Elephant In The Room: NATO Defense Spending

1. Western Allies Say They’re Running Out of Ammo

2. Reviewing Hidden Russian Defensive Positions

3. British Troops Not Headed To Ukraine But Arms Factories Are

4. Tracking Movement at the Front

5. US Transfers Iranian Weapons to Ukraine

6. Syria Gets Hot

7. A Look at US Pacific Strategy

8. New Book Hints at Shifting al-Qaeda Strategy

9. After Missing Goals, Army Shakes up Recruiting

10. US Captures ISIS Official in Syria (Again)

11. Podcast Recommendations

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1. Western Allies Say They’re Running Out of Ammo

A new piece in BBC talks about the need of western nations to find a way to increase military production. Adm Rob Bauer, chair of the NATO military committee, recently told the Warsaw Security Forum that “the bottom of the barrel is now visible.” He added, "We need large volumes. The just-in-time, just-enough economy we built together in 30 years in our liberal economies is fine for a lot of things - but not the armed forces when there is a war ongoing."

UK minister James Heappey added that NATO allies need to step up and actually spend 2% of their GDP on defense, asking "If it's not the time - when there is a war in Europe - to spend 2% on defense, then when is?" He added, "The elephant in the room is that not everyone in the alliance is yet spending 2% of their GDP on defence. That must be the floor for our defense spending, not the ceiling."

While Ukraine along with many western nations have taken steps to increase military production, these changes take time. Many nations right now are having to grapple with the challenges of sending enough ammunition to keep Ukraine in the fight but also set up the capacity to increase production for the long term.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66984944

2. Reviewing Hidden Russian Defensive Positions

A Ukrainian reserve officer who goes by Tatarigami_UA on X recently published an article showing how some significant Russian defensive positions were missed in early assessments.

In reviewing sattelite imagery from July 13th (image 1), August 8th (image 2) and September 11th (image 3) he shows that what first appeared as an ordinary treeline actually housed well fortified Russian positions. He says a major problem in assessing the Russian defensive networks prior to the Ukrainian offensive was that it focused so much on the anti-tank ditches, obstacles and clearly visible trenches. In turn, many viewed the large gaps between these as having little to no defensive fortifications.

As Ukraine has advanced, they’ve found that countless treelines that looked unsuspecting even from drone footage, are turning out to be significant obstacles to overcome. The author says that these defenses are not necessarily all manned at all times which may have been why they were easy to miss in early reconnaissance.

For additional images and further breakdown, the link to his full article is below.

Significance of Concealed Tree Line Defenses in the Counter-Offensive

https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA

3. British Troops Not Headed To Ukraine But Arms Factories Are