Military

I have a strong urge to watch youtubes with lines moving on maps.

There's some dude in my city that works by blacksmithing knives, so I thought I could tell him to do a specific one and it'd be nice to have one from a communist country, but I'm having a hard time finding some online. I've only found the NR-40 and NR-43 Soviet ones but they're not so pretty, to be honest.

Took some time today to flip through the 2024 Pentagon budget proposal, the unprecedented $842B budget.

1. Production isn't being dramatically increased
2. Increased $ topline comes from inflation and switch to more advanced variants

Something basic, like the JLTV will not only cost more for fewer vehicles (3108) but will likely miss production goals in 2023 (3311 out of 3721 projected).

Same story for the AMPV, which instead of the 72 for $380m will only see 43 deliveries this year. 2024 has 91 projected.

Certain systems like the M1 Abrams and the PIM sp-arty production will be increased but seem to be capped out at a production capacity limit. Note the increasing costs over last year's projections. 2024 budget reduces order numbers substantially, though additional upgrades slated

As for defensive systems, no new Patriots complexes, but research on the next iteration of the system has been funded with a dramatically larger R&D budget. As for interceptors, fewer will be built at a higher overall bill. Navy, SM-3 and SM-6 will be procured in tiny numbers.

JASSM unit numbers steady but per unit cost expected to skyrocket as production shifts fully to ER variant. LRASM numbers increased. Could also include facility upgrades. Meanwhile modernization of tomahawks crawls. Naval strike missile, small numbers at greater cost.

Pictures are linked in the twitter thread. TL:DR is that the US MIC is not actually increasing production throughput despite all the proclamations being put out by the informal state media but is rather adjusting to inflation.

This is also by the same think-tank who claimed that in their wargames the US would be able to win a confrontation with China over Taiwan around 2027 so don't get your hopes up that they would be able to connect what the data says for future prognostications.

Title says all

I recognize that German tanks were expensive and included too many features to be reliable; but this can't be the only reason.

I'll keep it short and simple: one thing that I was discussing with my fiance, about the hostilities in Ukraine, is that, apparently, Western nations are refraining from sending more modern weapons to help Kiev's regime precisely because they're aware the Russians would capture them and, soon enough, there'd be both counter-measures for those plus suspiciously similar designs appearing in Russia and, mayhaps, China.

Or would that be too difficult to happen? What are your thoughts?

🥭 @mangopress

vid: https://de.catbox.moe/9e2fco.MOV

Members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade deploy in Jenin, in preparation to confront the occupation forces expected storming of Jenin refugee camp.

vid: https://de.catbox.moe/au55pr.MOV

🥭 @mangopress

Image: 1945 / Chinese Internet

lmao they really cited the entire chinese internet

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/144352

New Info: Islamist extremists fighting alongside neo-nazis in ukraine

A chinese scale modelling company did a little trolling with their recent box art.