[mopsi]

They'd fare much better. Ukraine had a large pool of conscripts, a professional cadre with combat experience from the Donbas, and deep Soviet stocks to draw from, while Western Europe abolished conscription and destroyed its Cold War stockpiles a long time ago. The current reintroduction of conscription and massive investment in defense are clear signs that European armies were (and for some time, will remain) inadequate.

[throw310822]

Compared to Ukraine, Europe has enormous amounts of money and modern weaponry, including nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines, hundreds of f-16s, f-35s, and twelve times the population of Ukraine for twenty times the size. For God's sake.

[mopsi]

There simply isn't an "enormous amount of modern weaponry", otherwise it would have been given to Ukraine a long time ago.

  Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids. But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack.

https://archive.is/W6yv1

The same applies to tanks, artillery, and pretty much everything else.

[throw310822]

Are you saying that if we had them, we would have given all our weapons to Ukraine? Lol.

Europe's aid to Ukraine is also limited by the fact that it doesn't want to be seen as an active part in the conflict, so it provides only arms with a limited range and that can be used only defensively. All this of course would not apply if it were attacked directly.

[mopsi]

> Are you saying that if we had them, we would have given all our weapons to Ukraine?

No - I am saying that this "enormous amount of modern weaponry" that you speak of doesn't exist anymore. The large Cold War era stockpiles were simply destroyed. Even basic weapons, like artillery shells, are now in short supply.

[mrguyorama]

>The same applies to tanks, artillery, and pretty much everything else.

It literally does not.

US built 6700 Bradleys. US built 10,000 Abrams. Thousands of these machines are already stationed in Europe just waiting to shoot Russians.

Germany built 3600 Leopard 2 tanks. They built 2k Marder IFVs.

Saab built 300 Grippens.

The Brits alone built over 400 main battle tanks. France alone built 800 of theirs.

You should divide all these numbers by half or more to estimate ones with modernization upgrades, but Russia ran out of modernized equipment a while ago, and NATO 80s equipment has demonstrably outclassed Soviet leftovers.

The US is bad at producing Artillery shells because we utterly refuse to use State power to induce business nowadays, because of stupid "Capitalism good, gubermint bad" ideology, but Europe ramped up shell production. Manufacturers have openly said that all they need is a commitment, and they will build capacity.

The anti-air missile problem is because NATO always intended to rely on US air power (and our thousands of aircraft) to utterly own the skies and deny any air attack. Also the Shahed situation is somewhat novel. The US once produced 40,000 HAWK Anti-air missiles, which would be perfectly sufficient against something like Shahed.

Nobody wants to disarm themselves to give everything they have to Ukraine, but there is substantial arms that are just waiting for use, while Ukraine suffers. US alone could arm Ukraine twice over and not even feel the pain. Most of our equipment is considered not useful against China and is slated to be replaced, but we STILL refuse to sell it.

[mopsi]

Germany might have built 3600 Leopard tanks since the 1970s, but as of 2025, it has only about 300 in service with the Bundeswehr, of which roughly 200 are combat-ready. France, the UK, and Italy each also have around 200 tanks in active service; Spain has fewer than 100.

Nor are there thousands of American tanks in Europe ready to fire at the Russians. The last permanently stationed US tanks were withdrawn from Europe in 2013. At any given time, about 100 to 200 US tanks in total are scattered across Europe on temporary rotations (exercises etc).

These figures pale in comparison with independently verified Ukrainian tank losses, which currently stand at 1267, with total losses estimated between 1500 and 1900. In early 2023, the Ukrainian high command requested 300-500 tanks from allies for the next counteroffensive. The US was unwilling to provide such support, and other countries could not supply anything comparable, even through a joint effort. Hence the stalemate.

If Europe had deep stockpiles to draw from without compromising its own military readiness, the picture would be completely different. During the Cold War, Europe maintained such stockpiles, but they were dismantled in the 1990s and early 2000s as a cost-cutting measure.