NATO Vs. Russia is a Hybrid War

Let’s look at what’s happening in the Ukrainian battlefield, and worldwide. There are some important points that I think almost everyone is missing, or don’t recognize the significance of.

First, the battlefield. HIMARS is the ultimate wunderwaffen NATO has sent to the front, and I use it as a barometer. In my previous article about HIMARS, In that post I stated the USA is replacing HIMARS destroyed by Russia on a 1:1 basis, and used this data to make a prediction:

Like I said, the limiting factor for HIMARS is ammunition. That means some smart guys at the Pentagon had to do the math and figure out how many launchers they could commit to the Ukraine and have enough GMLRS to sustain them. There’s too little data to say conclusively, but my guess is that the magic number was “12.” The US wants to keep 12 operational launchers in the Ukraine at any given moment. Assuming Russian MoD reports are accurate, the number right now, 26 – 18 is eight. If my theory is correct, the US will try to get four more launchers into battle as quickly as possible, preferably within the next few weeks. Even if extra launchers still need to be manufactured, four launchers isn’t overly demanding to demand from the existing force.

Just hours after I published that post, the US DOD issued a press release announcing that they were sending four more HIMARS to Ukraine.

Fact and Fiction about HIMARS in Ukraine

The DOD press release is an interesting read.

• Four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and associated ammunition;
• 16 155mm Howitzers;
• 75,000 155mm artillery rounds;
• 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
• 1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems;
• 16 105mm Howitzers;
• 30,000 120mm mortar rounds;
• 200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles;
• 200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
• Obstacle emplacement equipment;
• Claymore anti-personnel munitions.

Here’s my immediate observations:

-There’s a glaring absence of tanks in this list, suggesting that tank losses in the Ukrainian offensives are not going to be immediately replaced.

-MaxxPro vehicles are useful in a counter-insurgency against an enemy like the Taliban who mainly fight with powerful improvised explosive devices (which often consist of multiple anti-tank mines rigged together into a single roadside bomb). But it’s not a replacement for an infantry fighting vehicle like the BMP models Kiev had prior to this year, and received more of after the Russians visited. Here’s a picture of one for context:

The MaxxPro is cumbersome, top-heavy, just really heavy in general and has only four wheels. As you can see from the picture, aside from the classic v-shaped hull that makes MaxxPro survivable against mine warfare, it’s not particularly survivable against anything else. I’ve never seen anything heavier than a .50 caliber machine gun or a 40mm grenade launcher mounted in the turret. I don’t think it’s practical to mount a weapon much heavier than those. A platoon of these would be easily chewed up by an equivalent force of IFVs, let alone tanks.

-It’s a bad sign that the Pentagon is already digging into their 105mm howitzer stockpile. 105mm howitzers are light, air-mobile artillery. They don’t have the range or punch of 155mm platforms.

-The ammunition numbers are all very small. A single artillery division can easily chew through 1,000 or more rounds in a single day. 200,000 small arms rounds is an even more astonishingly low number. A full combat load for an American soldier is 240-300 rounds, and meant to be replenished in a day or two at most. So this shipment wouldn’t even be enough for a single brigade of 2,000 soldiers.

Based on this list, I think it is very likely that the ongoing NATO offensives in Ukraine are winding down, and there are no plans for them to continue, at least for now.

On July 5 I wrote:

This is why I say that this is an asymmetric war. Russia’s special military operation is within arm’s reach, while NATO’s supply lines stretch across a continent, and the economic consequences (such as refugees and backfiring sanctions) have, so far, overwhelmingly harmed the West more than Russia. Unfortunately, I don’t think this week’s liberation of Lugansk republic and the presumably forthcoming liberation of the Donetsk republic is going to be enough to end the war. I do think Europe running out of food and gas this winter will end the war.

Let’s Play the Numbers Game in Ukraine

In other words, NATO has to significantly outspend and exert more energy to achieve the same net effect as a much smaller effort by Russia. The problem is that NATO is in fact outspending Russia, by a lot. According to a post from last Sunday written by Quora contributor Carl Hamilton (who I consider a neutral and balanced commentator):

Earlier this year, I talked about how that if allowed western military production would empower Ukraine eventually, and many people told me that NATO production is inefficient and not meant for high intensity warfare like this. I agree with that to some extent, however NATO has already delivered around 85 billion dollars of aid to Ukraine, and Ukraine is raising it’s military budget to around 30 billion dollars.

Yes Ukraine is taking out loans, regardless, Ukraine own + NATO aid is probably going to reach about 100 billion USD this year alone. Russia’s annual military budget was 66 billion USD, in 2021, and honestly probably not much higher this year. Russia has not switched to a war economy for various reasons, choosing to rely on stored material. As I will discuss in a moment, this is viable for them for a while, but please consider the actual massive difference in money being put into this. Consider for a moment that almost 10% of NATO’s entire budget is going to Ukraine this year, that is actually massive, considering how big USA’s budget alone actually is.

He’s especially right on this one point considering that only a fraction of that estimated $66 billion Russian MoD budget is going toward their operations in Ukraine, making the NATO expenditure even more massive in comparison. There are however, some crucial nuances Hamilton is missing. Firstly, exchange rates are misleading and the Ruble has significantly more purchasing power within Russia itself, making the spending gap quite a bit less massive than it might appear just from raw figures.

The reality is that Russia cannot outspend NATO in a war, and I think a lot of people talking right now get this wrong, Russia’s hesitancy to make a larger commitment in Ukraine must at least partially have something to do with keeping their other borders sufficiently protected with adequate reserves backing them up. This also has an obvious impact on the adversary. NATO might like to send more equipment and munitions to their Ukrainian proxies, but not without compromising their own force parity. As long as Russia maintains a strong presence at the borders of, say, the Baltic states, NATO must continue to do so too. That’s a pool of weapons that can’t be sent to Kiev no matter how much they would like to.

When it comes to judging Russia’s partial mobilization announced last month, there’s something from Sun Tzu about knowing the enemy and knowing yourself. In 2016-17 I was assigned to First Army, which is responsible for overseeing the training and mobilization of Army National Guard and Reserve units. For one example of such a training exercise see this article I wrote here. By the time I went over to First Army, there were only two mobilization sites in the whole country, both in Texas at Fort Bliss and Fort Hood. The numerous other mobilization sites that were active at the height of the Iraq and Afghan wars were, by the time I showed up, were dormant. Mobilized soldiers, myself included, almost all went to Bliss or Hood. However, in the event of a major war, these other sites could be activated and quickly staffed to support a sudden surge in mobilized reservists. That said, of course it wouldn’t go perfectly, especially in the first few weeks, and there would be many mistakes and inefficiencies. Anyone who insists there wouldn’t be errors is naive.

About partial mobilization, that’s an obvious baby step and something of a “trial run” to see how smoothly a larger mobilization would go. Mobilizing 300,000 soldiers over a period of several months is, I’m sure, a high enough quantity to increase the readiness of their bureaucracy and facilities, as well as identifying and correcting any inadequacies. The referenda that occurred simultaneously is also helpful in practical ways. Russian borders with the DPR and LPR just became internal borders, which no doubt significantly reduces the bureaucratic red tape involved in moving people and things back and forth.

Now, all that said, I think a lot of commentators are overly fixated on the battlefield and not paying enough attention to world events. Also, it needs to be said that Russians aren’t the only enemy. The US/NATO cabal is actively waging economic war against Germany, and the European Union is waging war on itself. This week, the EU decided to move forward with a so-called “price cap” on Russian oil. From Bloomberg:

The European Union backed a new package of sanctions against Russia that includes support for a price cap on oil sales to third countries…

The sanctions, which are due to come into force Thursday, would prohibit maritime transport of Russian oil to third countries above an oil price cap, the Czech presidency of the EU said in a tweet. The measure would extend an import ban on goods including steel products, and ban providing IT, engineering and legal services to Russian entities, it said.

A price cap on oil is an interesting idea. It’s like me going to a car dealership and telling them I have put a price cap on them and they sell me their most expensive SUV for $5. European oligarchs are used to living in a world where they have the power to just bully everyone else into submission, and I’m not sure that world exists anymore. From CNN business:

OPEC+ said Wednesday that it will slash oil production by 2 million barrels per day, the biggest cut since the start of the pandemic, in a move that threatens to push gasoline prices higher just weeks before US midterm elections.

The group of major oil producers, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, announced the production cut following its first meeting in person since March 2020. The reduction is equivalent to about 2% of global oil demand.

At this point, I need to remind everyone that Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both long-term American “allies,” signed military cooperation treaties with Russia last year. It’s important to pay attention to diplomatic developments like this, because, like it or not, if World War III seriously escalates, it becomes increasingly likely that OPEC would be forced to intervene on one side or the other, and their involvement would be decisive.

Try to imagine this conflict through the eyes of the Saudis. They likely don’t see any benefit in perpetual warfare like the USA does. Despite years of receiving American “help” to resolve the Yemen problem, there’s no sign of that war coming to an end any time soon. There are also a lot of inordinately expensive Abrams tanks getting destroyed.

Saudis have invested a lot of money in both Ukraine and Russia. I doubt Saudi billionaires care about the internal politics that compelled Ukrainians and Russians to fight each other, and would just like the war to end. Who’s actively preventing the war from ending right now? The USA.

As usual, the timeline of this proposed reduction in oil supply is difficult to discern, but I wonder if it is intended at least partially as an October surprise. CNN propagandists seem absolutely hysterical that this could hurt the Democrats’ chances in the upcoming American midterm elections, and they might not be wrong for feeling that way. I personally think a Republican-controlled Senate would be much easier, and I’m not the only one to hold that opinion.

Thank you for reading and thank you to my newest sponsor, Rolf!

Ian Kummer

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