Re: Everything is lies now
True, but that aid appears not to be affected by this decision, which seems to apply to the US State department-sourced funding, not funding from the DoD.
The funding is split, so DoD budgets pay for the military aid, State pays for stuff like salaries and pensions for Ukraine's civil servants and welfare programs.
Also, I have seen it suggested that a lot of the US military aid is on a sort of 'equivalent value' basis, where stocks of older kit are released to Ukraine, and the US Army then gets replacement vehicles of newer types, fresh from the factory - that's clearly happened with older (near-life expired) ammunition stocks being supplied
Yep. And it's much the same with the EU defence aid. Kind of a 'cash for clunkers' deal. Antiques like Spain's 1950s era Hawk missiles were donated to Ukraine and Spain got the cash to replace them. Or stuff like mothballed Leopard-1s, along with more useful stuff like T-series tanks and artillery that had been stored by former Soviet states. Along with some maybe more questionable donations, like a lot of the UK's artillery. So our artillery regiments can conduct training exercises by shouting 'bang' at the right moment.
So Ukraine ended up with a mish-mash of kit, a lot of which they'd never operated before leading to a lot of training, maintenance and logistics headaches. Plus being sent in dribs and drabs, meaning they rarely had anything sufficient to mass forces to use against Russia. But then they also wasted a lot of kit (and men) on misguided stuff like their Kursk invasion. They assigned a lot of their best remaining equipment to that venture, and most of it is now scrap.
But with European defence stocks drained, the next challenge is replacing them, and replacing them with.. what? The UK doesn't produce MBTs any more, but perhaps there could be a EuroTank. Or defence experts could decide that this conflict has shown significant challenges to pretty much any vehicle, so how to deal with the drone threat and be able to move soldiers around a modern battlefield. If Russia is the greatest threat, then our kit needs to be able to deal with those threats. Plus China, Iran, DPRK etc have been watching this conflict closely.
Which also has lessons, eg Russia or DPRK using the Koksan self-propelled gun, which at 170mm outranges Ukraine's (and our) 155mm artillery. So maybe Europe needs bigger guns as well.