HIMARS is a very formidable addition to the arsenal, but in general quantities supplied are extremely modest to really turn the tide. Hopefully the deliveries will step up.
They are enough to f*ck up Russian logistics behind the lines. Without a massive supply of shells from the rear to the guns themselves, the Russian artillery is incapable of executing their beloved "bomb everything into pieces" WWI-style doctrine.
And the Ukrainians have destroyed an untold number of Russian ammo dumps in the last weeks. Some of the explosions have been truly spectacular. This isn't something you can easily remedy. Any new ammo dump in range will be quickly spotted by either American spy satellites or local Ukrainian spies that are probably still active in Donbass - and get blasted to hell.
HIMARS is not enough to reconquer the lost territories, true. But it is enough to give Russians a forced operational pause.
The thing that the west is unwilling to do is give the Ukrainians cruise missiles. The Russians have lots and lots of these in the form of Kalibr and Iskander missiles that they launch from ships and mobile launchers and it seems to be making all the difference.
Think instead of the people who have authority over these weapon systems. How much time they spent training to use those weapons. How important it must feel to them that their weapons are used.
The fact that the intelligence needed to give them valuable targets is a secondary concern. Their main concern is the readiness and cohesion that come from pressing the fire button.
Well west is unwilling to supply modern tanks so Cruise missles look to be def. of the table. Ukraine is even short on basic armored personnel carriers and even regular consumer trucks widely used by military (mostly supplied by volunteers).
This is not really about "willingness". Modern Western tanks are a logistical nightmare, and Ukrainian logistical capabilities to support them are limited. In order not to overextend them, everyone concentrates on doing what is most effective.
In the case of this war at this very moment, it is long range high precision artillery. HIMARS eats rockets like crazy, it needs to be supplied constantly.
Once those supply chains are fully built and safe, they can talk about adding tanks to the mix.
> The Russians have lots and lots of these in the form of Kalibar and Islander missiles that they launch from ships and mobile launchers and it seems to be making all the difference.
Do they still have them or have they used most of them up?
IIRC, for all the attention they get, the US has surprisingly few cruise missiles and would use up its stockpiles pretty quickly in a war like that in Ukraine.
But a lot of those missiles have been stored somewhere in Siberia for 40+ years. Their condition is probably less than stellar. Who would regularly inspect and maintain random ammo dumps located five timezones away from Moscow in the middle of nowhere?
I suspect that at least some of those missiles are outright out of commission and others are unstable enough to be a danger to the Russians themselves.
IDK, but that is hardly relevant to the current situation. We aren't trying to one-up each other in a "who is worse" rhetoric content, but looking at the situation at the Russo-Ukrainian front.
From what I get, Western stuff delivered to the Ukrainians is in working order, while the Russians shells seem to have a fairly high percentage of duds - usually an indicator of a fuse degraded by long and inadequate storage.
And if shells frequently fail, so will other long stored equipment.
> Maybe but those are big assumptions. Does the USA inspect it's missiles in the middle of nowhere?
The US almost certainly does, but the Russians might not. They've been shown to have neglected routine maintenance in ways that caused very critical problems for their military (e.g. they lost a lot of expensive advanced vehicles, because their unmaintained knock-off tires disintegrated).
Both these videos are long, but they had a lot of interesting ideas and insight on this topic:
First, there is no proof of the original claim, other than words of Ukrainian mayor.
Second, this explanation is much more logical than the version with russians firing superexpensive anti air weapons to random ground targets.
Third, there were photos of these missiles, and they belong to older series of rockets. Russia dismissed these old s-300 long ago, but Ukraine have plenty of them.
Very observably not. Russia seems to be actually incapable of buying any modern weapons for the billions of euros it receives from Germany. Even China considers such cooperation too risky.
The technical level of Russian equipment deployed in the battles in Ukraine has gone downhill since February. Now they are pulling really old stuff (designed or even manufactured in the 1950s-1960s) from storage. And some of their auxiliaries from the separatist republics literally use WWI and WWII small arms.
Money matters in war, but it cannot substitute for a missing/inadequate supply chain. You can't bury the enemy in an avalanche of euros, you actually need to procure the necessary equipment.
There is no need in sophisticated weaponry or even artillery when you have endless literal cannon fodder. Hide or deny losses and drag on just enough to exhaust your opponent.
A year of slow territorial gains? Two? More? Not a problem as long as economy is propped by European money, Germans don’t bother sending enough weapons and Western media is tired of war and looks elsewhere.
Russia already had poor demographics before and now it is possibly spending years losing military age males?
Russia as a low prospect J-curve state might not be entertaining to the western media but it is basically the outcome the US has been gunning for since Gorbachev left, always with a lot of resistance from Germany. After a few more years of setting up alternative gas routes, I'm not sure Germany will even have a way to offer Russia yet another chance.
Russia doesn’t have endless cannon fodder. And has had a lot of difficulty sourcing troops. They are fine losing troops but their army isn’t as big as people imagine. And the logistics needed to get people to the front with basic supplies is hard.
Russia is itself the 2nd supplier of weapons on the international market and buying from the 1st (the US) is pretty pointless as whatever the US is selling is incompatible with the Russian systems. Who you envision Russia would need to buy weapons from?
