Technically He Is Not Wrong ...

 ... once you apply the main Western court historians' tool--a complete removal of context--to his conclusion, he is not incorrect.  

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called US billionaire's Elon Musk backing of a rival party in the country’s upcoming election “disgusting.” ... “We are very happy that the United States liberated our country and helped us to become a democracy again,” he added. “And this is why I am so angry about Elon Musk intervening for the far right and Elon Musk also not acting adequately to this killing of so many Jews and other people in Europe done by Germans in the past. This is the historic responsibility we will continue to take in the future as well.” “And this is really disgusting, and it is not good for the democratic development in the European Union,” the head of the Social Democrats concluded.

Technically, Allies liberated more territory of Germany than did the Red Army. Of course, explaining to followers of Patton's "view" on combined arms that geographical metrics, such as captured territory or distance covered per day, while important are secondary to main objective of the war of a complete physical annihilation of the enemy forces, will be exercise in futility, one should still keep in mind that there are still very many fantasists in NATO military top brass, who couldn't recognize what they were looking at when, say, Russian Army was setting into a strategic defense in the end of 2022 and completely bought own (illiterate, I may add) BS of successes of VSU, based solely on Russians seeing no strategic-operational sense of killing own people in empty fields.

Rewind back to 1945. Two weeklong Battle of Berlin alone--look up the butcher's bill--makes pretty much most of the proceedings on the Western Front look rather timid. 

But, of course, Germans learned absolutely nothing, and it was expected from the nation who saw its own catastrophic defeat by Soviet Union as a ... correct--catastrophe, with or without ample historical justifications for full annihilation of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany that is--catastrophic defeat is catastrophic defeat after all; trauma stays no matter what. Americans liberated Germany; Russians "destroyed" it--that's the ideological setup for the so-called German "democracy". Here are "lessons" for modern Germany: 

And nothing could be done about it. Certainly not "liberation". In related news--it is always the same:

The vast majority of Ukrainian media have been kept in business in recent years only thanks to foreign grants, with most of the funding coming from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), according to Oksana Romanyuk, the head of the Institute of Mass Information NGO. Last week, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order initiating a 90-day suspension of nearly all US foreign aid programs. Described as a front for US regime-change efforts, USAID boasted a budget of over $60 billion in 2023 and has funneled huge sums into Ukraine and other nations under the premise of humanitarian development. “Almost 90% of Ukrainian media survived on grants,” Romanyuk said, adding that at least 80% of outlets in the country had received funds from USAID programs.

Same goes for most "historians" in the West, it is all about who and how much pays you. If it plays into your own hatreds and biases--even better. 

Let Me Repeat.

And I don't mean it disrespectfully, but American operational experience in any war the US fought since Vietnam is absolutely worthless in application to real war in the so called "peer-to-peer" environment. Some tactical tricks are for the consumption and discussion of armchair generals from mommy's basement during school breaks. But that truism, evidently, is not known to Mr. Kelley.

A group of senators from both parties is pressing the Pentagon for more information on what it would take to send F-16 jets to Ukraine.  The fresh push came in a letter Tuesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin from eight senators, and obtained by POLITICO, as top administration officials from President Joe Biden on down have poured cold water on bipartisan calls to send U.S.-made fighters into the fight for now. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is “now at a critical juncture,” the senators wrote, arguing F-16 fighters could give Kyiv an edge as Moscow’s full-tilt invasion enters a second year. “After speaking with U.S., Ukrainian, and foreign leaders working to support Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference last month, we believe the U.S. needs to take a hard look at providing F-16 aircraft to Ukraine,” the senators wrote. “This would be a significant capability that could prove to be a game changer on the battlefield.” The letter was organized by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).

Senator Mark Kelly was a great astronaut and I deeply respect him for his career in NASA, and for his aeronautical engineering degree, but this line in his C.V. doesn't make him an authority of the REAL air combat:

He was then assigned to Attack Squadron 115 (VA-115) in Atsugi, Japan, and made two deployments to the Persian Gulf on the aircraft carrier USS Midway, flying 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm.

In other words, he flew missions against the enemy with NO functional air defense, air force and command and control. I spoke in depth about debilitating influence of a "victory" of the US Armed Forces against utterly incompetent and, in some areas, utterly defenseless enemy in Desert Storm. For those who want again to refer to proper description of this turkey shoot, here is CSIS's analysis of that campaign.    

Anthony H. Cordesman's book, The Gulf War, was published in October 1994, and was the first comprehensive analysis of the strategic and military lessons of the Gulf War. Unlike previous studies, which concentrated primarily on the diplomatic and policy decisions affecting the war, or decisions at the high command level, Cordesman provides a detailed analysis of all of the military trends and actions that occurred during Desert Shield, a net assessment comparing Iraqi and each of the major Coalition military forces, and a detailed analysis of the history and lessons of each phase of Desert Storm.

Kelly, never flew in his life against the best Air Defense in the world and against one of the best Air Forces in the world. In fact, he has zero understanding of it, which is true for most US military professionals who grew out of the beating defenseless kids in the sand box of the Middle East and because of it thinking that they know the war. He is a classic representative of this very environment of the US warmongers and neocons who due to their ignorance counted on Russia collapsing in a few months since the start of SMO. But then again, Kelly never attended any kind of schooling related to Operations and Planning. So, it is only natural for him, and his ilk, to think that F-16 in any numbers could be "a game changer". 

As Larry once stated in 2018 and I quoted him in my first book:

Any air defense engineer with a security clearance that isn't lying through his teeth will admit that Russia's air defense technology surpassed us in the 1950's and we've never been able to catch up. The systems thy have in place surrounding Moscow make our Patriot 3's look like fucking nerf guns. All of the knowledgeable aircraft commanders are usually scared shitless about the prospect of a legitimate air-to-air skirmish with a SU-30 or any Russian air superiority fighter.

I omit, of course, here anecdotal but very reliable evidence of Russian SU-35s literally toying with US F-22s in Syria. Senator Kelly, evidently, for all his impressive C.V., lacks basic understanding of the SEAD and its requirements to deal with Russia's VKS, not to speak of the issues which the US military didn't encounter ever--that is having its operational depth, including its airfields being mauled by stand-off high precision weaponry against which US simply has no effective means of defense. Hey, he flew Shuttles and didn't have time to study war. But behind that one can easily see a desperation from complex of inferiority in the field where the United States, while losing its wars even against weak enemies, managed to convince itself that it has "the finest fighting force in history". It is difficult to part with this delusion and Kelly articulates this pain in the open. He should have asked SACEUR General Cavoli.

And all this, while Russia didn't even deploy her main forces. Throwing few Brigade Combat Teams from 101st and 82nd at Russians as some suggest will change absolutely nothing strategically in 404 but will kill many of American personnel which shouldn't even be  there to start with. 

But Kelly is not alone, here is another RAND creature (combat veteran, adviser and "model major general") whose military exploits, again, are not applicable operationally and strategically to modern warfare. Yet, the guy writes on the subject he has no clue about:

One does not easily imagine Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals poring over maps or conferring with his cabinet, gazing at PowerPoints, weighing various options. Surrounded by servile opportunists who depend on his approval, one suspects that Putin may hold his immediate circle in outright contempt. These are, after all, his minions—mere messenger boys talking taxidermy. At home, Putin faces no elections, no party or state institutions that threaten his rule, no domestic political opposition. He is Russia. And Russia is his—so long as he projects strength. Avoiding defeat is his paramount objective. According to his foreign minister, Putin takes his counsel from Ivan the Terrible: He fires generals, jails dissidents at home, poisons those abroad. Measuring by his years in power, Western leaders are mere novices. He faces his third president of China, his fourth president of France, his fifth U.S. president, and his seventh prime minister of the United Kingdom. Longevity doesn't make one smarter, but, as the Russian saying goes, Putin “has seen the parade quite a few times.”

I am Russian, and with professional military pedigree but I never heard in my 60 years this "Russian saying" about parade. But then again, and I am beginning to speak openly about it--we ARE facing the issue of professional military incompetence on the American side. SMO exposed it dramatically and the way US Military-Industrial-Media complex shrieks and lies, while being consistently wrong on any Russian and warfare matter, is the best proof of a lost, largely self-proclaimed, military superiority. Hence hysteria about MQ9 Reaper. It is a fodder for US media bottom feeders, but reality is very simple--Russia will start dealing with ISR assets in a much more strict way and that was the message. I think the next step will be killing one or two commercial satellites the US uses to spy on SMO. Russia has all means to disable what she sees as a threat and issued warning officially on a number of occasions. 

But in the end, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the fact that Russian General Staff is older than the United States as a nation, and that Russian military history dwarfs, in scale and quality of enemies, anything the US ever fought, with the exception of the primarily naval Pacific War, in its history, not to mention the fact that US lost all of its modern wars. One has to have a good credit history to get a loan and the US is sorely lacking in this department. The US simply stopped, long time ago, being this "American observer" of which Alexandr Svechin wrote in his Strategy and became exactly what he warned about--a third rate student who doesn't do his homework. 

A particular strategic policy must be devised for every war; each war is a special case, which requires its own particular logic rather than any kind of stereotype or pattern, no matter how splendid it may be. The more our theory encompasses the entire content of modern war, the quicker it will assist us in analyzing a given situation. A narrow doctrine would probably confuse us more than guide us. And we must not forget that only maneuvers are one-sided, while wars are always two-sided. We must be able to get a grasp of war as it is perceived by the opposing side and clarify the other side's desires and goals. Theory is capable of benefitting only those who have raised themselves above the fray and have become completely dispassionate; we have chosen this path, despite the dissatisfaction with which several of our young critics have encountered the excess of objectivity, "the posture of an American observer," in military questions. 

Hey, I am on record--find better professionals who understand the real war of the 21st century and what it entails, and why the United States cannot and must not fight it because it will lose catastrophically. 

The Issue Of Scale.

 Mr. Stoltenberg is an exhibit A of why Western "economics" education is primarily a fraud. Don't look at me, an authority on economics orders of magnitude greater than me, Michael Hudson, also thinks so.

Ukraine is consuming an “enormous amount” of ammunition, and the West needs to boost production to keep up, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. Stoltenberg also called on the bloc’s members to increase their intelligence efforts, accusing China and Russia of spying on them with balloons. “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition,” he said ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. “This puts our defense industries under strain,” he continued, adding that “we need to ramp up production and invest in our production capacities.” Stoltenberg then pledged, as he has repeatedly since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began, that “NATO stands with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Remarkably, Jens Stoltenberg's thesis title (from Oslo University) was, drum roll: Makroøkonomisk planlegging under usikkerhet. En empirisk analyse ("Macroeconomic planning under uncertainty. An empirical analysis"). One cannot make this shit up even if one tries. So, this "economics" graduate wrote a thesis on something that cannot be accomplished in the modern West because "macroeconomic planning" and the modern West are irreconcilable things. SMO exposed all superficiality and chaos of West's economies dramatically. 

Remarkably, Stoltenberg, complaining about VSU using "enormous amount" of ammunition, forgets a simple fact of life that Russian Armed Forces use ORDER OF MAGNITUDE than whatever is left of VSU-NATO cabal more, and Russia is not just feeling fine, but dramatically expands the production of every single military materiel and technology she needs. That's real macroeconomic planning under uncertainty. But it is too late for Stoltenberg, and NATO in general, to learn now anything of substance about REAL war and REAL war economy. So, the only thing which is left is to spew propaganda which is increasingly detached, if not completely already, from economic and military realities on the ground. They DID miscalculate that badly, they ARE that ignorant--because the failure is systemic, across all institutions of the combined West, military included. 

Well, USA Today begins to suspect things:

'Little by little they are winning': Tide turns in key Ukraine city. Live updates as Russian offensive begins.

Western main-stream journalism is a combination of pathological lying and ignorance. Because what happens in effect now in 404 is not just "little by little" but a complete, industrial scale, annihilation of 404 and NATO's mobilization potentials. Will the West resort to the only thing it can do--terrorism? Possible. As US Embassy in Moscow urged US citizens to leave Russia, the chair of State Duma Committee On Investigation of Interference Into Internal Affair of Russia, Vasily Piskarev, citing SVR's data, explained that the US assets in Russia are getting ready to conduct terrorist actions (in Russian). Nothing new, really. Well, after NS2 terrorist act it is obvious that this is the extent of the current US military "capability" when dealing with serious adversaries. Could also be yet another primitive hack psyop against the background of obvious military-industrial failure. I warned about it for years--nobody listened. 

Meanwhile, Russia pushes ahead with completion of the newest plant for manufacturing satellites (including SMOTR class--part of SFERA program). Here is report in Russian. 

The plant, which goes into operation this year will be able to manufacture and test simultaneously 4 heavy satellites and 100 light ones. So, that adds to explanation of Musk's sudden "maneuvers" with Starlink.