Newfie wrote:Tanada,
Ziehan's most current post postulates the possibility of Russia giving North Korea either a ballistic missle(s) or a technology transfer.
I was wondering about your thoughts on that topic?
5 minute video.
https://youtu.be/nRfpkCDzBSQ?si=zT9SdrxWwEFxQOkE
Well I watched it but I have a hard time believing much of his opinions as they are almost exactly in line with propaganda about Russia being industrially crippled.
It is true that some types of artillery fillers are subject to not aging well and become more shock sensitive as they age. It is also true that Russia has had a deep draw down of their stockpile during the war and there have been a number of pieces destroyed by in chamber detonation.
However, when you fire off 20 million rounds of artillery there are two factors he is rather blatantly ignoring. Even with 99.9 percent ideal manufacturing perfection of the artillery shells in quest 0.1 percent of 20 million is is 20,000 defective artillery shells. Most of those will be dud's that either do not explode at the desired altitude to cause idealized shrapnel damage or do not explode at all even after impact. A certain number however will be the fail deadly kind that detonate in breech from acceleration forces when fired.
See here is the thing about aging artillery filler crystalizing. This problem was recognized all the way back in 1914 when WW I led to the first huge scale artillery barrages using relatively modern explosives. In the 109 years since then explosives went from a new science to a very mature science and all the explosives workers in every modern country know just which types of shells become unsafe as they age past say 20 years as that was the figure he used. This being the case and the fact is every military with artillery knows it, they make a concerted effort to use their oldest part of the stockpile during their training cycles. You don't grab a conscript, tell him he is an artillery man and then send him to the barracks. Nope you and every other military takes that recruit and sends him to the gun range where they practice loading, firing and hitting targets. While they are doing this they use up a statistically significant number of shells and yup, they try and use up the oldest ones first every time for any number of very sound reasons including it keeps the stockpile fresh because the replacement shells manufactured every year go into the stockpile as replacements for the old stuff they use up.
The next issue with this topic is speed of manufacture. The number of new shells you make each year is a matter of military budgeting and the goal is to match as nearly as possible the number of old shells used up in training, with is a lot closer to 100,000 than it is to 20,000,000. That means even if you ramp up your manufacturing immediately to 10 times your prior quantity you only manufactured 1,000,000 shells and used up 19,000,000 from the stockpile you did not replace.
So Russia wants to buy artillery shells that will fit seamlessly into their supply chain and fire them off at Ukraine until their "native manufacturing" can replace their expended stockpile. The natural people to buy these shells from are people who use Russian/Soviet designed and often manufactured equipment that already use identical ammunition. Over the decades the USSR/Russia has sold a lot of artillery pieces to a lot of countries especially in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. At various times Iran, Iraq and Syria have all been major purchasers as has North Korea. Some of these countries buy their ammunition while others, particularly North Korea, manufacture their own. In fact North Korea has a substantial industrial capacity, something many in the west seem unaware of. They build their own copies of a number of USSR/Russian equipment designs including APC's, Tanks, Jets and Artillery along with all the ammunition, and equipment to make those devices fully functional.
Given those realities North Korea has both a substantial ammunition stockpile of their own and manufacturing capacity to produce more. They probably can't replace the whole 20 million expended shells but then again they wouldn't eliminate their own stockpile even if that was possible. They can however doubtlessly manufacture at least 100,000 and quite possibly as many as 5,000,000 new shells a year if they go all out a the task which would let them ship a lot of their stockpile to Russia at very low risk of running their stockpile dangerously low.
Second issue. Artillery tubes or gun barrels if you prefer wear a little bit with every shell they fire. Most American heavy artillery since before WW I is designed with a solid outer barrel and an inner rifled barrel liner. I presume this is pretty common with Russian designs as well. What you do is you count how many rounds of ammunition are fired by your artillery piece and when it hits a predetermined number you send that gun back to the factory where they extract the liner and replace it with a new one returning the wear count to zero. Sometimes you can not manage this due to the exigencies of war and the piece stays in action growing increasingly worn and inaccurate until it is no longer combat effective. In some battles in WW I the French had left 75mm pieces in action so long that they no longer had enough range to reach no-mans-land and the shells started falling into their own troops positions before they pulled those pieces out of action. Next time you see an artillery piece in a VFW park or the Canadian equivalent go look at the end of the gun tube. I would be very surprised if you can not see the physical ring where the outer barrel and liner are pressed together in two distinct layers.
The upshot of this is just like ammunition barrel liners have to be carefully manufactured and machined to to installed on new or refurbished artillery tubes and this careful manufacturing takes time and skilled workers. North Korea has a lot of artillery pieces and the skilled workers to manufacture and refurbish gun barrels by installing new or replacement liners. This gives the second purchase option, Russia might ship say 1,000 worn artillery pieces to North Korea and load up 1,000 refurbished functionally identical North Korean manufactured pieces to take back to Ukraine for combat use. North Korea is not currently at war and only uses their training capacity level of capability so trading in worn pieces for functional pieces would be no strain on their refurbishing capacity and would not harm their readiness to repel an invasion by South Korea which we all know is a very low probability.
Third factor. Russia is today selling petroleum coal and natural gas on the world market outside the EU and North America. The so called western sanctions are completely ineffective and have not slowed down their ability to sell mineral resources even a tiny bit. The idea Russia needs to not ship oil to North Korea because they are desperate for western currency is unrealistic to put it politely. For crying out loud they just held the second BRICS conference where their de-dollarized joint trade agreement added Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Ethiopia, Egypt and Argentina. That means four Petroleum exporters are now aligned with India, China and Brazil who are major importers as well as Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt as significant oil importers. All outside the American Dollar "world currency" and World Bank control system.
This means North Korea has supplies of ammunition and artillery pieces that it would be convenient for Russia to buy or borrow and Russia can pay for this exchange in energy supplies or BRICS style trade agreements without fear of repercussions from the increasingly laughable "power" of sanctions and threats by the World Bank.
IMO the west has significantly overplayed its hand bluffing and threatening to the point that the non-aligned nations who feel very coerced by past actions of the USA/EU and the World Bank they have total control over are now able to look to the BRICS countries for financial and military support. The recent revolutions in Africa have been fully successful in part because China and the BRICS nations as a group have kept the World Bank from successfully enacting international embargoes and financial restrictions against the revolutionary governments who have come to power. Two of the three most power South American nations have now merged into the BRICS system, Brazil as a founding member and Argentina in the last few weeks. In Africa South Africa was a founding member and now Ethiopia and Egypt have joined the BRICS system. In part this is an outgrowth of how the EU/USA fomented the revolution in Libya and downfall of Quadaffy which caused a lot of African residents to see the EU/USA as strictly interested in exploiting them for their purposes and to heck with the African residents wants or needs. In point of fact (8) EIGHT!!! nations in Africa have had revolutionary overturning of their existing governments in the last three years and the EU/USA attempts to reverse or stop this has had zero impact on the state of reality.
With every successful revolt against EU/USA influence aided and abetted by the BRICS union the USA/EU looks increasingly ineffective and irrelevant.
Three minute video, our closest non European allies are now openly mocking us.
3:23 of mockery