DOPPELADLER.COM

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.

• H.R.8035 - Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024
  
  https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-con ... -bill/8035

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.

USA lieferten ATACMS-Raketen an Ukraine

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“.

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."

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.