of Russian mines to clear anyway.
Their responsibility to clean up the mess but I would hope we all muck in and support them as best we can after the dust settles.
I was reading that the Russian doctrine in regards to mining defensive positions was considered fairly extreme but there are reports that the amount of actual mining of the areas far exceeds the standard even for them. No idea if true or not.
The issue is that I tend to question everything both sides say - unlike you, who I suspect believe everything only one side say. It could be that the supply of these weapons is just a blip in the overal conflict as the sources you quote claim. Personally I doubt it, once a particular tool to wage war has been given to Ukraine, it's going to be very difficult to withdraw that weapon in the future. But time will tell.
Regarding the rest of your post.
I support Ukraine. I support Ukraine to exactly to point at which it is in this countries best interest to do so. Wherein lies that point is debatable but nonetheless it is there. That makes me realistic.
I hope sincerely that Ukraine can push Russian forces right back to the 1991 borders but have a realistic doubt about their ability to do so, militarily at least. To quote you...
But thats fine because I'm happy to refer you back to by post about COD players and Walter Mitty's - not that it gets us anywhere.
Because in all honesty, I think the only way Ukraine can win is if there is a seisemic shift in or complete collapse of the current Russian government. And that is because I have a historically more accurate view of what a grinding war machine that Russia is capable of fielding, given its size, its resources and a population of 144 million of which the current government will happy sacrifice in their millions to achieve its goals.
David and Goliath is just a story and fairy tales are just that.
I also have a realistic view of the current Ukrainian counter offensive, in that it is on a ticking clock. If you really think western populations won't tire of this very quickly and start to question the increasingly larger and larger amounts of money poured down a seemly black hole, against a backdrop of crumbling education systems, NHS failures and general infrastructure in this country, to say nothing about the fact our own armed forced have fallen to their lowest ebb in 80 years.
We better all hope Ukraine starts to make significant progress in this war. Because the longer this goes on the harder it will be to overcome those fortifications, cluster munitions or not and a stalemate is a loss and thats where it seems to be going.
If you prefer, I tend to consider all outcomes of this war, good and bad, and where that leaves us in the wider geopolitical world.
And all the cheerleading and cope in this thread is'nt going to change that.
I did'nt post it because it should'nt need to be said.
Perhaps we should allow Ukraine to castrate their POWs, I'm sure there are a few posters in this thread who would enjoy watching that.
Right. so where is your silent protest now?
I always find "rules" surrounding war and what weapons you can use to be such a strange thing.
I do partially get it (and appreciate some of the reasons), but at the same time it always seems absurd.
"Sure, violently kill people, but just don't kill them in that way."
I mean, why not just decide it all with a game of rock paper scissors then?
I do partially get it (and appreciate some of the reasons), but at the same time it always seems absurd.
"Sure, violently kill people, but just don't kill them in that way."
I mean, why not just decide it all with a game of rock paper scissors then?
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I happen to think we and Ukraine are better than the Russians. You?
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I said that in my post! Russia has already used cluster munitions against Ukraine.
Nonsense. We are happy to ignore wars of aggression and genocides that are going on in other parts of the world which are of no interest to us. For example, we did absolutely NOTHING to help the innocent civilians who were murdered in the Matabeleland massacre in Zimbabwe in 1983 or the one million civilians in Rwanda who were murdered in 1994. The real reason we are helping Ukraine is because their enemy is OUR enemy and if they fall then allies of ours are likely to be attacked next by Russia which could drag us into a major war.
1) They would be denied them if the lefties had their way.
2) Not when you are fighting a war of survival against an invading genocidal empire. At that point the gloves come off.
The Soviets ignored the convention they signed which banned the use of biological weapons, they spent decades developing them and would have used them in the initial strike on NATO territory which would have begun World War 3. It's very likely that the Russians have continued developing and stockpiling biological weapons as they never obey their agreements (see Budapest Memorandum etc).
During World War 2 Britain had 50,000 Anthrax bombs ready to go. The RAF had standing orders to use them against the Nazis if the country came under attack with WMD. Churchill wanted to use them in retaliation for the V-2 attacks on London, but he was overruled. Of course, we scrapped our biological weapons program when we signed the convention banning their usage (unlike the Soviets).
Chemical weapons usage was banned by the Hague convention and subsequent conventions, all of which we signed. This country honoured those bans and got rid of all its chemical weapons stockpiles. However, the Soviets continued to stockpile chemical weapons. Indeed, they even invented new ones, Novichok (meaning: newcomer) was a Soviet invention in the 1980s.
The reason the UK won't give chemical or biological weapons to Ukraine is because: 1) we don't have any, 2) it would be illegal under conventions we have signed and 3) it would be escalatory and would probably cause us to get dragged into the war. (2 and 3 applies to the USA, as they probably do still have some stockpiles of them.)
The reason the UK/USA/France won't give nuclear weapons to Ukraine is because: 1) it would be illegal under conventions we have signed (NPT) and 2) it would be escalatory and would probably cause us to get dragged into the war.
Since the Russians have used cluster munitions against Ukraine already then their use by Ukraine cannot be escalatory.
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I know what you mean. It seems strange to me, too.
And I wonder how many people here, if sat in a trench in Ukraine, clutching a red button to launch cluster munitions at the Russians ahead, would throw the button down, scream "tally ho" and run at the Russians .. because the cluster bomb is "not fair"? Very British! And shortly after, very dead.
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IIRC Russia was using the cluster munitions not only offensively as part of it's attempt to take over another sovereign nation, but in Civilian areas.Hypocrisy, thy name is America.
What are cluster bombs and why is US sending them to Ukraine?
Cluster bombs are banned by more than 100 countries - so the move will likely draw intense criticism.www.bbc.com
Quite interesting that even the BBC which is as pro Ukrainian as you can get still clearly recognises the erosion of decency. This has to be one of the lowest moves in the war so far. The use of cluster munitions is awful and will blight the country for years to come. Just because the Ukrainian and Russian forces have used already in the conflict doesn't mean it should be adopted.
Now in the future we are likely to see the use of such munitions openly in worldwide conflicts with far less oversight and it will be mocked when we protest. The Russians will probably use in their dirty deals in Africa with impunity. This move has killed countless people in the future.
And yes I'm passionate about this topic beyond the scope of this conflict. These are evil weapons with their effects on civilian population well known.
By the sounds of it Ukraine is going to be using them to try and retake it's own land, and won't be using them against civilians.
There is a fairly big difference between using a weapon system against enemy soldiers to defend your country, and using it as a terror weapon against civilians to drive them out of an area you are trying to take over as the invader.
Then there is the whole reliability thing, Russia has shown repeatedly that it doesn't care if it's weapons harm civilians because of utter unreliability in their targeting (both in selected targets and in how accurate/reliable any aiming system is), the US seems to be claiming that the ones they'll be supplying have a very small "failure" rate, which I can actually quite believe given the US does tend to like it's weapons to actually work as intended, even if you can argue they don't care much more about civilian casualties'*, they do care about the wasted money/effort in producing and getting the weapons into use (not to mention the fact that unreliable weapons are a danger to their own troops, can delay operations, and tie up logistics).
And no I don't like them, but I can understand the reasoning, and the difference between using them carefully and hopefully with a vary small failure rate (so you know where they were used, and that there shouldn't be many left unexploded to be cleared), and firing them at random knowing that half of them are likely to go wrong in some way or another (either hitting the wrong place, or lying unexploded).
*They seem to though, if just because they don't like the bad PR.
Oh, sorry I didn't realise you were one of those herp derps, I thought you were actually a sensible poster. So all 100+ countries that have signed the treaty banning the use of cluster munitions are "lefties", gotcha.
And so would cluster munitions.
Every stage of increasing supply of arms has caused someone to say it's escalatory and would cause us to be dragged in to the war.
As above and the US have withdrawn from the NPT with Russia in 2019 by the way
People said sending tanks would be escalatory, pretty sure the Russians had been using those since day 1
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It's mostly about collateral damage. Chemical and biological weapons will kill or maim all unprotected people in an area and the latter will spread through civilian populations if a sufficiently infectious pathogen is used. Land mines and undetonated cluster bombs will lay hidden for decades until some unlucky sod triggers them.
Some weapons were genuinely regarded (later) as too cruel to soldiers though, for example, mustard gas and some other toxic gases, as they often caused blindness after use in World War 1 trench warfare.
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