Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest US military post, officially announced the amount of anti-tank weapons and air defense systems that the United States and other allied countries have transferred to Ukraine as part of assistance against the Russian invasion.
According to him, we are talking about 25,000 units of anti-aircraft systems and 60,000 units of anti-tank weapons, the agency reports Reuters.
To understand the scale of the transferred weapons, the total number of tanks in the ranks of the entire army of the Russian Federation, in all units and branches of the military, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, is about 3300 units, according to Military Balance 2021. From this figure, as of March 8, it is necessary to subtract 700 units that have been destroyed or captured by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since February 24.
At the same time, to these 60 thousand units of anti-tank weapons, it is necessary to add the stocks that Ukraine had before February 24, including ATGMs of its own production – “Stugna” and “Corsair”. It should also be noted that the anti-tank weapons mentioned by Mark Milley most likely mean both Javelin and NLAW anti-tank guided missile systems, as well as Panzerfaust 3 or AT4 anti-tank grenade launchers.
Also, for the objectivity of the assessment, it is necessary to clarify that in addition to tanks, other armored vehicles are also a fair target for these systems – infantry and airborne combat vehicles, as well as armored personnel carriers. Their total number in the ranks of the entire army of the Russian Federation: about 16 thousand of all types of infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and reconnaissance vehicles, according to Military Balance 2021. From this number – “minus” 1890 units destroyed after February 24.
In any case, if we take the number of all armored targets in the ranks of the Russian army at the beginning of the full-scale invasion and only the anti-tank weapons transferred by the allies, then the ratio: 1 target for 3.27 units of anti-tank weapons. In reality, this figure is larger and may be somewhere in the region of 4-5 units of exclusively infantry anti-tank weapons per target. And this is without taking into account all other equipment and weapons that are capable of destroying enemy armored vehicles.
As for 25,000 anti-aircraft systems, in this case, most likely, we are talking about portable anti-aircraft missile systems such as the Stinger, the Polish Piorun, as well as additional missiles for them and MANPADS and missiles for Soviet systems that were in the warehouses of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.
Taking into account these figures, the Ukrainian army now has one of the largest concentrations of infantry, anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems per soldier among all armies in the world.