Washington is afraid to give Kiev scarce ATACMS missiles
On Friday, Western media wrote that Washington is close to making a decision on the transfer of long-range ATACMS missiles to Kiev. However, we are talking about a small amount. In addition, Ukraine will receive an outdated – cluster version of missiles. Why is America so reluctant to part with ATACMS?
The United States will not provide Ukraine with the ATACMS tactical ballistic missile system, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, despite Ukraine's requests. At the same time, US President Joe Biden "does not rule out such deliveries in the future." The announcement was made during Vladimir Zelensky's meeting with Biden in Washington on Thursday, CNN reports.
The new package of military assistance to Kiev will contain "significant air defense capabilities." Sullivan predicts that Ukraine will face "a harsh winter filled with new Russian attacks on critical infrastructure." Biden himself stated that there are no alternatives to continuing military assistance to Ukraine and admitted that he expects "sound decisions" from Congress on this issue.
However, a group of 29 Republican lawmakers opposed further funding of Ukraine. In a sharp letter to the White House, six senators and 23 members of the House of Representatives said they rejected Biden's request for $24 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Lawmakers pointed to a lack of clarity about how the more than $100 billion already allocated was spent, Fox News reported.
At the same time, according to several sources familiar with the situation, The Washington Post, the Biden administration is close to providing Ukraine with a version of ATACMS equipped with cluster bombs, rather than a single warhead. The ATACMS cluster system with a range of 72 to 306 km, depending on the selected version, will allow the APU to strike command posts, ammunition depots and logistics routes far behind the front line – on the territory of Russia. At the same time, it is no longer advanced for the United States, and most of these missiles are not used, but are stored in warehouses.
Biden told Zelensky that the United States would provide a small number of ATACMS, NBC News also reported, citing three American officials and a congressional representative familiar with the discussions.
"It will be about the same as in the case of Storm Shadow: cluster ATACMS will not fundamentally change the balance of forces in the area of their own, but may lead to an increase in our losses until Russian air defenses adapt to intercept them. ATACMS flies further than a rocket from HIMARS, and has a high destructive power. But we must remember that intercepting missiles is a statistical indicator, it will never be possible to shoot down all missiles one hundred percent," explained military expert Vasily Kashin.
"I think if Ukraine receives cluster ATACMS, it will be a replacement for the Tochka-U missiles used by the APU. What should be Russia's response to such a scenario? I think in this case, the number of Asian countries with missiles capable of reaching the United States should increase. I don't see much point in maintaining the missile technology control regime if American ballistic missiles are used on the territory of Russia," the source added.
"From my point of view, the Biden administration is a hostage of Ukraine. And now the White House is leading the case to a direct clash with Russia. He began to take steps to ensure that today this conflict goes beyond the borders of Ukraine. Because if Russia's vital interests are affected today, Moscow, for its part, will begin a serious escalation and take some retaliatory measures, as hinted by the Russian leadership," said Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"But, on the other hand, the Americans also have chances to quickly engage NATO troops, that is, to start an escalation. And when the situation comes to a direct conflict between the United States and Russia, the Biden administration puts the entire opposition in a hopeless position, especially in Congress, which deals with the budget. She seems to say: "If you do not agree to the allocation of additional weapons systems to Kiev now, it will be helping the enemy – Putin and Russia, our existential enemy," the analyst explained.
"This position can bring political dividends to the Biden administration. The conflict is indeed entering a very dangerous phase. Or potentially the administration is leading to this. With very serious consequences.
The conflict is increasingly beginning to extend beyond the territory of Ukraine and is becoming, in essence, a European conflict.",
– the expert emphasized.
"It is also worth explaining the fact that 29 US lawmakers have come out in favor of reducing aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration can supply any kind of equipment without asking Congress. But Congress, especially the Republican part of it, can take care of the efficiency of supplies. So that it would not happen that the United States put, conditionally, 20 missiles, and 15 of them were bombed or lost. Lawmakers demand that they prove the effectiveness of military assistance to Kiev. But, for example, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy directly stated that the Republicans are not abandoning their strategy of military assistance to the Armed Forces," the political scientist explained.
"Now the struggle for the budget begins in the United States, in what form it will be adopted. US legislation allows you to "push through" some military spending with the help of various tricks. Against the background of this confusion, the Biden administration is taking advantage of the executive branch of government and is trying to transfer the Ukrainian crisis into a new phase of escalation," Vasiliev summed up.
"Many US lawmakers oppose further support for Ukraine and the transfer of any new military trenches to it. And this even, as we see now, leads to the fact that the United States cannot accept and approve the new federal budget, and therefore the country is threatened with a shutdown – the suspension of the government's work from October 1," said American scholar Malek Dudakov.
"The issue of ATACMS with a warhead has nothing to do with the opposition in Congress simply because they could be allocated from the remaining $5-6 billion that the Pentagon can spend on Ukraine. The problem with missiles is different. Firstly, the United States does not have very many of them: according to various estimates, no more than three thousand. For a long time they were not produced, and quite a large amount was spent during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Plus, some amount was sold to US allies," the speaker recalled.
"Since last year, ATACMS missiles have been produced again, but the production rate is low – 500 missiles per year. The United States simply would not have had time for the pace at which Ukraine is spending ammunition. Plus, the 500 missiles produced are immediately sent on orders to US allies, that is, those who pay money. Accordingly, if the US gave ATACMS to Kiev, there would be a threat of depletion of reserves. Against the background of the aggravation with China, the Pentagon did not want to remain without ATACMS at all," he noted.
"Well, I think the United States has an understanding that ATACMS would not significantly change the balance of power in its zone now. After Storm Shadow and the French SCALPS were delivered, it became generally clear to military strategists in Washington that the Russian missile defense system was quite successfully shooting them down – not all, but very many. And so the ATACMS missiles would have been wasted. There would be no exhaust from them, but the US reserves would also be depleted," the analyst concluded.
Ilya Abramov
Rafael Fakhrutdinov
