Ukraine’s current main limitation appears to be funding, not troops or production capacity (although those are also precarious). Short-term they are diverting resources from their own frontline, but mid- to long-term it will allow them to increase their production capacity.
Being able to supply more drones to their frontline allows them to achieve more per deployed soldier. I recently learned that with enough drones, they need only a fraction of the troops they needed previously to hold the line. This means that selling equipment in the short-term could address their financial and reqruitment issues in the mid- to long-term.
Given that Ukraine is still holding on after more than 4 (or 3?) years of war, I think it’s safe to say that Ukrainian leadership has a good grasp of what they’re doing and that selling tech is a smart decision. With the worst of the winter behind them, they have less of a need for anti-drone drones. They just need to have enough of them before next winter.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
The bottleneck is not drones, the bottleneck is expertise.
Foreign investment/buy orders increase the production capacity of Ukrainian businesses which compensates for any drones diverted by increasing overall production, so no it isn’t diverting from the frontlines really.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
One cultivates the other, as operators need something to train on.
That said, raw supply of materials remains an issue across each theater of conflict. One of the bigger problems US/Israel has atm is producing and staffing weapons systems both offensively and defensively.
Ukrainians stepping in to provide support both drain their own front lines and create some miserable optics for a country that needs to be seen as opposing violations of sovereignty.
A country already strapped for resources and manpower, which they cannot afford to export.
Might as well be France, during the Blitz, exporting tanks to Franco’s Spain. It doesn’t help you if you’re businesses are going to be someone else’s property in another few months.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
No it might as well not, do not fear monger, the frontlines of Ukraine are not in danger of collapsing.
The more foreign powers work with Ukraine on drone defense the more all of Ukraine benefits. Drone production is one of the easiest weapons of war to scale up production of, we aren’t talking about helicopters, tanks or jets here.