Donald Trump made clear that his personal grudge with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t abated during a phone interview with NBC News.
Speaking with Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker on Saturday, the president knocked Zelensky for offering assistance to the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries, the latter of which the Ukrainian president said on Friday were seeking his aid in sharing drone detection technology.
The “last person we need help from is Zelensky,” Trump told Welker.
The USA is rapidly burning through munitions that Ukraine desperately needs. I suspect the loss of those anti air weapons etc is much worse for Ukraine than the small reduction in drones launched at them.
I honestly hadn’t realised munitions were so difficult to produce. Everyone concerned about burning through stockpiles. I guess in non-war times you don’t need the capability to produce a lot in a short time.
That’s exactly it, yes. Modern armaments production is geared around low intensity conflicts and maintaining existing stockpiles. It’s not set up for full militarization. That’s a good thing in a lot of ways; economies geared for war end up needing war. But it means that even a nation like the US can only sustain a high intensity conflict for so long.
Iran is particularly taxing because they’re focused heavily on the use of cheap drone munitions, which the US just does not have a cost effective way of intercepting. US air defense is still designed around shooting down expensive planes and missiles. Patriot is an incredible air defense system, but it’s ungodly expensive. The whole system costs over a billion dollars, and the missiles are 4 million each. If one of those missiles shoots down a $50 million Mig-29, that’s a really good deal. A $20,000 shahed drone… Not so much.