What the hell did we send to Ukraine? Mario Monti?

“Let's arm ourselves and go ” is now the pounding motto of European countries in the face of the Ukrainian crisis, with announced dispatches of arms to Kiev, to be able to resist Moscow, which many have announced imposing in words.

Among these voice donors was the Italian government, in the words of Prime Minister Draghi, who announced the dispatch of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. When I heard it, I am a bit stunned: after years of cuts, scratches and wear for use in international missions, but what can we have sent to Ukraine?

Let's get to the practical side: the anti-aircraft defense of our army is entrusted to the 17th “Sforzesca” anti-aircraft artillery regiment . whose equipment is as follows:

• Stinger shoulder missiles, old men, but good but few and to be used also with components on missions abroad. If we surrender them, we disarm the army of the most important anti-aircraft component
• SIDAM armored vehicles, equipped with 4 25mm guns, designed in the 1980s as a helicopter account, but whose gun is too light and of limited range, lower than that of the helicopter guns that it should counter, so much so that they are currently in reserve;
• Skyguard Aspide missiles, with a range of 20 km and semi-active guidance, developed in the 1980s by Finmeccanica and which is now 40 years old and had to be replaced in 2018.Since there is austerity and cuts everything, the Aspides are still there.

Aspide deserves a separate chapter since we were so far-sighted that we sold it to China in the nineties, which then developed a national version. Truly a brilliant move to provide technologies to potential adversaries and competitors.

However, these are weapons or scarce in number, or obsolete and not very useful, as well as not practical to be sent and requiring training. So I know that the sending, especially in this sector, was essentially about words, because austerity does not produce anything, not even technology. Of course we could have sent our most powerful weapon: Mario Monti. There is none as he destroys an economy.

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The article What the hell did we send to Ukraine? Mario Monti? comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/ma-che-cavolo-abbiamo-mandato-in-ucraina-mario-monti/ on Wed, 02 Mar 2022 10:00:24 +0000.