Alcun Atirutan BBS

Guys, guys, remember how we were sending Javelins to Ukraine? They were supposed to destroy (most of) Russian armor and let Ukraine easily route the invaders. But I did not hear anything about them for a while - more than a month in fact. Meanwhile Russian armor is cruising all over like nothing is happening, and getting drowned in rivers by a dozen by those Russian bunglers.

What has happened to those Javelins? They didn't work as advertised? Or were they stolen by corrupt Ukrainian commanders and logistic personnel?

This is in relation to Ukrainans asking for HIMARS, and saying that these highly effective rocket systems will destroy Russian artillery, and thus allow to rout the invaders. I may be a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but didn't I hear this tune before?

#unkraine

@zaitcev What I mentioned to others in the early days when I looked at the sum total of Javelins that had been shipped to Ukraine vs the total number of tanks that Russia had on paper was that they only had enough Javelins to take out maybe 5% of Russia's tanks (they only had about 1500 missiles at the start of the war, and ended up getting another 4000ish over the course of the war.) Of course, they've gotten a bit more since then but I doubt it's enough to take out the remainder. Add the other anti-tank weapons they received that were Swedish-made (NLAWs) and they're still likely at less than 33% max. And we've seen some of those get wasted by firing at too short of ranges to the tanks, and not fully arming themselves before hitting the target. Of course, not all of Russia's tanks that they had on paper were fully operable either. They're now fighting in a much more wide open, less forested area of the country, so shorter range weapons like the NLAW are far less useful in that area. That's why they're asking for longer range weaponry that can be operated beyond the horizon. Biden isn't wanting to send them anything over 75 miles range because he and the state dept are worried that it will escalate things with Russia. (Even 75 miles could escalate things, because they can reach targets within Russia.)

The battle for the Donbas region's natural gas fields is much tougher since it plays to Russia's artillery strengths.

@zaitcev (In order to destroy all Russian tanks with Javelins, you'd basically need every javelin missile ever manufactured, assuming about 33% of them fail or are used on non-tank transport. And many of those have already been fired in other theaters.)