West is sending tanks to Ukraine, so what's next on Zelensky's wishlist?

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After weeks of tense deliberation, the West finally agreed to send tanks to Ukraine. Germany finally agreed to re-export licenses for its popular leopard tanks from other European countries, as well as a handful of leopards from the Bundeswehr itself and the US committed to a battalions worth of M1 Abrams. While Ukraine was obviously grateful for the tanks Zelensky has since asked for yet another escalation in aid requesting that the US send fighter jets, advanced drone systems and longer range Hymas missiles to help Ukraine retake its territory. So in this article, we're going to take a look at the impact these new tanks might have, what further aid Ukraine is requesting and whether the West will oblige.

So before we get into what the West might say next, a quick look at the tanks and how much of a difference they'll make on the battlefield. At time of writing, the West is committed to sending somewhere between 100 and 150 tanks or between three and five battalions worth and well below the 300 requested by Ukraine. Now, these tanks will definitely help the German leopards, and the British challenges are more advanced than the Soviet T models that Ukraine is currently using. And if the tanks are used in tandem with all the other Western arms in combined arms operations, they can make a real difference in offensive operations. However, most military analysts seem to think the tanks impact will be limited by two things the number of tanks and the time they'll actually arrive on the battlefield.

Now, 100 tanks is a lot of tanks. But it's worth saying that according to the new German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, who's coordinating the European tank deliveries, the leopards will be delivered to Ukraine in two batches and the first batch of about 40 leopard2's, including 14 from Germany, will only arrive in March at the earliest and probably later. This is because while the newer leopards in Europe's armies are battle ready, they involve completely different technology from the T models Ukraine is currently using. So the Ukrainians have to be taught how to use them from scratch. Again, 40 tanks is a nontrivial number of tanks, but it's not going to be decisive given that there are already thousands of tanks in Ukraine. The second batch, which will comprise older models of leopards, will take a bit more time because they need to be checked for maintenance. Spain, for example, could end up sending as many as 50 older leopards but these need to be checked because Spain's tanks have been mothballed and kept in storage for the last ten years. Similarly, while the 14 challenger tanks promised by the UK should arrive around the same time as the first batch of leopards, the 31 M1 Abrams promised by the US will only arrive in September at the earliest because A they're really complicated to use and b the Abrams are being purchased from suppliers, not pulled from US stockpiles. So they need to actually be manufactured first.

The point we're making is that the majority of the 100 tanks or so promised probably won't arrive until the second half of this year at the earliest and this isn't great news for Kiev. Zelensky has made it clear that he wants to return to Ukraine's 2014 borders, which will involve pushing the Russian army out of Zakaria, Kherson, Donbass and even Crimea. But the longer Ukraine has to wait for tanks, the harder that will be, because as time goes on, the front lines will basically freeze and further advances will become difficult. The pace of advance is already far slower than what it was last year, and things will become even more difficult after the spring mud, which will give the Russians time to improve their fortifications. This is what happens in a war, the longer the front lines are stable for, the more difficult offensive operations become. Which is why we've seen basically no movement in places like Abdivka and Marinka, where both sides have been fighting since 2014. Anyway, this is one of the reasons why almost immediately after the tanks were announced, Zelensky and his ministers started calling for more aid. At the moment there seems to be basically two things on Kiev's wish list longer range ammunition for their Hymas system, otherwise known as attack teams and fighter jets, specifically American F-16s.

Let's start with ATMS. At ATMS, which stands for Army Tactical Missile Systems are Hymas compatible missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometres. Ukraine wants them because longer range missiles would give the Ukrainians the ability to put more pressure on Russia's logistics operation behind the front line and strike targets in places like Crimea. The West and specifically the US, has been reluctant to hand them over for two reasons. First, it's the US's only long range tactical missile system and there aren't that many around. Lockheed Martin who makes the missiles only produced between one and 200 missiles a year and the US's stockpile is estimated at around 3000 missiles. Second, the West has expressed a wariness that giving these systems to Ukraine would allow them to strike targets within Russia, and this massively increases the risk of escalation. The other thing on Zelensky's list are F-16s. For those of you who don't know, F-16s are an American fighter jet first produced in the late seventies, that is today by far and away the most popular jet for armies across the world, with somewhere between two and 3000 in service globally, while they're no longer manufactured. For the US Army, which is currently focusing on the newer F 35, they're still in production for other armies. This is something that's. On Ukraine's wish list for a while. And earlier this week, a spokesman for the Ukrainian air force said Ukraine wanted 200 fighter jets to create five tactical aviation brigades.

While both Poland and France have apparently said they're open to sending F-16s to Ukraine. Both the US and the UK have explicitly ruled out sending jets. a Downing Street spokesperson said on Wednesday that the UK's typhoon jets and the f35 the army have in stock require months of training, so it wouldn't be practical to send them to Ukraine and Biden flatly refused when he was asked about it on Monday. Presumably the anxieties here are similar to ATMCMS. Advanced fighter jets would allow the Ukrainians to strike targets within Russian territory. And it's true, as Downing Street suggested, that proper training would require months. It's also worth saying that F-16s are very expensive, often coming in at over $50 million. For context, older leopard tanks only cost about $5 Million each, while the Soviet T models that Russia uses can be less than a million. Now, obviously, while the West is currently against sending ATMCMS and jets, we've seen this sort of thing before. The West was originally against sending any, quote, lethal aid to Ukraine and now we're sending tanks. A cursory glance at recent history suggests that the West will eventually cave to Kiev's demands, as they did with artillery, Hymas, armored vehicles and most recently, tanks. However, while this might have happened in the past, this doesn't necessarily mean that Zelensky will get what he wants because Western politicians will presumably have to draw the line at some point.

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