1/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what President Vladimir Putin calls a "special military operation" against what it perceives as threats to its security. Ukraine and its Western allies have denounced Russia\'s actions as an imperialist-style land grab and imposed sanctions to try to disrupt the campaign.
2/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
Desperate to meet Ukraine’s demands for everything from artillery shells to the Patriot missile defense system that the US is poised to provide, the Defense Department is tackling a decades-long bugbear that has plagued arms production: finding ways to speed up assembly lines and entice weapons-makers with longer-term contracts to show the US military won’t abandon a system once its immediate needs are met.
3/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
It’s also led to bigger questions about how the US supplies itself and allies for war. With Ukraine keeping up the pressure for more — and more advanced — arms, the US must confront the risk that its own stocks of some ground-based weapons will be depleted if it’s suddenly required to defend itself, help Taiwan defend against China or counter military action by North Korea.
4/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
The problem is especially acute because Russia is forcing Ukraine to wage a type of war that some Pentagon planners thought was a thing of the past. While the US has focused money and production on stealth fighter jets, AI-augmented goggles and hypersonic weapons, Ukraine wants artillery shells, tanks and shoulder-fired missiles to repel Russian ground assaults.
5/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
The numbers are staggering. The US has committed to Ukraine more than 1 million 155mm artillery rounds, 180,000 105mm artillery rounds, more than 8,500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 4,200 precision-guided Excalibur 155mm artillery rounds and 1,600 shoulder-mounted Stinger missiles.
6/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
Just as the Coronavirus pandemic exposed the flaws in the world’s supply of everything from microchips to kitchen cabinets, the war in Ukraine and its military’s needs have highlighted how vulnerable the Pentagon has become to supply shortages.
7/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
Ukraine’s insatiable need for more is exposing gaps. A surge in weapons production, spurred by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was wound down as fighting waned. Raytheon shut down its production of Stinger missiles in 2020.
8/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
Now the US is trying to ramp back up, encouraging companies like Raytheon and Lockheed to restart production lines. It’s also using lessons it learned from Operation Warp Speed, the government-wide effort to expedite the development of vaccines, tests and therapeutics to tackle Covid-19.
9/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
So far, the Army is doing a good job identifying systems to replenish and planning for expanded production capacity of 155mm shells and GPS-guided rockets for the HIMARS, but the slowest part of the process “has been contracting,” said Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican.
10/10 - How US weapons are helping Ukraine against Russia
The US military will also expand wartime training in Germany of Ukrainian military personnel fighting Russia\'s invasion with a focus on joint maneuver and combined arms operations.
