The United States will send $1 billion in additional military aid to Ukraine, including rockets for both advanced air defense systems and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that have been so effective for Ukraine that Russia has lied about destroying them.
The package is the largest arms package yet announced under President Joe Biden’s Presidential Drawdown Authority, in which the Pentagon can ship weapons straight from US military stocks to a friendly nation at war. In announcing the package, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said, “This is the largest single drawdown of US arms and equipment utilizing this authority to date.”
Among the systems headed to Ukraine are rockets for HIMARS, the mobile, truck-mounted rocket launchers that can hit targets up to about 43 miles away when outfitted with a six-pack of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems missiles, or GMLRS. Kahl said the package includes GMLRS rockets but no new HIMARs launchers. The US has already sent 16 HIMARs to Ukraine.
“[GMLRS] is kind of the equivalent of a precision-guided airstrike,” Kahl said.
Spc. Mateo Valadez, a mortarman with Headquarters and Headquarters Company “Hoplites,” 2nd Battalion, 34th Armored Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, prepares to launch a 120mm mortar round at Bucierz range, Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area, Poland, Sept. 2, 2021. US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jennifer Reynolds.
US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jennifer Reynolds.
Since receiving the launchers, he said, the Ukrainians have been able to more reliably hit command-and-control nodes, sustainment and logistics hubs, and key radar systems.
Kahl would not specify how many GMLRS missiles will be shipped with the latest round of military aid, but he said the United States has provided Ukraine with “multiple hundreds of these systems in the past few weeks.”
The arms package also includes missiles for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, an advanced air defense system. NASAMS fires a ground variation of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM. AMRAAMs are the US’s front-line air-to-air combat missiles, carried by nearly all US fighter planes.
The Pentagon promised on July 1 to send two NASAMS systems to Ukraine. Monday Kahl said the NASAMS are “in the pipeline” and will probably arrive in the country in the next few months.
Other materiel in the package includes:
- Twenty 120mm mortar systems with 20,000 rounds of ammunition.
- 75,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition (the US has previously sent over 100 M777 155mm artillery cannons).
- Man-portable anti-tank systems, including 1,000 Javelin missiles and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor missiles.
- Fifty armored medical treatment vehicles.
- Claymore anti-personnel munitions, C-4 explosives, demolition munitions and equipment, and medical supplies.
Since Biden came to office, the US has committed approximately $9.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.
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