by Bernhard at Moon of Alabama
A new round of Wunderwaffen deliveries to Ukraine is taking place. It is unlikely to change the strategic or even operational picture of the war.
The U.S. and its ‘allies’ are engaged in a boil-the-frog operation in which they steadily increase the lethality and complexity of arms and other support they deliver to Ukraine. At some point in time this process will cross Russian red lines. That’s when it will become really interesting …
The newest gimmick to be deployed is the Patriot air defense system likely soon to be followed by main battle tanks:
The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian missiles, U.S. officials said Tuesday.The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and be moved from another country overseas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. The Patriot would be the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks.
During a video conference on Monday, Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery, missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.
He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.”
Well, yes, the artillery advantage the Russian army has in the current battle for Bakhmut is nine to one or even higher:
“For every artillery piece we have, they have nine,” said one soldier.
NATO no longer has the equipment and ammunition reserves to change that.
As for the Patriot, the “Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target”: Training for them takes quite some time and unless Ukrainians have already been secretly trained on them for several months they will have to be deployed with NATO soldiers or ‘former’ soldiers to have any effect:…
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