+ China, Iran and India are helping Russia actively. That's the only reason Russia survived the sanctions and isn't running out of anything any time soon.
Someone mentioned prior that western drones are superior to Iranian ones. That's true. The problem is US and allies aren't supplying the top end version but the models which are a little bit better than Iranian ones. Iranian ones are however very cheap to mass produce.

This post was edited by babun1024 on Jan 24 2024 06:42pm

India didn't want to be aligned with Russia. America forced them into this. We threw up a new iron curtain and said everyone must join in our economic blockade of Russia, and India simply said 'no'. Because it could wreck their economy, they get cheap Russian oil. I fear this might have longer and greater impacts than anything direct between the US, China & Russia. India is the ascendant world power and we're antagonizing them, forcing them into a pigeonhole with our rivals. Basically its like if Biden was playing a game of chess trying to find the fastest way to get himself checkmated.


I'm not sure about drones, there's been a lot of footage recently of upgraded Russian inferno FPV drones with night vision, high altitude precision bombers that carry 9 rounds, while footage of Ukrainian drones tends to still be one-shot suicide drones. Is that indicative of what's being used statistically? Because the Russian ones are far more lethal and particularly adapted to this conflict. Flying shaheds into power stations tends to just knock out utilities for a few hours or days as engineering crews replace them, but the hunter killer drones on the battlefield are wiping out the front lines

One thing is documented that the Russian axis ( backend support from Iran, China & co.) are producing drones in great quantities. Russia has even created assembly halls in Russia itself to pump them out en mass. We are talking about 10k drones.
Edit: All the English sources are beyond a paywall.

This post was edited by babun1024 on Jan 24 2024 07:05pm

Suicide drones are limited only by how many you can produce. FPV drones are limited only by how many targets you can find...

People who are not in the know , have absolutely no idea how "fearful' or should I say how much the Chinese would prefer to play a secondary role behind Russia in World affairs.

Suicide drones deplete AA capabilities which makes FPV ones more effective. If I remember correctly, shooting down the drones is way more expensive than producing them. You just have to periodically hit relevant targets over and over, so the opponent can never stockpile enough AA in one place to deter drone attacks. Russia is doing exactly that.

This post was edited by babun1024 on Jan 25 2024 02:11am

I wholeheartedly disagree with your first point because even with edited videos from the front, we have over two years of 4k footage of how western tech has fared against old Soviet era stockpiles. I'm not cherrypicking one specific instance but there's been enough t-90 turrets tosses for me to make my statement

I agree with your second part as it's completely true. I'm not trying to say that Ukraine is winning because of western tech but in specific instances, it has made a difference. Like you said Ukraine no longer has the supplies or logistics to keep this war going.

My point about russia not being able to establish air superiority and why that is can be debatable but that is a major factor to the slow advancement

Mate there’s no 4k footage lol. The grainy footage you see is hardly 360p

This a volume attritional war. I’m not going to argue that modern NATO weapons are probably better than Soviet ones but it’s a fact that Russia is out producing, has more shells, tanks, artillery, etc.

The other problem for Ukraine is you have hardware that’s sourced from dozens of countries so even small defects can debilitate modern hardware. It’s not easy to have a front line inventory for so many different things.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jan 25 2024 07:47am

google:

How many F-16 will Ukraine get?

On Dec. 22, the Netherlands announced it was preparing 18 F-16s for transport to Ukraine. European nations have promised around 60 F-16s to Ukraine, but not all will be ready soon — some nations have promised deliveries only in 2025.25 Dec 2023

also

Denmark's transfer of 19 American-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will take place in the second quarter of 2024, once Ukrainian pilots have completed training, the Danish Defense Ministry said on January 6.

This post was edited by ferdia on Jan 25 2024 08:06am

Ukraine actually effectively agreed to denazification by shooting down 65 neo-Nazis from Azov. Great news.