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Originally Posted by Raellus
A lot of the systems you mentioned are at or nearing the end of their service lives and were scheduled to be phased out of service over the next couple of years anyways. In effect donating them to Ukraine just gets them off the books a few years sooner. It's kind of like a kid starting to outgrow some old clothes and, before that happens, handing them down to a younger sibling (or giving them to a needy neighbor). That says, the donating countries are getting nothing for them (whereas they could sell these systems on the secondary market to recoup a portion of the loss).
NATO defense spending has gone up since the Russian invasion of Ukraine (it was already trending that way before said). Giving Ukraine mountains of military aid in the form of weapons systems and ammo gives NATO militaries a nice excuse to ask for bigger budgets and shiny new toys.
Transactionally, I'm less concerned for NATO than I am for Ukraine. Maintaining such a motley assortment of older, but new-to-them, vehicles and weapons systems is going to be extremely challenging, especially under wartime conditions. And, despite major similarities between analogous systems (say, for example, a Chally and a Leo), each system requires an adequate training cycle in order to be employed effectively.
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Ukraine has proven remarkably adaptable when it comes to onboarding with new equipment, but you're undoubtedly correct in that it's got to be an enormous challenge managing the various logistical needs, especially in wartime. Regarding the crews, I recall hearing that Ukraine had, was it tens of thousands of soldiers training in the UK a few months ago? I feel reasonable sure at least some of those were some tank crews getting up to speed on the Chally 2.