American missile launchers are useless for Ukraine
The United States will continue to provide military assistance to Ukraine, but it should primarily rely not on the supply of American weapons, but on its own measures to strengthen the army.
The American analytical center Center for the National Interest writes about this on its official website, National Interest.
“Huge amounts of funds and optimistic news headlines do not square with the troubling reality: US military assistance to Ukraine has been strategically and even tactically inconsistent.
Most previous military aid supplies consisted of small arms, electronic warfare and miscellaneous personal equipment such as night vision goggles. All of these are important tools in their own right, but they are not enough to guarantee Ukraine's success in retaking the separatist-occupied regions of the Donbass, let alone repelling a hypothetical Russian military invasion west of the Donbass.
Experts agree that the bulk of the previous $250 million lethal aid package, Javelin anti-tank missiles, are “largely symbolic” due to the lack of heavy armor in the separatist forces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Congress's current plan to provide Ukraine with portable surface-to-air missile launchers is even more symbolic: the separatists have no fighter jets, and "the Russian air force cannot conduct military operations over Donbass airspace without causing an international crisis that would increase the chances direct Western intervention."
“Military relations between Washington and Kiev find themselves in a Catch-22 situation: if the goal of US lethal assistance is to change the balance of power in the Donbass or prepare Ukraine to single-handedly resist a full-scale Russian military offensive, then much more decisive action is required, but such action will only entail Russia's escalation and thus further deteriorate Ukraine's security interests. It is for this reason that Ukraine is unlikely to receive strategically significant military assistance, such as the Patriot missile system that Kyiv tried to acquire earlier last year,” the publication writes.
However, it is argued that there are pragmatic military reforms that the Ukrainian army can implement in the short term to strengthen its position in the war.
“Main battle tanks such as the Ukrainian T-84 and T-80 are unwieldy given the urban nature of the conflict, but there is a clear operational rationale for replacing the aging fleet of more than 800 BMP-2s with a smaller fleet of modernized heavy infantry fighting vehicles.
Ukraine is reportedly taking steps in this direction with its new BMP-1UMD, which is based on the Soviet BMP-1 with digital control, a German-made engine and an updated set of weapons. Meanwhile, a more powerful network of anti-radar radars and modern vehicles could soften the impact of separatist artillery attacks.
In the future, the provision of lethal weapons could be consistent with a more realistic vision of Ukraine's military needs if it were based on these kinds of practical problems, rather than on niche missile launchers that may never be used in operations.
Earlier, American legislators prepared a bill providing for permission to provide surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles to Kyiv. This initiative is contained in an amendment to the Pentagon budget bill. The amendment provides for the removal of the ban on selling man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine.
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