The US has mostly donated their obsolete weapons that were going to be decommissioned anyway. While expensive, they would’ve otherwise cost the US money to decommission instead.
Are you referring to ATACMS, Hi-Mars, M777's and M1 Abrams, the backbone of the US military and many of its allies? The materiel currently used all over the world? That 'obsolete' heavy weaponry?[0]
Or is it the thousands of Javelins that annihilated the Russian tank columns so that the Russians are currently mounting assaults in Chinese golf carts?[1]
There were only a few M1s given. MANY more M1s were used against the Iraqi Army!
The stream of weapons has been more of a trickle of weapons. The Javelins have good PR with the nice Saint Javelin but the British-Swedish N-LAWs are wicked and the tens of thousands of the Bofors AT4 did a lot of the initial grunt work.
There is no proper replacement for ATACMS yet. At the projected rate of production for the new replacement missile, a years worth would last about a couple weeks of usage in a serious conflict. ATACMS are still 100% valuable to the US.
> A total of 110 PrSMs are expected to be procured in fiscal 2024 and 190 in fiscal 2025, Inside Defense wrote, citing the Department of Defense documents.
What did we replace "legacy" ATACMS with we could use in a war today? PrSM?
In November 2023, the Army delivered the first four Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) as an early operational capability (EOC). The Army shot two PrSM EOC missiles at a maritime target in June 2024. Between November 2023 and August 2024, the Army executed three production qualification test (PQT) events. The Army intends to complete a limited user test (LUT) with the fifth PQT test event in 1QFY25 and the remaining four planned PQT test events by 3QFY25.
Not to mention that maintaining M1s must be a nightmare.
The Ukrainians seem to prefer the Bushmasters. This kind of makes sense, given it seems a lot of what Ukraine is doing is guerrilla warfare then equipment that is easily serviceable likely is more useful.
ATACMS... The ones Biden reluctantly donated after Ukraine begged for them because they can strike deeper behind the frontlines and inside Russian territory? They may be an older platform but they appear to be highly desirable and still brought out for juicy targets.
It was 31 M1s donated, last time I looked. And they survived a helluva lot longer against the droneless Iraqi Army, which helps explain the low number. A $500 drone can ignite a $5M tank. Drones have changed the calculus of tank warfare.
Maybe the AT4 and NLAW didn't have the same effectiveness of Javelin? The Javelin has had a pretty good PR campaign with it's point and destroy videos.
>A $500 drone can ignite a $5M tank. Drones have changed the calculus of tank warfare.
No. What you see in Ukraine is the 20th century war with some drones. Active defense system can take out RPG and anti-tank missile. It can easily take out a much slower moving drone. Unfortunately, the Western tanks and IFVs came to Ukraine without ADS (and many even without reactive armor). And for whatever reason Ukraine was pretty slow to put passive drone defenses onto the armor - you can see on the videos of the Ukrainian 2023 counter-offensive that the Western tanks and IVF are mostly "naked", just the bare base armor.
There are stories - videos - from recent decade how tanks correctly "dressed up" with passive defenses and reactive armor would survive direct hits from Javelin, RPG, etc., in some cases it would even survive multiple hits from RPG. And active defense system is a huge step up even from that.
If anything, with the next generation of active defense systems being able to shoot down even incoming artillery/tank gun round, the tanks will continue to rule the battlefield, especially in autonomous version.
If you've been watching the war you'll notice that tanks are largely absent from battle these days. Russia had thousands more tanks than Ukraine 3 years ago, and now is scrounging the last of its inventory leftover from WWII.
The Super Tank™ you've described sounds cool, though. Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?
watch the videos from the war - the tanks are mostly without ADS, and the ADS that Russia has is really a crappy one. You can also watch videos how soldiers shoot down the drones with shotgun or just using some stick/stone. Drones are much easier to shoot down than RPG, and nobody has been able to shoot down RPG with shotgun (a great baseball player probably would be able with some non-zero probability to bat an RPG out though).
>Can Ukraine order 1000 of the upgraded version with lasers for Spring delivery?
No. Even the existing ADS with shrapnel warheads are not sold to Ukraine.
No navy would deploy a battleship today, no matter how good an anti-missile system it had. Only needs to miss one, and battleships just cost way way more than even a thousand missiles. Plus ballistic artillery just isn’t that useful compared to what a drone or cruise missle can do.
What's the cost of all your whizzbang technology? Does it cost $10M or $20M per tank to make? And how quickly are they produced? Maybe 1-2 per month? And how many years does it take to modify or improve them?
Now compare that to the hundreds of thousands of drones manufactured every month for far less and adapted monthly.
We've already seen mothership drones used in Ukraine.[0] How long do you think it will be until we see fire and forget multiple attack baby drones that overwhelm any whizzbang ADS? 6 months, a year? As the old saying goes: quantity has a quality all it's own.
A man-portable, fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile system before its expiration date is still a man-portable, fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile system.
It is however not worth as much to the US than a man-portable, fire-and-forge anti-tank guided missile system that they won't have to replace for much longer.
"How dare you refer to our weapons designed to fight in eastern europe against Russia. We need those weapons in the USA in case we have to.. fight... in eastern europe... against... russia?"
US never wanted to fight Russia directly as it would mean nuclear escalation.
US needs somewhat strong Russia as a scarecrow for Europe and everyone else in the world, so that people would join NATO and pay 4% of GDP to the American military industrial complex: Lockheed Raytheon and friends.
The goal is to scare people and force them to shell out dough for overpriced US weapons.
If Russia becomes too weak, there are two risks:
1. Nuclear/Biowarfare proliferation due to instability inside RU
2. Europe won't spend a dime procuring US weapons because Russia would not be a threat anymore
3. China can increase influence in Russia
so American goal is to keep somewhat stable Russia and force EU to shell dough on US weapons. Thats the racket, everything else is a distraction
Having stockpiles of obsolete weapons to give away is a byproduct of having funded our military for decades. If other NATO countries were doing likewise they, too, would have stockpiles of obsolete weapons to give away.
The fact that it's just the US doing this is indicative of the overall military posture of the EU. It's reasonable to question whether they are prepared to do their part to defend themselves should Russia penetrate further west.
Plenty of european countries have given both stockpiles and modern weapons.
As an example sweden has given Strv-122, CV90, Archer, Saab 340 AEW&C and has offered Gripen fighter jet (but Gripen has been blocked by US/France). All of those are up to date weaponry, and besides that much from older stockpiles has been given.
That's just one example from one small country with less people than one city in the US.
This has very long term repercussions for the US. No-one is making the mistake of using a US jet engine in their design again and getting export controls because of that. Already plans are evaluated for switching to an upgraded Volvo RM12 or something from Rolls-Royce.
The same scenes must be playing out in various industries across Europe and the rest of the world. Such wheels turn very slowly, but they now turn away from the US defense industry.
Certainly a world where NATO countries spend <2% of their budget on defence but the shiny new weaponry all comes from US contractors doesn't seem obviously more helpful than one where they're targeting 3% spend but making a point of building domestic industries or buying from pan-European projects.
Plenty of NATO members already build and buy from non-US sources. France basically made it a principle because of their historic fence-sitting NATO policy, Sweden mostly builds its own (but licenses parts from US/UK like fighter engines), other countries are buying artillery or tanks from south korea, etc. The US itself buys anti-tank weapons and riverine patrol boats from sweden, dutch rifles, german handguns and much more.
"but the shiny new weaponry all comes from US contractors" is not true.
It is true that the US has spent far more on it's military and made it far more global than any other country. It is also true that the US acted as a guarantor for west Europes security for most of the last 70 years and that should not be understated. That era seems to have come to an end.
I'm not suggesting the US has ever been literally the only NATO member supplying arms. I'm suggesting US companies have gone from the top of the list for a lot of procurement contracts to the bottom.
Yeah! Just from Czech Republic - our old Mi-24 are shooting down Shahed drones daily, some of the first tan shipments were czech t-72s, we sent our old Kub SAM bateries, Vampire MRLS, BMPs, etc.
