If you buy more the cost would go down due to economies of scale. Still very expensive though.
That's why I wrote "about €1.5bn". It could be €1.3bn or €1.4bn. By no means, it could be €1bn or below. These vehicles are totally unaffordable to the vast majority of potential customers.
But what is the alternative? Modern vehicles are computers on wheels. Downgrading the sensors and other electronics means less effective weapons, less (effective) survivability, worse mobility etc.
Which works perfectly well fighting a #shitholeCountry, as I've already mentioned.
You cannot fight a war of attrition against somebody who has plenty of equipment, and resources and is determined to fight despite suffering massive losses.
You just need to use totally different tactics like mixing up modern and expensive equipment with less expensive ones.
The Americans planned to acquire solely stealth fighters, but they concluded it was too expensive.
A better idea is to destroy, or heavily harm the enemy air force with stealth fighters and do massive harm to its air defence and carry on attacks with conventional planes afterwards.
And that western vehicles are being lost in Ukraine isn't a surprise given that Ukraine is fighting russia with scrap bits and bobs from the NATO arsenal
Are British Challenger 2s, German Leopard 2A6s, Polish Krabs, etc. scrap bits and bobs?
and not the complete package of air power combined
That's the missing thing.
with naval dominance applying a stranglehold to several important trade routes, economic embargo, electronic warfare and sufficient numbers driven by real-time intelligence with an industrial base outside of the reach of most russian weapons.
What naval blockade can work against RuZZia? Whatever the Orcs don't have, they can import it from #ChinaVirusDevelopers.
A naval blockade would just stop RuZZia from exporting goods to South America and make exports to Africa more difficult.
No weapon is invincible, but if the US army was fighting the war and not the Ukrainian one it would have been over a long time ago, and with far fewer losses in men and material.
Is it what our military planners thought when they decided to stay in Afghanistan? Did our smaller losses make us win the war in Afghanistan? Did they make the Americans win the war in Vietnam?
Your way of thinking just reminds me of your prediction about the success of the Ukrainian "offensive" in Zaporozhiya in 2023, while I said it would fail well before it started. Your optimism here is exactly the same.
The US obliterated the Iraqis and the gap in technology wasn't all that different then as it is now between the newer NATO equipment being sent and russia's upgraded WP equipment.
They also obliterated the Vietnamese. Does it mean they won the Vietnam War?
Ukraine is fighting NATO's war with a random screwdriver and a hammer, not the full toolkit.
As it cannot afford to buy the full kit. The point the West concludes it has more important problems than financing Ukraine will make things worse.
They've been equipped to stay in the fight, not to win it.
Yes, I know about it. How will you convince EU and U.S. taxpayers to spend another $200bn to help Ukraine, so it could carry on in the future?
If they had been trained properly in the years following 2014 (NATO not being chickensh*ts), supplied better with the basics and given everything they needed once russia invaded they imo would have driven russia out of the whole of Ukraine except perhaps Crimea by late 2022.
Has the Saudi modern equipment made Saudi Arabia win the civil war in Yemen?
The russian army was that ill prepared. NATO fears a Ukrainian victory more than they do a russian one for what the Ukrainian victory would mean for the integrity of the russian state and their nuclear stockpile being scattered to the four winds.
Yes, that's true, but what do you define as the "victory"? If Ukraine was able to liberate all its territories that were lost past 2014, do you really believe it would make RuZZia sign a peace agreement and stop fighting? You are out of the touch with reality.
The Ukrainian army hasn't been supplied properly since the end of the Cold War and it's training has been haphazard, especially post 2014, while also trying to implement a new doctrine in the middle of an insurgency. Any weapon you give them is going to be limited by many factors outside of the scope or control of the designers of the system.
Their training was much better than before 2014 and better than the RuZZian training in many ways.
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GPS is accurate to within 5m and INS 30m, but as with all American specifications these are severe adverse conditions specs, not russian ones that overstate abilities based on perfect conditions and/or wishful thinking/exports/the Führer's desire for Wünderwaffe. 1-2m and >10m should be achievable on most days.
Like GMLRS specs saying it's operational range is 80km, and russia moving their main supply hubs accordingly.
And then getting Himars'ed at a distance of 93km because it was a clear sky and the wind was favorable.
It does not matter. The Orcs have learned how to jam the GPS signal and made a lot of Western weapons ineffective. They don't have enough jamming devices to jam it everywhere and that's why some GMLRS and Excalibur attacks are still effective.