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archive.ph | Suspected Iranian Weapons Seized by U.S. Navy May Go to Ukraine, 14 Feb booty
The U.S. military is considering sending Ukraine thousands of seized weapons and more than a million rounds of ammunition once bound for Iran-backed fighters in Yemen, an unprecedented step that would help Kyiv battle Russian forces, U.S. and European officials said.

U.S. officials said they are looking at sending Ukraine more than 5,000 assault rifles, 1.6 million rounds of small arms ammunition, a small number of antitank missiles, and more than 7,000 proximity fuses seized in recent months off the Yemen coast from smugglers suspected of working for Iran.
[...]
"The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions and depleting allied stockpiles," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday, on the eve of the meetings. "The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain."
[...]
U.S. military officials began seriously considering the idea late last year after the U.S. Navy seized a million rounds of ammunition on board a fishing boat traveling from Iran to Yemen, the officials said. A few weeks later, the American military seized more than 2,000 AK-47s from a small fishing boat in the Gulf of Oman. In mid-January, French forces found 3,000 assault rifles, nearly 600,000 rounds and more than 20 antitank rockets on board another fishing boat in the Gulf of Oman.
[...]

by Cat on Wed Feb 15th, 2023 at 01:14:14 PM EST
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nationalpost reuters | UK training Ukrainians to fight in 'Western way' with less ammunition - minister, 15 Feb value chain
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Wednesday.
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Wallace said Britain had been buying and trading ammunition "that is Soviet" in standard while also helping the Ukrainian military convert to unlock "access to our ammunition stocks."

"At the same time we're training to make sure it's used in a way that's very productive and accurate," he said.

"The Russian or the Soviet way of fighting is very ammunition heavy, massive artillery barrages, and that's never how we have organized ourselves to fight in NATO," he said.
[...]

yahoo! Kyiv Independent | How many missiles does Russia have left?, 13 Jan
...Western claims that Russia is running out of advanced, high-precision missiles have floated in the news since March [2022]. But more than 10 months into the all-out war, Russian missiles continue to rain down on Ukrainian cities.
[...]
The short answer is, no one outside Russia has indisputable numbers on its stockpiles and production rates. Ukraine released figures but they have not been independently verified. There are also estimates from Western analysts relying on observable clues.
but
Many estimates agree on one thing: Russia's strategic bombing campaign is burning through missiles at an unsustainable rate. If it keeps going, Russia should come to a point where it won't be able to launch mass strikes every 1-2 weeks anymore, even if it keeps dipping into its strategic reserves.

Ukraine says that this point is just three mass strikes away. ....

21 to 42 days?
by Cat on Thu Feb 16th, 2023 at 03:37:21 PM EST
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The whole Russian "strategic bombing" campaign of the winter is a bust anyway : it was based on the idea that they could knock out Ukraine's electrical production and distribution systems and keep them down. This turns out to be another misunderestimation.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
by eurogreen on Thu Feb 16th, 2023 at 04:10:00 PM EST
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