The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new $400 million weapons package for Ukraine that includes ammunition for artillery and air defense systems, anti-tank weapons, and other types of equipment.
The arms are being provided through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the administration to send weapons to Ukraine directly from US military stockpiles. The Pentagon said in a press release that the package is the 43rd drawdown from US stockpiles for Ukraine since August 2021.
According to the Pentagon, the arms package includes the following:
- Additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS)
- Stinger anti-aircraft systems
- Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS)
- 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds
- 120mm and 60mm mortar rounds
- 32 Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers
- Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles
- Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets
- Hornet Unmanned Aerial Systems
- Hydra-70 aircraft rockets
- Tactical air navigation systems
- Demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing
- Over 28 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades
- Night vision devices and thermal imagery systems
- Spare parts, training munitions, and other field equipment
The Pentagon also released a fact sheet that said the administration has pledged more than $43 billion in military equipment for Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. The funds for the new weapons package are being drawn from spending that has already been authorized for the war, which at this point totals $113 billion.
The new package comes amid warnings from US and other Western officials that NATO stockpiles are running low, raising questions about the sustainability of President Biden’s proxy war against Russia. The US has provided Ukraine with an enormous amount of ammunition, including over two million rounds of 155mm artillery shells.
The administration cited the fact that the US was running out of ammunition as an excuse to arm Ukraine with cluster bombs, which are widely banned due to the extreme harm they cause civilians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed Ukraine would be “defenseless” without the civilian-killing munitions.
Hope they didn’t forget the underwear. Getting on in the year…
What will they do when they run out of Ukranians?
LOL
Before that happens, let Ukraine have some small success if it will bring the USA to the negotiating table. Biden by this time must be looking for a way out. He can declare victory and make for the exit door. To hell with the toxic trio of Sullivan, Blinken, and Nuland.
The comedian has shared he would like to get rid of the border between Ukraine and Poland in “the future”.
Take a wild guess where they will come from….lol
NATO will put on Ukrainian uniforms and magical coffins will begin to appear at NATO member door steps.
I certainly wouldn`t bet my house against that .
I have been saying the same thing for months , infantry win wars and Zelensky is running out of them fast , and with Putin now able to use cluster bombs because Biden has supplied Zelensky with them he will be out of fighting men sooner than later .
More money for war and death. Just another day in the worlds greatest Democracy.
How long will it take to replace that stuff?
Is any of the new production going to restock or is it being shipped to Ukraine?
How many days of battle does this leave us with?
Are our dwindling days we can withstain ourselves proportional to the demands of China to leave them alone in regards to their expansion?
A lot of this stuff is us cleaning out our closets and emptying the attic of old junk we don’t want anymore, and can claim as a “credit” as we go hat in hand to congress to ask for vastly more money to “replace” the useless old crap with “newer, better, but more importantly vastly more expensive crap”.
That’s why we “donated” hundreds of MRAPs; we tried giving them away to the afghans, but that didn;t work; so we cut them up for scrap in their hundreds overseas, rather than pay for shipping to bring them home; then we donated hundreds more to police departments, until THEY decided they didn;t want them either, so now we’re giving them to Ukraine, where, according to Oryx, they have already been lost in large numbers. And, Strykers??? They’re even worse. More expensive, less survivable (in the older, flat bottom versions) and bigger targets.
War presents many opportunities.
Germany’s VW just bought Navistar which is a US defense contractor. The US industrial military complex is becoming international….lol.
Won`t make any difference to the out come , Putin will play the long game and the Americans will get bored and do a runner as they usually do and leave Zelensky in the lurch as they did to their so called NATO allies in Afghanistan .
32 Strykers??? WTF? The war is showing that lightly armored wheeled vehicles are unsuited for this battlefield, in fact, even well armored, much heavier tracked fighting vehicles are proving extremely vulnerable – so vulnerable that the Ukrainians are ad hoc retrofitting ERA armored panels on even Leopard 2 tanks as well as Bradleys, already far better protected than a stryker could ever be.
The Stryker is an over priced badly designed unsuited piece of junk; better than an open backed truck (although much less reliable), a target as big as a school bus with no offensive capability besides a machine gun.
If we’re going to waste billions supporting this stupid war we should at least be judicious in what we send them.
Just an add-on, a quote I forgot to include;
“a leaked U.S. Army report from December 2004 said the Stryker was “effective and survivable only with limitations for use in small-scale contingencies.” The report, which drew from feedback from Stryker personnel in Mosul, described a litany of design flaws, and said the effectiveness of the vehicles was “getting worse, not better.”
And that was for use against lightly armed insurgents without armed drones, loitering munitions, artillery, tanks, or modern ATGMs. Completely useless junk for a real war, the French AMX-10RC wheeled fighting vehicles, armed with 105mm guns, have already been deemed “unsuitable for combat operations” and withdrawn from front line service by the Ukrainians – and they, at least were well armed.