The US has given its entire stockpiles of land war weapons to Ukraine. And is giving its entire stockpile of air war weapons to Israel.
The US hasn’t given Ukraine or Israel anything but ageing platforms that were ultimately up for retiring in any significant numbers, and most of the aid money “given” to Ukraine has been spend in the US modernising production facilities and working on replacements for the gear that was sent.
What they have given away was never going to see any use in a conflict outside of WWIII. While it would be nice to think they couldn’t do anything about Venezuela, they still have thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, fighter aircraft and bombers.
This is not true. I’ve seen actual US special forces units openly complain about weapons they need to be fully combat effective having been taken literally from their units to be sent to ukraine. It was a popular brand of complaint that was going around early on. Things like the mountain of Javelins that were sent weren’t “aging platforms” they were tools actively being used. The conventional artillery ammunition stockpiles in particular would be used in any war that involves ground operations, they used them in iraq, afganistan and they’d use them in any new wars. And they dipped into artillery-based cluster munitions stockpiles because they simply ran out of everything else in my opinion.
“more than 2,000,000 155mm artillery rounds”. is serious shit, it’s the entire fucking stockpile. You are right in assessing “this wouldn’t be used outside of a ww3 scenario” but the point is that the US doesn’t want to get into combat without having it there as a backup, as a contingency. It usually operates on the knowledge they have infinite resources it can dip into and not having the stockpiles scares them. US Generals don’t want to do shit without knowing they have such resources if things go wrong.
In Israel on the other hand we so far know of more than 5,400 MK84 bombs, 5,000 MK82 bombs, about 1,000 GBU-39 small-diameter bombs, and around 3,000 joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) that convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions. We don’t know the full extent of things being sent though because there’s zero transparency for what is being sent to Israel compared to Ukraine because they requested secrecy for it, not even congress knows.
The US hasn’t given Ukraine or Israel anything but ageing platforms that were ultimately up for retiring in any significant numbers, and most of the aid money “given” to Ukraine has been spend in the US modernising production facilities and working on replacements for the gear that was sent.
What they have given away was never going to see any use in a conflict outside of WWIII. While it would be nice to think they couldn’t do anything about Venezuela, they still have thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, fighter aircraft and bombers.
This is not true. I’ve seen actual US special forces units openly complain about weapons they need to be fully combat effective having been taken literally from their units to be sent to ukraine. It was a popular brand of complaint that was going around early on. Things like the mountain of Javelins that were sent weren’t “aging platforms” they were tools actively being used. The conventional artillery ammunition stockpiles in particular would be used in any war that involves ground operations, they used them in iraq, afganistan and they’d use them in any new wars. And they dipped into artillery-based cluster munitions stockpiles because they simply ran out of everything else in my opinion.
Seriously, read through this: https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/
“more than 2,000,000 155mm artillery rounds”. is serious shit, it’s the entire fucking stockpile. You are right in assessing “this wouldn’t be used outside of a ww3 scenario” but the point is that the US doesn’t want to get into combat without having it there as a backup, as a contingency. It usually operates on the knowledge they have infinite resources it can dip into and not having the stockpiles scares them. US Generals don’t want to do shit without knowing they have such resources if things go wrong.
In Israel on the other hand we so far know of more than 5,400 MK84 bombs, 5,000 MK82 bombs, about 1,000 GBU-39 small-diameter bombs, and around 3,000 joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) that convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions. We don’t know the full extent of things being sent though because there’s zero transparency for what is being sent to Israel compared to Ukraine because they requested secrecy for it, not even congress knows.