How America Makes Ukraine’s Most Important Weapons | Business Insider Marathon

watching this made me miss the show 'How Its Made'

US didn't gave money directly. Ukraine received arms in this amount. Most of the arms was was old. Basically US is renewing it's stocks. Arms industry in US had increased their production and had a boost in investment. That is more jobs and profits.

One, for pricing must remember that the U.S. Air Force spent $10,000 on each new toilet seat cover for the C-17 cargo plane. Two, when munitions in the U.S. Army reach the end of their service life, it's often more cost-effective to give them away rather than dispose of them.

Google Bard said that overall spending in Afghanistan is over 2 Trillion. Which is 20 times more than provided (not pledged) to Ukraine. So, incredibly small budget.

The intro showed F-16s as the voice over says the US sent "air support" which suggests that the US sent them, but NO! The F-16s were sent by European countries.

US didn't give a single jet. Denmark, Norway and Netherlands did.

This should really be titled, "spending over a 100 billion on testing modern weaponry on battle fields they don't even have to fight"

The ATAMs sent were past their use by date. There has even been a relatively high failure rate with these missiles. If these missiles were not given to Ukraine it would have cost millions to decommission these missile. Giving these missiles to Ukraine should be listed as a cost savings not a cost.

In addition, warfare is evolving. We’re not paying with American lives to see this kind of warfare evolve into drone warfare.

US: The tank is perfectly manufactured and tested before use. Russia: Dimitri, remind me where we put the T34s?

This was a really informative episode and I learned a lot! It is important to mention the amount of time that we’ve been sitting on these weapons and vehicles waiting for politicians to stop dragging feet though.

Where did you guys take $175BN from US? Ukraine support tracker lists $175BN from EUROPE and only ~74 BN from US (with another $24.7BN yet to be allocated from US). Also it's deceptive to say "spent" because much of the aid was just old junk US was trying to get rid of anyway—which is why we saw the two accounting adjustments from Pentagon. Smh what "journalism". Actually there's more errors in the video, I just CBA to write them all out. Anyway, best of luck to Ukraine from the UK

Ukraine never got this $175B in cash. A lot of items sent to Ukraine also were old equipment no longer used. Only a portion is new items and even then the money is invested in the domestic American industry and will return as taxes to the budget. Thank you America for supporting the freedom of Ukraine. Every dollar spent is saved lives of innocent people

A lot of misinformation here. $178k Javelin. This is 2 components. The launcher $100k and the missile$78k The launcher is reused. All munitions have a life span. Even 155mm artillery shells become questionable after reaching 20 years old. Most missiles can cost 50% of its original price to be disposed of. A $100k missile can cost $50k to dispose of. This☝️concerns the vast majority of what the U.S. has provided. Thus. In fact, the U.S. has saved billions of dollars in disposal costs. It's the politicians who figure the replacement costs that are being a little dishonest. The ATACMS the U.S. had in storage cost about $800k, priced out at $1m to $1.5 m all reaching & exceeding shelf life. Likely 100's of thousands of dollars each to dispose of. There's a reason the U.S. has a lot of out dates ordinance in storage. It's cheaper to store it for 30 years then to destroy it. PrSM->Precision Strike Missile. Anyway, the ATACMS are being replaced by the PrSM missiles that cost about $3m each. So the politicians need to decide how they price them out. $800k, $1m, $1.5m or the cost of it's replacement, the PrSM at $3m each. Thus ignoring the fact that disposal saved the Government $100k of dollars for each and every one of them. Note in the $60 billion in the last support plan. The Vast majority of that funding is to replace mostly the munitions that would normally have been taken from the annual military budget. It's a shell game. All government agencies play this despicable game. Say it costs a Billion dollars to cruise an aircraft carrier of the U.S. coast for a year. There's some unrest in the Mediterranean sea. So the send the carrier to the Mediterranean. It has an additional cost of 100 million dollars. Do the boost the budget for that. No. They allocate an additional $1.1 billion dollars in funding. Leaving about 1 billion dollars in the annual budget that they can use for something else. Seriously. You have maintenance costs of the ship whether it's sitting in port or stationed in some hotspot. You have to pay all the crew regardless where they are. In port or aboard a ship in a hotspot. And you have to provide food and medical etc no matter where they are. Note. Others have pointed out. The U.S. has given Ukraine zero F-16's. Other NATO members have. All while the U.S. is getting ready to put several 100 F-16's out in the desert for permanent storage. Also a couple dozen are intended to be updated to autonomous flight for target practice. That's right. They are going to blow them out if the sky.

When you think Vietnam cost America 1.4 TRILLION.

The Ukrainian 155mm Bohdana howitzer may take half a year to produce an individual unit, but have you ever seen an arms factory were they were working on just one tank at a time? Ukraine produces 6 Bohdana per month and they have a range of 30-40km depending on the round (no-frills $300 round or $3000 ERBB). The US provided 200 M777 which was very generous, sadly since they're stationary (no shoot-and-scoot) and the US removed the FCS which was too valuable to fall into Russian hands, the range was reduced to 24km with standard rounds and most M777 (and worse: their US trained crews) have been destroyed at this point. Though they provided Ukraine with some massive jolt in firepower at a critical point in the conflict. Two points I'd like to make: - I'd divide the donated weapons in 3 groups: 1.High-tech weapons produced specifically for Ukraine: HIMARS, MIM-104 Patriot, Javelins, M30/31 and ATACMS missiles, GLSDB, JDAM and the significant costs incurred by keeping AWACS and MALE surveillance drones in the air day and night, and analyzing that intel - upside for the US: if you look at this like it was a fire drill for a direct conflict with a near-peer adversary, it's identified some weakpoints that would not have been adressed otherwise. Like: insufficient stockpiles combined with lackluster production capabilities for certain systems in case of a protracted conflict - and the dire need to finally decide on a new long-range (80km) self-propeller howitzer. Another upside, primarily during the first year of the war, is that the army did actually save money by sending ammunition nearing the end of it's shelf life to Ukraine, saving on disposal costs. As for the cost of 10,000 Javelins - "over $200,000" per system is what foreign customers might pay. The US Army pays less than $100,000 if I'm not mistaken. And all those costs not only get injected directly into the US economy, there have been numerous anouncements from the defense sector that they will increase monthly production of X, meaning either extra shifts and/or extra production lines and/or new plants, all of which means extra manufacturing and R&D jobs in the defense sector - with a Democrat in the White House. Besides, not only has the US provided less Patriots than Germany, European countries are literally standing in line to buy MIM-104 Patriot batteries, F-35, HIMARS, Apaches, stockpiles of weapons for the F35, PAC-2/PAC-3 for the Patriots. The first thing the Bundeswehr ordered once the €100 billion check cleared was 60 of the CH-47F Chinooks and shortly thereafter 35 F-35A to stay in the NATO nuclear sharing program. The 3 MIM-104 Patriot batteries donated to Ukraine were matched by an order for 4 brand-new batteries from the US. 2. Mothballed weapon systems like the M2 Bradley. Surprisingly the Bradley has outperformed all other foreign IFVs and MBTs, at least that's my perception. Some of them you could argue are strategic stockpiles for a protracted conflict as well, but so far merely 62 Abrams and 400 something Bradleys have been sent. And it's not like the others were being sold off like hotcakes, they were just gathering dust in the Arizona desert - so what cost was incurred to the American taxpayer? Some of the other stuff makes me think: "My, they really could have thrown in an LCS or two with those 1,000 (!) MaxxPro". Upside: As with the MaxxPro, some systems mostly built for Afghanistan to quickly fix one specific issue might not be too painfull to get rid of - and if they're coming from active stock (presidential draw-down) the units that were robbed of their majestic MaxxPros get the chance to procure more versatile, modern systems. 3. Completely outdated weapon systems: included in those $175 billion are such treasures as the M113 - or 1980s soviet transport helicopters meant originally for the (very) short-lived Afghan goverment post-withdrawal of Coalition Forces. Finally: Europe has paid a heck of a lot more. Germany alone had to shoulder costs of $200 billion to get through the first winter without Russian gas, having to buy whatever was available at spot prices inflated up to 400% - convenient for gas producers like the US. Then there's also the detail that the EU is paying each year for over 5 million refugees. Depending on the benefits granted, that can incur significant costs as well. Germany alone provides shelter to ~1.x million Ukrainian refugees at a cost of over $12,000 per person per annum. So this used to be $12 billion year in, year out. TL;DR: US military aid to Ukraine is crucial. I don't mind if the US don't send a nickel in cash, but Europe unfortunately didn't build stockpiles of weapons to send to Ukraine. We'll pay their soldiers, their firemen, police and other public servants. We'll help with pensions and basic training. But when it comes to sending weapons, like NOW, nobody can replace America.

Hey Business Insider, you need to do a video about how the accounting behind this works. The U.S. has been valuing systems like M113s (1950s era APCs that we retired in the 80s) at more than $500,000 apiece. When they're sold for scrap they're sold for about $200 apiece (still running). A lot of the ammo we have sent was near the end of its shelf life and it would have cost us more to dispose of than it cost us to send to Ukraine. So $175billion is a hugely inflated number.

Oh it's manufactured in Scranton? Is patriotic American Dwight Kurt Schrute III in?

The last time I heard the word pledged, was from a reality tv show with captain jack sparrow

Did the Russian MOD write this headline? God damn.