‘Beyond logic’: Retired general baffled by Russia’s military move

Retired Maj. Gen. James "Spider" Marks discusses Russia increasing their cruise missile carriers in the Black Sea and what it means for Putin's war in Ukraine. #CNN #News

72 comments

  1. Watching the Major General talking took me back to my misspent youth watching all those badly dubbed European ‘art-house’ movies where the moving lips don’t match up with the words. Ah, nostalgia.

  2. When they first started saying the US is running low on ammunition I laughed so hard 😂😂😂 but I guess they kinda clarified that they are low on weapons and ammo that they want to give to Ukraine, trust and believe as an ex military man as of recently who worked on inventory the US will NEVER run out of weapons or ammo!! As long as Russia and china have weapons and ammo we will too…

    1. It takes 1 year for recent himars ammo and Ukraine uses it up in 14 days. They will have to start giving from a stockpile and that’s why Biden pushes for negotiations as suppliers are Germany France Russia US and China.

    2. @tarmaque
      He was never ignorant , he took that one sentence and found a way to instill fear into people . Like , what if I told people our milatary has no ammunition ? That’s a brick in the wall of deception . Instead of using a keyboard to verify , people use it to spread the lies .

    3. This is where the US military doctrine blows Russia out of the water, our ability to project not just force, but supplies. As an ex-DOD defense contractor auditor I can say we won’t run out of missiles…

    4. @loveforthegame3 republican politicians say “they’re taking your guns!” for that very reason…..they know trumpies will believe it every time and stock up….its insane

  3. Putin is a military genius. He is playing 3d chess by sending more cruisers to the Black Sea for strategic conversion into submarines.

    1. @mjbcswitzerland hahah I am neutral in terms of sides but just check the history of Russia and it’s invaders from Napoleon to Hitler and how they sucked. (Russians (victims) entered Berlin for instance..) Then you will realize what Russians are. If they are as weak as you claim, Nato would have conquered them long time ago having in mind the amount of natural resources Russians possess..

    2. @MaxTube I understand NATO is a defense organisation and is not involved with invading to steal resources.
      Where I am in agreement with you is that no one should consider invading Russia, just in the same way that Russia should not consider invading other countries. Since Russia has invaded illegally another country (again) my standpoint is clearly against their actions.

    3. @MaxTube wow, haven’t heard that one in months, well, we’ve been waiting for 9 months and that is ridiculous is a long time for a surprise influx of these said 90% capabilities.

    1. Exactly. Us military is sending ukraine stockpiles munitions that are close to expiration date. Meaning US can now order and make newer ones to replenish the stock pile. Win win

    2. @Nightmare KhaZix The original post I was replying to had nothing to do with the conversation and the original poster admitted this. You are going some next level nonsense that has nothing even close to do with either the post, the article or even what I was talking about.

    1. its like the US wanted to find out if their cold war tech really was better than Soviet tech,, I bet the generals are running a pool on this,,

    1. @John Freeman They’ve been retreating since March. The latest was in Kherson like a week ago. They retreated 20k troops, even blew up the bridge behind them o the way out.

    2. There not retreating. There playing chess and making that NATO Army move away from the city’s so those lying bastards are not fighting in the cities where all the people are… Those poor people are nothing but human shields for that evil man running Ukraine with the Good ol United States right now!!!!!! Sick how people get off on other people getting killed! No matter what side….

    3. @Sarah Waters No Russia is very much retreating right now. They just retreated from Kherson a few days ago, capital of the Kherson Oblast. This is not strategic but merely a retreat of 20k soldiers. They just are not strong enough to stand up against Ukraine, the force of goodness in this conflict!

  4. to be clear, the USA isnt “running low on anything” .. they are just getting down to inventory numbers that make war planners anxious. They plan for having 10times what they would actually need in a war. so getting down to 8times just makes them nervous. The USA has plenty of other weapons systems they can use for any specific targets, the war planners have based their plans on having much much more then they would ever need and to win conflicts with overwhelming force and as quickly as possible. having to use other weapon systems instead of what they planned on just removes 1 of their 10+ backup plans. The USA isnt giving away anything that they would actually need in a conflict with china. The USA is ok with giving away as much of the land weapons because they were designed to be used against russia anyway, china would be almost all air/naval force, 1 russian tank taken out by a Javelin is 1 less tank that USA would need to take out later. russia is incapable of building more high end equipment to replace their losses.

    1. ​@duke zinnia Im a former 13-M MLRS crew member, and I sat in the first HIMARs prototype back in 2003 at Ft Sill Oklahoma. (And back then the HIMARs was basically a LLM on a LMTV without any armor even. Very primitive. )
      What you see now is modern, but what we had back then wasn’t too much different with tiny exceptions. I remember the days we used PLUGGERS which are basically the first GPS units the military had, and they were the size of footballs, but were super accurate. Back when GPS was nearly nonexistent to the public.
      But really, you’d be surprised how ahead of the game we were even then, and how little really things have changed. So next HIMARS upgrade I wouldn’t expect too much more if a difference. Most likely it will be the Ammo that gets the attention.

    2. @duke zinnia Don’t know where you get your info from but I would research that better, Iraq and Afghanistan was a classic example, a RFI went out and industry responded. Industry is always refining there products and the DoD can’t buy them all. We don’t wait for a war to happen, then production start and even if we do, we just turn on a spigot.

    3. You believe Hollywood and the media too much. If you think the US navy can take out China without using nukes you are crazy. Saying Russia can’t replace equipment is also crazy. They have that capability. It is the US that can’t replace things quickly if it’s not in stock. Everyone has been saying Russia is running low on missiles etc every month for how long now?
      So obviously they are producing enough. The US cannot fight Russia in Europe and win. The Pentagon knows this hence the use of Ukraine as a proxy.

    4. @Peter.A. LanganLOL The US has donated less then 2% of its annual military budget to Ukraine. Now imagine that funding multiplied by over fifty, then multiply that by a few decades of annual funding and you have an idea just how poorly Russia matches up to the US. As for China, it’s not far behind Russia.

      As for things not in stock, the US is out of stock of nothing. It has not used any of it’s strategic reserve in anything sent to Ukraine, there is enough to fight two major wars simultaneously in two separate theaters across the globe. Neither Russia nor China could do this once with a peer adversary. Russia probably couldn’t even do it with a much weaker nation because it’s navy and air force is in such poor shape it can’t project power.

  5. The US running out of weapons is pretty ridiculous. Even if we run out, I am sure we will never publicize it as it marks a taint on our military. This seems to be a rheoteric for pressurising Ukr into negotiations.

    1. The U.S is running dangerously low on munitions and because it no longer has the manufacturing base can not replenish them in the short term.

  6. Just give Ukraine those longer range missles that the West has denied so far to Ukraine so that they can start hitting Russian military targets in Crimea and in the east Donbas regions. This war would be over sooner.

    1. @Shawn Fonseka The question is why shouldn’t they. I am actually surprised that there hasn’t been cells attacking soft spots in Moscow. Russia has no problem killing civilians, why should Ukranians hold back.

    2. If we take a direct approach then that could spark big tension, we would have to send troops then WW3, then it’s EndGame for all 💣💥

    1. Ukraine got 100 billion from Biden..it’s our money..and Democrats give it away for War !! To kill .. why ?? Stop ✋️

    2. They call him “spider” because his cold, calculated military tactics see his enemies trapped in his web… 🤣

  7. America can never be/run low on ammunition! Hell even if the government does(which not possible) the suburbs/hoods in the US alone have more then some whole countries….

    1. @Wilhelm Eley it’s hard to see the Wirtschaftswunder predicated on post-war industrial renewal as anything but a great success. Now as the industrial power house of Europe they seem to be doing Ok!

    2. @DAVJULART Yes but you can calculate the economic set back events like wars have, it is calculated, that Germany was set back by about 20 to 25 years by WW II in terms of its prosperity

    3. @Internet Research Agency you’re absolutely right, but most of these people are just regurgitating media narratives. Russia was completely justified in their security concerns and if the US was in a similar position, we would have been far less patient.

    1. Yep, we’d sure be using a whole lot more weapons if it was a full on NATO fight against Russia expanding into Poland or the Baltics once they’d taken over Ukraine and rebuilt for the next phase of Putin’s Reunification of the USSR master plan.

    2. @“ALASKA” Biden said he gone support Ukraine down to the last Ukrainian. I feel for Ukraine because Russia about to carpet bomb them. Thanks a lot Joe

    3. @“ALASKA” They can’t stop Russia running away you mean? Ukraine seems to have done a pretty good job of stopping Russia from advancing. If they are given the weapons they ask for, I’m sure they can drive them all the way back to Moscow.

  8. A large part of our stockpiles were dor a possible conflict with Russia. Our stockpiles going down while helping Ukraine, is still being used for that task. We’re just letting the Ukranians do the fighting, but it is still degrading the Russian military readiness.

  9. I believe they are doing this because they are short of land based cruise missles and probably have a larger stock of sea based cruise missles. This is a good sign that Russia will be on the losing end of this war of attrition. Sadly a lot of those cruise missles will be targeting Kherson and southern Ukraine areas like Oddessa.

  10. The biggest problem facing the US military is manning. Across all services we are witnessing a serious recruiting and, more importantly, retention problem. This is especially true in the Army. Our Brigade Combat Teams are at about 60% strength. The armor and infantry branches are the worse. Many say it isn’t an issue because we have great technological advancements that make up for low strength numbers within these units. I don’t but this argument. I don’t care how many small UAS or robotic devices you have. Nothing can replace a well trained infantryman or tanker. If a 9 man squad is down to just 5 or 6 men, the entire squad is ineffective if it receives one casualty. Because it take 3-4 people to treat, secure and evacuate that 1 casualty. The other 2-3 people are pulling security and cannot maneuver on the enemy or hold ground for long. The same for tank crews.

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