The Ukrainian Armed Forces conducted their first live-fire test of the Javelin anti-tank missile system provided by the United States as part of its defense aid package to the country.
Footage published on YouTube on May 22 by Oleksandr Turchynov, the chairman of the National Security and Defense Council, page shows a two-man firing section launching first a Ukrainian Stugna anti-tank missile, and then two Javelins at target armored vehicles at a distance of approximately 1 kilometer across open ground.
“This is a very effective defensive weapon that would be used in the case of a Russian offensive on Ukrainian forces’ positions,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in comments on his Facebook page.
The United States Department of State officially approved providing Ukraine with Javelins on March 1. The defense aid package envisaged a shipment of 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launch units, two of which would be spares, with a total value of $47 million.
Under the contract, the U.S. government would also provide training and other logistics and support, such as technical and transportation assistance. The missiles will be provided from U.S. Army stocks, while the launch units are to be obtained from on-hand stocks purchased by the Special Defense Acquisition Fund. As the document reads, the prime contractor of the deal will be the Raytheon/Lockheed Javelin Joint Venture, which is based in Orlando, Florida, and Tucson, Arizona.
For Ukraine, the weapons were provided at no cost, and paid for by from the U.S. federal budget.
On April 30, RFE/RL reported, with reference to a source in the State Department, that the shipment had already been delivered to Ukraine. While confirming the delivery, Ukraine’s defense minister Stepan Poltorak asserted that the Armed Forces would start practical training for the first Ukrainian Javelin operators on May 2.
Washington’s decision to provide Ukraine with the Javelins followed months of speculation concerning whether the United States would arm Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons amid the ongoing armed conflict with Russian-led forces in the Donbas. Previously, the United States has only sent non-lethal military hardware, such as medical vehicles and other non-lethal equipment.
According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. President Donald J. Trump eventually greenlighted the Javelin supplies back in early November 2017. Later, on Dec. 21, 2017, Trump also signed a U.S. defense appropriations bill for the fiscal year 2018 that assigned $350 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Commenting on the proposed Javelin supplies on Feb. 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Moscow would “draw conclusions” from the U.S. military aid to Ukraine and that Russia’s proxy military forces in the Donbas also “have capabilities to stand up for themselves.”
FGM-148 Javelins were first put into service with the U.S. Armed Forces in 1996, and as of today are operated by nearly 20 other nations – primarily U.S. allies in the Middle East and the Pacific region. The Department of State also greenlighted in November 2017 the sale of 410 Javelin missiles and 72 command launch units to Georgia at a cost of $75 million.
The Javelin, an advanced 3rd generation man-portable missile unit, has a fire-and-forget missile guidance system, under which the operator is not required to actively guide the projectile all the way to a target via a laser ray or a wire during an engagement, as with other systems. Instead, the Javelin features automatic infrared guidance that allows its operator to seek cover immediately after launching a missile.
Javelins defeat hostile tanks’ defenses by striking them from above, and are also capable of destroying enemy fortifications. The missiles are equipped with HEAT-type warheads, creating streams of molten metal that penetrate a vehicle’s armor – including explosive reactive armor.
However, their infrared guidance systems can be confused if a thick smoke screen is placed around a targeted vehicle during an engagement – an ability common to many modern armored vehicles.
Nonetheless, given the weapon’s firepower and its political significance against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials note that the newly provided Javelins are highly unlikely to be immediately engaged in combat in the war zone. More probably, the Ukrainian Javelin teams would be deployed in the deep rear as an ultimate response to any possible Russian all-out armor offensive, and also as a signal of Washington’s continued support for Ukraine, political observers say.
“Yes, as of today, there are certain limitations introduced regarding Ukraine,” Georgiy Tuka, the country’s deputy minister for occupied territories said on May 6.
“The provision is not to use those systems immediately on the engagement line. But there must be an understanding that this limitation can be lifted at any moment.”
Later the U.S. demand that the Javelins must be kept out of the combat zones was confirmed by U.S. envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker.
Nevertheless, such a low-key approach drew criticism from some foreign policy experts, who called for more overt support for Ukraine.
“Trump administration should let Ukraine deploy its new anti-tank weapons to the front lines, rather than insisting they be warehoused under lock and key in western Ukraine,” former U.S. Department of Defense official and currently a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Michael Carpenter commented on his Twitter page on May 3. “What’s the point then?”
According to later reports, the United States intends to continue providing Ukraine with both lethal and non-lethal military hardware in the fiscal year 2019. On May 7, the Senate Armed Forces Committee proposed to allocate $250 million defense aid to Kyiv in 2019, including $50 on lethal weaponry.
In general, according to the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Washington has spent nearly $1 billion on military aid for Ukraine since Russia launched its war in the Donbas in 2014.
Apart from non-paid defense aid packages, the amount of U.S.-produced weapons sold to Ukrainian security and defense agencies under regular commercial contracts also increased through 2017 and 2018.
In December, the Trump administration approved the sale of M107A1 Barrett sniper rifles to Ukraine. And since early 2018 a pilot batch of new M4-WAC47 assault rifles, produced by California-based company Aeroscraft, has been undergoing live-fire testing by Ukraine’s top security and defense agencies.
On May 17, the Interior Ministry reported that Ukraine’s National Guards forces accepted for service a batch of 500 U.S.-produced 40-millimeter PSRL-1 grenade launchers, a modernized version of the Soviet RPG-7 weapon.
