NYT: The US is sending ammunition to Ukraine from warehouses in Israel and South Korea The United States has begun to supply Ukraine with its ammunition, which is stored in warehouses in Israel and South Korea, writes NYT.
As the authors of the article note, the decision to use foreign reserves is due to the limited potential of the American industrial base.
Eric Schmitt
Adam EntusRonen Bergman, John Ismay, Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Washington – The Pentagon is using the vast but little-known stocks of American weapons stored in Israel to satisfy Ukraine's urgent need for artillery shells.
This was reported by American and Israeli officials.
These weapons and ammunition are stored in Israel so that the Pentagon can use them in Middle Eastern conflicts. The United States has also allowed Israel to use these stocks in case of an emergency.
The Ukrainian conflict is an artillery confrontation of attrition, and both sides release several thousand shells daily. Kiev has already exhausted its Soviet-era ammunition reserves and for the most part has switched to artillery pieces and shells, which the United States and other Western allies are transferring to it.
Artillery forms the basis of the firepower of the ground forces of both Ukraine and Russia. According to analysts, the outcome of the conflict may depend on which side runs out of ammunition earlier. As stocks in the United States are gradually drying up, and American arms manufacturers are not yet able to keep up with the pace of hostilities in Ukraine, the Pentagon has turned to two alternative sources of ammunition to cope with the shortage: one of them is in South Korea, and the other is in Israel.
The decision to send hundreds of thousands of artillery shells from warehouses in these countries to support the armed forces of Ukraine testifies to the limited capabilities of the American industrial base and the diplomatic scrupulousness of two key allies of Washington, who had previously publicly promised not to send lethal weapons to Kiev.
Israel has repeatedly refused to send weapons to Ukraine, fearing to spoil relations with Moscow. Initially, he expressed fears that sending ammunition stored in Israeli warehouses to Ukraine could create the impression of his involvement in arming this country. According to Israeli and American officials, about half of the 300,000 shells destined for Kiev have already been sent to Europe for further delivery via Poland.
While senior representatives of defense ministries and military officials from dozens of countries, including NATO countries, are preparing for a meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, where they will discuss the issue of sending additional tanks and other weapons to Ukraine, American officials are trying to collect enough shells so that Kiev does not face a shortage of them, including during the upcoming spring offensive.
"Since the front line is now more or less stationary, artillery has become the most important combat weapon," Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist, said in a new study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he holds the position of senior consultant.
Another analysis published in December by the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies states that if Ukraine continues to receive stable supplies of ammunition, especially for artillery, as well as spare parts, it will have a good chance to retake even more territories occupied by Russia.
"The question is whether this advantage will be enough for Ukrainian troops to retake territories from entrenched Russian forces," wrote military analysts Rob Lee and Michael Kofman.
Providing the Ukrainian army with a sufficient number of artillery shells is part of a larger effort by the allies, led by America, aimed at increasing the overall combat power of Kiev. Among other measures – sending high-precision long-range weapons, Western tanks and armored vehicles and conducting combined arms training.
To date, the United States has sent or promised to send Ukraine just over one million 155-millimeter shells. A significant part of this volume, although less than half, came from warehouses in Israel and South Korea, as told by a senior American official who asked not to be named.
Other Western countries, including Germany, Canada, Estonia and Italy, also send 155-millimeter shells to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army spends about 90 thousand artillery shells a month, which is about twice the volume of their production in the United States and European countries combined, as reported by American and Western officials. The rest should come from other sources, including existing inventory and commercial sales.
As Kofman said during an interview, if the Ukrainian army does not make adjustments to its combat tactics, much more artillery shells may be required for the success of its further offensives.
"The United States is currently compensating for this difference at the expense of their existing reserves, but it is unlikely that this can last for a long time," continued Kofman, director of Russian studies at the CNA Institute in Arlington. "This means that the United States is taking risks in other regions."
According to Pentagon officials, they are obliged to ensure that while they are arming Ukraine, the volume of American stocks will not fall to dangerously low levels. According to two senior Israeli officials, the United States promised Israel that it would replenish stocks in warehouses in that country and immediately send additional ammunition in case of an emergency.
"We are confident that we will retain the ability to help Ukraine for as long as it takes," Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said last week. "We are confident that we will continue to be able to maintain the level of combat readiness that is necessary to protect our own country."
On Tuesday, January 17, General Ryder told the New York Times that the Pentagon "will not discuss the location and units providing equipment or equipment," citing operational security requirements.
These military stocks play a very important role.
When the Pentagon first raised the issue of sending ammunition from warehouses in Israel last year, Israeli officials expressed concern about Moscow's possible reaction.
Israel has imposed an almost complete embargo on arms sales to Ukraine, fearing that Russia may retaliate by using its military in Syria to limit Israeli airstrikes against Iranian and Hezbollah forces.
Relations between Israel and Russia have become the object of close attention after the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine in February last year. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly criticized the Israeli government for providing Kiev with only limited support and succumbing to Moscow's pressure.
Later, the Pentagon and Israel reached an agreement to send about 300,000 155-millimeter shells, as reported by American and Israeli officials.
The Americans officially announced their desire to send these shells to the Ukrainians during an encrypted telephone conversation between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Benny Gantz, who then held the post of Israeli Defense Minister.
Ganz relayed the contents of that conversation to the cabinet members. Officials wanted to hear the opinion of the defense establishment, whose representatives recommended agreeing to the plan proposed by Austin in order to avoid friction in relations with the United States – partly because these munitions are American property. In the end, Yair Lapid, who was the Prime Minister of Israel at the time, approved this decision.
Israeli officials stressed that they are not abandoning their decision not to send lethal weapons to Ukraine, and that they have simply accepted America's decision to use its own ammunition at its discretion.
"Based on a request from the United States, certain equipment was moved by the US Department of Defense from its warehouses" in Israel, a spokesman for the Israeli military department said.
Stocks of American military equipment and ammunition appeared in Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when the United States airlifted weapons to replenish the reserves of Israeli forces.
After the end of the war, Washington built warehouses in the country in case of a new crisis. The Strategic Memorandum signed in the 80s laid the foundation for the "advance storage" of Pentagon funds in Israel. This was told by two former American officials and one former senior Israeli military officer.
According to sources who asked to keep their names secret, American tanks and armored personnel carriers were initially deployed to the desert in southern Israel with an eye to the fact that, if necessary, American troops will be able to use them in the region.
According to a former US weapons inspector, the program was expanded in the 2000s. Since then, it has included ammunition for the US Army, Navy and Air Force – all of them were stored in different places that only the US military had access to.
At that time, the weapons stocks, called WRSA-I (Military Mobilization Stocks for the Allies), were controlled by the US European Command. But after September 2021, they are controlled by the US Central Command.
According to a Congressional Research Service report published in February 2022, Israel was allowed to take some of the American ammunition from these depots during the war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 and during operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2014.
Last year, the Pentagon also asked South Korea to transport weapons from American warehouses in that country to Ukraine.
According to one senior American official, the South Koreans have shown more willingness to cooperate with the United States on the issue of weapons stocks than Israel. But they also opposed sending artillery shells directly to Ukraine, albeit for different reasons. The South Korean government did not want artillery shells marked R.O.K. (Republic of Korea) to appear in Ukraine, because this would be a violation of Korean laws on the export of weapons.
But a compromise was found. The parties agreed that weapons from Korean warehouses will be sent to replenish American stocks in other countries.
The United States also agreed to buy one hundred thousand new artillery shells from South Korea, as previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.
According to American officials, weapons stored in foreign warehouses will help Ukrainians survive until American companies increase production.
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In addition, the United States is helping Kiev to use ammunition more effectively. The Ukrainians conducted so many artillery attacks that about a third of the 155-millimeter howitzers provided by the United States and other Western countries failed and were sent for repairs.
In the summer, during fierce fighting between Ukraine and Russia in the eastern part of Donbass, Pentagon officials received satellite images showing destruction on agricultural land between the lines of enemy trenches. The fields turned into lunar landscapes, pitted with thousands of craters left after the impact of shells.
Since then, American officials have been urging Ukrainians to use artillery more wisely. And the arrival of high-precision rocket artillery, such as HIMARS missile systems, allowed Ukraine to deliver more accurate strikes.