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Comment by zer00eyz | Hacker News Reader

Total aid, yes.

Military spending no.

In fact this war has highlighted that NO ONE was ready for the fight that came about.

Skip the money for a moment. Ukraine right now is marginally fucked for one reason: 155mm artillery shells.

There isnt enough global production to have a war. The US is far and away the largest producer. EU can not keep up and did not bring on anywhere near enough capacity to defend itself in a future conflict.

I would also like to point out that without that humanitarian aid flowing INTO Ukraine those folks flee TO the EU. Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany and having to spend it there. After taking in so many refugees in recent history the EU is gunshy about another migration.

View on HN

"Military spending no."

  Country          Military 
  EU Total         49,67
  United States    42,22
  Germany          17,70
  United Kingdom   9,12
  Denmark          8,40
  Netherlands      4,44
  Norway           3,80
  Poland           3,00

And if we take % of GDP the US looks worse on military aid.

And if we take % of military budget, the US is last on the list.

I’m not sure how the calculations work in other countries, but the US was/is heavily depreciating its donations, and funding/facilitating a much of European donations.

There's also ring trades where the us donates surplus gear to European countries to get them to donate hardware to Ukraine - somewhat inflating tallies. Greece got several c-130s in expectation that they would donate 152mm ammunition.

Yes, and Germany has ring-traded a lot of military equipment, e.g. several dozens of Leopard 2 tanks.

Sure about the 152mm? Not 155mm?

> Sure about the 152mm? Not 155mm?

I'd have to double check but its quite likely. 152mm being the popular Soviet/WP large artillery caliber which Ukraine no doubt has (or had, at the beginning) a lot of legacy Soviet-era heavy artillery.

Did some searching, didn't find anything.

The only thing I could find about Greece is Germany giving 40 Marder APCs to Greece so Greece could give 40 BMP-1 to Ukraine.

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill...

It's more messed up than that. The ROI on US dollars vs Euros is stupefying. There has been a fairly significant spend IN the us retooling for this war. The ramp up of 155 production ISNT aid to Ukraine but is going to benefit them.

And I called out 155 for a reason, the ebb and flow of it has been at the forefront of Ukraine being successful or failing. It is the the most consistently asked for and consumed large item as it in combination with drones has proven effective beyond anyones expectations.

And this is chart is missing EU strongest military - France, they do not announce all the support they give for strategic reasons.

Could the strategic reason be to avoid explaining why they give so little?

Unlikely. The Caesar artillery systems are large, expensive and well publicized.

They need USAs 155mm production the most. the fact that we cut off our specialty is ridiculous.

France published a list of equipment they sent to Ukraine, about an hour ago [1]

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/international/live/2024/02/16/en-dire...

Quoting and translating the best I can (any translation error is mine):

Ground - Air

    SAMP-T : 1 system and ASTER 30 missiles
    CROTALE NG : 2 systems and some missiles
    MISTRAL : 5 systems and hundreds of missiles
    RADAR : 1 GM 200

Air - Ground

    SCALP : about a hundred missiles
    A2SM : several hundred bombs starting in February 2024

Artillery

    CAESAR : 30 canons and tens of thousands of munitions
    TRF1 : 6 canons and tens of thousands of munitions
    LRU : 4 systems and hundreds rockets

Armoured and liaison vehicules

    AMX 10 RC: 38 AMX 10 RC and tens of thousands of 105mm shells
    VAB: 250 (including VAB SAN)
    VLTT P4: 120 vehicles
    MILAN: 17 launch positions and hundreds of missiles

Engineering and small arms

    Anti-tank rockets: several thousand
    Anti-tank mines: several thousand
    Assault rifles: several thousand
    12.7mm machine guns: several hundred
    Other ammunition: several million

Aerial domain

    Drones: several hundred reconnaissance drones and small tactical drones
    Jet fuel: tens of thousands of cubic meters

No idea how important / relevant it is. Just posting

"SCALP : about a hundred missiles"

Wish Germany would send long range Taurus.

I do wonder what the shelf life of those things are? Germany could hand over 200 - 300 of those things and just order new one to replace the oldest one in their stockpile.

In general, Germany is not especially keen to enter into conflicts with Russia. They are a long time economic and energy partner. It is why Germany has a history of thwarting EU energy security and solidarity, and why it dragged its feet w.r.t. early in this conflict.

Energy security like from the US? Germany spending billions to switch to US LNG as fast as possible just to be gut punched. Russia delivered gas without problems for 50+ years, the US is not able to deliver LNG reliably for 1 year:

"The U.S. has become the biggest exporter of LNG to Europe [..] U.S. President Joe Biden last week paused approvals for applications to export from new LNG projects to review the climate change and economic impact of such projects." [0]

The only energy the EU can really control is solar, but probably has not enough room for panels to replace LNG with green hydrogen.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-export-pause-...

Parts of the German government party SPD are long term friends of Putin and need to be dragged by their feet for every inch of the way. At least the chancellor changed course - luckily otherwise there would be no support at all. But he is still fighting a fraction in his party of Putin friends - there is a "governor" of the government party SPD in power who took money from Putin.

> France published a list of equipment they sent to Ukraine, about an hour ago [1]

Which is something new, until yesterday I was in with OP.

> No idea how important / relevant it is. Just posting

Here's some background: https://www.politico.eu/article/france-germany-macron-scholz...

All the help is great, but these numbers are tiny compared to what Russia is fielding. Thousands of shells sounds nice until you realize Russia fires tens of thousands per day, and is able to manufacture hundreds of thousands per month. 30 cannons is nice until you realize Russia has thousands. The West can not solve this problem by dusting off whatever is left in the forgotten corner in the storage and sending it out and forgetting about it. In fact, they can't even solve it with fully mobilizing their capacity - which is still not happening - because while Russia (and USSR for decades before that) has been maniacally arming and stockpiling, the West has been reducing their capacities and relaxing under the impression that the Cold War is over, wars are thing of the past, and whoever thinks Russia is a threat is to be laughed at and needs their head checked. Now some are waking up, but from waking up to gaining back all the lost capacity and getting even to parity is a long way, and one that will be very expensive - which I am not convinced the West is willing to do, especially when it's for benefit of some ex-Soviet country that's not even in the EU. Maybe Putin will take it and then just stop, because this is always how it worked with aggressive fascist dictators in the past.

That's not exactly true, as there's plenty of M198 built, they're just in storage. Ammunition is what's the main issue.

There's also plenty of M1 tanks in US.

The question arrises, when people start to realize that the storage of those wasn't up to the required standards.

The worst part was that multiple countries dragged their feet on providing arms and realizing that 2022 was the start of a new arms race. And multiple countries are still reluctant to commit to refill the arms stockpiles.(hence the inability to even start mass production 2 years after it's clear what's going on)

> whoever thinks Russia is a threat is to be laughed at and needs their head checked

As a Lithuanian - I know this all too well. My mother tongue is Russian and Russian political class had been dominated by anti-western, revanchist and militaristic rhetoric for at least the last 17 years. No one in the west bothered to listen.

Um, so the UK has rejoined the EU?

I'm mean it's a nitpick, but you're kinda nitpicking.

Not sure where I wrote that the UK is part of the EU.

  EU Total         49,67
  United States    42,22

Then there is a list of countries, like the US, some EU countries and the UK. The entry "EU Total" is not the sum of these countries.

With the argument, the list implies the UK being part of the EU b/c it is listed below, would be the same as the "United States" are part of the EU, because it is listed below.

You’re counting UK but not Canada in the EU?

Looking at Military aid only [1]:

The US has provided: ~$42.2B

Germany + United Kingdom + Denmark + Norway + Netherlands + Poland + EU inst.: ~$51B

[1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

France is up there with UK, but they are not on the chart because they do not disclose all the transfers they do.

Source?

Em... That's the point, we know that France transferred a lot of equipment(Cesar self propelled artillery is Franch). We don't know how much they transferred, there may be unofficial guestimated numbers - but there can be no source for "we don't know".

I wonder if there is such a clear cut between aid and military spending. Most of the aid of Europe is send to Ukraine government such that the government can spend that money. I understand that about 90% of the USA military spending stays in the USA and is actually stimulating the economy.

This war is also a display of weapons produced by defense industries in the USA and increase the spending of foreign countries in the USA. So, the netto effect might be actually turn out to be possitive, if it were not chilled by the current position of the USA in not providing weapons. This is definitely not making European countries happy and might actually result in the EU on putting substantial effort in developing it own weapon systems in the coming decades and reduce the spending the USA.

It is quite hard to think about things knowing that countries can hold multiple contradicting ideas simultaneously. Nothing is entirely correct or incorrect.

for example, true or false: The US started a war against Europe and Russia by blowing up the pipeline. If we look at it like that it is a great success?

Why would that perspective be entirely wrong?

Ukraine is fucked in the long term by demographics and economics, not by the lack of any particular weapon or munition. Now that the war has settled into an attritional phase, it's a question of who will run out of fighting men and war materiel first. The answer is unfortunately clear.

People down-voting this, care to explain how this is wrong?? I've thought about this a lot and as far as I can tell, this is the only reasonable expectation I can come up with as well... it seems quite possible to me that the reason Europe and the USA are turning up the "Russia will soon attack us" rhetoric is to justify higher military spending in the short term, and sending boots to Ukraine in the medium term, given that if you look at the reality of the situation, the Russian military has been stopped by a weak (compared to NATO) Ukrainian military, hence you would have to conclude that the possibility of Russia actually even thinking of attacking NATO in the next few decades should be very much zero under any circumstances. It's like thinking in the 60's that if we don't stop North Vietnam, they will come for the rest of Asia :D it just doesn't add up to any reasonable, rather than passion/hate-filled analysis (which is what we mostly see in the media, unfortunately).

Sure: he's flat out wrong. This has been played out again and again - "winning a war" is meaningless if you can't retain the territory. Unless the world is going to stand by and allow Russia to commit genocide of the entirety of the Ukranian population, this will move from a traditional war to a guerilla war. Ukrainians can fight guerilla warfare longer than Putin is going to be alive and able to maintain support of the Russian population. They couldn't conquer Afghanistan drawing from more than double the population.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFG/afghanistan/popula...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072400/population-us-us...

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/UKR/ukraine/population

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population

In the short term, as in right now these days they suffer lack of ammunition.

And if they loose the war, they won't exist at all. Despite Russia having demographic and economic issues too.

Wars aren't decided by pure manpower/materiel, or the US would have won the Vietnam war. It's all about win conditions.

For instance, if Russia loses e.g. 20% of their population then the economy will utterly tank, and if the economy tanks then Putin will lose support for the war and risk falling out of a window.

Ukraine doesn't actually need to win here, they just need to stall the war out for longer than Russia is willing to stay. Russia doesn't need to wipe out Ukraine, they just need to kill Western support of Ukraine and dry up the flow of military aid.

So if Ukraine just needs to stall then why did they go on a counterattack? Because it brings in more military aid now while Russia still has a materiel shortage. If Ukraine has a harsh materiel advantage over Russia then they can push Russian casualty rates far harder and force Putin into political strife much sooner.

Putin crippled the Russian economy by refusing to sell gas to the EU and by extension hurt Russian materiel production, but the tactic makes sense when you consider his win conditions: break Ukraine's western support, so that Russia has a materiel advantage.

>"Russia will soon attack us" rhetoric

I think that's actually Russian propaganda - Russia wants the West afraid to give Ukraine aid, so they play up the nuclear threat every time new milestones in aid are suggested (e.g. when the first F35 is given to Ukraine), then fold the moment the milestone is reached. Russia does this because slowing western aid to Ukraine is vital for their theory of victory.

> I think that's actually Russian propaganda

Not at all. Are you joking? Multiple governments in Europe issued warnings to the population that they should prepare for war. Sweden is even re-opening Cold War era bunkers for the population to hide in case of attacks, and old military bases are re-opening.

But what does "win" mean here? Ukraine clearly is not going to displace Russia, but they can presumably make Russia's occupation expensive and net-negative for several more years at a fraction of their current attrition rate, unless they're forced to the table.

And this seems like a functional loss for Russia. The Eastern provinces Russia holds aren't that valuable in any objective sense. Crimea provides an extremely valuable Black Sea port, but only if Russia can safely keep warships there -- which Russia currently is not able to do. Russia has certainly proven that if they rebuild their entire economy around the goal of holding these assets they can, indeed defend them indefinitely. But they haven't demonstrated that this is worthwhile or sustainable without a very generous peace deal from Ukraine.

>Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany

I‘d argue that refugees, 50% of whom intend to stay, are the reason why EU is the only party to win something from this war. I actively support Ukrainian refugees by giving them some work and talk to people: those who will stay, want to integrate and they offer some relief to the job markets.

"some relief to the job markets."

I agree and have done the same with Syrian refugees.

Oh, yes, Syrians. Danke, Merkel, I found some good IT admins from there.

In Sweden two of my favourite doctors are Syrian refugees, they gave me more humane and personal care than many Swedish doctors I've been to.

My landlord (and by far the best landlord I've had in Sweden) is another refugee doctor, a very laid back Iraqian pulmonologist, to the point I even invite him over to have some beers during summers.

NATO already won; it has expanded and defence commitments are up, and that is besides the renewed raison d’être Russia has leased it.

The US defence industry has seen a minor win, too. It will reap the long-term win of new NATO accessions.

The EU got a wakeup call (not so much a win, but hey) to seek energy independence from belligerent petrostates, so that could be seen as a future win.

I‘m not sure about NATO, at least while Trumpism exists in America. If U.S. voters will think that Europe has to be sacrificed in favor of bilateral Russian-American deal, NATO is effectively as dead as it was pre-war.

U.S.defense industry will also depend on that. If Trump wins and commits to do everything he promised, they will be in a weaker position, loosing foreign markets one by one.

There is a lot of money riding on NATOs continued existence and I think if Trump decides to pull the USA out of NATO he will be in for a rude surprise. Playing with the climate accords was dumb enough and didn't have any immediate impact, if the USA visibly isolates itself from NATO after other countries supporting the USA in various efforts over the last couple of decades then the world as you know it will grind to a very rapid halt and the United States will be the big loser from that unless Trump is reigned in. I would expect him to receive a couple of very pointed reminders of what the consequences of such a move would be. Fortunately even an unhinged TV personality can not single-handedly destroy a country and what it has stood for for the last 70+ years.

Not to nitpick, but trump could singlehandedly destroy the United states in an afternoon. The presidency has absolute control over the use of the nuclear arsenal. One strike on China, in a conflict over Taiwan and the country will be blown to pieces. I don't think that's likely - but one cannot deny it is possible.

Any scenario where anyone throws a nuke means the __world__ will be blown to pieces. That's a different scale of issue.

This is not a serious argument. By the same token, putin or comrade xi can do the same if they feel suicidal.

There are controls in place (or at least on the paper) that prevent a crazy president from running amok with the nukes.

I'd hope that if he would give that order that someone would remove the source of the problem. Not everybody enjoys seeing the world destroyed.

>even an unhinged TV personality can not single-handedly destroy a country and what it has stood for for the last 70+ years.

A war-mongering, propaganda-spewing, dystopian corporate empire beheld entirely to the military-industrial complex and megacorps?

You're right, I don't think he can turn the ship around.

He absolutely can and will destroy the country and what it has stood for. He's already completely corrupted one of the only two viable political parties. They no longer believe in democracy. If Trump or one his sycophants gains office again, America won't be a shining city on the hill, it'll be a toxic waste dump.

Trumpism is an ideology that overgrown its founder: there are members of Congress, governors and other politicians who share his mindset. It is the Republican Party of 2020s, not just an insane businessman, who will throw global security under the bus. All those pointed reminders will mean nothing until it is too late.

Americans being in favor of making a deal with Russia would be proof that psyops works

How do you do that? I've hosted refugees for free, as opposed to locals who've had to pay for hotel stays, but I'm not discriminating against locals when hiring.

How do you "actively support refugees by giving them some work" in a way that's legal, without hiring bias?

E.g. I use cleaning services from a company that employs refugees.

Besides, using only specific recruiting channels to select candidates from certain demographics is not a discrimination. If locals would apply this way, I would consider them, but honestly… In Germany, esp. in Berlin hiring locals? The market is so tight, that by just removing the German language requirement you will find some immigrant faster.

>If locals would apply this way, I would consider them

What way do you mean, how exactly should they apply?

Why are you asking? I have no idea, neither I care about it. If I want to hit a diversity target, I just go to a specific channel, be it some refugee job board, a women in tech community or anything else. If someone unintended sneaks through it, fine, as long as they don’t lie to me.

Was just curios, and wanted to understand what you meant.

I think South Korea does pump out more 155mm shells than most other countries, including US ?

And Europe doesn't order there due to french veto.

If you can not deliver personal, delivery is fine as long as no cannon go hungry.

Ukraine's primary artillery for 155mm shells are the French CAESAR and US M777.

There is no need to fire tens of thousands of shells with this equipment, and no one would ever do that. These shells cost thousands of dollars each.

The upside is that they are incredibly accurate, with an error radius of something like 100m at 25km, using the standard dumb shells. (Things like Excalibur are markedly more accurate, but cost $100k each).

Add in counterbattery radar, and there's just no reason Ukraine would ever need to fire 25,000 shells a day like Russia does.

Clearly Ukraine needs more 155mm ammunition, but there's no reason to directly compare the numbers of shells launched by Russia and Ukraine.

Also Archer, Pzh2000 and FH155/FH70.

Congratulations for picking with 155mm shells one of the few items that Europe has far outproduced the US with an estimated capacity of 650k shells/year pre war and a ramped up actual production to 1 mill/year in the next few months.

Artillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war; I would expect more air force being put in play if the conflict escalated into the rest of europe.

Even though Russia has got the bigger air force on paper (https://rlist.io/l/european-countries-with-the-largest-air-f...).

> [artillery shells] which for some reason has become the main tool

Because Soviet (and ex-Soviet) armies were heavily built around massive numbers of lower-trained conscripts.

It's difficult to conduct maneuver warfare without highly trained troops.

It's a lot easier to throw a lot of artillery at the problem.

> Conscript reporting. Da!

> Artillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war

The reason is that neither side has air supremacy. Ukrainian AA defense is good enough to keep the Russians at bay, but Russian AA defense is also good enough to prevent Ukrainians from taking out their frontline defenses.

So with classic air forces being all but taken out, the only way either side can make progress is by using tanks and artillery.

Can’t we give Ukraine HARMs?

The USA seems unable to give any more support due to political deadlock.

It definitely could provide much more to Ukraine if both parties were aligned to the common cause of sustaining America's hegemony by being a reliable ally, right now there's one party which the whole ideology centers on going against whatever the other party does and/or supports. Even if that means allowing Putin's Russia to gain more power and influence.

I don't think the vast majority of Americans understand the long-term consequences of allowing the USA to become unreliable to its closest partners (the West in general). You will be feeling this over the next few decades, America's soft power is waning.

> It definitely could provide much more to Ukraine if both parties were aligned to the common cause of sustaining America's hegemony by being a reliable ally, right now there's one party which the whole ideology centers on going against whatever the other party does and/or supports. Even if that means allowing Putin's Russia to gain more power and influence.

It's even worse. The 45th is actively calling for Russia to take what they want.

You have already done that. [0] They don't seem to work too well. [1]

[0] https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/missile-defense-weapo...

[1] https://www.eurasiantimes.com/hamrless-missiles-us-supplied-...

We gave them nerfed HARMs that can't properly integrate with their soviet planes, and they have zero SEAD training. HARMs aren't magic, without the strategy and training required for good SEAD, they won't do much. Things may improve when the F-16s start flying since those are properly integrated and capable SEAD platforms.

"Things may improve when the F-16s start flying"

This could only end with tactical nukes starting flying and with the strategic ones if the US attacks Russia. Things won't 'improve' no matter what happens.

Putin is done for in those scenarios. He doesn't look the type to fall on his sword.

In which scenario he isn't done for if the US keeps escalating?

I think Putin can find a way to exit the Ukraine and define that as a success if he wants to. But he still thinks he has a chance to win on the battlefield, so he has no motivation to do that.

How can he exit if Zelensky's goal is to retake Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk?

Hopefully we are about to find out.

That's wishful thinking.

He lied about why the Russian army is in Ukraine and Russians bought it.

He can lie about why the Russian army is leaving Ukraine and Russians will buy it.

He can stop this war at any moment.

Just like the US can stop this war at any moment by dropping support for Ukraine and pressuring them to negotiate. Or can't they?

Oh, moving the goal post uh ? Pretty weak game you show here.

> Just like the US can stop this war at any moment by dropping support for Ukraine and pressuring them to negotiate.

Just like So you admit Putin could stop the war at any moment ? Good. Why don't you petition for that ? (oh wait, what happened to that guy that submission is about and who wasn't completely on board with Putin's leadership ?)

What prevents him from stopping this war anyway ? Why won't he ? What terrible outcome would he or Russia face if he just declared "okay, we showed the world we ain't no pushovers, we are now confident Ukraine and NATO won't try to invade us because we showed them how strong we are" ?

Anyway, that Putin guy has made it pretty clear he wants to knock off all of Ukraine. Only Russian shills and useful idiots believe otherwise. But that's not what you are, aren't you ?

Putin can back down no more than Biden can.

Return to 2014 borders.

Done.

Putin will be done if he tries to abandon people of Crimea.

"According to Tamila Tasheva, Zelensky’s representative in Crimea, if it were liberated tomorrow, at least 200,000 residents of Crimea would face collaboration charges, and another 500,000 to 800,000 residents would face deportation. Refat Chubarov, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, says that more than 1 million people—more than half the current population—will have to leave “immediately.” "

[0] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/18/ukraine-russia-war-civi...

Oh no, how terrible, all the Russian colonists who moved in after the annexation would have to leave, and collaborators would face justice.

In 2014 approximately 1.5 million Crimeans were ethnic Russians. In 2021 census there were about 200 thousand more. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea#Ethnici...

Kremlin has said multiple times, that use of western weapons against targets on Russian soil will be escalation and they will target NATO bases.

There have been multiple strikes using western weapons on Russian soil... with zero response. One of the most recent being shooting down an Il-76 near Belgorod.

The problem, at least according to that article and to pictures and videos of shot down HARMs, isn't really the integration. The problem is that Russian AA systems can defend themselves passively using IR or optical sensors, and are highly mobile. Basically, a pure antiradiation missile would only work if the crew of the air defence system makes a mistake or runs out of missiles.

The other issue is that merely because you did get that radar to turn off, doesn't mean that the launching aircraft is safe. Russia (and Ukraine as well) has a true IADS, so it's very risky to get within position to launch the HARM in the first place, let alone stay in position long enough to actually use your sensor package and give more capability to your missile.

Besides, Ukraine had Soviet antiradiation missiles that are extremely similar to the HARMs and that are integrated into their airframes. They weren't hugely effective.

How is an F-16 going to get close enough to Russian SAMs to be able to fly a conventional SEAD mission anyways? The traditional US way of using them is to jam enemy radars while flying F-16s as a wild weasel. The F-16 itself is not a capable SEAD platform - it needs and entire package with EW aircraft and air superiority fighters to defend them.

Besides, the problem in Ukraine is that Ukraine just can't fly even close to the frontline, and can't fly high. That's not just due to air defences - Ukraine used to be able to do this until Russia started using their extremely long range air to air missiles.

Ukrainan Air Force has HARMs, but they are VERY limited in their capabilities due to them being employed from soviet-era jets. Basically area where target resides have to be pre-programmed on the ground, rocket then flies to that area and lock on any radar it finds there. But what previous commenter missed is that even if Russian air defenses are suppressed, their planes outclass Ukrainian ones. For example, air to air missiles that UAF has available need to be guided by planes radar all the way through, also that missiles have shorter range than something like R-37, which is fire and forget with VERY high range. Western air to air missiles are much better than what Ukraine has right now, but they can't be fired from Su-27 or MiG-29, they require something like F-16 or Gripen, but while a bunch of European countries agreed to transfer them, Ukrainian pilots and ground crews don't know how to operate them, and need to be trained, which happens right now. If there were trained beforehand it would've changed current situation on the front lines VERY significantly.

What happened to the F16s, Ukraine was promised?

F16s will arrive this spring, but Soviet AA was designed to contain them. None of the expert observers seems to consider F16s a gamechanger on the battlefield right now.

Soviet AA isn't even the biggest threat - As many Ukrainian pilots put it, the main threat is the R-37M. You can at least fly low and out of the way to defend against SAMs, but without a missile like the Meteor there is no answer to the combination of long range SAMs and R-37M carrying fighters.

Basically the problem is that to avoid AA you have to fly low or far from the front lines. If you fly low, you can't give enough energy to your missile to threaten even just Russian bombers.

If you fly high but far away, there is no way to deal with Russian planes carrying R-37s that will be able to fire their missiles far before you.

The only way to even the playing field would be to give Ukraine modern Gripens with the Meteor missile, as the F-16 cannot fire the Meteor.

> as the F-16 cannot fire the Meteor.

To be fair, the MiG’s Ukraine does have were not supposed to be capable of firing storm shadows either.

But that problem got resolved, and they are now firing them well outside the expected operational envelope and scoring solid hits.

Not really. The Storm Shadows are programmed externally, the plane just gives the signal to fire.

For the Meteor you would need deep integration into the fire control system, and even into the data links to be able to use it's range as the F-16 radar is not powerful enough.

If it was easy to do, MBDA would have done it and made a lot of money that way.

F-16s are not much better than the Su-27s and MiG-29s the Ukrainians had in droves. They will not be able to face combined Russian GBAD+CAP.

Their role will most likely be to fly far behind the frontlines and fire NATO weapons Ukraine's airframes can't.

Stalin called artillery the god of war. Ranged surface-to-surface weapons are the antithesis of close combat, and whoever has the systems with the highest range and military effectiveness can clear the way ahead of physical occupation until political or economic forces compel suing for a negotiated cessation of hostilities.

While Ukraine is training F-16 pilots, this will take a lot of time and money to achieve and sustain, and is vulnerable to parts supply chain issues, maintenance program sophistication gaps, and puts expensive-to-train pilots at risk of loss by being shot down. Vipers will barely move the needle on the course of the current conflict, but will enable Ukraine to defend its territory and airspace without direct NATO intervention.

The domestic Ukraine drone and missile industry is another leg of the table on which Ukraine will advance and sustain self-defense by striking strategic Russian military logistics, naval, army, and air force targets.

> Even though Russia has got the bigger air force

Russia's military is barely functional due to corruption and complacent reliance on being a nuclear superpower. The % of operational jets is barely enough to sustain territorial defense much less a sustained "special military operation". Russia's air assets total 3000 pieces of equipment but with only 7 regular air bases close enough to launch strikes and could only muster around 250 operational strike aircraft given the limitations on maintenance, storage, and the few pilots.

185 fighters

264 attack aircraft

415 multirole

119 bombers

1000+ helicopters

1000 transport

177 others (EW, a few tankers, c3)

https://youtu.be/geSvbR9io3c

Because Ukraine lacks military aircraft, but got reasonable AA. We're partially back to WW1 there.

US also right now possesses the largest stash of 155 munition. Small fraction of that trove would've save Avdiivka.

Yep. And the so-called "aid to Ukraine", 80% of it would be spent within the US on current stockpiles and new equipment. It's curious that the US military-industrial complex isn't falling all over itself attempting to send Ukraine lots of expensive gear and supplies it didn't even ask for. I guess there are too many Putin sympathizers in US political circles able to buy, engineer, and install influence.

> It's curious that the US military-industrial complex isn't falling all over itself attempting to send Ukraine lots of expensive gear and supplies it didn't even ask for. I guess there are too many Putin sympathizers in US political circles able to buy, engineer, and install influence

That's an absurd premise. That gets endlessly repeated on Reddit and elsewhere with absolutely zero proof. If so much of the US Government (the world's richest nation and the only superpower) is purchased by a weak and poor enemy nation (Russia), where's the proof of that? Not supporting a war isn't proof. So a US politician against the Israeli war is bought and paid for by Hamas or Iran? It's laughable and quite obviously so. Nobody would dare float that premise, but somehow for Ukraine it's the go to propaganda.

Why isn't the Biden DOJ + FBI + CIA + FBI + NSA running a large sting operation against all these bought and paid for US politicians that Russia owns? Because it doesn't exist. It'd be a huge win for the Biden Admin to bring those people down and get them arrested. And yet, crickets.

All you really have are US politicians that are opposite of Biden looking to jab him any way they can, because it's a partisan battle and they're looking to score points. It's no more complicated than that. They're taking up position opposite of Biden.

And with the military industrial complex, the issue is nobody is paying for that gear. Ukraine is a hyper poor nation, they are barely surviving. Anything advanced has to get Biden Admin and or Congressional approval. Ukraine isn't getting the very best US weapons (eg F35s) and should not.

North Korea was ready...

Good thing Bulgaria is able to supply Ukraine with plenty of 152mm shells for their old soviet artillery.

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