US to provide anti-tank weapons to Ukraine
According to CNN, the US State Department has said that the US will provide anti-tank weapons to the Ukraine to help them defend against Russia-backed separatists.
The State Department said the “US assistance is entirely defensive in nature, and as we have always said, Ukraine is a sovereign country and has a right to defend itself.”
Among the weapons being sent are US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, the official said.
Members of Congress and the US-backed Ukrainian government had long requmested anti-tank weapons to boost Kiev in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.
From ABC News;
The total defense package of $47 million includes the sale of 210 anti-tank missiles and 35 launchers. Additional supplies will need to be purchased, according to a senior State Department official.
The Russians aren’t pleased;
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, responded harshly to the news of the pending deal in a statement on Saturday.
“The United States in a certain sense crossed the line, announcing the intention to transfer weapons of direct damaging action to Ukraine,” the statement said, translated from Russian. “American weapons can lead to new victims in our neighboring country, to which we cannot remain indifferent.”
Category: Foreign Policy
Ukrainians wouldn’t need anti-tank weapons if the Russians didn’t give the separatists tanks in the first place. So STFU Sergei, there’s a new sheriff in town.
Or anti aircraft systems
But wait, according to the left wing narrative President Trump is a Russian puppet! Doh, wrong again Lars. 🙂
Was thinking the same thing… Collusion!
If Vlad did pay to have the current 45 put in the WH, he probably should be asking for a refund.
More goodies to the Ukrainians-
http://www.guns.com/2017/12/22/sniper-rifle-sale-to-ukraine-further-cools-relations-with-russia/
“A deal approved by the White House to export a shipment of American-made .50-caliber sniper rifles to Ukraine has drawn rebuke from Moscow.”
Reach out and touch someone!
Javelin. Cool. Not just for tanks.
This reminds me of giving Stingers to the Mujahideen.
Yeah, you never know when or where those weapons will
pop up.
Just 20 years ago, the Rebels on Bougainville Island used salvaged WW2 weapons to trounce the Papua New Guinea military.
Go boonie-stomping in Guam and you can still find WWII ordnance.
Then I would suggest you take it easy on the stomping. Better to look like Tiny Tim and tiptoe through the Tulips rather than stomp in the wrong place and sound like him.
A nasty surprise for someone. From Wiki:
“Javelin is a fire-and-forget missile with lock-on before launch and automatic self-guidance. The system takes a top-attack flight profile against armored vehicles (attacking the top armor, which is generally thinner), but can also take a direct-attack mode for use against buildings, targets inside the minimum top-attack engagement range, and targets under obstructions. The missile also has the ability to engage helicopters in the direct attack mode.[12] It can reach a peak altitude of 150 m (500 ft) in top-attack mode and 60 m (190 ft) in direct-fire mode. It is equipped with an imaging infrared seeker. The tandem warhead is fitted with two shaped charges: a precursor warhead to detonate any explosive reactive armor and a primary warhead to penetrate base armor.”
This clip is from over 10 years ago, but it never gets old.
You ground pounders got all the fun stuff. All we had was Mk48’s, Mk45’s and Subrocs.
Man, you’re showing your age. We didn’t have Subrocs or Mk-45’s.
We had Harpoons and Tomahawks instead, and just started getting -48 ADCAP.
LOL! Well we also had Mk37’s and were one of the first boats to test the Captor mines.
The Mk45’s always made me nervous. 🙂
As a Vietnam veteran I just want to say, “Payback is a bitch”.
Ronald Reagan said that when the Soviets wanted to bail out of Afghanistan with honor.
Unfortunately for the Soviets, today’s Russians, things don’t always pan out. They worked against us in Vietnam, and their side gets defeated in the battlefield. It took their useful idiots in the U.S. to win the Vietnam War for their side, and doing it on U.S. soil.
When we do to them what they do to us, they suffer the consequences that they wished we suffered.
Geez … FINALLY!!
Amazing what happens when adults are calling the shots.
“American weapons can lead to new victims in our neighboring country, to which we cannot remain indifferent.” Sergei, maybe if the “Russian-backed separatists” weren’t members of the Russian Army, driving Russian Army tanks and BMPs, the Ukraine would have no need of outside help? Just a thought.
Sergei? Did any American elect him?
Ah no, so he can just zip it……
America openly supported Yugoslavia separatists. We backed them with weapons, training and air power.
Yugoslavia was a sovereign nation.
And we act like we have the moral high ground in the Ukraine.
Play the game. Others can too.
This reminds me of the 1980s, when I watched the news of anti aircraft weapons being sent to Afghanistan… Followed days later by news segments showing the Soviets hauling downed aircraft on flatbeds. They tried to fly at higher altitudes, but sacrificed accuracy.
What the current administration is doing is similar to what I saw another administration do in the 1980s.
The Russians are bitching, whining, moaning, and groaning about the fact that their side’s advantage is being eroded.
Russia could easily play the same game.
Give the Taliban and ISIS-K advanced shoulder fired SAMs to take out our helos/air and very accurate rockets to hit our few bases.
And for fun, the Russians have their own Javelin type missile system. Yeah – the MRAPs and uparmored HMMWVs are not going to hold up.
Do you really want to push them?
No, the Russians wouldn’t easily be able to play the same game as us. First, the Army, and the other military branches, train for contingencies much worse than the theaters that they’re deploying to. We don’t just train for counter insurgency, but for a full blown war… Full spectrum warfare. In other words, we train for an enemy that attempts to bring itself at par with our forces. Remember, we took down Saddam’s military despite their being not only a conventional army, but having things in their arsenal that conventional armies have. In both Saddam’s Army, and ISIS’s, cases, they were able to bring a bigger fight, and punch, to bear. Our birds flew low enough for them to use shoulder launched weapons against them. If we ended crushing both, Saddam’s Army and the following insurgency with the weapons they had in hand, they’re not going to have any better luck using the equipment that you say the Russians could equip them with. Heck, in the last military field exercise that I participated in, the so called “terrorists” had attack helicopters, anti armor weapons and rounds, had complex electronic warfare capabilities, and were much more organized than the enemy that actually existed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Training has transitioned to deal not just with counter insurgency, but with force on force like what was constantly played out during Cold War exercises. So, even if your scenario played out, their benefits would be short lived, and it’d be back to our side handing the other side their asses, despite their being armed with the equipment that you talk about above. Second, I could tell from watching videos on how both, the terrorists train and fight, as well as videos on how the Russians, and their proxies, train, as well as conduct themselves and fight, that we’d militarily defeat both in the battle field… far exceeding what we need to do to prevail over a scenario that you laid out. Third, the Russians know that attempting to arm ISIS, or the Taliban, in the scenario that you talked about, would complicate… Read more »