Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

crissindahouse said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

France does more than it seems in pure financial terms. They deliver lots of artillery and AA (30 Ceasar SP Artillery pieces out of a total stock of 76, plus all of their 155mm towed howitzers and lots of different shells, rockets and rocket systems). However, the really expensive stuff, like tanks and IFVs, aren't sent by France since they don't have the tooling and no replacement in sight for the Leclerc tank while the VBCI IFV is wheeled and thus not really appropriate for the Ukrainian theatre.

Also, their equipment tends to be cheaper by design (Their new APC is contractually obliged to cost less than 1M, the Bradley by contrast already cost much than that in the 80's), so the monetary value of what they are sending is lower, too.

Edit: Belgium, on the other hand, is well-known to massively underfund the military and rely on their neighbours and NATO partners for their defence, so even if they wanted, they simply don't have anything to send. Until recently they barely sent more than Luxembourg, a country with an "Army" of a grand total of less than 800 soldiers (We always joke that if Germany wants to conquer us again, they'd send the firefighters from Trier this time around).

Sounds like excuses to me. I bet there is something countries like Italy, France and Spain could do. Germany as example is sending their Iris-T systems to Ukraine before they even get them themselves. Brand new equipment. I'm sure the other countries also get some air defense or other equipment which they could send to Ukraine first. 

Stuff like the tanks is obviously another story but yeah, right now nobody can tell me that the other big European countries just can't do more...

But it looks really bad for Ukraine now. Wilders won in Netherlands, German politicians can't get their shit together right now to even free money for anything so that money for Ukraine looks even worse. Then what's happening in USA and so on...

I'm not denying that France certainly could do quite a bit more, I'm just saying it's not quite as bad as the raw numbers would suggest. I can understand why they won't send their brand-new anti-Drone system (out of fear that Russia could capture and reverse-engineer them or develop some countering devices), but they have other equipment that they could send.

Not much air defense (due to their focus on mobility and anti-insurrection warfare they only use Mistral MANPADS, of which they already donated some), but especially their bridging and mine-clearing equipment could be interesting to Ukraine. The EFA for instance is a mobile bridge and ferry all in one, perfect to ship personnel and equipment in bigger quantities quickly across the Dniepr. They have around 100 Mine-clearing Robots which would be a big boon in allowing offensive actions again.

Other than that, they also have some surplus which is worth noting: They put 55 MLRS into deep storage and only recovered 15 of them (13 for themselves and a paltry 2 for Ukraine so far). They could pretty much send all their MILAN And Javelin Anti-Tank missiles, as they have 2 replacement systems in large quantities already. They have several hundred, if not over 1000 VAB in storage now that it's successors are available in larger quantities.

So yes, they certainly could send more. It looks like they are ramping up shipments again lately though (new Ceasar artillery systems and dozens of VAB engineering vehicles in October), so there's hoping that they will send more in the near future