And NATO’s role in the war is crucial, of course, as a supplier of materiel, but not as deep as the conspiracy theorists like to think. They did not launch this war and do not direct it.
Also, despite my comment being voted down, it’s not a joke that NATO was shocked by how Ukraine has fough, not just how well. Its influence is openly discussed in the US and a European press and can be seen, for example, in the rush to embrace low cost disposable drones.
But it’s more than that: Ukraine has been more nimble and creative than the stogy western militaries who stopped taking Russia’s military that seriously in the early 1990s. Russia has underperformed, but not by a lot. But Ukraine has taken a weak hand and, without a navy, bottled up the Russians in the Black Sea. They demonstrated and used a flexibility far from the capabilities of any of the western militaries at scale. NATO needs not just to embrace that (which will likely take a generation) but also be ready to fight an adversary that has a similar attitude.
I don't think that civil war in Myanmar, for example, is much of testing/advertising zone.
>do not direct it
They do. There were many articles in western press about, for example, the role of NATO in planning of last year's failed Ukrainian offensive.
> But Ukraine has taken a weak hand and, without a navy, bottled up the Russians in the Black Sea.
That's an old thing: "another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected." [0]
2. Not really. NATO mostly gave Ukraine stuff that's obsolete, or close. The cutting-edge stuff (drones, mostly) is Ukraine innovating out of resource constraints, not NATO testing stuff out.
Two counterexamples don't add up to "nope".
But maybe, instead of "obsolete", I should have said "not state of the art". Is there anything that NATO has given Ukraine that is state of the art? HIMARS might be. Were the Abrams and Bradleys state of the art, or were they old revs? Is Storm Shadow actually state of the art?
Latest L2, Abrams etc. wouldn’t fare significantly better. Close enough for evaluation.
Performance in a real conflict has many dimensions. This large land war is the closest thing to the hot Cold War conflict most of the gear in question was built for. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
There’s much more than tanks, guns and missiles to be tested.
They don’t want to hurt sales with bad PR. But they have to send something. Older, gimped models as excuse.
Costs are already massive. New production is often pitiful. As horny as many NATO generals are for this war, parting with what little working gear they have left, unlikely to be replaced soon if ever, stings.
That said, “testing ground” is also kind of a red herring. A side-effect, not really a cause.
AMRAAM-ER, for example.
>Is Storm Shadow actually state of the art?
"France, the UK, along with Italy are jointly developing the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon to replace SCALP/Storm Shadow and each nation's respective anti-ship missiles by 2028 and 2034." [0]