A Pentagon official said Friday that the US is accelerating the production of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to send more to Ukraine.
William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, made the comments after visiting Lockheed Martin facilities in Camden, Arkansas, that produces HIMARS and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS).
“As we continue providing security assistance to Ukraine, we are working with industry to accelerate production of critical weapons and systems,” LaPlante said, according to Newsweek. “This includes providing funding to buy more equipment, expand production lines, and support additional hiring and workforce development.”
The HIMARS is a portable rocket launch system, and the munitions the US is providing give the weapon a range of about 50 miles. So far, the US has sent 16 HIMARS to Ukraine. Russia has said it destroyed six HIMARS, but Ukraine has denied that any have been destroyed.
The US policy of sending billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine has been a boon for Lockheed Martin and other US arms makers. In April, President Biden showed his support for the company when he visited a Lockheed Martin facility that produces Javelin anti-tank missiles, which the US has been pouring into Ukraine.
The Javelin is a joint project between Lockheed and Raytheon, another company that has been cashing in on the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy. Before taking his post at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin served on the board of Raytheon.
The Biden administration announced last week its single largest weapons package for Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, worth about $2.98 billion. The funds are being pulled from the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill that Biden signed into law in May.
War is big business in the US…we have no morals, no conscience, no empathy as long as there is money to be made. Lockheed Martin and everyone involved with them should burn in hell.
Putin’s attack may have been triggered by NATO actions but he did it bypassing the UN. If I am antiwar I must condemn him too. By now this Russo-Ukrainian war has morphed into an international conflict in which the Ukrainian soldiers have become cheap mercenaries for NATO/US against Russia. And there is no end in sight for this madness because these madmen need to be in lockups and, unfortunately, they are still running free almost everywhere.
Last night there was a TV program on the History Channel which showed me again how expensive wars are. The building of Haga Sophia in Constantinopolis (now Istanbul) is estimated to have cost some 660 million of today’s dollars. Hence our most recent tranche for the Ukrainian military etc. of 13 billion $$ is the equivalent of building a Haga Sophia in some twenty US cities! And the real Haga Sophia has lasted almost infinitely longer than any of these dollars will last. Astonishing.
“but he did it bypassing the UN”
Show me where it says the UN is the world government.
That’s the UN that won’t condemn Israel’s ethnic cleansing because the U.S. uses its veto every time. So how is the UN the moral or legal arbiter?
Furthermore, most nations in the UN refused to condemn Russia, despite the danger of opposing the U.S. on this.
The UN was only a method for avoiding a third world war, by allowing the West and the Soviet Union to use their vetoes and thereby hold back each other. And it is a way to transfer Western people’s tax money to the ever growing billions of the Third World, so there can be even more people in the Third World next year and the next. That’s working well.
I agree that the UN is a useless bit of f*ckery ( thanks, Caitlin!)
There has been a lot less news about the HIMARS lately, both on the Ukrainian and Russian side. Why? Because it isn’t a wonder weapon. It can do damage, but so can Russian artillery, of which there is ten times more.
But the media held up the HIMARS as the thing that was going to win it all. Like TheNewAtlas says on YouTube, “If the HIMARS would be able to win the war then Russia would win the war first, because they have similar artillery to the HIMARS and more of it.”
Bye-Done is doing wonderful things for the MIC! Bet they love him. I keep wondering would we, the citizens of this great country, could do with some of that money funding these wars… I think BD is looking for some action… What might the American people be able to do with some of this money, in our own country…
Yup, Donna, just ask the homeless, the minimum-wage earners, the medically uninsured, seniors whose only income is Social Security, the disabled, the mentally ill in need of treatment…oh, how long can I go on ?
Oh joy, more deaths!
Too bad Lockheed Martin can’t manufacture negotiators.
During the Ukrainian counteroffensive they lost, 26 Ukrainian tanks, 23 infantry fighting vehicles, 9 other armored combat vehicles were destroyed, 2 Su-25 attack aircraft were shot down. The enemy’s losses in manpower amounted to more than 560 servicemen. Another attempt at offensive actions of the enemy failed miserably.
Ukraine’s southern counter-offensive has failed. Southern Command spokeswoman Natalia Humeniuk announced that “offensive actions in various directions” had begun. Troops moved toward Kherson from three directions, reports RT.
They soon lost 26 tanks, 23 armored fighting vehicles, 9 more armored vehicles, two SU-25 ground-attack jets, and 560 soldiers.
After that, there was no more talk about an offensive. Monday evening, Ukraine’s general staff only mentioned a Russian attack near the village Potemkino.
Odessa’s mayor Trukhanov now calls for negotiations to end the war. While he condemns Russia’s invasion, he says Zelensky has made “many” mistakes. Among them that he didn’t give enough autonomy to the regions. (Perhaps a covered way of criticizing that Pereshenko and Zelensky ignored the Minsk Agreement, which would give autonomy to Donbass, and instead they kept bombing the region.)
Trukhanov condemns the destruction of statues of Russian historical figures, such as the poet Aleksandr Pushkin, and cosmonaut Jurij Gagarin (who was highly critical of the USSR government in private). He says that Ukraine and Russia are “deeply connected by history, culture, language, religion, traditions”.