Ukraine has become a “testbed” for western weapons which do not always live up to expectations and may finally become a thing of the past, a US media outlet has reported.
The outlet claimed that the Ukrainian conflict “offered the United States and its allies a rare opportunity to study how their own weapons systems perform under intense use.”
An unnamed source familiar with western intelligence was cited by the outlet as saying Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations.” According to the source, “This is real-world battle testing.”
Another insider told the outlet that some sophisticated systems delivered to Kiev, including the Switchblade 300 drone and a missile designed to target enemy radar systems, have turned out to be less effective on the battlefield than anticipated.
The insider argued that one lesson that Washington may take from the Ukrainian conflict is that towed artillery – like the M777 howitzer system supplied to Kiev – may be never used in the future due to the fact that the system is “harder to move quickly to avoid return fire.”
Since the beginning of the year, the US and its allies have delivered more than $40 billion in military assistance to Kiev. Moscow has repeatedly warned against providing Kiev with arms, something that the Kremlin says contributes to further escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
13 December 2022, 16:45 GMT
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, for his part, underlined that the Ukrainian conflict had become another pretext for the US and its allies to unleash an economic and information war against Moscow in order to deplete it strategically.
“Ukraine has been picked [by the West] as an instrument of a hybrid war against Russia,” Shoigu added, stressing that western arms supplies to Kiev add to prolonging the conflict and cause more casualties.
Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, following a request from the Donbass republics to protect them from Kiev attacks.