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Old 03-01-2022, 10:56 PM
swaghauler swaghauler is offline
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Originally Posted by Ursus Maior View Post
There are basically no Leopard 2A4s left for anyone to buy and no one in NATO would want to. The A4 model is a 30 year old piece of equipment and badly out of date: The gun is too short, armor to low and optics/sensors badly out of date. Buying the latest model, the A7 generation (different iterations available) is expensive, however. The same goes for buying old F-15s. That's not what Poland needs, those birds are old and obsolescent. I think Poland will go for the F-35 as is Germany now after it's surprisingly decisive course change this weekend: There will be a €100 billion fund for the Bundeswehr this year as well as a a true funding North of 2 % BIP in every future year. Currently, that would mean a defense budget approaching or beyond of €80 billion per year for Germany, or about 25 % more than Russia lately spent, but without nuclear forces to pay for as well as no cheap conscripted soldiers (as of today, who knows what 2022 will hold).

However, neither the 250 M1 Abrams nor airplanes will be available for Poland immediately, let alone integrated into the armed force. The same can be said for Bulgaria, who was a mentioned second candidate for a fighter swap scheme with Ukraine.
That's not true either. Germany HAS A4s and A5s in their mothballs inventory and Poland was trying to buy them but Germany is saving money by upgrading the older A4s & A5s to the new A7 standard. This resulted in Poland not being able to buy the cheaper A4s and A5s (of which she has over 100 each) so she started upgrading them with Rhinemetal's help. But the US approved the sale of 250 M1A3 SEP tanks in January. So Poland now plans on buying up to 500 M1A3 SEPS which cost almost the same as upgrading their Leopard 2s to the new PL standard they developed with Rhinemetal. The suggested plan with Ukraine was to have Poland give them her 338 T72s and her 232 Twardy tanks and the US will replace those tanks with surplus M1A2 (not the new SEPs, just surplus A2s). The rumor was we would give Poland 350 M1s and she would ship her PACT tanks to the border.

The other deal (which may yet go through) has Poland giving Ukraine 24 MIG 29s and we immediately transfer 24 F15 Strike Eagles to Poland (from the UK) to complement her F35s. The F15 Strike Eagle is NOT obsolete and the US still spends more than 100 million per plane to buy newer Strike Eagles even now. They are important to the new "distributed lethality" concept that the Navy introduced and the Air Force seems to have adopted as well. The F35 flies ahead with 2 AA missiles (for self-defense), 2 anti-radar missiles, and 2 air-to-ground missiles (or 4 if Hellfires are carried instead of Mavericks) on board. It then acts as a scout/spotter for the F15s (which carry 12 missiles each) who act as "missile trucks," firing their missiles which are then directed to the target by the F35. This high-low system is the Air Force's new doctrine.

The idea for giving the indicated systems to Ukraine is that they won't need to be trained on those systems because they already use them. The US would then bring in the new systems to the NATO members as "payment" for their sacrifice of equipment while simultaneously upgrading their capabilities so we don't have to keep our troops in harm's way.

I disagree with your assessment of Ukraine's chances because she currently has more than 240K people "under arms." That's quantitatively a match for Russia's (mostly conscripted) forces... especially IF this turns into an Insurgency. Putin cannot simply burn Kyiv to the ground as he did with Grozny in 2000. That will only harden the Ukrainian's hearts and turn the West farther against him.

What Ukraine NEEDS is arms, ammo, and food... which is flowing in now. I still believe if the Ukrainians can hold on for 10 days, they can really hurt Putin's chances of victory. And I'm basing that on OUR (the US Army's) logistics consumption on the offensive. The Russians have a smaller "logistics tail" than we do and are using far more rockets and artillery than we would. Contrary to popular opinion, morale and logistics win wars [at the strategic level], not just firepower.
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