Are those 18 HIMARS from existing inventory, or new production / yet to be built?
The 20 we’ve delivered so far (or maybe it’s up to 24 now?) were dribbled out in batches of 4 a month.
Even if the Ukies have received 24, that’s under 6% of the inventory we had a year ago, and, SFAIK another 50 or so were scheduled for 2022 delivery.
I guess my point is that while some of those numbers seem impressive, Russia has a huge numbers advantage, and while their weapons generally are not as good, they also are not suffering from dire lack of long range weapons or aircraft.
The timeline for delivery was not specified in what I read.
It was just one of the agreed upon military hardware packages for Ukraine.
I am sure we are considering other contingencies. We must.
I’m not on the “we’re depleting our inventory” bandwagon.
My point is that what we are providing is impressive. When you look at the whole picture and what we provided before the war started, 8 packages since the war started, us and our allies combined. PLUS the cash and humanitarian aid, mercenaries, logistics and sustainment (over hauling equipment in Poland for Ukraine), intel...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-intel-helped-ukraine-sink-russian-flagship-moskva-officials-say-rcna27559 (Nice to have a friend with massive SIGINT and
IMINT, an NRO).
Can you think of a conflict post WWII where we provided this much military assistance to another nation?