U.S. Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

[Albany Rifles]

One of the fun things in my job, one of the very few, I know which programs these funds are coming from. I also know some great Americans who moved heaven and earth. And their efforts were matched by some great trading partners in our vendors who agreed to expedite these refunds.

This is, at best, a life ring. They need a lifeboat.

Also with the EU going to provide frozen Russian assets worth Euro 2-3 billion this summer to Ukraine, if I was Ukraine I'd scrape up seed money to start getting contracts in place with US & Korean vendors of munitions, especially 155mm ammo.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ls-2024-03-12/

US preparing new weapons package for Ukraine, officials say

By Mike Stone, Idrees Ali and Patricia Zengerle
March 12, 20241:10 PM EDT






Item 1 of 2 Ukrainian servicemen of 79th brigade take part in training, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine March 4, 2024. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak/File Photo


WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) - The United States is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine that could be worth as much as $400 million, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday, the first such move in months as additional funds for Kyiv remain blocked by Republican leaders in Congress.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an announcement was expected later on Tuesday.
One of the officials said that the funding for this package is from credits refunded to the Pentagon for recent purchases and is expected to contain artillery.

The U.S. Army, in particular, has been making huge purchases of munitions and vehicles to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine.
The last drawdown was in December 2023 when funds to replenish stocks fell to zero.
The White House has been scrambling to find ways to send more military assistance given the situation on the battlefield and the resistance to the funding from Republican hardliners.
U.S. officials have also looked at options for seizing some $285 billion in Russian assets immobilized in 2022 and using the money to pay for Ukraine weaponry.

The announcement is set to come as Poland’s president and prime minister meets President Joe Biden at the White House later on Tuesday to talk about ways to bolster support for Ukraine.
The new weapons package was first reported by Reuters earlier on Tuesday.
Using the funds that have been returned to replenish stocks opens a narrow window to urgently allow more aid to be sent from existing stocks as the Biden administration waits for supplemental funding to be passed by lawmakers.

Biden, a Democrat, has backed military aid to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, while his likely Republican opponent in the Nov. 5 U.S. election, former president Donald Trump, has a more isolationist stance.
Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, an ally of Trump, has so far refused to call a vote on a bill that would provide $60 billion more for Ukraine.
The measure has passed the Democratic-run Senate, and both Republicans and Democrats in the House say it would pass if the chamber's Republican leaders allowed a vote.

Leaders of U.S. intelligence agencies urgently pressed members of the House of Representatives on Tuesday to approve additional military assistance for Ukraine, saying it would not only boost Kyiv as it fights Russia but discourage Chinese aggression.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that the situation along the front of the country's war with Russia was the best in three months, with Moscow's troops no longer advancing after their capture last month of the eastern city of Avdiivka.
Zelenskiy, in an interview with France's BFM television, said Ukraine had improved its strategic position despite shortages of weaponry, but suggested the situation could change again if new supplies were not forthcoming.
He said earlier that Russia is preparing a new offensive against Ukraine starting in late May or summer. Zelenskiy has said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since February 2022.
Russia's capture of Avdiivka gave the Kremlin's forces breathing room in defending the Russian-held regional center of Donetsk, 20 kilometres (12 miles) to the east.
Earlier this month, a top military commander said that Ukrainian troops were forced to leave several settlements neighboring Avdiivka due to Russia's continued offensive amid its own depleting stockpiles of munitions.
Denmark will provide a new military aid package including Caesar artillery systems and ammunition to Ukraine worth around 2.3 billion Danish crowns ($336.6 million), the Danish Defence Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
European Union countries are set to agree on a new 5 billion-euro ($5.46 billion) top-up to a fund used to finance military shipments to Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing four officials briefed on the discussions.

[Albany Rifles]

One of the great impacts of Sweden & Finland joining NATO is it is bringing into the light expanding involvement and cooperation with Scandinavian defense firms.

https://www.defensenews.com/industry...ions-facility/

Saab to expand US footprint with new munitions facility

By Jen Judson
Mar 26, 09:30 AM
A Boeing-Saab Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb is fired during a test at Andoya Test Center in Norway. (Courtesy of Boeing and Saab)Saab is growing its footprint in the U.S. with a new facility that will manufacture ground combat weapons and missile systems, the head of the company’s American branch told Defense News.

The new site is part of a global manufacturing push from the Swedish company to quadruple its global capacity to produce its ground combat weapons, Erik Smith said in a recent interview.

“We certainly see a very broad and very large market opportunity for the kind of products that we have today and the kinds of products that are being developed right now,” Smith said. “As this facility ramps up, what you will see is a combination of products that Saab is very well known for and some new products that really haven’t hit the market yet.”

The facility will feature advanced manufacturing capability and an innovation center to enhance munitions production capacity stateside, according to Smith. He also said it will support the production of components for the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, or GLSDB, system as well as close combat weapons.

Saab is in the process of selecting a site, having issued a request for proposals. Six states are in the running, although Smith decline to identify candidates. He said the company plans to choose a site and break ground by the end of 2024, with plans to begin production by 2026.

The company has rapidly expanded its locations across the U.S. in recent years. Last year, the company established two facilities focused on unmanned underwater vehicles in Rhode Island and Massachusetts as well as in California to support its work with U.S. Marine Corps training.

In 2021, Saab opened an advanced aerostructure manufacturing facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, where it builds the rear fuselage for Boeing’s T-7 trainer aircraft.

The company is based in Syracuse, New York, and runs its surveillance side of the business there.

“We’ve had pretty substantial growth in our land systems portfolio,” Smith said, including winning a large contract in 2021 to provide a next-generation force-on-force training system to the Marine Corps.

Additionally, the Air Force awarded a contract to Saab and its partner Boeing for the GLSDB system, which the company began to deliver to the service in 2023.

A year ago, the U.S. pledged to send the GLSDB to Ukraine. The bomb has a range of 93 miles and can be launched from mobile artillery systems like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

For the new facility, the plan is to follow a similar model to what Saab did with its West Lafayette site. In that case, the first engineering and manufacturing development fuselages were built in Sweden, then, in parallel, Saab built the Indiana plant with high-end technology to produce the fuselages beginning with low-rate initial production, Smith explained.

“We’re going to take advantage of some of the advanced technologies that are out there in manufacturing today and the evolution of the manufacturing space and capability since many, including our weapons and ammunition factories, were built many, many years ago,” Smith said. “You can imagine there’s some significant opportunities for efficiency improvement and … capability improvement overall, in terms of building these kinds of systems.”

The facility will not just produce systems but will also have capability to test and integrate capability, he added.

The facility in West Lafayette is about 100,000 square feet and is one of Saab’s larger facilities in the country, but the footprint needed for land combat systems is expected to be “significant,” Smith said.

“I would envision this facility employing hundreds of people,” he added. And like in West Lafayette, the land secured for the facility will allow for a large amount of growth over time, he added.

Saab is the 33rd largest defense contractor in the world, according to Defense News’ Top 100 list.

[TopHatter]

GOP Rep. Mike Turner: Russian propaganda is 'being uttered on the House floor'
House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner on Sunday said several of his GOP colleagues have repeated Russian propaganda on the House floor.


Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, at the Capitol on Jan. 9.

GOP Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even "being uttered on the House floor."

"We see directly coming from Russia ... communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor," Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."

"There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not," he added.

Turner's office did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for clarification about which members of Congress he was referring to.

His comments come on the heels of remarks House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul made this week about how Russian propaganda has taken root among the GOP.

McCaul, a Texas Republican, told Puck News that he thinks "Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base."

Turner and McCaul each tied Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, to other authoritarian leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea.

"[The propaganda] makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is," Turner told CNN, adding, "President Xi of China, Vladimir Putin himself have identified as such."

McCaul described explaining to colleagues that the threat of Russian propaganda is similar to threats made by other U.S. adversaries.

"I have to explain to them what’s at stake, why Ukraine is in our national security interest," he said. "By the way, you don’t like Communist China? Well, guess what? They’re aligned [with Russia], along with the ayatollah [of Iran]. So when you explain it that way, they kind of start understanding it."

The committee chairs' remarks about Russian propaganda came as they spoke about the need for Congress to approve more military aid to Ukraine.

"Ukraine needs our help and assistance now, and this is a very critical time for the U.S. Congress to step up and provide that aid," Turner told CNN.

The House in recent months has stalled on efforts to pass Ukraine aid, with Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to put an aid package the Senate passed in February that would provide resources to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on the House floor.

Last week, Rep. Don Bacon said on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that he had commitments from Johnson and McCaul that they would allow a bipartisan Ukraine military aid package to advance to a vote.

Rep. French Hill echoed this point on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday morning, saying he believes Johnson will bring Ukraine aid to the floor "immediately after completing the work on [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and FISA's extension — that deadline of April 19 makes it a priority for the first few days we're back."

"I believe he's fully committed to bringing it up to the floor immediately thereafter," Hill added.

But Bacon, R-Neb., also warned that Johnson could face a vote to oust him from the speakership if he moves forward with Ukraine aid.

On Sunday, Turner downplayed the notion that Johnson's position was at risk over Ukraine aid.

"I don't think he's at any risk," Turner said. "I think that what people have been referring to as the 'chaos caucus,' those individuals who are seeking attention for themselves and trying to stop all of the important work in Congress, are now seen as merely disruptive."

Democrats have signaled that they could join several Republicans in helping to save Johnson's speakership if a motion to vacate, such as the one filed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene just before the House left for a two-week Easter recess, were brought to a vote.
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Russia Russia Russia....

[Albany Rifles]

That high speed whirring you are hearing are Allen Dulles, George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan & other ghosts of the Republican Party spinning in their graves!

Fvcking fellow travellers, indeed.

[TopHatter]

US transfers thousands of seized Iranian guns, rocket launchers and munitions to Ukraine



The US transferred thousands of machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition seized from Iran to Ukraine last week, US Central Command announced on Tuesday.

Ukraine has been suffering from shortages of weapons and munitions on the battlefield in its war against Russia, with the US unable to send more equipment from its own stockpiles until more funding is approved by Congress.

CENTCOM said the materiel transferred to Ukraine is enough to equip one Ukrainian brigade — around 4,000 personnel — with small-arms rifles. “These weapons will help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

The munitions were originally seized by the US military and its partners “from four separate transiting stateless vessels between 22 May 2021 to 15 Feb 2023,” but the US government did not obtain ownership of the equipment via the Justice Department’s civil forfeiture process until December of last year, CENTCOM said.

It is not the first time the US has transferred seized Iranian military equipment to the Ukrainians. The US transferred over one million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces in October, CNN previously reported.

Over the past year, the US Navy has seized thousands of Iranian assault rifles and more than one million rounds of ammunition from vessels used by Iran to ship weapons to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The seizures, frequently carried out with regional partner forces, target small stateless vessels on routes historically used to smuggle weapons to the Houthis.

For the last year, the Biden administration has been working to legally send the seized weapons, which are stored in CENTCOM facilities across the Middle East, to the Ukrainians.
________

Noice. Every dime they don't have to spend on small arms can be spent elsewhere.

[S2]

A discharge petition presently has only 191 of the 218 signatures necessary. 23 democrats haven't signed. You can easily guess who they might be.

Biden had a significant window of opportunity in that first year (March 2022- May 2023) to truly rally and solidify our support. Too much fear and trepidation about "crossing red lines" that weren't there and wouldn't matter if they were, however. Our support, therefore, has ALWAYS been fitful and hesitant relative to what we might have otherwise mustered.

Both parties have badly fumbled here. Not just one.

[TopHatter]

U.S. announces $138 million in emergency military sales of Hawk missile systems support for Ukraine

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has greenlighted an emergency $138 million in foreign military sales for Ukraine to provide critical repairs and spare parts for Kyiv’s Hawk missile systems.

The U.S. announced the move Tuesday saying that Ukraine has an urgent need for the maintenance support to keep the missile system running.

The announcement follows a similar, small-sized round of $300 million in munitions support the Pentagon announced last month after it was able to convert contract savings to be able to offset the cost of providing the aid. Both the State and Defense Departments have been looking for ways to continue to get Ukraine support while a $60 billion Ukraine aid package remains stalled in Congress.

The HAWK is a medium range surface-to-air missile system that provides air defense, which is one of Ukraine's top security needs.

“Ukraine has an urgent need to increase its capabilities to defend against Russian missile strikes and the aerial capabilities of Russian forces,” the State Department said in a memo outlining the sale. “Maintaining and sustaining the HAWK Weapon System will enhance Ukraine’s ability to defend its people and protect critical national infrastructure.”

During a Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said without the support — the U.S. risks that Ukraine will fall to Russia.

“Ukraine matters, and the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine will have global implications for our national security as well,” Austin said.

If Kyiv falls, it could imperil Ukraine’s Baltic NATO member neighbors and potentially drag U.S. troops into a prolonged European war.

The work on the Hawk systems will be performed by contractors from Massachusetts-based RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon and Huntsville, Alabama-based PROJECTXYZ. The State Department said the parts needed to repair the systems will come from U.S. Army stock, third-country donations, commercial off-the-shelf components and new production.
___________

[Albany Rifles]

Not bad for a weapons system which has been in service with the US Army since 1981 - 43 years. And much of this expansion was due to funding for Ukraine in 22-23...proof over 80 cents of every dollar of aid to Ukraine is used in the US. And this also helps fill requirements for other allies and partners for their needs.


https://www.defensenews.com/land/202...riot-missiles/

How companies plan to ramp up production of Patriot missiles

By Jen Judson
Apr 9, 04:50 AM
German soldiers fire a Patriot weapons system in Chania, Greece, on Nov. 8, 2017. (Sebastian Apel/U.S. Defense Department via AP)Amid a significant use of missiles in Ukraine and the Middle East, customers are ramping up independent production of some of the weapons the Patriot air defense system can launch at an unprecedented scale.

The United States, where Patriot manufacturer RTX is based, is trying to contend with the rapid use of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles in its military operations while ensuring it has enough stockpiled in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. (Beijing considers the island nation a rogue province and has threatened to take it back by force.)

Missile production is increasing in the U.S., particularly the Lockheed Martin-made PAC-3 MSE missiles, the most capable variant. The company is making hundreds of them over the next two years.

Lockheed was building 350 MSE missiles a year in 2018 and was working to ramp up its production to 500 missiles a year prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Lockheed is now fully funded by the U.S. Army to build 550 missiles a year at its Camden, Arkansas, production line. In December, Lockheed hit a rate of 500 per year, Brenda Davidson, the company’s vice president of PAC-3 programs, told Defense News.

The business built a new 85,000-square-foot facility to make PAC-3 MSE missiles complete. The location features a variety of automated systems that make production a smoother and more efficient process, Davidson said.

While the Army has yet to fund another missile production increase, Lockheed decided in the latter part of 2022 that it would continue to invest internally to be able to build 650 a year. “Lockheed could see the demand out there,” Davidson said, adding that the company plans to hit that number in 2027.

Additionally, Lockheed has worked to stabilize its supply chain as much as possible, Davidson said. Aerojet Rocketdyne supplies the solid-rocket motor and is co-located in the same industrial park as Lockheed in Camden. Boeing supplies the seeker and has spent its own capital to keep up with demand.

Lockheed has also added a variety of second-source suppliers to mitigate risk in the supply chain, Davidson said, and is funding sub-tier suppliers to ensure they have the right tooling and test equipment — and are on the same page in terms of what the program requires.

It’s unclear if the U.S. Army sees a need to ramp up its Patriot missile production beyond 650 missiles a year. But Emily Harding, deputy director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Pentagon must encourage industry to continue investments that allow for the rapid production of much-needed missiles.

The department, she explained, should essentially tell industry: “Even if, let’s just say for a second, that peace breaks out across the globe tomorrow, we will still fulfill those contracts, so please build them.”

During a December defense conference in Washington, D.C., Army acquisition chief, Doug Bush, sent out a subtle signal, stating that while the draw on Patriot “has been manageable for Ukraine because they have other systems that are helping as well ... the long-term challenge of just having Patriot missiles for a Pacific scenario is the other reason we are asking Congress for support of that investment.”

The Army is “providing stuff out of stock. The build-back time is the concern,” he added.

The service needs supplemental funding, Bush said, in order to ramp up capability like the PAC-3 MSE weapon, noting the pending supplemental request to replenish American stockpiles of weapons and equipment sent to Ukraine includes $750 million to help Lockheed increase capacity by more than 100 a year over its current capacity.

The Senate passed a supplemental funding bill, which included a Ukraine aid package, that would contribute to ramping up the PAC-3 MSE capability, but the legislation is held up in the House.

While stalled during the first half of the fiscal year, the Army will be able to move forward to cement a multiyear contract for PAC-3 MSE missiles through the recent passage last month of the fiscal 2024 defense appropriations bill.
The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement weapon broke its own distant record to take out an air-breathing target simulating a cruise missile or fixed-wing aircraft, during a U.S. Army-led test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin)

Lockheed continues to place its bet through internal investments and work with suppliers that have long-lead times to deliver subcomponents and parts, Davidson said. And the company continuously talks to the Army about how much more the business could and should ramp up production, she added.

Even without Army funds, “demand for PAC-3 MSE just continues to increase,” Davidson said, noting the company signed six letters of approval last year from international customers.

Lockheed is also pitching the PAC-3 MSE to the U.S. Navy, and is spending $100 million to integrate the missile with the service’s Aegis combat system.

The company plans to test this spring whether it can fire the missiles from a vertical launch system tied into Aegis’s command-and-control technology and the SPY-1 radar. If successful, the hope is the Navy or Pentagon will conduct further tests that could lead to an initial operational capability on a ship.

Seeker supply, rocket motor boost


Boeing, which supplies the seeker for the PAC-3 MSE missile, is also spending money internally to align with Lockheed’s production increase plans, according to Jim Bryan, Boeing’s director of integrated air and missile defense programs.

While Boeing had made some incremental expansions, the company decided last year that “the demand signals were strong enough that [it] went out ahead of any government funding to invest” in a 35,000-square-foot factory expansion for its seekers, which equates to a 30% production capacity increase, Bryan said.

Bryan added that Boeing can build seekers to keep up with the planned 650 missile production rate using the facility it has, but the new location will feature added efficiencies such as the addition of a variety of automated systems to include inspections and robotic soldering.

The new facility also sets up the company to meet “much higher” demand signals above 650, Bryan added.

Meanwhile, orders for solid-rocket motors used on a wide variety of munitions is straining current suppliers Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne. However, the solid-rocket motor industry is growing with some newcomers.

Still, PAC-3 MSE production is weathering that flex in supply and demand, according to Davidson. Aerojet Rocketdyne makes the solid-rocket motors that go with PAC-3 MSE missiles right next door to Lockheed’s missile production line in Camden.
L3Harris Technologies in July 2023 acquired Aerojet Rocketdyne, which produces rocket engines for main-stage, upper-stage and in-space propulsion. (Aerojet Rocketdyne)

Aerojet opened a 51,000-square-foot facility in the same industrial park in 2022, where it is producing the PAC-3 MSE propulsion system. All of those manufacturing activities are under one roof and is positioning the company, acquired by L3Harris Technologies in July 2023, to significantly increase production rates, Aerojet Rocketdyne has said.

“As we continue to modernize and expand, we have been building in the ability to surge beyond current requirements, including adding manufacturing space and equipment,” Ross Niebergall, Aerojet Rocketdyne’s president, told Defense News in a written statement.

Aerojet has increased rocket motor production from about 70,000 in 2021 to 115,000 in 2023 — a more than 60% increase — the company said. These motors range from ones that can fit in the palm of your hand to the size of a small car. The increases, the company stressed, are tied to contract requirements.

Challenges still remain, Niebergall added. “Solid rocket motor production relies on several important components and materials, and regardless of the number of solid rocket motor providers that exist, we each require these same components and materials — and more significantly, the suppliers who produce them.”

The company is working to partner with suppliers to come up with solutions and ensure they have what they need in terms of capacity and flexibility to support production, according to Niebergall, and it is spending money to support suppliers.

“Thanks to significant internal and government investments, we’re expanding and modernizing key production locations across the country, investing in digital engineering, and pursuing collaborations,” Niebergall said.

Foreign contribution


Meanwhile, in Europe, countries have realized amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that they need a greater magazine depth for air defense forces, according to Tom Laliberty, Raytheon’s president of land and air defense systems.

Four NATO countries — Germany, Romania, Spain and the Netherlands — are coming together to buy 1,000 PAC-2 GEM-T missiles and will do a large amount of production in those countries, primarily Germany.

By pooling their resources, the countries get an economic order discount, and since they are being bought collectively, the missiles will be distributed based on priority of need, Laliberty explained.

Raytheon went under contract at the beginning of the year with NATO. While some components will still be made stateside, Raytheon is expanding its supplier base in Europe to build critical GEM-T components and will build an all-up round integration and test facility with Germany’s MBDA.

MBDA subsidiary Bayern-Chemie will become a new rocket motor manufacturer for the missile, and another company in Spain will build a new control actuation system.

Overall, Raytheon’s production of PAC-2 GEM-T missiles is ongoing, with a contracted backlog of approximately 1,500 missiles, including the NATO order and an estimated near-term demand of an additional 1,000 missiles. The company is producing roughly 20 missiles a month and, with the added capacity being through international initiatives, is on a path to reach 35 missiles a month by the end of 2027, according to Laliberty.

[Albany Rifles]

And the proven combat capability ties hand in hand with the article above.


https://www.defensenews.com/land/202...-fresh-future/

How Patriot proved itself in Ukraine and secured a fresh future

By Jen Judson
Apr 9, 05:00 AM

U.S. Patriot missile batteries stand ready in Poland on April 10, 2022. (Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Smith/U.S. Army)In the dead of night in May, Russia launched a Kinzhal hypersonic missile at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

The air-launched weapon can reach speeds up to Mach 10, which equates to about 7,700 mph.

Less than a month earlier, the U.S. had sent a Patriot air defense system to Ukraine to help it fend off the barrage of complex missiles Russia was using. But the system had never proved itself against a missile like the Kinzhal.

Even so, the Patriot system blocked the incoming missile, defusing the weapon and several others, according to U.S. officials.

Since then, the Patriot system has continued to successfully intercept a wide range of Russian weaponry. It has shot down Russian aircraft like Su-34 fighters flying nearly 100 miles away, and intercepted missiles as far as 130 miles away, according to Oleksandr Musiienko, head of the Kyiv-based nongovernmental organization the Center for Military and Legal Studies.
A Russian Air Force MiG-31K jet carries the high-precision hypersonic missile Kh-47M2 Kinzhal during the Victory Day military parade. (Pavel Golovkin/AP)

The success of the RTX-made Patriot system in Ukraine comes as the U.S. Army aims to replace the Patriot with an integrated air and missile defense system better able to connect with other equipment on the battlefield and equipped with a more capable radar.

But the Patriot system’s dominance in Ukraine has attracted fresh attention and potential customers from around the world. What might have looked like an aging system not long ago now appears to be a workhorse that could be used for years to come.

“Patriot has prove[d] to be a very reliable system,” said Ben Hodges, a retired three-star general who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. “The Ukrainians learned very quickly how to operate it, and even more impressively they learned very quickly how to employ it to great effect.”

“Nations are much more alive to the [air and missile defense] threat,” he added.
The successor


The Patriot system was first introduced to counter threats to the United States during the Cold War. But it faced significant battle when forces deployed the system in the Middle East during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.

In those early years, the Patriot experienced major failures. In 1991, for example, the system failed to intercept an Iraqi Al Hussein Scud missile, which hit barracks in Saudi Arabia and killed 28 U.S. soldiers. The system was then involved in three friendly fire incidents in 2003 during the Iraq War; in one case, a Patriot shot down a British Royal Air Force Tornado jet, killing its two crew members.

Despite these failures, the U.S. Army has long relied on the system. Indeed, its Patriot units for years maintained the highest operational tempo across any units in the service with the longest deployments. Despite the incidents in Iraq, it was heavily used there and successfully countered ballistic missile threats.

And plenty of other countries also use the system, which is made up of eight truck-mounted launchers, a ground radar, a control station and a power generator. The launchers can each hold four interceptors.
A U.S. Army Patriot missile fires to engage a target at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, Australia, during the 2021 Talisman Sabre exercise. (Cpl. Jarrod McAneney/Australian Defence Department)

According to Raytheon, an RTX company that manufactures the Patriot system, 19 countries have purchased the weapon and there are more than 250 Patriot fire units around the world. Tom Laliberty, Raytheon’s president of land and air defense systems, told Defense News in a recent interview the U.S. owns 85-90 of those, with the rest distributed among the other 18 customer countries.

“The system has just been continually improved based on feedback we get from the now 19 countries that use Patriot,” he said.

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea led to a sales burst. Eastern European countries jumped to buy Patriot systems to enhance their own defenses. Romania, Poland and Sweden signed on as new customers in the years between Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But during the same time, the U.S. Army started making plans to replace the Patriot, seeking a capability with a more flexible command-and-control system and a radar capable of full coverage. The Patriot radar’s existing configuration creates blind spots for the system.

The Army is slated to build a new Patriot battery to replace the one sent to Ukraine and to secure one more battalion’s worth of systems. But the service will gradually replace individual elements of the Patriot system over the next several decades. Eventually, all of those upgraded elements will become a new system known as Integrated Air and Missile Defense.

The first piece to be replaced will be the Patriot’s command-and-control system, which will be swapped out with the Northrop Grumman-developed Integrated Battle Command System. IBCS, approved for full-rate production last year, will enable the system to connect with a variety of other sensors and shooters on the battlefield.

Next, the Patriot system’s radar is slated to be replaced with the Raytheon-developed Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS. The first set of prototype radars is undergoing tests with the Army; they are expected to offer 360-degree coverage.
The Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, shown here, is slated to replace the Patriot system’s radar. (Darrell Ames/U.S. Army)

In recent months, the sensor completed four successful live-fire demonstrations at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

The Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense system will be designed to tie into a broader air defense architecture using IBCS. The service is also expected to be able to easily improve the technology through software updates.
Patriot heats up


But the system’s success in Ukraine has made clear there remains interest for the Patriot in its current state.

Switzerland purchased five batteries and 75 missiles in November 2022, and Romania plans to buy additional fire units. At least two other European countries are close to announcing plans to buy Patriot, according to Laliberty, who declined to identify them.

Germany announced in March it would buy more Patriot systems to augment its air defense capabilities. Raytheon won a $1.2 billion contract that buys radars, launchers, command-and-control stations, spares and support, according to a company statement.

Slovakia has publicly expressed interest in buying Patriot systems following a NATO-owned Patriot system’s deployment to the country in 2022.
A Romanian Patriot system fires a missile during a drill at the Capu Midia shooting range next to the Black Sea on Nov. 15, 2023. (Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images)

Raytheon’s production lines are churning out five fire units for the contract with Switzerland, Laliberty said, and the company anticipates an additional 12 will be under contract within the next 18 months.

“Given that our capacity supports the production of 12 fire units a year, there is sufficient capacity to support current as well as future contracts as they materialize,” he noted.

Raytheon also received a contract in January to replace the U.S. Patriot battery donated to Ukraine. That was paid for with fiscal 2023 supplemental funding approved by Congress.

Now, the company is focused on boosting production of the missiles the Patriot system uses as interceptors. The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement weapons, made by Lockheed Martin, are the most capable missile variant used by the system.

In 2018, Lockheed’s annual rate of building those missiles was 350. The company planned to increase that to 500 annually. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has put new pressure on this effort, and the U.S. Army has provided funding to get Lockheed to 550 missiles per year. In December, the firm said it reached a rate of 500 per year.

The company built an 85,000-square-foot facility equipped with automated systems to build PAC-3 MSE missiles and is now preparing to produce 650 a year by 2027.

Boeing, which supplies the seeker for the PAC-3 MSE, is also planning to accelerate production, according to Jim Bryan, the company’s director of integrated air and missile defense.

Bryan said Boeing last year added 35,000 square feet to its factory, enabling a 30% production increase.

Many of the expansion efforts by Lockheed and its suppliers preceded government funding. The companies are banking on both an increase in U.S. government spending in the coming years as well as a rise in orders from international customers.

“From a demand future, we continue to see it. We meet with customers all the time, and we think we’ll be adding new customers to the MSE line,” Brenda Davidson, Lockheed’s vice president of PAC-3 programs, told Defense News. “The areas of Asia-Pacific and the Middle East continue to be very, very important to us.”
‘Patriot has a place’


Indeed, those two regions have existing Patriot customers that continue to rely on the system. And geopolitical hot spots, such as the Taiwan Strait and the Red Sea, are driving demand for air defense more broadly — regardless of which system is available.

Increasingly savvy ballistic missiles and emerging hypersonic missiles are creating new challenges for air defense systems. The U.S. Army has named air defense one of its highest priorities, and is adjusting its funding accordingly.

In the fiscal 2025 budget released in March, the Army asked for $602 million in research and development efforts for Integrated Air and Missile Defense and $2.8 billion in procurement, which covers modernized capabilities beyond the Patriot system.

For Patriot modifications alone, the Army planned to spend $1.7 billion between FY24 and FY28, according to FY24 budget documents. Now, the Army is requesting an additional $2.29 billion across the same time period to modify and upgrade its Patriot capability, according to FY25 documents.

The head of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, said the service has sought to reduce pressure on Patriot air defense units, but has been stymied by today’s demands.
In its fiscal 2025 budget request to Congress, the Army asked for $602 million in research and development efforts for Integrated Air and Missile Defense and $2.8 billion in procurement, which covers modernized capabilities beyond the Patriot system. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

“Prior to the recent increase in deployments, we were continuing to move along a path to regain some of that readiness,” he told Defense News in March. The “demand has limited our ability to regain a lot of that readiness back.”

He said the Army hopes international allies will help as they increasingly buy air defense capabilities.

“It’s going to be a challenge as long as we have the high demand moving forward on our soldiers. But leveraging our partners and leveraging our modernization goals are the ways that we can eventually, sometime in the future, start alleviating some of that pressure,” Gainey added.

Hodges, however, said there remains just one U.S. Patriot battalion committed to Europe.

“I have seen and heard a lot more conversation about” air and missile defense integration among allies and partners in Europe, he noted, “but I have not seen marked increases in capabilities, nor have I seen a large-scale, theaterwide, joint, multinational air [and] missile defense exercise that presents the same sort of challenge a Russian attack would bring.”

“None of us has enough capacity to defend much of what must be protected. So integration and regional approaches are necessary,” Hodges added.

For his part, Gainey said some European countries are interested in adopting the U.S. Army’s modernized capability, including the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor as well as the Integrated Battle Command System. Poland, for example, is the first country to field the latter.

“Patriot has a place,” Gainey said. “They will still operate out there hand in hand until we fully modernize the air and missile defense force.”

[TopHatter]

Trump thought Ukraine ‘must be part of Russia’ during presidency, book says


Author David Sanger writes that Trump’s view of Ukraine was ‘essentially identical’ to that of Vladimir Putin.

As president, Donald Trump “made it very clear” that he thought Ukraine “must be part of Russia”, his former adviser Fiona Hill says in a new book about US national security under threat from Russia and China.

“Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia,” Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.

“He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state.”

This, Sanger writes, meant Trump’s view of Ukraine was “essentially identical” to that of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who would order an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a year after Trump left office.

Before triggering the invasion, Putin said in a speech: “Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.”

Last month, in a speech marking 10 years since the annexation of Crimea, Putin declared that parts of occupied Ukraine were part of a “New Russia”.

New Cold Wars will be published in the US on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.

The book appears with the Ukraine war grinding into its third year but with $60bn of new US military aid to Kyiv blocked by far-right Republicans in the US House, acting in accordance with Trump’s wishes as he runs to defeat Joe Biden in a presidential election rematch and return to power.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has indicated he wants to pass Ukraine aid but he faces strong opposition, not least from Trump, with whom Johnson is due to appear in Florida on Friday. Biden has strongly condemned Republicans’ hold on Ukraine aid, as have lawmakers from both parties. Biden and other senior figures have also condemned Trump’s words in support of Putin, including a stunning promise to “encourage Russia to do what the hell they want” to US Nato allies he deems financially delinquent.

On Thursday, Alexander Vindman, formerly the top Ukraine aide on Trump’s national security council, told CNN that without new US aid, Ukraine’s position had become “quite precarious”.

Like Hill, Vindman was a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment trial, over his attempts to blackmail Ukraine by withholding military support, in an attempt to extract political dirt on rivals including Biden.

Vindman was fired, after Senate Republicans loyal to Trump assured the president’s acquittal at trial. Hill left office on her own terms.

Vindman was born in Ukraine. Hill was born in Britain. Now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and chancellor of Durham University in the UK, Hill’s thoughts on Trump, Russia and Putin remain eagerly sought, particularly given her co-authorship of Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, a well-regarded biography.

In Washington in February, Hill told a conference staged by anti-Trump conservatives that Trump “idolises” Putin for his autocratic leadership and longevity in power.

That view, Hill said, contributed to Trump’s furious rejection of intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

She also said she had spoken to European leaders at the Munich security conference, finding them nervously preparing for a possible second Trump administration.

“The prime ministers and presidents and foreign ministers and others … all know how capricious Trump is,” Hill said. “And that’s really what they’re worried about, because it doesn’t matter how many people that they know who become secretary of state or secretary of defense, it comes down to Trump himself and the unpredictability of his personality.”

Hill’s words to Sanger about Trump’s view of Ukraine, though brief, seem guaranteed only to add to such worries.

The result of growing qualms about Trump, his attitude to Russia and other idiosyncrasies, Hill said in February, “is that [European leaders] have started to lose faith in the United States. And it’s very distressing to hear.”
__________

Trump sees Ukraine as a piece of real-estate and Putin as an other real estate developer. Trump wants to do a real estate deal with Putin.
He sees Putin as a business man with whom he can carry out a business deals now and in the future.

Putin sees Trump, and his cult, as fit for manipulation as easily as a small child.

[Albany Rifles]

Jfc...

[Albany Rifles]

Okay...my read on why Johnson is finally moving on this.

1. Johnson is a member of the Messianic Christian Nutjob Sect Christian Church which sees the end times comes with the ultimate battle of Israel over all and we will get the 2nd Coming. So he realizes he needs to use the Iranian attack this weekend to strike while the irons hot to get aid for Israel through the House.

2. He is feeling the heat from his last few remaining caucus members who still remember when Russia/Soviet Union was the enemy and aiding Ukraine is in our best interests. And they also get that politics is supposed to end at the shoreline. And a lot of these members are in leadership role and it will be hard to buck them.

3. As Johnson only has a 1 vote margin as Speaker I bet Hakeem Jeffries, who is one hell of a good politician (and that is meant as a compliment not a pejorative), told JOhnson the Democratic Caucus won't go against him in case the GQP wing moves to remove Johnson from power. They may not vote for him as Speaker but perhaps will abstain or vote present to allow the sane members of the party to carry the day.

Regardless, it will be good to see some real governance coming out of the House for once instead of the originally planned Freedom For Appliances Week was on the agenda...and that is not a joke.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/polit...ran/index.html

Johnson makes his long-awaited move on Ukraine as House plans to vote on separate aid packages


By Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju, Annie Grayer, Haley Talbot and Clare Foran, CNN

5 minute read
Updated 10:44 PM EDT, Mon April 15, 2024

House Speaker Mike Johnson holds a news conference following a House GOP caucus meeting at the US Capitol on April 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesCNN —
Speaker Mike Johnson announced Monday evening the House will take up separate bills this week to provide aid for Israel and Ukraine, heeding demands from the far right to keep the issues separate as the threat of a vote to oust him from the speakership looms.

The long-awaited decision by Johnson marks a pivotal moment for the Louisiana Republican as he has faced intense pressure from his conference over how he would handle foreign aid to the key US allies.

Johnson predicted the House will vote Friday evening on the separate bills.

“There are precipitating events around the globe that we’re all watching very carefully,” Johnson told reporters after a GOP conference meeting Monday evening. “And we know that the world is watching us to see how we react.”

Despite the speaker’s attempt to thread the needle, however, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who continues to dangle the threat of a vote on Johnson’s ouster, was quick to criticize the foreign aid plan.

“I am firmly against the plan as it stands right now,” Greene told reporters, though when asked whether she would force a vote on the motion to vacate as a result, she said, “I haven’t decided on that yet.”

Johnson dismissed concerns over a vote to oust him by his conservative flank if he moves on aid to Ukraine, telling CNN, “I don’t spend my time worrying about motions to vacate. We’re having to govern here and we’re going to do our job.”

In addition to aid for Israel and Ukraine, Johnson said in a post on X that the bills would support allies in the Indo-Pacific and there would be additional measures to “counter our adversaries and strengthen our national security.”

But Republican leaders could still take procedural steps to send all those pieces as one package to the Senate, which could enrage the right wing of the House GOP conference.

Johnson left open the possibility that the bills could ultimately be packaged together, setting up a potential fight with the right flank.

“We’re discussing whether they would be merged together in one package that’s sent to the Senate or if it goes over as individual measures,” Johnson said. “My personal preference is to do it individually, but we’ll let the body decide.”

Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, a hardline conservative who had initially expressed support for Johnson’s approach to foreign aid, pushed back on the possibility of merging the bills.

“Israel funding should not be held hostage by Ukraine funding. The American people deserve to know where their senators stand on each funding component,” he wrote on social media.

Among the ways GOP leaders plan to address Ukraine aid: a bill to seize Russian assets, a lend-lease program for Ukraine military aid and convertible loans for humanitarian relief.

Former President Donald Trump, who recently met with House Speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago, has expressed openness to structuring Ukraine aid as a loan.

GOP Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma told CNN that Johnson is allowing germane amendment votes on these bills as well – a process that far right Republicans had been demanding of Johnson.

In the wake of Iran’s unprecedented retaliatory strikes on Israel, Democrats have called on Johnson to bring up a Senate-passed foreign aid package that includes aid to Israel and Ukraine, but hardline conservatives have urged the Louisiana Republican against attaching Ukraine funding to any Israel aid package – a warning that comes as the speaker faces the threat of a potential vote to oust him from his leadership post.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged immediate passage of the foreign aid package passed by the Senate in a new letter to colleagues.

“The gravely serious events of this past weekend in the Middle East and Eastern Europe underscore the need for Congress to act immediately. We must take up the bipartisan and comprehensive national security bill passed by the Senate forthwith,” Jeffries wrote.

In November, the House passed a bill to provide $14.3 billion in aid to Israel, but Democrats objected to the fact that the bill did not include aid to Ukraine and would enact funding cuts to the Internal Revenue Service.

The Senate passed its bill in February – a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill with assistance for Ukraine, Israel and other priorities.

A significant number of House Republicans are opposed to sending further aid to Ukraine. Now, Johnson faces the most significant threat to his speakership to date after GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is among those who oppose additional Ukraine aid, filed a motion against him that could be used to force a vote on his ouster.

Greene told CNN on Monday that Trump’s backing of Johnson during a Friday press conference will not deter her from moving to oust the speaker.

“No, no, and as a matter of fact, there’s more people that are probably going to be angry from whatever happens this week,” she said.

Later, Greene said, “He’s definitely not going to be speaker next Congress if we’re lucky enough to have a majority. I think that is a widely held belief throughout the Congress.”

Asked if she thinks he’ll remain speaker for the remainder of the current session of Congress, the congresswoman said, “That is to be determined. Like I said, I’m still processing.”

Johnson called Greene’s decision to file the motion to vacate a “distraction” during an interview on Fox News.

“That’s a distraction. What Marjorie has done with the motion to vacate is not helpful for our party, for our mission to save the country, because if we don’t grow the House majority, keep the House majority, win the Senate and win back the White House for President Trump, we’re going to lose the republic,” he said.

[TopHatter]

Trump’s Plan for Ukraine: Gift-Wrap It for Putin
With a bow on top.


LAST WEEK, AFTER MONTHS of hints and innuendo, we finally got some insight into former President Donald Trump’s plans for Ukraine should he return to the White House. While the details remain scarce, the Washington Post revealed that Trump’s Ukraine policy will center on “pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia.” The plan is a “terrible deal,” as Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center told the Post. But it’s worth delineating precisely why Trump’s anticipated Ukraine policy is so appalling—and what an affront it is to both Ukrainian and American interests.

Trump’s position apparently stems from his belief that Russia is simply looking for a negotiated exit from the war in Ukraine. Such a framing not only echoes other Trump supporters—such as Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who last week repeated calls for “negotiations” in the New York Times—but it further smacks of the Obama administration’s myopic beliefs that it could find an “off-ramp” for Moscow following Russia’s initial 2014 invasion. As Trump sees it, Russia wants “to save face, they want a way out,” per the Post’s reporting.

Would that it were so. There were many off-ramps on the road to Kyiv, and Putin took none of them. As Putin has revealed over and over again, his designs are hardly limited to a territorial land-grab in southern and eastern Ukraine.

At the outset of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Putin’s rhetoric was (as it still is) saturated in calls to “denazify” Ukraine. In the ensuing two years, we’ve learned how Putin intended on toppling Ukraine’s government wholesale, even going so far as to send assassination squads after Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky and drafting plans to return Viktor Yanukovych, whom Ukrainians ran out of power in 2014, to leadership. Putin’s overall plan was to geld Ukraine, to return Kyiv to the Kremlin’s subservience, and to restore Moscow’s imperial writ across the country. Along the way, he hoped not only to push Russian sovereignty all the way to the Moldovan enclave of Transnistria, but, as he demanded at the outset of the 2022 invasion, a removal of NATO troops from all of Eastern and much of Central Europe.

Two years into the expanded invasion, it’s easy to forget these details, especially with the war bogged down in Ukraine’s east. But it’s worth remembering, especially as Russia girds for a renewed summer offensive, that contra Ron DeSantis, this war is no mere “territorial dispute.” It is an effort to reverse the outcome of the Cold War, to divide Europe into empires and batter it with revanche. This is, in many ways, a story Europe has seen before, from Hitler’s Germany to Milosevic’s Serbia.

Trump’s proposals completely ignore the previous, hard-won lessons that offering territory to dictators on the march will hardly satisfy them. Indeed, Trump appears unaware that Putin has claims to have “annexed” regions beyond what his army now controls—territories Putin will, of course, continue pushing for, slaughtering as many Ukrainians as needed in the process.

Nor is it just that Trump’s proposals amount to little more than warmed-over appeasement. As he’s done for years, Trump has completely misunderstood the local dynamics and desires of the Ukrainians in Crimea and the Donbas. For years, Russian nationalists have claimed Moscow’s rightful ownership of Crimea, crowing that the peninsula is an historic font of Russian identity, and that Moscow’s 1954 transfer of the peninsula to Soviet Ukraine was an historic blunder. What those nationalists ignore, however, is not only that Russians were hardly an ancient or dominating force on the peninsula—it wasn’t until World War II that Russians were the ethnic majority in Crimea, and only then as a result of Joseph Stalin’s massive ethnic cleansing campaigns—but that Crimeans have never evinced any clear desire to be ruled from Moscow. The majority of Crimeans voted for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, just like every other Ukrainian province. In polling leading up to the Russian invasion in 2014, less than a quarter of Crimeans claimed any desire for Russian annexation.

Little wonder, then, that Moscow’s 2014 annexation relied on a ballot-by-bayonet referendum, the results of which—with a supposed 97 percent of Crimeans suddenly voting for Russian annexation—are about as credible as Putin’s recent presidential victory. Even anecdotally, the clear lack of desire among Crimeans to join Russia’s embrace was palpable. When I toured the peninsula just a few months before Ukraine’s 2013–14 revolution, pro-annexation sentiment in Crimea was effectively nonexistent. In Yalta, locals were far more interested in strolling the promenade, scaling the rocky outcroppings, and boozing on the beach. In Bakhchysarai, the Crimean Tatars I spoke with, including those ethnically cleansed by Stalin during WWII and their descendants, were all far more interested in restoring their own histories and legacies on the peninsula, rehabbing the local Khan’s Palace, and opening a spate of new Tatar restaurants than joining Russia.

In Simferopol, Crimea’s capital, scattered Russian flags may have fluttered, but there was no chatter of annexation whatsoever. Such a dearth of pro-Kremlin sentiment echoed the observations of the Russians who spearheaded Moscow’s 2014 intervention. Igor Girkin, the Russian national (and war criminal) who helped lead Russia’s invasion, later revealed he “didn’t see any support [for annexation] from any organ of government power” in Crimea. As other journalists noted, rather than witness an upswell of pro-Russian sentiment, Russian special forces swarming Simferopol were instead forced to wrangle Crimean deputies into a quorum to vote for annexation.

Trump, though, couldn’t care less about these realities. To him, and to all those others who’ve swallowed Putin’s claims to the peninsula, Crimeans “would rather be with Russia than” Ukraine, as Trump sputtered in 2016. Rather than Ukrainians waiting for liberation, Trump would have those still on the peninsula, as well as across Eastern Ukraine, permanently consigned to Russian rule—to oppression by a dictator wanted by the International Criminal Court, and to a country whose imperialist designs have “no borders.”

Trump’s proposals, if followed through, would simply whet Putin’s irredentism and allow him time to rearm for yet another effort to subdue Ukraine. Not only would Europe be that much more destabilized and America’s national security interests that much more threatened, but revanchists from Beijing to Caracas would grow that much more confident. Thanks to Trump, the world would be once more safe for empire.

Of course, at that point, Trump may not care, as drenched as he and his followers are in anti-Ukrainian conspiracies. And at that point, Putin may not be the only one happy to see Ukraine demolished as a sovereign entity—regardless of the cost to American interests, or to the Ukrainians whom Trump would force into Russia’s permanent embrace.
_______

[Ironduke]

Draft House bill for Ukraine war aid:
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek...KRAINE_xml.pdf

Maybe AR can help interpret here. How much of this bill is actually aid for Ukraine? For example, the bill talks about replenishment of DoD stocks. Does this mean the DoD can in the future give that much in dollar value of arms to Ukraine, then use the money to replenish those stocks?

[Albany Rifles]

Draft House bill for Ukraine war aid:
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek...KRAINE_xml.pdf

Maybe AR can help interpret here. How much of this bill is actually aid for Ukraine? For example, the bill talks about replenishment of DoD stocks. Does this mean the DoD can in the future give that much in dollar value of arms to Ukraine, then use the money to replenish those stocks?

Okay...so you see the funding down into the various budget categories used in DOD...O&M-Army means the money to pay for the day to day monies used to pay for current operations. It also pays for new purchase of munitions and repair and operations costs. So this is the funding to pay for the update of new hardware from Army stocks (that is refurbish mothballed items) and new round so fmunitions...be they 155mm, 7.62mm. 120mm, or PATRIOT missiles. New procurement is RDT&E money for tweaking current systems. Other Procurement-Army (OPA) is new from the factory weapons and gear...i.e., not hand over of existing items from US units but new from industrial production...read new Patriot Batteries. However, some creative accounting can backfill Army units with new and improved models in order to give up older on hand equipment for Ukraine.

Inspector General funding is to pay for those 22 different layers of monitoring and tracking expenditures to fight corruption...very robust.

Also note most have allocated funds to be used until the end of FY 26...this gives the Federal government authority & time to keep providing items going forward. Also it is blended with assistance for Israel & Taiwan mixed in. But you see other parts of government are covered as well...i.e., for refugees and humanitarian relief...read for helping UKR refugees and Gazans. Also some of those State Department funds are for that and funding the UKR government. And manpower funding is to pay for the civilian and contractor workforce working in Europe and other places to manage the forward movement and handover of items to Ukraine & Israel.

All in all, a pretty clean, straight forward bill.