Some sobering thoughts on the war

For those who think the USA (((clown world led))) vs Russia-China is going in any way well for the West, here are a few key performance indicators:

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has now lasted more than 500 days; most modern conflicts that cross that mark become protracted. After April 26, 2022, when the first meeting of representatives of 40 Western countries took place at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany on the issue of arms supplies to Ukraine, this conflict turned into an armed confrontation between Russia and the West. Accordingly, such a long confrontation is developing into a race of military-industrial complexes and its prospects can already be assessed.

In March of this year, Michael McCaul, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that of the four aid packages allocated to Ukraine for $113 billion, about 60% went to the U.S. military and military-industrial complex to modernize the stockpiles of weapons and military equipment. It would seem that after such injections, the output of the military-industrial complex should have grown like on yeast, but this is not happening.

600 million dollars went directly to the Pentagon’s Defense Production Capabilities Directorate. Of that amount, $45.5 million went to Arconic to expand production of high-grade aluminum. The fact is that Russia controls more than 75% of the world market for high-grade aluminum, which is needed for the production of jet aircraft and various military equipment. Now the U.S. access to Russian aluminum is limited.

13.8 million was awarded to Timken, the only supplier of high-strength ball bearings that meet U.S. Department of Defense standards. The Pentagon awarded $200 million in grants to U.S. companies to produce 27 critical chemicals that are part of the supply chain for jet fuel and explosives.

In June 2021, the only black powder plant in the U.S. was blown up due to an accident. Although black powder is no longer used in the same quantities as it was 200 years ago, the technology to produce it is virtually unchanged due to the fact that the use of electricity in the processes is minimized due to the risk of sparking. Production at this plant was not scheduled to resume until the summer of this year.

15 million dollars was allocated by the Pentagon for a feasibility study of cobalt mining in Idaho, as China has cut its supply to the world market. China holds a controlling stake in 70 percent of the cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s largest supplier of the metal.

The sanctions war between the U.S. and China is heating up and, therefore, it is pointless to hope for the restoration of previous volumes of rare earth metals supplies. Cobalt is used not only in the production of tank armor, but also for aircraft and even radar.

It will take years to modernize these existing production facilities, and in the case of cobalt, now we are talking about exploratory drilling, and the construction of production facilities for cobalt processing is a separate big story.

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