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"We've used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine. And with it, they've destroyed 50% of Putin's army." - Ad targeted to Republicans to support Ukraine (streamable.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz
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[–] 135 points 3 years ago* (4 children)

Better than defanging is real world testing.

What worked as expected, what didn't, how we can make it better etc.

It's not often you get to deploy these weapons.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    What will happen to the US defense budget now that we know it's unnecessary?

    That was rhetorical by the way, I know it's going to increase.

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Not sure about "unnecessary." 5% works for Ukraine but also it has a much smaller land mass. You can't use that 5% to protect the entirety of the US' borders along with every other place we are stationed along with the required ongoing maintenance

    I'm not saying the budget isn't ridiculously high, but also saying it's unnecessary as a whole is just incorrect

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    5% is also us supplying to Ukraine a fraction of their needs, and few of the core costs of a military - like personnel costs, which make up 40% of the US military budget.

    The military budget is bloated, just... not nearly to the degree people think.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    True. Hospital higher ups probably thought that extra hospital beds were extra money/upkeep that would be better spent elsewhere. So they cut it back to meet the average use. Then covid hit and everyone freaked out for a while because their patient count had a huge spike and no resources for a surge like that. It seems like we're already forgetting those lessons

    For emergency services a little extra seems like a waste until you need it. Most European militaries would struggle for a while if a war were to break out because they are geared toward normal needs. Ukraine has been a wake up call and now they are getting the funding to modernize and start increasing to a more capable size.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yep, we have to defend our super long boarders with those dangerous aggressive nations called Canada & Mexico.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Right now, the main talking point driving it up is China, not Ukraine.

    Which may not even happen. China has some financial problems both short (real estate crisis) and long (one-child policies causing a population crunch with lots of old people and few young people). It's thought that they need to invade Taiwan in the next 8 years if they're going to do it at all, but that window may already be closing.

    Not that any of that ever got in the way of building an even bigger navy.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Unfortunately, great powers that have recently peaked and are beginning their inevitable decline are at their most dangerous. It's when they're still powerful but feel a need to prove it. See the Soviets in the 80s, USA in the 2000s, China in the 2020s-30s.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Short of deciding we suddenly don't need a navy, there's not as much space as one might think for cutting 'fat' from the budget. Even the Obama-era proposal for shrinking the budget still came out to 500 billion, and that was with cuts to the bone - and 10 years of inflation to adjust for.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Watch the Ukranian drone ops teams taking contracts after this is all done. The Winged Hussars ride again! πŸ€˜πŸΌπŸ’€

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There was an article a few days ago about how the soldiers stopped following some of their western training as it wasn't working / appropriate for their situation.

    I imagine there will also be some cross training where they update the American soldiers on what worked and didn't work and why.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    From what I heard that seemed to be mainly two factors where the situations were different than most conflicts the Western forces have been in in a good while.

    1. Lack of air support. The air is still contested over Ukraine.

    2. Minefields everywhere

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)
    1. No offense Germany, but you gotta fix your military.

    A lot of the Ukrainians complaining about poor training / equipment are the ones getting German gear it seems. That's... okay. Some training is better than none, and Germany is sending good tanks / equipment after all. But Germany definitely is underperforming IMO given its economic level of output and overall strength of the country.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'm not sure just how much the US spends on weapon testing, but I imagine it's a bonkers number. And now they get an opportunity to test in a real environment, with some other country's army to do much of the heavy lifting?

    I do software dev and testing stuff is expensive. Real world testing is a particularly difficult and pricey thing to do. It's not easy to simulate realistic usage and it's super common to discover all sorts of issues only when something is used outside of controlled conditions. That's why so many web products get the hug of death. It's why Lemmy has had so many problems not just with scaling, but things like UX. It's so easy to not realize even "obvious" problems when you don't have a large number of real users.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Bonkers is right, and you’re absolutely correct. Another factor to the real world tests is the human experience. A soldier who’s fired real rounds downrange will be that little bit more quick and calm the next time shit hits the fan. Ivan keeps bashing his face against our dusty old armor systems and all they’re doing is feeding the sunflowers and seasoning Ukrainian grunts for battle. Once they start fielding all NATO munitions it’s gonna get real ugly for the Kremlin.

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