Can anybody knowledgeable tell me why Ukraine would have old-ass Soviet missiles left? I would naïvely assume that old munitions would be long gone (aren't we like 8 months in?) and replaced with shiny US stuff.
Ukraine has captured a lot of Russian equipment during the recent Russian retreats.
I’ve even seen it claimed in the past few months that Russia was, at points, the number 1 supplier of Ukraine in terms of equipment due to how much they left behind. [1]
While there are simple US weapons that have been provided (things like TOW missiles, M777 howitzers, etc.) and a small handful of complex ones (the famous HIMARS) many of the weapons provided have actually been of Soviet manufacture- since the Ukrainians already know how to take care of and use them, it is easier to give them Polish MiG-29's that the Ukrainian Air Force already can operate than to spend months training everyone on how to take care of a F-16. (Though in the end, I don't believe the Poles ended up giving any MiGs to the UAF, that was the central topic of negotiations for some time.)
The current signals (UKR having low artillery stocks and US and other NATO countries inability to provide more, with Russians stocks also apparently low) have reminded me of 1915 in the First Big Mistake, when everyone had used up their prewar stocks of artillery shells, and waited to bring the factories online to make vastly more of them- the build-up to the mega-deaths at Verdun and the Somme. Hopefully we won't see that level of death in this war.
The ammo makers have already increased production. There are many sources for 155mm shells.
Nammo [1] BAE Systems.[2] Dezamet [3] General Dynamics [4]. Those are somewhat generic. The real shortages are in the fancier guided stuff. Most of which is decades-old technology and could be built today from common smartphone parts.
RU didn’t really use its airforce to deplete UA’s AA missiles (S-300 can’t lock on low altitude cruise missile). Also because UA was a buffer between NATO and other Soviet territory it inherited a lot of AA missiles (thousands, maybe lower 10s of thousands).
The location might be a factor. Munitions that have been stockpiled in the western part of the country are likely not being expended at nearly the rate that they are in other parts.
Look at the globe. It was the main part of USSR defense against West offensive. The only country which had a comparable amount of defensive systems is Poland.
I wonder if either Soviet or US export arms include remote disable and/or Identification, friend or foe (IFF) systems preventing attacks on "friendly-to-exporter" targets.
I think that they want to get rid of their old stuff (and the best way to do that, is throw it at the Russians). Maybe those missiles were protecting something of a lower priority, than the "shiny" kit.
Also, the most important aspect of any enterprise, is the human. These folks trained for years, on Russian kit, and know it backwards and forwards.
It would have been highly unusual for the Ukrainian military to have depleted their entire anti-air arsenal in April, given that, at the time, they weren't receiving Western high-altitude anti-air systems. (Nor were they facing a persistent campaign by Russian warplanes deep behind the front line, since by that point the Russian air force had largely given up on straying deep into Ukraine.)
