The pressure to send western fighter aircraft to Ukraine has mounted for months. Even from the evasive answers of the politicians and officials in the know, we can deduce that some decisions have been made and at least the US and UK are training Ukrainian pilots for undisclosed aircraft types. The most often talked about fighter models are the Swedish Gripen, American F-16 and European Tornadoes and Typhoons, with an honorary mention going for the French Mirage 2000. Spanish Air-Force EF-18M (Photo by :TOMAS DEL CORO) All of the aforementioned planes in all of their versions would be more capable than the current Ukrainian air force inventory that is rapidly reaching the end of their service life. But there is one additional option that is available in decent numbers and is very well suited for Ukrainian use: F-18 Hornet. While the US Navy and parts of the USMC have already phased out their legacy Hornets in favor of the more capable and especially longer ranged Super Hornet, there
Since the all out invasion of Ukraine the Russian army has lost at least 1700 tanks. This has caused the Russian army some supply problems, when they are re-forming their mauled units. Fighting has also revealed the need for upgrades on most of the Russian tank designs. The most obvious issues with the existing Russian tank fleet are the insufficient armor protection, the lack of reverse mobility and the vulnerability of the automatic loaders and their ammunition carousels. Although the last one has gifted us the sport of Turret Throwing. T-72B obr 2022 tanks Very little can be done for the mobility with the limitations of the existing transmissions and the autoloaders can’t really be replaced with better designs or human loaders either. The armor part on the other hand can be improved during the activation and refurbishment of the deep stored Soviet-era tanks. The first new design that appeared in the battlefield was an upgraded T-72B3 with additional armo,r mimicking the T-90M layo