"relatively little investment" - they literally received the
equivalent of some nations GDP in aid, one should assume this is enough to buy some cheap ass drones? maybe corruption is the issue not the money.
Really interesting stats from Ukraine's Unmanned System Forces (aka drones).
The big one: the marginal cost to kill or seriously injure a Russian with drones is just $911 USD.
https://nostr.download/1cbe7c1ab49ff8d539b3b3f54a3269da359d30e2901659408a03e5bf4929ba1a.mp4
I've personally spoken to quite a few soldiers at different units (units have fundraising and recruiting booths at basically every big event in Ukraine), and they all say the same thing: a remarkably high percentage of their drone funding comes from private donations. A big problem is Western military aid tends to be tied to specific weapons systems – not money – so the overall resources can't be spent optimally.
Of course, it's not like the war itself costs $911/Russian casualty – there's lots of other costs and investment necessary to get there. But the fact that units are still short on drones even though relatively little investment would fix this is absurd.
Also, I don't keep track. But I wouldn't be surprised if just my personal donations – anonymously with Bitcoin – have resulted in the deaths of a few Russians. You can easily make a difference.
Discussion
As I said, they didn't. The actual cash component they could be spent on drones is very small.
For example, of the $60 billion in military aid the US has given so far, in reality at least half ($30 billion) was in the form of mostly obsolete weapons taken from storage. Almost all of the rest was restricted to purchasing US made weapons.
The US does not make effective drones. The US simply doesn't know how. Ukrainian companies do.
they have received $399.8 billion in total.
Military Aid: Approximately $169.5 billion (42% of total aid)
Financial Assistance: Around $207.2 billion (52% of total aid)
Humanitarian Aid: About $23.1 billion (6% of total aid)
they have an issue with corruption not drones.
😂
Did you use Grok for that? It's very wrong. The real figure is much less than that: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
😂 ifw-kiel.de, sure.