Naivety is the key word when reading the results of Ukraine’s defense-industrial complex work for 2020 and the tasks for 2021. For example, two years ago we wrote about the promise to liquidate Ukroboronprom, the "laying of the foundation" for the renewal of the naval forces of Ukraine, the critical need to renew air defense and the completion of the creation of Ukraine’s own operational-tactical missile complex.
50 days before the russian full-scale invasion, we wrote about the air defense and aviation renewal, realizing that this is a task worth billions of dollars, they emphasized the need to strictly adhere to the plans and deploy serial production of weapons.
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Rereading these articles now, when Ukraine has been resisting and liberating the Ukrainian land from the russian invaders for 11 months, all this looks like absolute childish naivety. Because even if we imagine that in 2021 all the main and (as of now) obvious tasks had been completed, it is unlikely that anything would have fundamentally changed in the one year before the invasion.
We also wrote that a new russia-West cold war was getting hot, predicting the battle for Ukraine and for common sense then.
The Ukrainian Air Force upgrade
Let's imagine that at the beginning of 2021, Ukraine orders Western air defense systems and fighter jets. Without mentioning the question of cost: NASAMS or IRIS-T, imagined to be ordered in 2021, would not be ready in one year. The fact that Ukraine received them is the result of "moving" in the queue of current customers for the sake of Ukraine. And the real deadline for the transfer of these air defense systems would be 2023-2025. As an example, at the end of 2020, Hungary ordered NASAMS and was supposed to receive the first SAMs only in 2023.
Not earlier than the same period, in the best case, the first sample of Ukraine’s domestic air defense system could be tested, it would take another five years for it to be accepted into service and only the start of serial production. And these are already the most optimistic assumptions, as in Turkey it took 13 years just to create its own HISAR.
Regarding aircraft, the current delivery terms for Gripen from Saab are measured in six to seven years, F-16 aircraft – six years, according to the example of the contract with Bulgaria. The only possibility to get even used planes, would be if French Rafale jets are ordered. The first used vehicles after repair could possibly get to Ukraine a year after signing the agreement. For example, such a deadline was agreed with Greece, which at the end of 2020 ordered 18 aircraft worth 2.8 billion dollars. And one can only imagine the scandal and the size of the "betrayal" if Ukraine had ordered used Rafale two years ago for $155 million per unit.
We don’t even mention the available money to conduct such purchases, which are measured in billions of dollars. As well as the fact that Ukraine has been under a silent arms embargo since 2014, only in 2018 did the US agree to sell Javelin ATGMs to Ukraine.
Update of the Ukrainian Ground Forces
Was the situation with armored vehicles conceptually different? Since 2014, the Ukrainian defense industry has already accomplished the astronomical task of modernizing the armored fleet through a pragmatic decision to install thermal imaging cameras and digital communication in armored vehicles and tanks, which also received new dynamic protection.
Could Ukraine produce several hundred Oplot tanks in one year? No. Even if the order had been issued on January 1, 2021, on February 24, 2022, at best, several machines would have been ready. That’s due to the manufacturing cycle of one Oplot tank, which exceeds 12 months. And it’s without taking into account the real problems with the serial production of equipment, such as with the BTR-4. And taking into account that the production of Oplot tanks for the export contract for 49 vehicles lasted as long as seven years, the order for 100 units would have been completed in 14 years or so.
And in addition to armored vehicles, there was an obvious need to update the army's air defense, attack and transport helicopters, artillery, etc.
Speaking of artillery: it should also be clear that the presence of one sample, say the Bohdana self-propelled gun, which had only completed preliminary fire tests exactly one month before the full-scale invasion, does not mean serial production. And the beginning of serial production does not mean that this sample is already mass-produced in the army.
The French CAESAR self-propelled howitzer demonstrates how long it takes from the first display to the appearance of an adequate number in the troops. Demonstration in 1994, then the first prototype was handed over to the army in 1998, and in 2004 an order was issued for 72 self-propelled guns worth 358 million dollars, supply of serial samples lasted from 2008 to 2011.
Lost years
Of course, history does not know the word "if", but if simply thinking about how much time it would take to fully prepare for russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, which would develop according to the same scenario, then it is possible to get one single answer: it would take years.
And not one or two years, but years within a decade or even more. If it had been taken into account that at the beginning of 2022, russia would have attacked Ukraine with the aim of total occupation and genocide, then Ukraine had had to start preparing for this not in 2021, not in 2019 or even in 2014. But somewhere at the beginning of the 2000s at the level of a strategic cornerstone program at any cost.
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