UK defense secretary lets slip Italy has been sending cruise missiles to Kyiv

(Originally published April 30 in “What in the World“) Russian forces struck Ukrainian railways as Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu vowed to disrupt the revival of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

But the U.S. isn’t the only Western ally supplying arms for Ukraine. While Republicans in the U.S. Congress managed to disrupt the American flow, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization tried to fill the gap. Their efforts have been hindered, however, by the fact that Europe’s own arms manufacturers haven’t been able to ramp up production fast enough to meet surging demand. As Ukrainian forces run out of ammo, therefore, Russia has been able to use its North Korean weapons to break the stalemate and seize villages in eastern Ukraine.

Still, the prospect of losing market share to European rivals in the world’s preeminent munitions showroom increased pressure on Washington to revive its aid to Ukraine. The interregnum also enabled even more hawkish European allies to give Kyiv the kind of weapons U.S. President Joe Biden has resisted giving it for fear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will step up attacks inside Russia and provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin into a broader attack against NATO and the U.S.—possibly with nuclear weapons.

British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps revealed to The Times of London last week that Italy has also been out-pacing Washington in Ukraine. In an interview during a visit to the factory in Stevenage where Storm Shadow/SCALP EG stealth cruise missiles are made, Shapps disclosed that Rome had joined the U.K. and France in sending some of its own Storm Shadow missiles to Kyiv.

Storm Shadow/SCALP EG’s have a range of up to 400km, farther than even the latest Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, that Biden shipped secretly to Ukraine in February. Those Atacms can hit targets only 300km away.

That suggests that Biden’s concerns aren’t just about provoking Putin, but about Ukraine provoking Putin with U.S. weapons inside Russia. Since those more advanced American weapons don’t necessarily even match the capabilities NATO has already provided Ukraine, Biden’s reservations may also have been about avoiding the perception among his domestic contituents that he is provoking Putin.

Shapps’ disclosure was part of his efforts to sell Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s recent pledges to boost British defense spending. Sunak has proved instigator #1 when it comes to prodding Washington into stepping up deliveries to Ukraine. It was only after Sunak said he was sending long-range missiles to Kyiv last September that Biden relented on sending shorter-range Atacms.

As observed in this space last October:

It was Sunak who promised to give Ukraine Challenger battle tanks, thereby giving Biden the pretext back in January for dropping his own reservations about handing over U.S. Abrams tanks.

Then in May, Sunak announced the creation of a consortium with the Dutch to send F-16s to Ukraine and train Kyiv’s pilots, despite the fact that the UK has no F-16s and that it would have required Washington’s approval to give any to Ukraine. Biden almost immediately dropped his public objection to giving Ukraine American F-16s. It was later revealed that the whole episode was part of an elaborate, three-month PR sham: the decision to give Ukraine F-16s had been made as early as November the year before.

That left only attack drones and long-range missiles on the list of weapons Biden wouldn’t give Kyiv for fear Moscow would consider them a prescription for direct attacks on Russian soil and therefore tantamount to direct NATO involvement in the war.

But Sunak then began promising to send attack drones and long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine.

That removed even more obstacles in the White House:

When Britain began shipping long-range missiles to Ukraine and Russia failed to escalate, national security adviser Jake Sullivan was able to overcome objections from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that Atacms were too expensive and stockpiles too low to send them to Ukraine, which would likely expend them as quickly as it has blown through its artillery and air-defense missiles.

Other European nations are also accelerating defense spending, in part to meet their commitment as NATO members to spend at least 2.5% of GDP on defense. Denmark, for example, has more than doubled its defense spending in the past decade, putting it in third place behind Ukraine and Poland in terms of accelerating military spending, according to the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Denmark cut back its military spending at the end of the Cold War and last year spend just short of 2% of GDP on defense. But with threats from Russia and former U.S. President Donald Trump rising, Copenhagen last month announced that it would boost its defense budget by roughly 50%, allocating an additional 40.5 billion Danish crowns ($5.8 billion) on top of the 155 billion crowns it has budgeted for the military over the next decade. As part of that plan, Denmark is reportedly spending 7.5 billion crowns to buy 115 Swedish-built Combat Vehicle 90 infantry fighting vehicles. The CV90 competes with the American M2A2 Bradley fighting vehicle that Washington has provided Ukraine.

That might make them seem equivalent. But the CV90 is reportedly more maneuverable—particularly in snow—and provides better crew protection. Both are made by different divisions of the same company, BAE Systems, but the taxes on profits from their manufacture would be paid to different governments. And perhaps even more importantly, buying the CV90 doesn’t require the approval of the White House, whose policies could be set for another quadrillenial shake-up next January.

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