Since Russia has opted to commit war crimes by repeatedly bombing civilian infrastructure with the goal of inflicting mass civilian causalities, the western world has responded by opting to give Ukraine even more advanced military kit.
The U.S., as usual, is leading the way, supplying a Patriot Missile Defense battery and JDAMs.
SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: All right, well, thanks very much for joining us. Today’s background briefers will include (inaudible) and me, (inaudible). For attribution, please refer to (inaudible) as “a senior defense official” and to me as “a senior military official.”
And with that, I will turn it over to our senior defense official for some opening remarks, and then we’ll be happy to take your questions.
SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to start by just recognizing where we are in this war. We’re in over 300 days after Russia launched this war to try to stamp out Ukraine’s existence as a free nation. And at this moment, we are welcoming President Zelenskyy to Washington, D.C., a sign of Ukraine’s determination, its spirit, its resolve, and an opportunity for us to be able to reinforce our support for Ukraine during President Zelenskyy’s visit.
So you will hear more from the White House later this afternoon about President Zelenskyy’s visit. In the meantime, what I wanted to do is give you some important details about our new security assistance commitments that President Biden announced today, totaling $1.85 billion.
Now, these — these commitments come in two parts, and we’re announcing both of these together. First, we have a presidential drawdown package that’s valued at $1 billion. This is the 28th such drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August of 2021. And then the second is an additional $850 million in commitments under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
So first, let me talk about the presidential drawdown package, and this package includes for the first time a Patriot air defense battery and munitions. This is another signal of our long-term commitment to Ukraine’s security. As you know, Patriot is one of the world’s most advanced air defense systems, and it will give Ukraine a critical long-range capability to defend its airspace. It is capable of intercepting cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft.
It’s important to put the Patriot battery in context. For air defense, there is no “silver bullet.” Our goal is to help Ukraine strengthen a layered, integrated approach to air defense. That will include Ukraine’s own legacy capabilities, as well as NATO-standard systems. Patriot will complement a range of medium- and short-range air defense capabilities that we’ve provided and that allies have provided in prior donation packages, and for us, that includes NASAMS and Avenger systems. Patriot does require training, and we expect it will take several months to ensure Ukrainian forces have the training they need to employ it successfully.
Now, in addition to Patriot, this drawdown package includes several other highlights. First, it includes an additional 500 precision-guided 155-millimeter artillery rounds, and it includes several different mortar systems and rounds for those systems. Second, it includes precision aerial munitions, and then third, it includes additional MRAP vehicles and Humvees, and I think important to note, this is 38 MRAP vehicles, but we’ve provided 440 to date, and it’s 120 Humvees, but this comes on top of 1,200 Humvees that we’ve provided to date.
Now for the second part of today’s announcement, the $850 million under USAI, I just want to remind that this is an authority under which we procure capabilities from industry, rather than drawing them down from U.S. stocks. So USAI capabilities typically take longer to deliver. Now under USA — AI, we are committing to provide a range of different non — what we call nonstandard ammunitions. This is what we formerly called Soviet-type ammunition. It includes 152-millimeter artillery rounds, 122-millimeter artillery rounds, and these will be able to help the Ukrainians bring more of its legacy systems, its legacy howitzers back into the fight in greater numbers. We also plan to — to provide 122-millimeter Grad rockets, and this is to support Ukraine’s Grad rocket artillery capability, as well as tank ammunition to help Ukraine sustain operations with its existing tanks. Another capability we’re providing via USAI are satellite communication terminals and services. This will add resilience to Ukraine’s communications infrastructure. And then as always, we have funding from (sic) training, for maintenance and for sustainment in support of the equipment we and our partners have provided.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown in convenient Tweet form:
Big capabilities in this PDA:
-One Patriot battery and munitions;
-HIMARS ammo
-500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
-10 120mm mortar systems and 10,000 120mm mortar rounds;
-10 82mm mortar systems;
-10 60mm mortar systems;
-37 Cougar MRAPs
-120 HMMWVs
(1/2)— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) December 21, 2022
In USAI package:
-45,000 152mm artillery rounds;
-20,000 122mm artillery rounds;
-50,000 122mm GRAD rockets;
-100,000 rounds of 125mm tank ammunition;
-SATCOM terminals and services;
-Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) December 21, 2022
Europe is supplying other weapons, but is unable to keep up with the furious rate of munition use.
Ukraine’s military fortunes also depend on European countries, such as Germany, that let their defense industry atrophy in peacetime and are struggling to catch up as they focus on securing energy supplies.
Ukraine’s battle against the Russian invasion is consuming ammunition at rates unseen since World War II. Kyiv’s forces have been firing around 6,000 artillery shells a day and are now running out of antiaircraft missiles amid a relentless aerial onslaught by Russia, according to experts and intelligence officials. At the height of the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire stock of the British military, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
No country in NATO other than the U.S. has either a sufficient stock of weapons to fight a major artillery war or the industrial capacity to create such reserves, said Nico Lange, a former top official at the German Defense Ministry. This means that NATO wouldn’t be able to defend its territory against major adversaries if it were to be attacked now, he said.
“Governments have been slashing contracts for decades, so companies shed production lines and employees,” said Mr. Lange, a senior fellow with the Munich Security Conference, a global security forum.
The current shortage of shells and missiles is largely due to a shift in the military doctrines of NATO allies in recent decades: Instead of planning for World War II-style ground battles, they focused on targeted, asymmetric warfare against unsophisticated opponents, said Morten Brandtzæg, chief executive of Nammo AS, one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers.
“We need orders of magnitude more industrial capacity,” said Mr. Brandtzæg, whose company is co-owned by the governments of Norway and Finland.
Ukraine uses up to 40,000 artillery shells of the NATO caliber 155mm each month, while the entire annual production of such projectiles in Europe is around 300,000, according to Michal Strnad, owner of Czechoslovak Group AS, a Czech company that produces around 30% of Europe’s output of such munitions.
“European production capacity is grossly inadequate,” Mr. Strnad said. Even if the war were to stop overnight, Europe would need up to 15 years to resupply its stocks at current production rates, he said.
As always, there are rumors that Russia has had to buy artillery shells from north Korea and, as always, these rumors should be treated with several grains of salt. Russia used up huge amounts of its smart munitions early, but early predictions that Russia would quickly run out its own dumb artillery shells have thus far proven to be premature.
The Patriot system may prove to be more symbolic than really useful, if only because Russias has already used up sop much of its medium range missile stocks. JDAMs, on the other hand, could prove to be very effective at targeting Russian military assets.
In any case, it’s now clear that a war Russia thought would be “three days to take Kiev” will now drag on as a war of attrition for a year or more, and a goodly portion of the western world has signed up to supply Ukraine with munitions for as long as it takes.