“The notion of “assisting” Ukraine with US servicepersons and material escalates tensions and depletes readiness, simultaneously.”
For one thing, we’re not supporting Ukraine with “boots on the ground”.
As far as providing material, the munitions are from older lot numbers that would have otherwise been removed from stocks through decommissioning (destruction), sold to allies, used in training, or refurbished. Even with what we have sent to Ukraine to date, we still have more than enough for wartime contingencies, and training
When it comes to the heavy weapons such as Abrams, Bradleys, Strykers, MRAPs, and M113s all of them are older models, and have been put in storage years ago.
The U.S. Army currently has over 2,500 Abrams in service, with a further 3,700 in storage. A mere 31 tanks going to Ukraine isn’t going to affect readiness.
With the Bradleys, the Army has over 1,400 in active use with a further 4,800 in storage. 100 or so isn’t going to affect our readiness.
Strykers... Almost 4,200, 190 isn’t going to hurt readiness especially when it’s 190 older vehicles that do not have the current double V hull configuration and the vehicles came from a recently reconfigured IBCT that went from Strykers to being a light infantry (airborne) brigade.
MRAP, 12,000 produced and only a few are used in active units. Those used by active units are newer M-ATV. So again not going to affect readiness.
Humvees are being replaced by JLTV with thousands in storage. No affect.
Etc, etc, etc.
You could have stopped at that because the fact is we have no business messing with two siblings in a family squabble. Get DNA samples from all of the so called ethnic Ukrainians and the ethnic Russians and no expert could tell then apart with one thousand years of intermixing, especially in the last one hundred years.
We have no dog in this hunt. We owe all of this folderol to corruptions in Washington and Kiev.