That's the way all armies and all governments do business...

 

I'm only surprised that the author of this article hadn't figured it out long ago.

Reports have increased in recent months that European states send obsolete weapons to Ukraine, including those that are known to be unreliable and ineffective in combat. These facts raise certain concerns about the quality and effectiveness of the assistance provided by the West to Ukraine. Let’s look at some examples that have become known through open sources and reports from the battlefield.

One example is Spain, which sent a batch of CETME L submachine guns that were withdraw from service more than 20 years ago and known for their reliability issues. Experts question their effectiveness in modern warfare despite being upgraded before shipment.

Another example is France, which sent artillery pieces that have failed in battle, raising questions about their ability to provide effective support. The French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers, which were hailed as high-tech weapons, have proven to be far from perfect. According to Ukrainian military sources, these systems are prone to frequent breakdowns and suffer from insufficient shooting accuracy, which is especially critical considering the significant role artillery plays in the current conflict.

Moreover, about a thousand mortar shells supplied by Bulgaria and Romania have been found to be defective. Some Ukrainian military reports say, some of these shells fail to explode and others misfire, which not only reduces the effectiveness of combat operations, but also creates additional risks for military personnel.

Such cases are not exceptions, but rather the norm. Western countries are actively disposing of outdated and withdrawn weapons by sending them to Ukraine. However, Kyiv has little choice but to accept what the allies offer, despite the fact that the quality and effectiveness of these weapons leave much to be desired.

There's more at the link.

The United States has done exactly the same thing, of course.  If our armed forces had demanded an extra one or two hundred billion dollars for fresh weapons and ammunition, Congress would have slapped them down in short order.  However, weapons for Ukraine are an entirely different matter, and politically correct at that.  Therefore, that expenditure is quickly approved.  However, the weapons will take months, if not years to manufacture:  so our armed forces take their oldest, least serviceable hardware and ship it off to Ukraine, replacing it with new-production weapons and systems as they come off the production lines.  It's a well-known procurement sleight-of-hand technique.

Of course, it's inevitable.  No nation can produce fresh hardware out of thin air.  It has to be ordered, raw materials and parts assembled, manufactured, tested and approved before it can be sent - and if we waited to do all that, the nation needing it would have ceased to exist long before it received what we'd promised.  At least, by sending older, less capable equipment, we're giving them something to fight with, which is a lot better than nothing.  Nevertheless, it does leave a nasty taste in one's mouth.

There's always the alternative:  to capture equipment from an enemy and "repurpose" it by donating it to another country or third party.  South Africa did this for years during the Border War.  It captured literally tens of thousands of small arms, hundreds of anti-aircraft weapons, landmines, rocket launchers (so many of them that the Soviet RPG-7 became the standard rocket-launcher of the South African Defense Force), and so on.  Three units of the South African Army were equipped with captured Soviet light anti-aircraft weapons (ZPU's, ZU-23-2's and M1939 [61-K]'s), and captured latest-generation Soviet missile and radar hardware provided valuable information to South Africa's own designers (and was shared with the USA, Israel and others).  When South Africa was developing its G5 155mm cannon, it required a stop-gap long-range weapon, and therefore leased several Soviet M-46 130mm cannon from Israel, which had captured them in combat against Arab nations (and took them back after enough G-5's had entered South African service).  In addition, the vast majority of the weapons South Africa captured from Angolan, Cuban and other services during the war were given to UNITA, which promptly used them against their former owners.  South Africa could therefore claim, by the strict letter of the law, that it had not supplied any of its own weapons to UNITA.  More recently, Israel has allegedly been sending much of the weaponry it's captured from Hamas, Hezbollah and the chaos in Syria to Ukraine, although that can't be independently confirmed.

I'm most concerned about unconfirmed reports that Ukrainian oligarchs and other criminals have been selling donated US and other weapons on the international black market.  It's by no means impossible that a donated anti-aircraft missile such as the US Stinger, or its Soviet equivalent Igla (sometimes nicknamed the "Stingerski"), might find its way into the hands of a terrorist organization that will use it to shoot down a civilian airliner or three.  That could paralyze the entire air traffic network in Europe and the United States for months.  If any such weapons are sold to outsiders, let's hope and pray they're old ones that no longer work!

Peter