In Reply to: Ukraine: people are dying while Trump is dithering posted by SagoBob on October 17, 2025 at 11:59:28
The Tomahawks are not as big a deal as the papers make them because the US only has around 4,000 Tomahawks.
At best, we are looking at the US giving Ukraine 10 to 20 Tomahawks, with maybe Germany matching with Storm shadows.
70% of Ukraine's arms are built by Ukraine, with joint munitions/drone/arms factories in Denmark, Czechoslovakia, etc.
Ukraine made around 1.2 million drones this year, beating its target of a million. Next year, their target is 5 million drones in a joint venture with England.
Ukraine is currently making 1 or 2 Flamingos a day, which is a slower, bigger missile than the Tomahawk, but I believe that it has 3 times the range and 3 times the payload. Their target within a month or two is 7 Flamingos a day.
The most important thing that the Trump administration has given and continues to give Ukraine is targeting information.
They are telling Ukraine what to hit, what path to take, what altitude and direction to attack from, and most importantly, what to actually aim at since drones have a minimal payload. From memory, I believe 23 out of 30 refinery strikes this month were considered successful, with five strikes categorized as unknown. That's a remarkable success rate that requires US intel.
Trump has also given permission for Ukraine to take strikes on the Russian power grid and refineries, which Biden forbade.
Russian ballistic missiles/shaheed drone strikes are also more effective, given the updates they have given to their weapons, but in terms of strategic impact, Ukraine's is much more than Russia's.
We are at a point now where some sober analysts feel that we may be at an inflection point in the war in Ukraine's favor, which is why Trump is entertaining giving Tomahawks. He's a frontrunner. He's with Russia if they look like they are winning, but he'll stand with Ukraine if they create a substantial lead.
With the Tomahawks, you are only looking at 10 to 40 strikes within 1,000 km of Russian territory. Ukraine can make that up easily at this point. That only accelerates Ukraine's situation by 2 weeks to a month at best.