Ramstein-2: Beneficial for Both Ukraine and Partners

May 24, 2022February 1, 2026

The virtual Ramstein-2 summit passed successfully and in a business-like manner. Once the final decision was made that Ukraine can receive any types of weapons, without dividing them into defensive and offensive, everything went much faster. This is understandable. If certain restrictions exist, you need to account not only for their formal parameters but also for the political subtext behind them. This alone can stop those who aren’t against supplying us with weapons but don’t want to get involved in political games around the conditions of delivery.

Actually, this clarity was introduced at the very beginning of the summit. US representatives declared that the composition of deliveries under the lend-lease program will include long-range air defense systems, MLRS, and aircraft. After that, all questions disappeared on their own. Clearly, there was no full breakdown of what exactly and how much will be delivered. But we’re talking undoubtedly about those very multiple launch rocket systems that serve as platforms for launching tactical missiles reaching targets at distances of 300 to 500 km. Moreover, the air defense systems in question are the well-known Patriots.

Ramstein-2: Training Already Complete

What’s interesting, other sources report that the decision on air defense systems was announced practically simultaneously with another report. Polish-based training of the first groups of our military specialists finished. They’re now cleared to work with precisely these complexes. Such synchronicity is hard to call a coincidence. Most likely, we’ll soon find out exactly why. By and large, this summit became the formalization of a qualitative change in positions of countries that not only supply us with weapons but also produce them for their own needs and for export. And first of all — the USA.

Apparently, the first bell rang with the results of Ukrainian soldiers using American, Swedish, and German ATGMs. It turned out that Ukrainian military showed results above those declared by the manufacturer. They also exceeded what their own military achieves. Obviously, we’re talking about tactics of using weapons in high-intensity combat. No training ground or exercise can show your products working in such a mode.

The Real Testing Ground: Why Partners Need Ukraine

Yet the manufacturer always needs feedback precisely in real combat conditions. Only this way can they understand which decisions worked and which didn’t. From here arise conditions for modernization or the release of fundamentally new products. After all, what already entered production is subject only to refinement. Meanwhile, engineers and designers are already working on something new. Most often, they set “synthetic” goals before them — higher, faster, more precise, lighter, stronger, and so on.

Clearly, each such characteristic improves the overall weapons potential. But how much — that’s a big question. You can invest enormous funds in boosting a single parameter. Yet in combat it turns out practically unnecessary, because something else matters more. Identifying these ratios, or even discovering something completely unaccounted for, is possible only in real combat. But that’s not all yet.

As practice showed, over the last 20 years the main requirements that military placed on their industry were conditioned by the character of combat operations already underway and expected in the near future. These were various counter-terrorism operations. In other words, combat operations were planned with small mobile groups in mind. Groups that have neither heavy weapons, nor armored vehicles, nor aviation. Therefore, a number of weapons systems functions simply weren’t in demand.

In general, there’s nothing unusual here. However, if such military requirements are issued consistently over decades, the set of weapons produced by industry gradually develops a noticeable tilt. Eventually, the weapons themselves and methods of their application become either unsuitable for large-scale war against a major regular army, or their effectiveness comes into question.

The World Was Heading Toward This Conflict

The world was rapidly moving toward a high-intensity, large-scale conflict. One in which regular armies would face each other. Both the Swamps¹ and China were moving toward such conflicts at an accelerated pace. And considering the infantile position that the collective West took, this was becoming inevitable. If pootin hadn’t started the war in Ukraine, China would have unleashed one against Taiwan.

And now Ukraine has shown and proven to everyone that it wants, can, and knows how to fight against the very army that kept half the world in fear. We simply needed to put weapons in our hands — and we’d do everything ourselves. Partners gave it, and saw what was impossible to see in recent decades. Now a mutually beneficial interest has emerged, however it sounds and looks. We need effective and powerful weapons. Partners gained the opportunity to see their developments not in a fight against a “conditional enemy” and not against ISIS, but against a regular and one of the largest armies in the world.

And one shouldn’t forget that Chinese military industry at its core was built on soviet principles. Weapons were produced with approximately the same set of criteria as in the sovok and now — in the Swamps. Thus, by observing how Western weapons work in the hands of Ukrainians against the Orc²v army, with a high degree of probability you can assume how this will look in a fight with China.

Ramstein-2 Results: Mutual Benefit

Western partners are very interested in supplying us with their newest weapon samples. They want to see their true worth and potential. Thus, now there’s no doubt that within a month and a half, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will become a completely different military force. Both in technical terms and in terms of the peculiarities of applying the newest weapons systems. Actually speaking, we’ll soon see the actions of a completely different army. One that knows how to act in a new way not only defensively but also offensively.

And partners now also need to watch this — and here our interests coincide. We’re interested in putting an end to missile strikes on our territory, partners need to understand the distance at which they’ve pulled ahead of the adversary in technical terms. And most importantly — understand what to strive toward. The Ramstein-2 summit formalized what both sides already knew: this partnership benefits everyone.

¹Swamps – an ironic name for Russia, emphasizing decay, stagnation, and filth. The Commander of the USF, Robert Browdie, and most soldiers use this word.

²Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine. Dehumanizing? Yes. Accurate? Also yes.