Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
That's something, but those are probably towed systems, which are more vulnerable to counter-battery fire than mobile systems. The Soviets have a huge numerical superiority in artillery. The Ukrainians have been so far been quite successful with hit-and-run attacks. SPAAGs or MLRS would lend themselves much better to said tactics than static tube artillery.
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Ukraine already has more self-propelled artillery than the United States (over 1000 combined units of Gvozdika, Akatsiya, Giatsint-S, Pion, and Msta-S compared to 850 Paladin), and a little less than half as many MLRS (450+ Grad, ~75 Uragan and 75 Smerch [around 600 launchers total] to 500 HIMARS and ~1000 M270A1 MLRS). It would probably be more helpful to offer replacements to allies that can send Soviet/Russian-caliber weaponry to Ukraine, like Czech Republic sending Dana artillery vehicles and RM-70 rocket launchers, to keep Ukraine's logistics from spiraling out of control with a bunch of incompatible ammunition types.
Other allies might send self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, but the US doesn't really have any. I suppose we could send Avenger, but Ukraine already has Gecko and Gopher in the short-range self-propelled anti-aircraft missile world, along with however many Stormer vehicles the UK ends up sending.
Supplying vehicles ends up raising a number of questions, some of which are likely relatively simple concerns, but some of which could be real problems in the middle of a shooting war:
1. How easy are they to operate by soldiers who aren't literate in English? Can all the labels (and manuals) be easily produced in Ukrainian for use by soldiers literate in that language? This is likely to need specialized translators who know Ukrainian military jargon to ensure ease of understanding.
2. What's the spare parts supply chain look like? Can parts be easily shipped in to Ukraine to maintain these vehicles that likely have no parts commonality with Ukraine's ex-WP supply chain?
3. How long does it take to train mechanics to keep these vehicles running? What effect will the time for that training have on their ability to keep existing forces maintained?
4. As touched on briefly above, what does adding yet another caliber do to supply chain logistics? Their vehicular artillery already uses 120mm, 122mm, 152mm, and 203mm shells. Adding 155mm (and possibly 105mm) increases complexity. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if the 155mm Bohdana had replaced large numbers of the ex-Soviet self-propelled artillery, but only the prototype(s) have been built and still haven't been fully tested. On the MLRS side, they have 122mm, 220mm, and 280mm launchers, while the US uses 227mm and 610mm rockets. Would countries using vehicles with the same caliber of weapons as Ukraine (Poland, Romania, Algeria, India, Bosnia & Herzegovina, etc) be interested in "selling" them to Ukraine to "buy" systems from the United States as a way to both modernize their equipment and supply Ukraine with vehicles they can already arm and maintain?