Ukraine knew how to use it and has the expertise to support it
Not necessarily. There’s a reason they needed training for those old tanks. Germany having to grab some random 60 year old civvies to give the training because it was all rotting away in warehouses exemplifies that nobody wanted to use that stuff anymore and we were glad to ditch it. There’s also plenty of old British and French tanks being used in Ukraine right now.
You are right there is stuff that the Ukrainians had before. But that’s also the problem. We didn’t want that cold war stuff ourselves, we already upgraded from it.
But when it comes to giving Ukraine our modern new equipment we got all stingy about it. It’s not just F16’s. No Reaper Drones, No modern tanks, even the anti air missiles are often old stuff. But we have new stuff! We just don’t want to give it to Ukraine because then “we have nothing to defend ourselves”.
Only recently have we really committed to giving Ukraine some newer weapons. But it’s likely already too late now.
The m1a1 is still a modern thank. It’s better than anything the Russians have. We gave them the patriot. Our current air defense system. What’s newer than the patriot? What’s newer than the stinger or javelin ?
You keep saying things that aren’t true. We are not giving them garbage. We are giving them things they can use and are still better than the Russian crap they have.
We did give them a lot of Russian gear because they didn’t need training to use it. We won’t give them certain weapons because they are restricted and only for countries we’ve vetted.
The patriot stuff is fine. But it took more than one year for Ukraine to get the first ones. Same with the M1A1 tanks
Ukraine got some good weapons. I’m just saying that especially at the start of the war we were very much just dumping old garbage into Ukraine. If we didn’t do a bureaucratic stall for 1-2 years and didn’t allow Putin to get a war economy going but decisively sent modern weapons to Ukaine, Ukraine would have won by now. Russia did not have a good weapons arsenal at the start of the war.
But we did not do that and turned the war into a stall fest. Just barely giving Ukraine enough equipment to hold out while bleeding manpower. Zelensky had to regularly go on trips around the world asking for some modern weaponry.
And now we are finally getting them some new stuff but it’s getting real obvious that it’s just too little too late.
I’m not sure you understand how military equipment works. You. Can’t just hand someone an f16 and say happy hunting. Also Ukraine isn’t vetted for the technology. You act like they some trusted ally.
Ukraine at the time didn’t have a runaway that the F-16 could even use reliably. They didn’t have trained pilots. They didn’t have trained staff to maintain it. They didn’t have the equipment to maintain an f-16.
That’s why we gave them Soviet hardware.
Ukraine doesn’t have the skills to maintain an m1. They didn’t know how to operate one and we didn’t want our best technology falling into Russian hands. When an m1 breaks and we can’t keep control of it. We blow them.
Trump was the first to arm them and sent javelins. What do you think is better than the javelin in our arsenal?
What is better than the patriot?
It’s Zelenskyy job to ask for things but it’s our military job to give them what they can use. It’s also our job to make sure our country and countries with treaties are protected. We don’t have a treaty with Ukraine. Thei corruption in Ukraine is epic.
I support Ukraine but I don’t support just handing over anything they want but can’t use. You need the logistics to support the equipment. You need the know how to use the equipment.
We taught them how to use it and then they did the exact opposite in the counter offensive and made no progress. They didn’t want to use nato tactics which is how you fight with nato equipment
