The Biden administration is requesting $375 million in a new Pentagon package for Ukraine.
Biden announced the new request on May 22 in a joint appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan.
“The brutality with which Putin is conducting this full-blown assault is just — I don’t think even three years ago anybody would have thought it could be anything like this,” Biden said. “That’s why the United States continues to do all we can to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, including launching some new joint efforts with our partners to train Ukrainian pilots on a fourth-generation fighter aircraft like the F-16.”
Last week, the U.S. said that it would undertake a months-long training program in Europe with other countries to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s (Defense Daily, May 19).
A March 14 letter from a bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the F-16 for Ukraine is a potential “game changer on the battlefield.”
The new aid package for Ukraine–what the administration said is the 38th such drawdown from DoD inventory since August 2021–includes ammunition for Lockheed Martin [LMT] High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds; Raytheon Technologies‘ [RTX] Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles; Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Javelin missiles; and AT-4 anti-armor systems by Saab Group‘s Saab Bofor Dynamics.
Thus far, the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with more than 1,600 Raytheon Stinger anti-aircraft weapons, 10,000 Javelins, 60,000 other anti-armor systems and munitions, 160 155mm howitzers and two million 155mm rounds, 7,000 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds; 4,000 TOW missiles; eight Raytheon and Kongsberg National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, which use Raytheon Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles; one Raytheon Patriot air defense battery; 109 BAE Systems‘ Bradley fighting vehicles and a variety of drones.
Last week, the Heritage Foundation said that, as of May 16, the U.S. had provided $21.1 billion of defense equipment to Ukraine through Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which authorizes transfers of U.S. equipment to allies in response to an “unforeseen emergency.”
The $21.1 billion PDA, not Foreign Military Sales, accounts for “nearly all the U.S. equipment already provided to Ukraine” by the U.S., Heritage said.
The Biden administration said that it has committed $37.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s assault on Feb. 24 last year.
A recent Reuters article said that DoD acknowledged that it had overvalued the amount of security assistance provided to Ukraine by $3 billion (Defense Daily, May 22).
Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairs of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, respectively, called the overvaluation “extremely problematic” and said that the Biden administration should use those unspent funds to provide advanced munitions in support of Ukraine’s planned offensive operation.