Even in JSE-listed company’s results, there’s rarely a commentary nowadays which doesn’t mention the war in Ukraine. That’s how deeply it has permeated our consciousness. So developments from Central Europe are relevant even for those of us thousands of miles away from the action. The massive turnaround in the Ukraine War takes some absorbing.
Even Russia’s state media is now admitting Putinland is getting a hiding. Over the weekend, the bridge connecting Russia with the Crimea peninsula, opened by Putin to great fanfare in 2018, was severely damaged by explosions. The bridge symbolized permanence of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory. Its destruction tells a very different story.
For military experts there is little mystery behind the War’s dramatic turnaround over the past few months. It lies with vastly superior weapons supplied to Ukraine by the West. The centre-piece of which is driving a “global revolution in warfare” – the US-made M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or ‘Himars’.
Ukraine has 16 Himars, mobile, highly precise, quick firing missile batteries which hit targets up to 80km away and are housed on 5-ton trucks. Experts say they are responsible for 70% of Ukraine’s advances on the Kherson front where its troops have seized back large swathes of territory occupied during Russia’s Blitzkrieg. Another 18 Himars are on their way to Kyiv.
As stirrup-using Mogol horsemen proved a thousand years ago and disciplined Roman legions a millennium earlier, superior technology triumphs in any head-to-head contest. In war as well as business. What Himars achieve with a 200-pound explosive warhead requires 100 000 pounds of traditional artillery. Superior tech has turned the war in Ukraine’s favour.
More for you to read today:
* Trouble has come to town. William Saunderson-Meyer says our water supply crisis has been a long time coming.
* Fed’s Inflation Fight Has Some Economists Fearing an Unnecessarily Deep Downturn. Rapid rate increases provide less time for central bankers to study their economic effects.
* Here’s a Different Way to Think About Stock Diversification. Everybody knows to spread money across many investments. Fewer think about diversifying over time.
* BAE, U.S. in Talks to Restart M777 Howitzer Production After Ukraine Success.Potential resurrection of big gun shows how the war in Ukraine could reshape the global arms industry.
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