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The ATACMS missiles that Ukraine is getting are soon to be expired because they are reaching their end of life (of course they are still in production but it shows these are not the current generation)

The current generation missiles "PrSMs" have not been given to Ukraine

The M777 howitzers are from 40 years ago

The stinger missiles have been used in the Afghanistan war

Even the F-16 planes are from 30 years ago

And Patriot air defense systems are several decades old

So it is fair to say that Ukraine has been using mostly older weapons



The one caveat here is that the Patriot missile system was originally made in the 80s. Like most of the US arsenal, it has seen significant improvement since then. Ukraine got fairly modern and capable Patriot systems and missiles.

The M777 also included fairly modern fire control hardware and counter battery radar.

Everything else has been purposely downgraded to ancient specs, like removing armor from the Abrams, and sending ancient F-16s. The stingers we sent Ukraine have been out of production for decades, and the US has not fielded them in mentionable capacity since the early 90s.

The table scraps of the US desert storm military is providing Russia a stalemate in Ukraine vs an army barely trained to use their new equipment, that had several high level traitors in it during the invasion.

Meanwhile, ignore that Russia cannot keep tiny kit-built aircraft out of it's airspace, which has always been a problem for Russia despite supposedly being the Premier anti-air missile system maker since the 50s. One of these kit built cruise missiles killed several important people in a Naval Command post in Crimea, despite immense investment in S400s to protect it.

The Russian Navy has been shown to be not just non-threatening, but jaw droppingly incompetent. I'm sure they blame whoever runs Russian air defense systems, but the flagship of the black sea fleet was sunk by the same intensity of threat as the damn Houthis taking pot shots at tankers. This wasn't a "occasionally the missile gets through" situation either. The Moskva had multiple redundant and cooperating missile defense systems that on paper, and even in foreign military knowledge, would have defeated a couple incoming missiles. Either they weren't turned on, in which case why not, or worse, they are inoperable or ineffective, in which case WHY

There are notable unfortunate outcomes however. The small diameter bomb, as I understand, did not perform well. Russia's GPS jamming is powerful and effective, though this isn't as dire as it seems. In a GPS denied warfighting environment, the US still builds significantly better ordinance guidance systems than Russia. The Krasnopol laser guided artillery shell is pretty good, and gets you the outcome of an Excalibur shell for significantly less money, and is harder to defeat electronically. The Lancet is way more cost-effective and useful than anything the Switchblade company has shat out, and we should be copying it as hard as possible cough Anduril cough. Russia now has a production quantity JDAM style system, which is effective.


You're referencing a small fraction of cherry-picked American weapons Ukraine is receiving. Other nations are giving other weapons, many of which are current generation. Patriots are current generation, and are continuously updated with new missiles and software. If you consider any weapon system that was not initially designed a few years ago to be old, then almost every weapon system the US and Europe is currently fielding would be "old".

To name a few current generation systems given to Ukraine: IRIS-T AA missile systems, StormShadow / SCALP cruise missiles, AGM-88 HARM missiles, AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, NLAW anti-tank missiles, Martlet missiles, Starstreak AA missiles, Aster AA missiles, Krab artillery systems, CEASAR artillery systems, Excalibur guided artillery, ECV90 IFVs, and on and on the list goes.


> To name a few current generation systems given to Ukraine

Just checked 3 of your list:

* AIM-120 AMRAAM was fist used in 1991

* AGM-88 HARM 1985

* CAESAR system 2008

All look pretty old.




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