WW III? Nah; they don't have the men, the training, nor the arms, and, thank God, neither do we
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shock and awe
NATO “wants” to send 300,000 troops to the Russian border.
NATO military planners want to designate an additional 300,000 troops to be positioned along the eastern edge of the alliance on the border with Russia in order to forestall any thought by Moscow of expanding the war in Ukraine.
There’s only one small problem; they don’t know where they’re going to get the weapons and ammunition.
“The current rate of consumption compared to the current rate of production of ammunition,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in early March, “is not sustainable.”
But the problem isn’t just manufacturing bullets and shells. It’s a problem of figuring out how much every NATO nation has to give in men, money, and material. And that has proved difficult in the past.
“If there’s not somebody hosting the potluck and telling everybody what to bring, then everyone would bring potato chips because potato chips are cheap, easy to get,” said James J. Townsend Jr., a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy.
“Nations,” he added, “would rather bring potato chips.”
But the process could get tricky. Why? Because moving so quickly, even given a month, requires lots of people, equipment and training — and lots of money.
Some militaries will have to up their recruitment efforts. Many allies will have to increase defense spending. And everyone will have to buy more weapons, ammunition and equipment.
Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said that “readiness” is “basically, do you have all the stuff you’re supposed to have to do the mission assigned to a unit of a particular size?”
“An artillery battalion needs to shoot X number of rounds per year for planning purposes in order to maintain its level of proficiency,” he said. A tank battalion needs to hit targets, react to different situations and “demonstrate proficiency on the move, day and night, hitting targets that are moving.”
You can bet that all proper Republicans and their sisters the Democrats would be only too happy to supply most of those “NATO” forces, but America doesn’t have the resources either, so we should be spared armageddon this summer, anyway. Then again, a few nuclear missiles can make up for conventional armies’ deficiencies, so keep a sharp eye on those neocons entrenched in the D.C. military/industrial/political complex.
eneral Sir Richard Barrons, who formerly served as the Joint Forces chief, said spending cuts have so weakened the British military that the UK would run out of ammunition and artillery shells within a single day of hot war with Russia. According to The Sun, the UK would need a year to produce the amount of shells that Ukrainians currently use in the conflict.
"This is truly shocking. But it is true. And we must fix it," General Barrons wrote in The Daily Telegraph this week. "The UK spends more on defence than any EU ally and our brave Armed Forces have long been one of Britain's most influential levers around the world. Yet for decades they have been hollowed out by spending cuts."
The general said the government needs to allocate an additional £3 billion per year to the military just to meet the minimum requirements of NATO.
The Ministry of Defence responded to these claims saying that ammunition levels are "highly classified" and that it is indeed boosting spending on ammunition stockpiles. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, meanwhile, mentioned that the UK defense apparatus has been "hollowed out and underfunded" — but neglected to mention who was responsible.
