How American Weapons Aid Ukraine | Business Insider Marathon

watching this made me miss the show 'How Its Made'

US didn't gave money directly. Ukraine received arms in this amount. Most of the arms was was old. Basically US is renewing it's stocks. Arms industry in US had increased their production and had a boost in investment. That is more jobs and profits.

US didn't give a single jet. Denmark, Norway and Netherlands did.

I was shocked to see bad journalism from business insider, but it's owned by axel springer. As a german, i know axel springer for their shitty journalism. Best example is the German "newspaper" Bild, just bullshit articles and fear tactics.

The intro showed F-16s as the voice over says the US sent "air support" which suggests that the US sent them, but NO! The F-16s were sent by European countries.

The ATAMs sent were past their use by date. There has even been a relatively high failure rate with these missiles. If these missiles were not given to Ukraine it would have cost millions to decommission these missile. Giving these missiles to Ukraine should be listed as a cost savings not a cost.

Google Bard said that overall spending in Afghanistan is over 2 Trillion. Which is 20 times more than provided (not pledged) to Ukraine. So, incredibly small budget.

@8:12 a lot of people don't realize that the money we're spending is going into building infrastructure here in U.S. that will benefit the U.S. in the future. These items are priced at high dollar, but we're producing them for a fraction of that. So, while it seems like we're sending over $175 billion, it's actually much less than that, with a large percentage of the money being invested into factories and equipment here at home. We're literally sending our old stockpiles and then replacing them with new ones. This not only replenishes our ammunitions but it provides jobs for people in the U.S. as well.

In addition, warfare is evolving. We’re not paying with American lives to see this kind of warfare evolve into drone warfare.

Yea, that headline number is bullshit. The majority of stuff sent was about to expire or we were never going to use anyway (cluster munitions being one example). We give Ukraine the 30 year old shit we would otherwise pay to dispose of, then buy new stuff for our own stockpiles.

One, for pricing must remember that the U.S. Air Force spent $10,000 on each new toilet seat cover for the C-17 cargo plane. Two, when munitions in the U.S. Army reach the end of their service life, it's often more cost-effective to give them away rather than dispose of them.

This should really be titled, "spending over a 100 billion on testing modern weaponry on battle fields they don't even have to fight"

Munitions have a shelf life. 20 years for heavy equipment (missiles, artillery) usually, 10 to 15 for most infantry-based munitions (manpads, anti tank rockets etc). Weapons are "use it or lose it". When munitions in the US army reach end of life, they are expended in training exercises anyway. Over 70% of the munitions sent to Ukraine is 10 to 20 years old already and was near end of life and would've been fired off in training exercises anyway. Also, the manufacture of fresh munitions / weapons is a DIRECT investment in the US economy as it employes countless thousands of AMERICANS. That money is NOT LEAVING the US, it is going directly back into it.

The Ukrainian 155mm Bohdana howitzer may take half a year to produce an individual unit, but have you ever seen an arms factory were they were working on just one tank at a time? Ukraine produces 6 Bohdana per month and they have a range of 30-40km depending on the round (no-frills $300 round or $3000 ERBB). The US provided 200 M777 which was very generous, sadly since they're stationary (no shoot-and-scoot) and the US removed the FCS which was too valuable to fall into Russian hands, the range was reduced to 24km with standard rounds and most M777 (and worse: their US trained crews) have been destroyed at this point. Though they provided Ukraine with some massive jolt in firepower at a critical point in the conflict. Two points I'd like to make: - I'd divide the donated weapons in 3 groups: 1.High-tech weapons produced specifically for Ukraine: HIMARS, MIM-104 Patriot, Javelins, M30/31 and ATACMS missiles, GLSDB, JDAM and the significant costs incurred by keeping AWACS and MALE surveillance drones in the air day and night, and analyzing that intel - upside for the US: if you look at this like it was a fire drill for a direct conflict with a near-peer adversary, it's identified some weakpoints that would not have been adressed otherwise. Like: insufficient stockpiles combined with lackluster production capabilities for certain systems in case of a protracted conflict - and the dire need to finally decide on a new long-range (80km) self-propeller howitzer. Another upside, primarily during the first year of the war, is that the army did actually save money by sending ammunition nearing the end of it's shelf life to Ukraine, saving on disposal costs. As for the cost of 10,000 Javelins - "over $200,000" per system is what foreign customers might pay. The US Army pays less than $100,000 if I'm not mistaken. And all those costs not only get injected directly into the US economy, there have been numerous anouncements from the defense sector that they will increase monthly production of X, meaning either extra shifts and/or extra production lines and/or new plants, all of which means extra manufacturing and R&D jobs in the defense sector - with a Democrat in the White House. Besides, not only has the US provided less Patriots than Germany, European countries are literally standing in line to buy MIM-104 Patriot batteries, F-35, HIMARS, Apaches, stockpiles of weapons for the F35, PAC-2/PAC-3 for the Patriots. The first thing the Bundeswehr ordered once the €100 billion check cleared was 60 of the CH-47F Chinooks and shortly thereafter 35 F-35A to stay in the NATO nuclear sharing program. The 3 MIM-104 Patriot batteries donated to Ukraine were matched by an order for 4 brand-new batteries from the US. 2. Mothballed weapon systems like the M2 Bradley. Surprisingly the Bradley has outperformed all other foreign IFVs and MBTs, at least that's my perception. Some of them you could argue are strategic stockpiles for a protracted conflict as well, but so far merely 62 Abrams and 400 something Bradleys have been sent. And it's not like the others were being sold off like hotcakes, they were just gathering dust in the Arizona desert - so what cost was incurred to the American taxpayer? Some of the other stuff makes me think: "My, they really could have thrown in an LCS or two with those 1,000 (!) MaxxPro". Upside: As with the MaxxPro, some systems mostly built for Afghanistan to quickly fix one specific issue might not be too painfull to get rid of - and if they're coming from active stock (presidential draw-down) the units that were robbed of their majestic MaxxPros get the chance to procure more versatile, modern systems. 3. Completely outdated weapon systems: included in those $175 billion are such treasures as the M113 - or 1980s soviet transport helicopters meant originally for the (very) short-lived Afghan goverment post-withdrawal of Coalition Forces. Finally: Europe has paid a heck of a lot more. Germany alone had to shoulder costs of $200 billion to get through the first winter without Russian gas, having to buy whatever was available at spot prices inflated up to 400% - convenient for gas producers like the US. Then there's also the detail that the EU is paying each year for over 5 million refugees. Depending on the benefits granted, that can incur significant costs as well. Germany alone provides shelter to ~1.x million Ukrainian refugees at a cost of over $12,000 per person per annum. So this used to be $12 billion year in, year out. TL;DR: US military aid to Ukraine is crucial. I don't mind if the US don't send a nickel in cash, but Europe unfortunately didn't build stockpiles of weapons to send to Ukraine. We'll pay their soldiers, their firemen, police and other public servants. We'll help with pensions and basic training. But when it comes to sending weapons, like NOW, nobody can replace America.

lol nobody calls this a stalemate. nobody that follows this closely.

"Drones" and "heroic" should never be used in the same sentence.

if you decide to show the french Cesar cannon multiple times, at least give its name and his origin, don't pretend it's a US made weapon !

Where did you guys take $175BN from US? Ukraine support tracker lists $175BN from EUROPE and only ~74 BN from US (with another $24.7BN yet to be allocated from US). Also it's deceptive to say "spent" because much of the aid was just old junk US was trying to get rid of anyway—which is why we saw the two accounting adjustments from Pentagon. Smh what "journalism". Actually there's more errors in the video, I just CBA to write them all out. Anyway, best of luck to Ukraine from the UK

This was a really informative episode and I learned a lot! It is important to mention the amount of time that we’ve been sitting on these weapons and vehicles waiting for politicians to stop dragging feet though.

Hey Business Insider, you need to do a video about how the accounting behind this works. The U.S. has been valuing systems like M113s (1950s era APCs that we retired in the 80s) at more than $500,000 apiece. When they're sold for scrap they're sold for about $200 apiece (still running). A lot of the ammo we have sent was near the end of its shelf life and it would have cost us more to dispose of than it cost us to send to Ukraine. So $175billion is a hugely inflated number.