The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a new $1 billion security package for Ukraine that includes a range of much needed military items for Ukraine’s forces, which have been battling increasing Russian assaults the past few months amid scant assistance from the U.S.
“This package will surge munitions, weapons, and equipment forward to support Ukraine’s ability to defend its frontlines, protect its cities, and counter Russia’s continued attacks,” the Defense Department said in a statement.
The size of the package had been telegraphed by administration officials eve since the House approved a supplemental bill for Ukraine last Saturday. The Senate on Tuesday night approved the $95 billion bill, which President Biden signed on Wednesday.
The bill includes $60.8 billion in assistance for Ukraine, $26.4 billion in aid to Israel, and $8.1 billion for U.S. security in the Indo-Pacific region, to include aid to Taiwan, and $3.3 billion to invest in the U.S. submarine industrial base.
The new $1 billion Presidential Drawdown Authority package for Ukraine will allow weapons and equipment stocks to be taken out of Defense Department inventories. The capabilities include short-range air defense RIM-7 missiles and short-range air-to-air AIM-9M missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, more ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS)—Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) on Sunday said aid this week might include the longer-range ATACMS precision strike missiles fired by HIMARS—small arms and related ammunition, including .50 caliber rounds to shoot down drones, 155mm high explosive and dual purpose improved conventional munitions artillery rounds, 105mm artillery rounds, 60mm mortar rounds, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, Humvees, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, Javelin and AT4 shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons, TOW missiles, precision aerial munitions, logistics support vehicles, tactical vehicles for towing and hauling equipment, airfield support equipment, anti-armor mines, Claymore anti-personnel munitions, munitions to destroy obstacles, night vision devices, and spare parts, field equipment, training munitions, maintenance, and other equipment.
The administration has previously provided Ukraine with a limited number of shorter-range ATACMS equipped with cluster-type munitions, which have can take out lightly armed or soft targets. Ukraine has used these to destroy aircraft and other soft targets. The longer-range versions of the missile are equipped with unitary warheads and can take out hardened targets as well as infrastructure such as bridges.
“So they not only give Ukraine greater range, they give Ukraine far greater options on what they can attack,” Phillips O’Brien, a military historian and professor at the Univ. of St Andrews in Scotland, wrote earlier this week in the Substack online publishing platform.
These options include putting Russian forces as well as their depots, and command and control operations in Crimea at serious risk, O’Brien wrote. Essentially, long-range ATACMS “could go a long way to making Crimea toothless,” he said.
ATACMS and their HIMARS launchers are made by Lockheed Martin [LMT].
O’Brien has been a keen follower of the war in Ukraine, including battlefield strategies and tactics, and of the politics in Western governments supporting Ukraine.
O’Brien has been critical of the Biden administration’s refusal to provide long-range precision strike weapons to Ukraine out of what he considers are misplaced concerns that doing so will lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin escalating the conflict to include the potential use of nuclear weapons. O’Brien was also frustrated with House Republicans, particularly loyalists of former President Trump, who held up the Ukraine supplemental since late in 2023.