The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new massive $2.6 billion weapons package for Ukraine that includes HIMARS ammunition, missiles for air defense systems, artillery rounds, and other equipment.
The package includes $500 million in the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows President Biden to ship weapons to Ukraine directly from Pentagon stockpiles. The other $2.1 billion will go toward purchasing new equipment for Kyiv that could take months or years to deliver, a program known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI).
The funds for the new weapons are still being drawn from the $45 billion Ukraine aid bill Congress passed in December. So far, the US has authorized about $113 billion to spend on the war.
According to the Pentagon, the Drawdown Authority package includes to following:
- Additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems
- Additional ammunition for HIMARS
- 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds
- 120mm mortar rounds
- 120mm and 105mm tank ammunition
- 25mm ammunition
- Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles
- Approximately 400 grenade launchers and 200,000 rounds of ammunition
- 11 tactical vehicles to recover equipment
- 61 heavy fuel tankers
- 10 trucks and 10 trailers to transport heavy equipment
- Testing and diagnostic equipment to support vehicle maintenance and repair
- Spare parts and other field equipment
The equipment that will be purchased under USAI includes:
- Additional munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS)
- Nine counter-Unmanned Aerial System 30mm gun trucks
- 10 mobile c-UAS laser-guided rocket systems
- Three air surveillance radars
- 30mm and 23mm anti-aircraft ammunition
- 130mm and 122mm artillery rounds
- 122mm GRAD rockets
- Rocket launchers and ammunition
- 120mm and 81mm mortar systems
- 120mm, 81mm, and 60mm mortar rounds
- 120mm tank ammunition
- Javelin anti-armor systems
- Anti-armor rockets
- Precision aerial munitions
- Approximately 3,600 small arms and more than 23,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition
- Seven tactical vehicles to recover equipment
- Eight heavy fuel tankers and 105 fuel trailers
- Armored bridging systems
- Four logistics support vehicles
- Trucks and ten trailers to transport heavy equipment
- Secure communications equipment
- SATCOM terminals and services
- Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment
The new package comes as the US is hoping Ukraine will carry out a counteroffensive to regain more territory, but comments from Ukrainian officials have cast doubt on Kyiv’s capability to launch an assault. It’s also unclear if US and other Western support is sustainable as Ukraine has been using massive amounts of artillery ammunition in its battle defending the Donbas city of Bakhmut.
Last month, a Pentagon official told The New York Times that upcoming ammunition shipments were part of a “last ditch effort” to help Ukraine on the battlefield as Ukrainian forces are using artillery rounds at an unsustainable rate. According to a Pentagon fact sheet released Tuesday, the US has pledged over 1.5 million 155mm artillery rounds for Kyiv.
$$$$$$$$$$$2.6 BILLION in weapons? BBBBBBBBBillion?
“You want more, there’s some more !”
Just stop already.
“US is hoping Ukraine will carry out a counteroffensive to regain more territory” – maybe they can regain something but it wouldn’t change the scenario forced upon them by Russia which is essentially the war of attrition with a progressively increasing military pressure from Russian army. Can Ukraine/NATO abandon Bakhmut and start an offensive somewhere else? Of course, they can, but hardly it can change anything. Russian artillery and air force are dominating everywhere.
You all know the saying, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results”. The U.S. keeps doubling and tripling down on things that aren’t working, but then again, the blood isn’t being shed by the warmongers.
Once Assange said that American MIC needs not a victorious war, it needs an endless war. Maybe it was correct about Afghanistan but Ukrainian war is different, it goes in package with a full scale economic and financial war against Russia. It triggered a tectonic shift in the geopolitics and not in American oligarchy’s advantage. Still some people are making a lot of money anyway and they are determined to carry on as long as possible.
The U.S. was not correct about Afghanistan. 9/11 was an inside/outside job.
Assange was correct about their motivation.
No blood but plenty of.blood money
It’s all going to get obliterated under UMPC’s (Russian JDAM). They’re ramping up to produce hundreds of units per day. Already seeing 10-20 per day being used.
2.6 BILLION BUCKS-In Weapons TO UKRAINE???????????????????………………..
Maybe they threw in some NUKES too?…………….
………>>And BILLIONS more to go?
How quickly can a single neocon drag us into another endless war. The cancer needs to be cured. We need to invest in our own country rather than boosting the stocks of the military industrial complex!
$2.6 billion to Ukraine.
Yet, there are over 550,000 Americans who are homeless.
Many of whom are veterans.
And 13,000 of them die – each year.
https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/homelessness-statistics/
I guess we know that Ukrainians are more important to the WH/Congress than the American homeless.
As we watch the American empire implode within, US citizens will have less value as time goes on.
This has always.been so
Boots on the ground is not on that package list. Who is going to be using all of that equipment and weaponry?
“US Announces $2.6 Billion Weapons Package for Ukraine”
Good bye American hegemony, hello hyperinflation!
America is a runaway train with dead mans curve just ahead!
And recent events btw Beijing and Riyadh signal the end of the petro-dollar and a likely rift btw Wall St. and the War Party, neolibs and neocons. A momentous geopolitical paradigm shift is inexorably aborning.
SA has said that they plan to cut production by 1.5 million barrels per day for the rest of 2023.
Yes. An election year, soooo … goodbye strategic reserve.
And a brain-dead engineer…
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-4423-huge-tuesday-update-bonanza
Huge Tuesday Update Bonanza
Zelenski has just returned from Poland where he met Poland’s President Andrzej Duda. It is my understanding that they reached an agreement where Poland would step in and annex West Ukraine if the Kiev regime “greatest counter attack the world has ever seen” fails.
So much for Ukrainian sovereign integrity. So after 9 years of occupation by NATO and civil war the US/NATO forces are going to attempt to carve up Ukraine. Best of luck with that.