The US is going to send Ukraine Bradley Fighting Vehicles for the first time in a new weapons package worth nearly $3 billion, US officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The officials said the $2.85 billion aid package will be formally announced on Friday, and it will mark the single largest arms package for Ukraine the US has pledged at one time. The package will include 50 Bradleys, which are designed to transport infantry troops with armored protection that are equipped with a 25 mm gun.
The White House confirmed the US will be providing Ukraine with Bradleys in a statement on a phone call between President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The statement said that Berlin will be supplying Kyiv with a similar piece of equipment, the German-made Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles.
The announcement came the day after France said it would be giving Ukraine AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles, which are similar to the Bradleys but have a bigger gun and are considered “light tanks.” A French official said it was the “first time that Western-made armored vehicles are being delivered in support of the Ukrainian army.”
While providing Ukraine with Western-made armored vehicles is a significant escalation in aid, it falls short of the heavier tanks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been seeking, such as US-made Abrams and German-made Leopards. Zelensky was denied Abrams when he visited Washington DC, and a US official told The Washington Post the Biden administration is still ruling it out.
The US officials speaking to AP said the $2.85 billion weapons package that will be announced on Friday will also include HUMVEES, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and a large number of missiles and other ammunition. The weapons will be paid for by funds already authorized by Congress to spend on the war, which at this point totals about $112 billion.
This is consistent with Biden’s response to Putin’s call for a 36 hour ceasefire.
If anything, 40 transport vehicles seems like not very much equipment. Helpful yeah, but kind of underwhelming. I guess we feel the need to pretend that this is only a temporary and gradual escalation.
Forty Bradleys is enough for ten infantry platoons. So along with some other vehicle types for headquarters company, etc. about one infantry battalion. Not an especially large force.
It might be used as the main maneuver element for an otherwise non-mechanized (or just truck-mounted) regiment. It would give the troops some protection and some extra armament (25mm chain gun, 7.62 machine gun, and TOW anti-tank missile — I wonder if that last has been modernized to something better?), but it doesn’t seem like any kind of large-scale game-changer.
Of course, the Ukrainians also have other APCs, including BMPs, BRDMs, and BTR-80s. These may mostly be replacement vehicles for combat losses.
Thank you for the detailed clarification. My guess is that your last sentence is correct.
Lots of acronyms. But they’re all just shorthand for methods to mutilate and kill people.
I’ve been noticing in some discussion fora that they are latched onto with an obscenely adolescent glee by a lot of progressive democrats. Does make me wonder…
Yup, huge swathes of supposed liberals have become combat fanboys, although the vast majority have experience and training limited to role-playing games.
It’s not generally a bad thing to learn about and understand the type of warfare being conducted in Ukraine, though. The more one knows, the easier it is to see that sending a Patriot battery or a few dozen infantry fighting vehicles, or whatever wonder weapons are announced next, is not going to make an appreciable difference to the outcome of this rolling disaster.
“supposed liberals”
“Supposed” being the operative word. It’s like “supposed conservatives”. We have both of those in abundance but nary a true liberal nor a true conservative.
Yup.
Even without being technically competent it seems anybody with any sense could see that a few dozen of anything short of nuclear weapons couldn’t have an appreciable effect in a national scale conflict. It’s all a theater of the absurd, being staged for an apparently receptive audience.
Yes, although I would say clearly receptive. Generations of Americans have been programmed from birth to dislike and be suspicious of Russia and Russians. Then the Russiagate nonsense pushed a huge segment of the population all the way into foaming, unreasoning hatred and stupidity. If if the administration announced that the US is sending spears and longbows to beef up Ukraine’s air defenses, there would be more cheering than questioning.
Yeah, they’re clearly a receptive audience. I guess I try and give them some benefit of doubt. I don’t know why. They’re a bunch of hateful monkeys. I saw as a child the absurdity of hating an entire nation of people.
What are you talking about? Ukraine would be half annexed by now had not been for all the lethal assistance it has received from West. Wars are won one battle at the time.
I had a vague memory of a squabble with congressional committees over vulnerability when the Bradleys were new, so I spent a few minutes googling. It turned out that the Wiki entry is as thorough and well-documented as anything else I found.
It turns out that there were major controversies and conflicts over the development of the vehicle. Among other things, the GAO investigated and reported that the Army had fudged the vulnerability tests. Supposedly, improvements were made.
A couple dozen Bradleys were destroyed in Gulf War I, most of them by friendly fire. Douglas Macgregor was an armor officer in that one, so I expect he’ll have something to say about this transfer.
It appears that about 150 Bradleys were lost in the Iraq invasion and occupation. I didn’t dig deep enough to determine what weapons took them out, bit there are citations to reports of vulnerability to IEDs.
The US Army has lots of Bradleys, thousands, most apparently in storage. Multiple sources say it was retired from combat after the Iraq mess.
Based on the Wiki entry you cite, etc., I’d rate the Bradley as “an expensive truck with some protective utility and a little mounted weaponry.”
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the Bradley back when I was a Marine Corps grunt. We just didn’t really use APCs. We got where we went on foot, in Jeeps (later HMMVs), or by truck. There was the LAV-25, but it carried a crew of 2-4 and was mainly a reconnaissance vehicle (the only Marine KIA in Panama was an LAV vehicle commander, whose name — Gareth Isaak — came right before mine alphabetically in our platoon in boot camp, meaning we often stood two-man watches together).
Forty Bradleys could be useful, but only in a small way — a single on-call company for situations that require fast movement, or a large reconnaissance element.
Yes. A guy I knew who had been a maintenance tech in the Army at that time told me, Yes, but they are so much better than what we have. On the grand model of conventional war in Europe, they were part of Armored and Armored Cav Units. Tanks, APC’s and other specialized vehicles. It can carry 6 infantry at the same speed the Tanks move? I think. And with NBC protection.
I like MacGregors analysis. There is a reason they made him retire. Too smart.
A Bradley platoon has six vehicles. They each carry fewer infantry than the older vehicles did. A company is twenty, with three platoons of six and two command. Forty would then be two companies, or the infantry component of one combined arms battalion.
Could be a way to field test them against something other than insurgents so the MIC can then sell upgraded versions to the tax payers
$112 Bbbbilion Bbbbbucks! We’re not talking chump change here.
You type that number on a PC in a bank, and presto, you have the money!
Magic!
It’s funny how much money we spend on WAR… It makes me wonder if there is a tally on how much we spend on peace?………………………………
It’s the Null Set.
It shows you clearly that the whole financial system is a giant SCAM!
“US to Send Ukraine Bradley Fighting Vehicles in Nearly $3 Billion Arms Package The vehicles represent another escalation of US military aid”
In third world countries fighting tribal people the US used these vehicles as the US military played wack-a-mole with tribes using primarily small arms and a few IEDs.
In Ukraine the Bradleys will be death traps against Russian heavy weapons.
They are quite mobile and can put Russian tanks at risk from the backs and sides. Better than being in a truck. War is dangerous.
In Ukraine you will not be fighting aboriginal tribal people with small arms, IEDs and RPGs. Ukraine is a major European land war between the cannon fodder Ukrainians plus industrial America and Russia.
In this battlefield Bradleys are worthless.
Compared to what? A truck, better than a truck, a BMP, better than a BMP.
With armed Drone use and heavy artillery there is no good armored vehicle in Ukraine.
Both the BMP and Bradley are magnets for destructive weapons in use in Ukraine.
OK, but the Ukrainians asked for them and we have tons of these in storage. War is dangerous
“OK, but the Ukrainians asked for them and we have tons of these in storage.”
Best rationale for a proxy war I’ve seen to this point.
Congratulations.
“In Ukraine you will not be fighting aboriginal tribal people with small arms, IEDs and RPGs … In this battlefield Bradleys are worthless.
APCs seem to have been worthless in fights with aboriginal tribal people with small arms, IEDs and RPGs. I used to have a little Afghan-woven rug (bought from a shop in Saudi Arabia whose proceeds allegedly supported the Afghan muj) featuring images of burning BMPs.
On the Ukrainian battlefield, they’re reasonably fast transportation for infantry and provide some protection from e.g. overhead artillery.
I don’t think they’re worthless, and they certainly provide protection against small arms fire, although not much more than that, it seems. And they can carry a squad over fairly rough terrain much faster than wheeled vehicles.
But 40 of them, in a war of attrition with a front hundreds of miles long? More PR/propaganda.
Over time, you’ve continuously asserted that this is a “war of attrition.”
What makes you think it’s any such thing?
I think straightforward observation reveals that the conflict has been a war of attrition for some months now. It seems quite deliberate on the part of the Russians, at least.
Having withdrawn from expensive-to-defend territory and consolidated shortened lines along the front, the Russians haven’t been attempting any significant pushes, certainly nothing remotely like a big-arrow offensive. Almost everywhere, they seem satisfied, at least for now, to inflict casualties and equipment losses on the Ukrainian forces that keep being poured into the grinder. Along with wreaking havoc on Kiev’s logistics with all those infrastructure strikes.
Ukraine, in late summer and fall, was in maneuver-warfare mode. That worked, sort of. A big chunk of territory in Kharkov was (re)taken and Russian troops ultimately withdrew from Kherson territory on the right bank of the Dnieper. In both cases though, the gains were extremely expensive in casualties and materiel losses and the gains don’t appear, to me, to be worth the costs.
The fighting around Bakhmut looks like WWI. The Russians are grinding away at Kiev’s troops, which are are constantly being fed into the grinder. Russia is making incremental advances, but the Ukrainians are in serious fortifications constructed over eight years, so attrition warfare is almost automatic there, unless Russia decides to launch a massive assault of some sort, and it doesn’t appear to want to do that, at least not now.
Also, everything Surovikin has said since being appointed as overall commander indicates that attrition is the plan for the moment.
That just leads to additional questions, such as why you believe there’s a “grinder” and that Ukrainian forces are, to any great degree, being “fed into” it.
Each side claim to have killed 100,000 or more of the other side’s troops, and to have lost 1/10th as many.
Both numbers are probably closer to the 1/10th than to the opponent’s claim. There are a few headline casualty events, but for the moment at least the Ukrainian forces seem to have mostly given up on wasteful “big push” attempts, and outside of desultory attempts to secure DPR the Russian forces seem mostly content to lob a few missiles at cities whenever they fear the Ukrainians have forgotten they’re there.
The closest this thing has come to Verdun was Mariupol.
I don’t think we’re watching the same war. Let’s just wait and see.
This is your standard response, “wait and see”, when you have nothing else to contribute.
“The Russians are grinding away at Kiev’s troops, which are are constantly being fed into the grinder.”
What Tom pointed out above was your bias. As if only Ukrainians are dying in masses.
But this is typically your talking point which is pretty tepid.
Let’s just wait and see.
If they wanted to send Kiev all this equipment to occupy Donbass, they should have done it before the war, not piecemeal. Now all it does is add an extra day of Russia bombing new equipment. An extra day of forced Ukrainian conscripts dying for Zelensky.
“Give”- Maxwell Blummenthal has called 3 billions, welfare queens.Pretty easy when Twitter files show how Twitter Interfered in the Pres election helping install Chairman Biden.
“Chairman Biden”… I hope that one sticks. lol
We should also take a page from the media and call the government in Washington the U.S. “regime”.
And personally I never write “the U.S.” does something, just like I don’t write that “Ukraine” is attacking Donbass. It’s Washington and Kiev, to show that it’s certain individuals in government.
I kinda like “Cadaver in Chief”, Donna 😉
That is SENILE Biden, not chairman. He doesn’t look like a chair, just a stupid warlord.
These are still mostly useful for holding territory, not offense to gain ground. It’s the US govt that’s totally cynical, bleeding Russia and Ukraine for as long as they can be coaxed into dying indefinitely for nothing.
How many people who “support” the Ukraine regardless of the truth and facts would like to be victims of a government just because of their nationality/ethnicity? The Ukraine has been attacking Russian people within its borders for a long time and it finally precipitated in Putin’s “surgical operation to de-Nazify” the Ukraine. Those who condemn Russia blindly and with a closed mind would certainly not want to fill the shoes of those people molested by the Ukranian government, their “OWN” government!
Don’t worry Americans!
Senile Joe is NOT sending HIS money to spend on HIS war…. He is sending YOUR, and YOUR grandchildren’s’ and their grandchildren’s’ money to send on HIS stupid war.
So, cheer up!! all is good with our senile warlord.
The US will send old, used, broken down vehicles that were put into storage because their units could no longer repair them with reasonable cost and effort.
That money won’t go to Ukraine. It goes to the US Army, to buy new vehicles for the US Army to use.
This is a smokescreen. Propaganda. Lies.
Anyone seen Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” cover? I don’t have to tell you who it is.
I noticed it standing in the checkout line at Meijers. Good thing my stomach was empty, or I might have expelled its contents. 😝
They make excellent target practice for Russians to expose their weakness and at the same time help US improve on these outdated armor system. Only losers are the Ukrainians who will cook inside those Bradleys upon impact.
Go ahead- Bradleys are big targets and loud AF. I hope the Ukro soldiers who use them have their SGLI papers up to date. Same for the poor bastards who were issued the Aussie M113 shoeboxes. (Oh, and good luck with maintenance.)
Next stop tanks … after that – nukes?
The whole thing is very disconcerting… It has been weighing heavily on my mind….
It makes me wonder who is behind all this terminal insanity, human or non-human entities …
What if arms manufacturers instigated wars so they could test their new toys?
And what if their instigation included campaign contributions to effectively the entire membership of both houses of Congress . . .
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?cycle=2022&ind=D
and many tens of millions of dollars to lobby those grateful recipients of their donations . . .
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=2022&ind=D
??? ☹️
I am still very concerned about this money and this war… There are so many ways that this situation can escalate…
I have no desire to get my a– nuked…
I’ve been trying to get it started that we call these kinds of vehicles EBOs, for Easy Bake Ovens. Maybe issue the soldiers packets of dough. Using them without air superiority is basically scrapping them with people inside.
Week after week, the US and to a lesser extent other NATO members announce these arms packages as if they could actually make a difference in the outcome of this war. It’s nonsense, PR hype, information warfare, bullshit. You don’t have to be a professional military strategist or tactician to understand that, but you do have to have a basic understanding of combined-arms warfare, which is what’s happening in Ukraine.
If you don’t have that basic knowledge, I think the assessments of these packages provided by Brian Berletic on his “New Atlas” video channels are well worth following. Here’s his latest, which deals with the package we’re talking about here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XOSoGQcc4k
“You don’t have to be a professional military strategist or tactician to understand that, but you do have to have a basic understanding of combined-arms warfare, which is what’s happening in Ukraine.”
Interesting.
My brother’s opinion (which I’m not sure I share) is that the reason the Russians haven’t fared well is that “they suck at combined arms.”
But, that came up back when he and I disagreed over whether the move on Kyiv was a strategic feint or an actual attempt to take the city. I thought it was the former from the first, he still thinks it was the latter.
My take is that everyone sucks at combined arms right now, because combined arms is changing.
It used to be infantry, armor, artillery, and air. Then cruise missiles, etc. came into the equation as well.
Armor and manned air are both fast becoming obsolete, and missile defense is getting better.
The Russians and Ukrainians both, to probably different degrees, seem to be taking the transition to unmanned drones in stride.
I’m not sure whether the Russians have figured out that tanks are no longer worth the financial and manpower investment.
The Russians seem to have an edge versus missile defense improvements with hypersonics — on the development, if not yet on the deployment, end, anyway.
One thing I’ll be interested to learn is how much actual combined arms is going on over there with US/EU/NATO assets doing things that the Russians either aren’t detecting or choosing not to openly confront.
As I’ve said repeatedly, I absolutely don’t think Russia had any attention of trying to take Kiev. It would have been an extremely stupid move to attempt it with so few troops and nothing I see or hear suggests that such stupidity is common among their general staff.
I think Russia intended to shock Kiev into negotiations and a quick resolution. That almost happened, but the Western sponsors and masters shut it down. And it has taken some time for Russia’s Plan B to be developed and implemented.
I do see what’s happening as combined-arms operations, sort of. But the lines have been mostly static for some time, so . . . the elements of combined arms as it now is are there, but not much is moving so it’s hard to get a picture of relative competence and successes.
Russia is inching forward in the area around Bakhmut, where the most intensive fighting has been going on for a long time. They seem to be content with inching, which makes sense. Ukrainian forces there are dug into extensive fortifications that have been developed and expanded since 2014. Trying to advance rapidly in a situation like that means almost certainly taking lots of casualties and the Russians clearly want to avoid that. It is around Bakhmut that I think their war of attrition tactics are most obvious.
I agree that armor is clearly less important than most would have expected in a battle like this. It turns out that zillion-dollar tanks are much too easy to take out with swarms of cheap drones.
Russia clearly has the air defense advantage. Ukraine definitely started with a good system, but replacements for that Soviet equipment just aren’t available. in adequate quantities and now they have to deal with mixing and matching with whatever Western stuff they can get.
But the real air defense problem for Ukraine is that Russia is routinely launching saturation sorties of drones, cruise missiles, ballistics, etc. Even if Ukraine intercepts many of them, more than enough get through to inflict massive infrastructure damage.
If US-NATO is doing things we haven’t seen, I expect we eventually will see. Ukraine is almost entirely dependent on assistance and materiel from the West and it’s clear from the lists the Pentagon keeps publishing that the weapons and munitions being sent are just not adequate by themselves.
I don’t see anyone backing down. That probably means it will all get even more dangerous and devastating.
Imagine a few Russia soldiers in a bar joking about how they finally have a use for those captured Javelins….
Imagine a few Russia soldiers in a bar joking about how they finally have a use for those captured Javelins….
Maybe for all that money we should have bought all those soldiers Lexus sports cars and let them drive home.