Military expert analyzes what kind of weapons US is sending to Ukraine 5:19
Washington (CNN) — The United States has few ways of tracking the substantial stockpile of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weapons it has shipped across the border with Ukraine, a blind spot largely due to a shortage of American boots, according to CNN sources is due. locally in the country and the easy portability of many of the smaller systems that are now disposed across the border.
It’s a deliberate risk the Biden administration is willing to take.
In the short term, the United States sees the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment as crucial to the Ukrainians’ ability to contain the invasion of Moscow. A senior defense official said Tuesday it was “certainly the largest recent shipment to a conflict-linked country.” But the risk, for both current US officials and defense analysts, is that some of these weapons could eventually end up in the hands of other militaries and militias that the US did not wish to arm.
“We have allegiance for a short time, but when it gets into the fog of war we have almost zero,” said a knowledgeable US intelligence source. “Fall into a big black hole and after a short while you’ll have almost no feeling.”
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In deciding to send billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment to Ukraine, the Biden administration considered the risk that some of the shipments could end up in unexpected places, a defense official said.
But for now, the official said, the government sees a failure to adequately arm Ukraine as a greater risk.
With the US military absent, the US and NATO rely heavily on information from the Ukrainian government. Officials privately acknowledge that Ukraine has an incentive to only provide information that strengthens its case for more aid, more weapons and more diplomatic support.
“It is a war: everything they do and say publicly is to help them win the war . “That doesn’t mean they’re wrong in any way.”
For months, US and Western officials have provided detailed accounts of what the West knows about the status of Russian forces in Ukraine: how many casualties they have suffered, their remaining combat capability, their weapon stockpiles, what types of ammunition they are using and where.
But when it comes to Ukrainian forces, officials concede that the West — including the United States — has some information gaps.
Western estimates of Ukrainian casualties are also confusing, according to two sources familiar with American and Western intelligence.
“It’s difficult to follow up when nobody’s on the ground,” said a source familiar with the intelligence community.
Weapons to Ukraine, a matter of visibility
The Biden administration and NATO countries say they are supplying weapons to Ukraine based on what Ukraine’s armed forces say they need, whether it’s man-portable systems like the Javelin and Stinger missiles or that Slovak S-300 air defense system they sent last week.
Of course, Javelin and Stinger missiles, as well as rifles and ammunition, are harder to track than larger systems like the S-300 that were shipped by rail. Although the javelines have serial numbers, there’s little way to track their movement and usage in real time, say sources familiar with the matter.
Last week, the United States agreed to arm Kyiv with the kind of powerful capabilities that just weeks ago some Biden administration officials considered too great a risk of escalation, including 11 Mi-17 helicopters, 18 155mm howitzers and 300 more switchblade drones. But much of that support has yet to materialize, and Switchblades are single-use mobile drones that are also likely to be difficult to track with hindsight.
“I can’t tell you where they are in Ukraine and if Ukrainians are using them right now,” a senior defense official told reporters last week. “They don’t tell us every round of ammo they fire and at whom and when. We may never know exactly to what extent they use the switchblades.”
According to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, the Department of Defense does not target the weapons it sends to specific units.
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Trucks loaded with Defense Department-provided pallets of weapons are picked up by the Ukrainian military — mostly in Poland — and then driven to Ukraine, Kirby said, “then it’s up to Ukrainians to determine where they go and how they’re distributed in there.” become his country”.
A Congressional source noted that while the United States is not on the ground in Ukraine, it does have tools to know beyond what Ukrainians are saying, noting that the United States makes extensive use of satellite imagery and that both the Ukrainian and Russian military appear to be using commercial communications devices.
Another congressional source said the US military considers the information it receives from Ukraine to be generally reliable because the United States has spent eight years training and equipping Ukraine’s military and has built strong relationships. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some blind spots, the source said, on issues such as the operational status of Ukraine’s S-300.
Jordan Cohen, a defense and foreign policy analyst at the CATO Institute who focuses on arms sales, said the biggest danger related to the flood of guns being funneled into Ukraine is what happens to them when the war ends or goes into a kind of prolonged stagnation.
This risk is part of any consideration of sending arms abroad. For decades, the United States sent arms to Afghanistan, first to arm the mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet army, and later to arm Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban.
Inevitably, some weapons ended up on the black market, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the same type the United States is now supplying to Ukraine.
The US effort to recover the Stingers after the Soviet war in Afghanistan is famous. He didn’t find them all, and when the United States itself invaded Afghanistan in 2001, some officials feared they might be used by the Taliban against the United States.
Other weapons eventually armed America’s adversaries. Much of what the United States left behind to help Afghan forces became part of the Taliban arsenal after the collapse of the Afghan government and military.
The problem is not limited to Afghanistan. Arms sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates found their way into the hands of fighters linked to Al Qaeda and Iran.
The defense official acknowledged that there is a risk of a similar scenario in Ukraine. In 2020, the Department of Defense Inspector General released a report raising concerns about end-use control of weapons shipped to Ukraine.
But given the Ukrainian armed forces’ almost insatiable short-term need for more weapons and ammunition, the long-term risk of guns ending up on the black market or in the wrong hands is acceptable, the official said.
“That might be a problem 10 years from now, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about it,” said Cohen, the CATO analyst. “More than 50 million rounds of ammunition, all this ammunition is not only used to fight the Russians. Ultimately, whether intentional or not, this ammunition will be misused.”
The Russian threat
Officials are less concerned — at least for now — about the guns falling into Russian hands. The informed intelligence source noted that the fact that Russia has failed to hold large parts of the territory or force the surrender of many Ukrainian units means that these weapons have been deployed or remain in Ukrainian hands.
And so far it seems Russia has had trouble intercepting or destroying supplies. A third source familiar with the intelligence information said it does not appear that Russia is actively targeting Western arms shipments to Ukraine, although the exact reason is unclear, especially as the US has information that the Russians want this and both have discussed publicly as well as privately.
This person added that there are several theories as to why the shipments have been avoided so far, including the fact that Russian forces simply cannot find them as the weapons and equipment are transported in unmarked vehicles and are often transported at night. It could also be that Russian forces are running out of ammo and don’t want to waste it attacking random trucks unless they can be sure they’re part of a gun convoy.
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Although this Monday Russia claimed it had destroyed a warehouse “near Lviv” containing “large shipments” of arms shipped to Ukraine from the United States and European countries. CNN could not verify this claim.
But by and large, Russia also doesn’t have perfect intelligence on Ukraine, this source noted, and its air capabilities over western Ukraine, where supplies are arriving, are extremely limited due to Ukraine’s air defense systems.
Publicly, the Pentagon says it has yet to see any Russian attempts to disrupt arms transfers or shipments within Ukraine.
“Flights continue to enter hubs in the region. And there continue to be ground movements of this material within Ukraine. Every day there is security support, weapons and materiel and support equipment coming into Ukrainian hands,” he told Kirby on Thursday.
“We will do this for as long as possible and as quickly as possible. We have not seen any Russian efforts to intercept this stream. So we’re going to keep doing that,” he added. “We look at it constantly every day, we monitor it, we change it, we adjust it if necessary.”