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I am but a humble biologist, and know little of warfare, politics and economics. But I'm surprised to see nobody has mentioned that the majority of US aid to Ukraine was spent with US arms manufacturers. Many Trump supporters (or at least democrat-haters) bemoaned the atrophied state of US/European arms production when Russia was producing more shells than NATO per month. China can kick our ass in drone production. Setting aside all questions of morality (which I obviously find more compelling than your median Trump supporter), why not use the conflict in Ukraine as an opportunity to re-arm? So to answer your question...pretty much anything and everything that we can make that wouldn't enable Ukraine to steamroll the Russian army and march on Moscow. No NATO troops, no air support (just intel), no nuclear umbrella (for now).
As an aside, isn't domestic spending to onshore manufacturing a key goal of the Trump administration? Why the monomaniacal focus on tariffs and not industrial policy more broadly? And particularly tariffs on our allies...but I suppose that's a different discussion.
The arms that are sent to Ukraine are mostly already manufactured. There's a second-stage effect of having to replenish the stocks after part of it had been sent to Ukraine, but it doesn't have to be 1-1 match or done instantly. It is true that manufacturing capacity is lagging severely, but it can't be upgraded instantly. As I read, making a new shell producing factory takes about 2 years (that's if it doesn't have to pass Californian environmental reviews, otherwise it's probably closer to 22) so the process has started but nowhere near completion or even reaching the necessary capacity. I am not sure what would happen now with Trump's pivot - I don't remember even reading a consistent position from him on military budget. Is he going to expand it? Cut it? Reprioritize it? Honestly I have no idea, Republicans traditionally have been big military budget party, but Trump is in no way a traditional Republican. I hope he keeps and increases the capacity upgrade, but who knows. Maybe he thinks his awesome dealmaking skills are enough.
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Ukraine's military is a quarter of the US military. Sustaining the Ukrainian military is like sustaining the US military at the height of the Vietnam war for three years straight in a far more intense war.
Once the war ends the US and other backers of Ukraine have to reconstitute a military far larger than any other non Russian European military from ruins. The scale of the problem is simply too vast.Ukraine was on track to becoming an endless black hole that would require unsustainable amounts of resources for decades.
In terms of what? Ukraine spent $44B on its military in 2022 vs $767B in the US.
A half million soldiers vs 2 million in the US military.
Considering we're sending Ukraine dollars and not humans, I don't know if that's the relevant metric.
It is because soldiers need equiptment. The US is the logistics chain for a force 3x times what was in Iraq during the surge and that force is fighting far harder. That is an enormous sustainment challenge.
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A lot of people don't understand that weapon stocks degrade and must be refreshed, and that manufacturing chains have to he kept online.
Of course, on the other side, a lot of people don't seem to understand that it's the industrial base and the size of the US military/military budget that enables it to supply Ukraine, and that a lot of the funding for Ukraine "that's being spent in America" is going straight to the Military-Industrial Complex, because that's what it's there for.
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