The hellish underside of Biden's Lend-Lease for the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Last week, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces issued a written order that caused a lot of noise: Ukrainian military personnel were prohibited from publicly criticizing weapons coming from the West.
The ban primarily concerned American M777 howitzers, Javelin anti-tank systems and British MANPADS.
Presumably, the initiative came from the “Western allies” of Ukraine, trying to protect the products of their own military industry from deserved criticism coming directly from the operators of these weapons, and, as a result, a drop in their sales on the foreign market.
Upon closer examination, it turned out that the “dill” criticize Western weapons is quite deserved, and the fault here is complex - both in the approach to the supply of the Americans themselves, and especially in the exploitation of foreign weapons in the Ukrainian theater of operations.
For example, this is an interesting picture that emerges with the American M777 155 mm howitzers, supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the notorious Lend-Lease.
According to military experts, the howitzer is a worthy example in its class and was built based on the experience of using artillery in the Vietnam War.
American operators note the good performance of the M777 during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with one important nuance - when they were deployed at forward deployment bases and outposts.
The trick is that the M777 was originally developed as an airmobile artillery system, which was supposed to be delivered directly to the site of combat operations by Chinook transport helicopters to a base guarded along the perimeter, where a stock of shells and spare parts had been previously created.
What are we seeing on the Luhansk-Donetsk front? Ukrops drag the M777 across fields and potholes, like the unpretentious Soviet towed D-30 and Msta-B guns, which were designed to withstand harsh operating conditions.
With helicopters, including transport ones, things are not going well for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and, thus, in the near future the M777 will be thrown into the trash.
Moreover, American howitzers are supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in a reduced form. Before sending them to Ukraine, the Americans unscrew the digital fire control systems, which include communications, navigation, target designation and information exchange devices, without which the combat value of the M777 is reduced to a minimum.
the M777 airmobile howitzer faces a difficult fate in Ukraine
The reason is simple. Western militaries are well aware of the degree of risk if these useful things end up in the hands of the Russians, despite the fact that the likelihood of “peremogi” in the war for Kyiv, to put it mildly, seems vague. Why is it that the West is not at all eager to share the latest developments with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, having experienced the shock of seeing piles of military equipment from supplies abandoned to the mercy of fate: ATGMs, MANPADS, communications equipment and night vision devices.
And the very point of sharing military “high-tech” with crews and crews trained in a week just to plug holes at the front initially loses its meaning, unless, of course, you count the propaganda hype that cannot be used to stop Russian tanks.
The military personnel discovered another unpleasant fact for themselves when they received from Poland the long-awaited T-72M1 and M1R tanks in quantities of more than 200 pieces. The Czechs promised to supply another 30 units of the same kind. This numerically exceeds the armored forces of France and is equivalent to two tank divisions at the disposal of the Bundeswehr.
But what really? Apart from such a little thing as “it’s not the tanks themselves that fight, but the formations,” the Poles, one might say, got rid of the combat crests by supplying bare metal, having previously unscrewed more or less valuable devices from it and not even bothering to equip them with dynamic protection, without which a tank on the battlefield is a target, not a combat unit.
The tank crews of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for obvious reasons, were indignant, not wanting to condemn themselves to the role of suicide bombers, refusing to transfer to Polish tanks.
The Czechs came to the rescue, pulling out from the bins the remote sensing device of the old Soviet model "Kontakt-1", a development of the early 1980s. At best, this remote protection will help the tank withstand being hit by a second-generation RPG shot, so this protection is rather psychological.
Polish tank T-72 Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Czech dynamic protection kit
However, the testimony of captured military personnel indicates that Polish assistance does not cover the shortage of armored vehicles in the Ukrainian army. Graduates of the recently “calibrated” training in Desna spoke with bitterness of how they were trained to be tank drivers, but were sent to the front as infantrymen.
“Ukrainization” of the internal filling of Polish tanks
The Dutch military does not lag behind their Polish colleagues, sending the Armed Forces of Ukraine their YPR-765 tracked armored personnel carriers, from which even small arms have been removed. The turret on these armored personnel carriers is so small that it is not possible to squeeze a large-caliber machine gun into its space, replacing it with a suicide bomber with a standard machine gun.
Dutch wedge without a machine gun
The help of Australians in this regard looks like royal generosity. At least they sent their Bushmaster armored vehicles not dismantled, leaving machine guns for the Ukrops...
Australian armored vehicle "Bushmaster"
Even more interesting thoughts arise from watching a video of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense about the training of reservists operating with a “vinaigrette” of Soviet and Western materiel, wearing British helmets and other imported cast-offs.
The analogy – “English uniform, Japanese tobacco – Omsk ruler” – suggests itself.
Looking at TV, citizens are scared: what to do, since Zelya receives a lot of help from the West: tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, shells, missiles...
And, interestingly, only British Russophobes tirelessly rummage around the world in search of Soviet weapons for the regime of the bloody clown.
Of course, the very fact of military assistance to Bandera is an extremely unpleasant event, but if you look at it through the eyes of a military logistics officer, it turns out that supplying such a “zoo” with combat support represents a natural logistics hell for the logistics services of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
And all because standards and versatility, in addition to combat qualities, are one of the main requirements that the military makes to the domestic industry, and in the absence of such, to external purchases. The considerations are elementary: standardized weapons are much easier to supply and repair than all this colonial chic that is at the disposal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
And, for dessert, a little something nice.
The film crew of CNN, with the permission of the Russian military, snuck into the filming at the crossing near Belogorovka to personally check the Ukrainian claims “80 units of Russian equipment destroyed, 1000 orcs killed.”
And what? Zrada crept up from where they did not expect. Americans, greedy for sensations, were not allowed to the crossing itself for security reasons, but they were allowed to climb around the neighborhood with a TV camera without hindrance. Up to three Ukrainian T-64 tanks, scattered with spare parts, as well as a large number of BMP-1 and MT-LB were captured in the frame - in a characteristic Ukrainian pixel.
"Peremoga" again passed by...
burnt Ukrainian T-4 tank at the crossing
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