From Canberra to Kyiv, governments are ordering up missiles their makers won’t be able to deliver for years.
(Originally published May 10 in “What in the World“) The U.S. is giving Ukraine another $1.2 billion to buy air-defense missiles and artillery.
The new funding comes from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, under which Kyiv can buy weapons from defense contractors directly. It brings to $36.9 billion the total amount of military aid the U.S. has given Ukraine since Russia’s invasion (full inventory below).
Ukraine’s new missiles won’t likely arrive in time for Ukraine’s Big Spring Counteroffensive, but only once their manufacturers have had time to build them in the months or years ahead. Makers of 155mm artillery and precision guided missiles are already struggling with backlogs of orders that will take years to fill.
Most of Ukraine’s U.S.-supplied weaponry has so far come from the Pentagon’s own arsenal, which the Pentagon then must replace. The U.S. Army, for instance, just announced it will buy at least $1 billion worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to replenish Javelins it gave to Ukraine. The three-year deal, with a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, calls for the companies to boost production to 3,960 Javelins a day by 2026. While the initial purchase is for $1 billion, orders could climb as high as $7.2 billion over the contract’s term.
Ukraine desperately needs more air-defense, too. Russia has stepped up its aerial barrage of Ukraine in an apparent attempt to deplete Kyiv’s air defenses ahead of its Big Spring Counteroffensive. Ukrainian forces said they shot down more than 24 Russian drones over Kyiv in a single night. Russian forces prefer to launch such attacks in the dark when Ukrainian forces can’t shoot down their drones using smaller, cheaper firearms.
In the dark, Ukrainian forces have to rely on multi-million dollar U.S.-supplied air-defense missiles like the Patriot or Nasams. Leaked top-secret documents revealed in April that the Pentagon worries Ukraine is on the verge of running out of its own air-defense missiles, making U.S.-supplied ones even more crucial to its defense. One of Ukraine’s Patriot missile batteries successfully shot down a Russian hypersonic missile last week.
Washington still won’t give Ukraine long-range Atacms missiles. But a British-led consortium plans to change that. The International Fund for Ukraine, which comprises the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, has issued a tender for missiles able to strike targets up to 300km away. While the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with missiles for its Himars launchers with a range below 100km, the U.S. has resisted calls to give Ukraine longer-range Atacms missiles for fear it would use them to strike targets across the Russian border and give both Russia and China a pretext for escalating the war.
It wasn’t clear whether U.S. missile makers, including the Atacms maker Lockheed Martin, were bound by Washington’s restrictions against supplying long-range missiles to a U.S. ally for use in Ukraine. Washington did, however, rig Ukraine’s Himars so they wouldn’t fire Atacms.
The Fund may have to get in line behind Ukraine and other U.S. allies, though. Australia just announced a record, $35 billion defense budget that includes more than A$750 million ($508 million) in purchases of Lockheed Martin’s Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, A$558 million to buy Lockheed’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, and A$1 billion for Raytheon’s AIM-9X and AIM-120D missiles.
Australia’s purchases are, of course, meant to help it stand up to the perceived threat posed by China. China’s navy has this week been busy far to the north, taunting Japan by sailing its vessels around it, including an intelligence ship that cruised through the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Honshu. That might seem like it invaded Japanese territorial waters, but it turns out that, in the 1970s, Japan pulled its territorial boundaries there back to just 3 nautical miles from the usual 12 nautical miles so U.S. Navy nuclear-armed vessels could pass through without violating Japan’s prohibition against nuclear weapons.