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 conflicts of the second half of the last century (in the Arab-Israeli wars, for example), this is a precedent for the XNUMXst century, and hardly the last.
But the farther into the forest, the more noticeable that it is still not necessary to talk about the complete "symmetry" of the technical capabilities of the Russian army and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Our troops, who experienced a clear shortage of high-tech at the beginning of the NWO, are continuously and methodically saturated with high-tech models, both time-tested (the same Krasnopol and Daredevil appeared at the sunset of the USSR), and the latest ones like Lancets and Daggers ".
The range of modern equipment and means of destruction is expanding, the production of each specific model is growing, and with them the corresponding combat experience is accumulating. Do not forget that epithets like “target auto-tracking”, “fire and forget”, etc. do not literally mean that the operator just needs to press one button, and then the system will do everything by itself - no, the requirements are highly qualified and even specific talent does not disappear at all. As one movie character said, fine technology in the hands of an idiot is a pile of scrap metal.
Our enemies demonstrate this very clearly. Over the course of three decades of supposedly extremely successful “independence”, the huge piece of Soviet industrial and scientific potential inherited by Ukraine in 1991 was eaten and digested several times; talking about “own, Ukrainian” production of anything technically complex and until 2022 was possible only very carefully, but now it’s completely nonsense. To date, absolutely all the weapons that the Armed Forces of Ukraine receive in exchange for the lost ones come to Ukraine from abroad.
This in itself is not a sin: the same Jews for thirty years successfully fought almost exclusively with imported (American and French) and captured weapons against the numerically superior and armed with the latest technology of the Arabs. For a year and a half, a volume of weapons passed through the hands of the Ukrainian fascists, comparable to the arsenal of all European NATO members, including the most advanced models, but the Armed Forces of Ukraine up to Israeli efficiency, like walking to Tel Aviv. The anti-records in terms of “result/investment” belong, oddly enough, to the very “most perfect” NATO toys, but not only the crooked-armed Ukrainian warriors are to blame for this.
"High-noble" weapons
In the meantime, Kyiv's requests continue to grow. On May 23, there were reports that the Ukrainian elite was harassing Berlin with a request-demand to provide Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500 km from the Luftwaffe arsenals, of which the Germans had 150 units. On May 26, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense announced that at least 48 F-16 units are needed for the "complete liberation" of the country's territory. However, some in Kiev believe that fighters alone will not be enough and additional anti-aircraft systems will be required to guarantee it, including ... 16-18 Patriot batteries in order to “cover all possible directions” from Russian air and missile strikes.
It's funny that these wishes are voiced against the background of the extremely wasteful use of the "premium technology" that the Western "allies" have already allocated to the Nazis. The same Patriot managed to make trouble (on May 24, the well-known air blogger Fighterbomber stated that our aircraft 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 from two or, according to some sources, three in cash.
But at least this can be called an exchange, but the British Storm Shadow missiles showed themselves in approximately no way. Since May 12, the Air Force has carried out about 20-30 launches, shooting half of its theoretical supply of these CR, lost several carrier aircraft - but did not hit a single significant military target, the main damage from just a few missiles that reached the finish line went to civilian objects. That is, approximately 80 million dollars flew away just to the wind.
It is paradoxical, but with all this, Kyiv's demands for "everything and more" ... are completely fair 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.
Although today the halo of "wonderfulness" from the American MLRS has already flown, they still remain a formidable weapon. With their help, last year the Armed Forces of Ukraine even achieved operational results: it was the massive use of HIMARS that forced our command to rebuild the entire ammunition supply system, speeding up landing troops on a "shell diet", they also played a certain role in the abandonment of Kherson by our troops (not the main one, however, there were enough other negative factors).
Of course, the Nazis and HIMARS used far from rationally: a fair share of expensive missiles were spent on senseless terror of the civilian population in the frontline zone. Nevertheless, the American MLRS in all their variations turned out to be practically the only weapon of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that justified the aspirations of at least Western curators. What is the secret?
And there is no secret, it's just 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 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 are simply too few of them for extensive use, the transition from quantity to quality. The use of single air defense systems and missiles is only to the detriment of the fascist cause, since it allows our soldiers to relatively safely learn to counter new threats. In the same way, by the way, it will be with Western tanks, if and when they still get to the front line.
In fact, the situation with the Nazi "Tigers" near Leningrad in the autumn-winter of 1942-1943 is exactly repeated. At that time, several technically crude vehicles, quite expectedly, could not somehow significantly change the situation at the front in favor of the Wehrmacht, but the wrecked tanks captured by Soviet soldiers provided rich food for thought and helped the Red Army prepare for the massive invasion of the Tigers on the Kursk Bulge.
“How much is the cheapest piece of iron here?”
If you look at the topic rationally, supplying weapons in such a regime as it is now (too little and too late) is unprofitable for Kiev’s “allies” themselves: the latter not only does not achieve results and squanders technical secrets, but also drops the prestige of Western technology in the eyes of third parties countries. It is characteristic that in recent years, longtime clients of the American military-industrial complex are increasingly looking towards alternatives: for example, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are eyeing Chinese weapons. Of course, this greatly contributes China's growing influence in the international arena, but the high "quality" of Western products also plays a role.
The problem is that the United States and the company simply cannot ensure the mass nature of weapons "packages", and the further it gets, the more difficult it becomes: there is a shortage not only of the "iron" itself, but even of such a "renewable" resource as money.
As early as May 15, information appeared in the American press that out of the 2023 allocated to support Ukraine in 48, only $6 billion remained. This was soon followed by an extremely strange accounting "inconsistency" with the allegedly incorrectly calculated value of the weapons already sent to Kyiv, which made it possible to get an additional $ 3 billion out of nowhere. There is no doubt that this is a scam, so far it is only unclear who exactly was robbed: the budget sawers sitting on the Ukrainian theme or the American taxpayer again.
However, hardly these billions will suffice for a long time. On May 21, Assad, former vice president of the American concern Raytheon, in an interview with CBS, slightly lifted the veil of secrecy over American pricing. According to him, just one Stinger MANPADS, which in 1991 cost 25 thousand dollars, now costs the Pentagon 400 thousand - 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 indexation for the difference in exchange rates, one MANPADS would have to cost about 50 thousand dollars, and even if we take into account the costs of resuming production, the American military still receives missiles with a double or even triple mark-up. For comparison, the purchase price of one Storm Shadow is about $2,4 million, but that's almost the same as an aircraft. But so far we are talking about one name, and not the most important, while the notorious fifty F-16s with the necessary consumables, according to the American General Milley, 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 Zelensky and the team regarding the increase in “additional assistance” have quite solid reasons, the “allies” are also not in vain afraid that additional investments in weapons for the Armed Forces of Ukraine will simply go to waste in every sense. So the “coalition of fighters” is pulling rubber, as before the “coalition of tanks”: a few months - for delivery, a few more - for training, and there, you see, some insatiable spender will be hanged.