Ukraine conflict: Lithuania sends mobile command vehicles to Ukraine
Lithuania has supplied an undisclosed number of M577 armoured command vehicles to the Ukrainian army.
The vehicles, provided under a military support deal, arrived in Ukraine on 5 April, according to the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence (MND) on 6 April.
An MND spokesperson was unable to specify to Janes the number of units supplied for security reasons.
M577 is the command-and-control (C2) variant of the M113 tracked armoured personnel carrier (APC) that was first introduced to the US Army in the 1960s. Three generations exist – A1, A2, and A3 – as is the case with the M113. M577 can also be used as a fire-direction centre and mobile medical treatment facility as well as a communications vehicle.
In December 2016 Lithuania acquired 168 M577A2 vehicles from Germany at a cost of EUR1.6 million (USD1.7 million). The vehicles were suited for various purposes, including C2, artillery fire control, mortar fire control, training, and as an ambulance. This followed an earlier order for 26 M577s from Germany.
US proposes debt to fund Ukraine using profits from frozen Russian assets
The US has proposed raising tens of billions of euros in debt for Ukraine secured against the future profits generated by Russian state assets that have been frozen by western countries.
The G7 group of nations has been split on what to do with €260bn worth of Russian assets put on hold by the west since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington has backed the idea of confiscating the reserves in their entirety and handing them to Ukraine, an idea European officials fear could violate international law and destabilise financial markets. EU countries would prefer to only give Kyiv the profits generated by the underlying assets.
But the issue of using Russian reserves to help Kyiv has become more urgent in recent months, with the war now in its third year and additional US aid to Ukraine held up in Congress.
“We’re at a point in which we should explore every possible avenue to maximise the value of the immobilised reserves for Ukraine,” Daleep Singh, US deputy national security adviser for international economics, said in Kyiv on Wednesday. “We can’t wait forever, we know that.”
The US has proposed raising tens of billions of euros in debt for Ukraine secured against the future profits generated by Russian state assets that have been frozen by western countries.
The G7 group of nations has been split on what to do with €260bn worth of Russian assets put on hold by the west since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Washington has backed the idea of confiscating the reserves in their entirety and handing them to Ukraine, an idea European officials fear could violate international law and destabilise financial markets. EU countries would prefer to only give Kyiv the profits generated by the underlying assets.
But the issue of using Russian reserves to help Kyiv has become more urgent in recent months, with the war now in its third year and additional US aid to Ukraine held up in Congress.
“We’re at a point in which we should explore every possible avenue to maximise the value of the immobilised reserves for Ukraine,” Daleep Singh, US deputy national security adviser for international economics, said in Kyiv on Wednesday. “We can’t wait forever, we know that.”
He noted that Europeans had already shown a willingness to transfer interest from the reserves to Ukraine on a biannual basis. However, there were ways to “supersize the value of these income flows over time”.
“Instead of just transferring the yearly profits from the reserves . . . it’s conceptually possible to transfer the 10 years of profits or 30 years of profits,” he said. “The present value of those profits adds up to a very large number.”
The proposal is due to be discussed by G7 finance ministers on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF spring meetings in Washington next week, and Singh said the goal would be to reach a decision on the matter at the G7 leaders’ annual summit in June.
Much of the frozen Russian money is in the EU, including roughly €190bn in Russian central bank assets held at Euroclear, a central securities depository based in Brussels. These have generated €3.85bn in profits since the start of the war and EU countries had been discussing deploying these profits to help Ukraine.
Under an EU plan, yet to be adopted by the bloc’s 27 member states, most of the future profits would be used to buy weapons for authorities in Kyiv, while some would go towards reconstruction of the war-torn country.
With the US proposal added to the mix, a possible compromise would be to use part of the profits for weapons purchases and reconstruction, and part of it to back debt.
“Imagine you have €1bn of usable proceeds of these revenues. You can allocate €300mn to reconstruction, €300mn to self-defence of Ukraine, and €300mn to back up the emission of loans . . . You can make small pockets of these amount and distribute it to different needs,” said an EU diplomat, cautioning that talks on all these ideas are still ongoing.
One big advantage of the US idea is that it would generate more funds upfront for Ukraine.
A European official said a bond could deliver between €30bn and €40bn based on the estimated profits from the Russian funds in Euroclear over the next 10 years, and €50bn-€60bn in profits over the next 15-20 years. They cautioned, however, that this was heavily dependent on future interest rates.
“These simulations are more or less reliable for one year and then you have to see. You really have to be careful,” the official said.
But officials in one major EU country have asked what would happen to a bond secured against 10 years of interest payments from impounded Russian assets if the war were to end in a couple of years and the assets unfrozen and handed back to Russia under a peace settlement.
The G7 states could back the bond with a state guarantee, as a way of reassuring private investors, the officials said. But they cautioned that such a move might be open to legal challenge in some states.
Western divisions over how to use the frozen assets matter for Ukraine’s looming talks to restructure debts owed to private creditors this year, which are part of an IMF call to plug holes in a $120bn-plus plan to finance Kyiv over the coming years.
Ukraine is aiming to close a deal on restructuring its debt by the middle of this year, before a payment standstill granted by bondholders in 2022 runs out.
Many bondholders favour a restructuring this year. They see it as a critical step for Ukraine to eventually return to global markets to raise money, which they say could possibly be collateralised with seized Russian assets in the future.
Deutschland liefert weiteres Patriot-System an Ukraine
Online seit heute, 15.17 Uhr
Deutschland wird der Ukraine ein weiteres Patriot-Luftabwehrsystem liefern. Wie das Bundesverteidigungsministerium in Berlin heute mitteilte, fiel die Entscheidung dazu „aufgrund der weiteren Zunahme der russischen Luftangriffe“ gegen das Land. Die Einleitung der Übergabe aus Beständen der Bundeswehr erfolge „unverzüglich“.
Bin gespannt wenn die Ukraine jetzt Atacms mit höherer Reichweite bekommen dann haben die ja Einzelsprengköpfe statt Cluster. Das ist dann ja eher etwas für Punktziele oder Brücken - gegen Flugplätze sind die fast 1000 Bomblets der M39 sicher zerstörender. Zuerst müssen jetzt aber mal mehr 155 Geschoße her - und Raketen für Patriot, Nasams und Hawk. Bin gespannt ob jetzt noch mehr Patriot Batterien kommen. Und was sicher hilfreich wäre sind mehr Bradleys und Stryker. Was ich mich gefragt habe - die Ukrainer sagen sie würden auch mehr Angriffskapazitäten per Hubschrauber brauchen - da hätten die USA ja jede Menge OH58D eìngelagert
Wie der ORF mit Informationen umgeht ist wieder einmal "interessant":
The US quietly shipped long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine
The United States in recent weeks secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for use in its battle to fight off Russian invaders, and Ukraine has now used them twice, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
The missiles were contained in a $300 million military aid package for Ukraine that U.S. President Joe Biden approved on March 12, said the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official would not say how many of the missiles were sent.
The missiles were used for the first time in the early hours of April 17, launched against a Russian airfield in Crimea that was about 165 km (103 miles) from the Ukrainian front lines, the official said.
The official said Ukraine used the weapon a second time overnight against Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine.
Russia's use of North Korean-supplied long-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine in December and January, despite U.S. public and private warnings not to do so, led to a change in heart, the U.S. official said.
Also a factor in U.S. decision-making was Russia's targeting of Ukraine's critical infrastructure, the official said.
"We warned Russia about those things," the official said. "They renewed their targeting."
In late January the U.S. military found a way to satisfy their concerns about military readiness, which enabled the administration to move forward. They began acquiring new missiles coming off the Lockheed-Martin (LMT.N) production line.
Biden met with his national security team in mid-February and agreed to accept the unanimous recommendation of his advisers to send the missiles to Ukraine. Involved in the discussion were national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman C.Q. Brown.
The challenge at that point was to figure out how to pay for the missiles. The United States had exhausted all of its funding options and congressional gridlock stymied further aid.
An opportunity arose in March, when several Pentagon contracts came in under bid. Biden was able to use the difference to send $300 million in assistance to Ukraine.
Biden told his team to include the long-range ATACMS in this funding package, but to do so secretly in order to maintain operational security and the element of surprise for Ukraine, the official said.
Die Ukraine hat von den USA zur Verteidigung gegen den russischen Angriffskrieg weit reichende ATACMS-Raketen erhalten. Die Präzisionswaffen seien von der US-Regierung im Stillen genehmigt worden, teilte das Verteidigungsministerium heute mit. Sie seien Teil eines von den USA im März bekanntgegebenen Notfallmilitärpakets für die Ukraine gewesen, dort aber nicht explizit aufgeführt worden, „um die operative Sicherheit der Ukraine auf deren Ersuchen hin aufrechtzuerhalten“.
Have Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs Been ‘Thrown Aside’ By Ukraine?
A U.S.-supplied air-to-ground munition transformed into a ground-based strike weapon has been performing very poorly in Ukraine due to jamming and other factors, according to a senior Pentagon official. Though the weapon system in question has not yet been confirmed, there are strong indications that it could be the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB).
"One company, I won't say who they are, they came up with a really cool idea of taking an air-to-ground weapon and doing a ground-launched version of it, and it would be a long-range fire weapon," Bill LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, said yesterday. The Under Secretary was speaking as part of a panel discussion at the annual Global Security Forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank's International Security Program.
"They raced and did it as fast as they could," LaPlante continued in his remarks yesterday. He added that U.S. authorities truncated typical testing requirements to help speed the weapon system in question to Ukraine. Previous reporting has said that months of testing were still required before the GLSDBs could go to Ukraine. The weapons are not currently in U.S. military service.
"We said, look, just test for safety. Otherwise the operational testing will be non-cooperative with the Russians," according to LaPlante. "And so then we sent it to Ukrainians. It didn't work."
"It didn't work for multiple reasons, including [the] EMI [electromagnetic interference] environment, including just really ... doing it on [the] ground, the TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures], the DOTML [the doctrine, organization, training, and materiel] – it just didn't work," LaPlante explained. "And what happens is, when you send something to people in the fight of their lives, [and] it doesn't work, they'll try it three times and then they just throw it aside. So that's happened, too."
Ukrainian Fighter Jets “Using iPads” To Control Western Weapons
The Ukrainian Air Force is using iPads, or similar tablets in the cockpits of its Soviet-era jets to enable rapid integration of modern Western air-to-ground weapons — something that TWZ predicted back in 2022. This has been confirmed by Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Dr. William LaPlante. While many questions remain about the tablet and how it exactly works, there’s now footage showing it fitted in cockpits during combat (or at least live-fire training) missions.
LaPlante was speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank's annual Global Security Forum yesterday, April 24, 2024. When asked to provide examples of successful programs that rapidly developed capabilities and got them into the hands of the military, one example he chose was the tablets in Ukrainian fighter cockpits:
“There’s also a series of … we call it ‘air-to-ground,’ it’s what we call it euphemistically … think about the aircraft that the Ukrainians have, and not even the F-16s, but they have a lot of the Russian and Soviet-era aircraft. Working with the Ukrainians, we’ve been able to take many Western weapons and get them to work on their aircraft where it’s basically controlled by an iPad by the pilot. And they’re flying it in conflict like a week after we get it to him.”
LaPlante didn’t provide further details, but it’s noteworthy that a video recently released by the Ukrainian Air Force shows a Su-27 Flanker fitted with exactly this type of system — possibly an iPad, but perhaps also another kind of commercially available tablet.
