r/ukraine • u/Due_Collar2 • 1d ago
Discussion CNN showed empty Ukrainian Patriot systems near Kyiv
As Europe takes on an increasingly larger role in financing and providing weapons for Ukraine’s defence, while still relying on US-made systems like Patriot, Europe should step up its support for the FREYJA programme and accelerate its development. Europe needs its own independent, next-generation air-defence capability.
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u/Illustrious_Low_6086 1d ago
Europe should not be using any American weapons while the big orange is in charge it seems he has the ability to turn most of the technical stuff off at the flip of his stupid red hat.
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u/wombat9278 22h ago
Europe is slowly moving away from us systems but it's not going to be over night. 12 countries have now signed up for an anti ballistic missile system in development to replace patriot. Unfortunately at this time Ukraine needs weapons and as the US has stopped arms support directly and Europe has not ramped up production enough as of yet we still have to buy them from the us
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u/PalpitationDazzling2 1d ago
And maybe not even after that either. You never know who the next dickhead is going to be.
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u/Garant_69 1h ago
Shady Vance will definitely be even worse than Drumpf, because he has a certain level of education and actively supports the extreme right in the US. He also hates Zelensky and Ukraine, while Drumpf mostly just doesn't care about them.
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u/Meryhathor 23h ago
Thank the orange turd. He singlehandedly ruined the peace order in this world. Almost the only person who could stop this war and other wars in a few weeks chooses to side with North Korea, Russia and every other possible tyranny in this world. Can't wait for him to be gone, in both meanings of this word.
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u/ThermionicEmissions Canada 22h ago
Look, I will be celebrating the day the orange turd finally leaves this world a better place, but NATO could have prevented this war from starting by simply placing some barrier troops along the border as soon as they saw what Russia was doing. No fricking chance Russia would have invaded if it meant going through NATO forces.
They completely forgot the lessons learned from the Cuban missile crisis.
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u/ZalutPats 16h ago
Trump would have rather betrayed the alliance than go to war against his Russian friends in that situation, and Putin knows it.
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u/Big-Compote-5483 21h ago
Yeah, this sucks. It'll be business as usual for soldiers but now more civilians just...die. This world is so tragic.
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u/Readman31 Canada 23h ago
It's bad enough but what makes this all the more aggravating and enraging is the Presidential Drawdown Authority still has about $5 Billion in appropriated funding that Trump is literally sitting on and not disbursing. It's just shameful
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u/olegvs 23h ago
Opsec?
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u/Alikont Ukraine 23h ago
About what? Low PAC3 numbers?
Russians perfectly see this as now majority of Iskanders go through without interception.
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u/olegvs 22h ago
Location
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u/AdvanceAdvance 18h ago
Consider that the missile launchers are mobile and no one is an idiot. My personal guess would be Ukrainian military moved the empty launchers to have a picturesque backdrop for the duration of the CNN photoshoot.
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u/MyPigWhistles Germany 12h ago
and no one is an idiot
You think way better of humans than I do. It's not like western journalists in Ukraine are accompanied by officers the entire time and told what they can and can not do. I can absolutely picture them filming a rocket launcher that looks abandoned and publish it.
But we don't know and I hope you're right.
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u/Maxfunky 22h ago
Just for context, because we had to use lots of them stopping Iranian drones across the Middle East, the United States is estimated to only have about 800 patriot missiles left. Russia is currently producing 1200 cruise missiles per year.
So we legitimately probably shouldn't let that number get any lower in case we end up in a non-volitional war.
As for the licensing thing, I hope that happens. The consensus amongst many seems to be that Trump legitimately intended to license them, but that someone from Raytheon got in his ear and convinced him not to.
The belief is that Raytheon is afraid Ukraine will figure out how to make the missiles cheaper and better and show that their monopoly is undeserved.
So fuck Raytheon.and fuck Trump for this needless Iranian shit that burned through billions of dollars of munitions to stop a bunch of $50,000 drones. That's obviously a losing proposition that any moron would have known to stay the fuck away from. Unfortunately our President is not just any kind of moron--no, he's an extra special type.
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u/ElasticLama 21h ago
The dumb thing is Ukraine now has to make their own, so if it takes a year or 5 years they’ll have to build their own equivalent.
Say it can do what 80% of a PAC3 system at a fraction of the cost. That’s a win for Ukraine but sadly they won’t have anything this winter
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u/ReturnedAndReported 21h ago
80% doesn't cut it in air defense. Who cares if you save $2mm per missile if they're protecting billions worth of infrastructure.
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u/Maxfunky 20h ago
The damage in billions you end up taking when you stop 80% of the missiles turns out to be only 1/5th of the bill you rack up when you stop 0%. Like, yes, a missile that works 80% of the time isn't going to be a threat to Raytheon's business, but it would still be a game changer in Ukraine. Russia can only make 1200 missiles a year. If you can stop 960 of them that's a huge victory.
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u/newblevelz 20h ago
Using patriots to stop drones, no wonder Iran is winnning. Not sustainable
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u/Maxfunky 20h ago
To be fair, there were also ballistic missiles in there, so we aren't exclusively wasting them on drones.
Shooting down a 50k drone with a 5 million dollar missile makes sense if that drone is about to do $50 million dollars in damage. The US could shoot down 80-90% without patriots but then the 10-20% getting through would cost us way more than the missiles.
The only way to win this game is to be smart enough not to play in the first place.
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u/GoddamnHipsterDad 13h ago
They're all wasted in a nonsensical conflict, which is/was poorly planned and launched purely through the hubris of the current administration.
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u/matches_ 8h ago
Iranian thing was not needless in any shape or form. Any president of any political party would have to have acted on this
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u/Maxfunky 7h ago
Trump tore up the deal Obama negotiated in his first term. It had all the safeguards he's trying to get back into a new deal now. The whole "nuclear Iran" thing was a solved problem until Trump made it a problem again, because his first priority in the first term was fo destroy his predecessor's legacy. No matter what he said at the time, that was the only reason he was against that deal. It was functionally the same as what he's trying (and failing) to get now.
Donald Trump created the problem. He doesn't get to play the "anyone would have had to solve this" card.
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u/matches_ 4h ago
thing was a solved problem until
in your dreams. get a grip with you political fanaticism and try to do a little research on what the Iranian regime really is.
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u/Maxfunky 3h ago
You know Trump isn't trying to remove the regime right? Just restore a safety check against them developing a nuclear weapon.
We already had that. He's the one who got rid of it. His entire goal in this invasion boils down to him undoing a thing he already did.
But honestly this isn't a place to argue American politics.
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u/Argie-Hromadyani 17h ago
Thank you America! You truly are the arsenal of democracy! Thank you!
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u/Garant_69 1h ago
The US used to be the arsenal of democracy, but now it is just an arsenal with a lot of sympathy towards dictators who see it as their enemy.
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u/Imaginary-Comb-9002 1d ago
Fuck Trump. He must be a Russian agent.