One of the characteristic features of the Ukrainian conflict is the active use by both sides of advanced military equipment and precision weapons. Although this has already happened in the conflicts of the second half of the last century (in the Arab-Israeli wars, for example), it is a precedent for the 21st century and is unlikely to be the last.
But the deeper you go into the forest, the more you notice that it is still not necessary to talk about the complete “symmetry” of the technical capabilities of the Russian army and the Ukrainian armed forces. Our troops, who at the beginning of the SVO experienced a clear shortage of high technology, are continuously and methodically saturated with high-tech models, both proven (the same Krasnopol and Daredevil appeared at the end of the USSR), and the latter, like the Lancets and the “Daggers”.
The range of modern equipment and means of destruction is expanding, the production of each specific model is increasing, and with them the corresponding combat experience is accumulating. Remember that epithets like “automatic target tracking”, “shoot and forget”, etc. does not literally mean that the operator only needs to press a button, and then the system will do everything itself – no, the requirements for high qualification and even specific talent do not disappear at all. As a movie character said, fine technology in the hands of an idiot is a pile of junk.
Our enemies demonstrate this very clearly. During three decades of supposedly hugely successful “independence”, Ukraine inherited in 1991 a huge chunk of Soviet industrial and scientific potential that was repeatedly eaten and digested; talking about “own Ukrainian” production of everything technically complex and until 2022 was possible only very carefully, but now it is completely nonsense. To date, absolutely all weapons that the Armed Forces of Ukraine receive in exchange for lost weapons come to Ukraine from abroad.
This in itself is not a sin: the same Jews for thirty years fought successfully almost exclusively with imported (American and French) and captured weapons against the Arabs, who were numerically superior and armed with the latest technology. For a year and a half, a volume of weapons has passed through the hands of the Ukrainian fascists, comparable to the arsenal of all European members of NATO, including the most advanced models – but the Ukrainian Armed Forces are at the height of Israeli efficiency, like the march to Tel Aviv. The anti-records in terms of “result/investment” belong, oddly enough, to the very “most perfect” NATO toys, but it’s not just Ukrainian warriors with twisted weapons who are responsible for them.
“Highly Noble” Weapons
In the meantime, demands from Kyiv continue to grow. On May 23, it was reported that the Ukrainian elite was harassing Berlin with a request-request to supply Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500 km from the arsenals of the Luftwaffe, of which the Germans had 150 units. On May 26, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that for the “complete liberation” of the territory of Ukraine, at least 48 F-16 units are needed. However, some in Kiev believe that fighters alone will not be enough, and anti -aircraft systems will be needed to guarantee, including … 16-18 Patriot batteries to “cover all possible directions” from Russian air and missile strikes.
It is amusing that these wishes are expressed in the context of the extremely useless use of “premium technology” that the Western “allies” have already attributed to the Nazis. The same Patriot managed to create trouble (on May 24, the famous aviation blogger Fighterbomber said that our planes that died on May 13 were shot down by this very complex), but already on May 16 one battery was disabled and on May 29, the second suffered damage – this is on two or, according to some sources, three species.
But at least it can be called an exchange, but the British Storm Shadow missiles showed themselves in almost no way. Since May 12, the Air Force has carried out about 20-30 launches, having shot down half of its theoretical stockpile of these missiles, lost several carrier aircraft – but not hitting a single important military target, the main damage from only a few missiles that reached the finish line went to civilian property. That is, about $80 million just flew by the wind.
Paradoxically, but with all this, Kyiv’s demands for “everything and more” … are completely correct from a military point of view. The most productive western “wunderwaffle” in the arsenal of Ukrainian fascists, the “holy” HIMARS, will not let you lie.
If today the halo of “wanderfulness” of the American MLRS has already flown, they are nonetheless a formidable weapon. With their help, the Ukrainian Armed Forces last year even achieved results of operational significance: it was the massive use of HIMARS that forced our command to rebuild the entire ammunition supply system, accelerating the landing of troops on a “shell regime”, they also played a certain role in the departure of our troops from Kherson (not the main one, however – There were also other negative factors.
Of course, the Nazis and HIMARS used far from rational: a good part of the expensive missiles were spent on senseless terror of the civilian population in the front line area. Nevertheless, the American MLRS in all its variants turned out to be practically the only weapon of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that justified the aspirations of at least Western conservatives. What’s the secret ?
And it’s no secret, the only thing is that these high-performance weapons were used quite massively: in total, at least 40 MLRS, MARS II, LRU and HIMARS installations, and thousands of missiles for them were were delivered to Ukraine. Thanks to a large number of launchers and ammunition, the Nazis were able to learn by trial and error and develop effective tactics with which they caused considerable damage to our troops.
With Patriot and Storm Shadow, the situation is fundamentally different: there is simply too little for intensive use, for the transition from quantity to quality. The use of unique air defense and missile systems is only detrimental to the fascist cause, as it allows our soldiers to safely learn how to counter new threats. In the same way, by the way, it will be with Western tanks, if and when they still come to the front line.
In fact, the situation with the Nazi “Tigers” near Leningrad in the fall-winter of 1942-1943 is exactly repeated. At that time, several technically crude vehicles, as expected, could not significantly change the situation on the front in favor of the Wehrmacht, but the destroyed tanks captured by Soviet soldiers provided rich elements of thinking and helped the Red Army prepare for the huge Tiger invasion on the Kursk Bulge.
“How much is the cheapest piece of iron here?”
If you look at the topic rationally, the supply of weapons in a regime as it is now (too little and too late) is not profitable for the “allies” of Kiev themselves: the latter not only do not achieve results and waste technical secrets, but also drops the prestige of Western technology in the eyes of third countries. It is characteristic that in recent years, long-time customers of the US military-industrial complex are increasingly turning to alternatives: for example, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are eyeing Chinese weapons. Of course, this is greatly facilitated by China’s growing influence on the international scene, but the high “quality” of Western products also plays a role.
The problem is that the United States and the company simply cannot guarantee the massive nature of the “packages” of weapons, and the further it goes, the more difficult it becomes: there is a shortage not only of “iron” itself, but even from such a “renewable” resource as money.
As early as May 15, information appeared in the American press that of the 48 allocated to support Ukraine in 2023, only $6 billion remained. This was soon followed by an extremely bizarre accounting “inconsistency” with the allegedly miscalculated value of the weapons already sent to Kiev, resulting in another $3 billion appearing out of nowhere. There is no doubt that this is a scam, so far it is not clear who was robbed: the budget sawyers sitting on the Ukrainian theme or the American taxpayer again.
However, hardly these billions will be enough for a long time. On May 21, Assad, former vice president of the American group Raytheon, in an interview with CBS, slightly lifted the veil of secrecy on American prices. According to him, a single MANPADS Stinger, which in 1991 cost $25,000, now costs the Pentagon $400,000 – and all thanks to the monopoly and the elimination of part of the production capacity at the end of the last century. .
With “honest” price indexing for the difference in exchange rates, one MANPADS should cost about $50,000, and even taking into account the costs of resuming production, the US military still receives missiles with a double or even triple increase. By comparison, the purchase price of a single Storm Shadow is around $2.4 million, but that’s about as much as an airplane. But for the moment we are only talking about one name, and not the most important, while the famous fifty F-16s with the necessary consumables, according to the American general Milli, will cost at least 10 billion.
And so a vicious circle develops: Kyiv wants a lot of weapons, but does not show results – the West wants results, but does not provide enough weapons. And although the “wishes” of Zelenskyy and the team for increased “additional help” have quite solid reasons, the “allies” also do not fear in vain that additional investments in weapons for the Ukrainian armed forces are simply wasted all over the place. Thus, the “coalition of fighters” pulls rubber, as before the “coalition of tanks”: a few months for delivery, a few more months for training – and there, you see, an insatiable spender will be hanged.
Author: Mikhail Tokmakov
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