The Biden administration must do more to meet Ukraine’s urgent military needs

In anticipation of a Russian stepped-up attack on eastern Ukraine, President Biden announced on Wednesday yet another package of aid to the beleaguered country, this time totaling $800 million. The package will include an additional 500 Javelin long-range anti-tank missiles, 11 Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopters, 18 155mm Howitzers, 300 Switchblade small drones, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers, and 100 armored high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles. The arms package will for the first time also include 10 AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars and two phased array AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel Air Surveillance radars. 

The latest shipment will bring to $2.5 billion the total cost of American military assistance Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February.

On the same day as the president’s announcement, major defense contractors met at the Pentagon to discuss with Department of Defense (DOD) leadership ways to accelerate production of key items such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Javelin, and Raytheon’s Stinger 2 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, which no longer are in production, with a contract for a follow-on variant expected to be awarded in 2026. The Javelin missile is still in production, but as much as one-third of the American stockpile has been shipped to Ukraine.

Some experts have argued that it will take a year to ramp up Javelin production from its current annual rate of 1,000 to maximum production of nearly 6,500. It could take even longer to reopen the Stinger production line. In both cases, there is a concern that U.S. forces might not have enough of these weapons if they are needed in a confrontation with, say, Iran or North Korea. Yet it is arguable that American stocks could be run down even more, even as production could be ramped up more quickly.

During the 1982 Falklands War between Britain and Argentina, then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger ordered that Britain automatically should receive whatever and however many smaller systems, such as missiles, that it might request. At the time, I was coordinating the supply of these systems and Weinberger not only insisted on being shown daily what were expected delivery dates for these systems, but also whether those dates met British needs.

On occasion I would receive a visit from a four-star officer protesting that my demands (they were really Britain’s, and, by extension Weinberger’s) would result in a dangerously low level of American stocks of the equipment in question. My reply was always, “If you disagree, go see the Secretary,” which invariably terminated the discussion. Not only did the Pentagon become Britain’s “action office” for meeting its demands, but it met those demands — however short-fused they might be. 

In one case, as the British were on the verge of mounting their major assault on the islands, the Ministry of Defense requested systems that had not been long in the American inventory and asked that they be delivered within 24 hours. The systems duly reached the British, having been released from American stocks and shipped down to Ascension Island within the 24-hour deadline. If it was possible to reduce our military stockpile during the height of the Cold War, it is possible to do so today.

As for replenishing supplies that are provided to Ukraine, Raytheon, Lockheed and other defense contractors could ramp up production by going to three daily shifts, so that production can happen on a 24/7 basis. No doubt an increase of this magnitude would drive up the cost of these systems significantly, but clearly Biden is now committed to supporting Ukraine whatever the financial cost of doing so.

It is arguable that, until recently, the Biden administration until has been slow to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky’s frequent and increasingly urgent pleas both for more of the systems that Ukraine has received — and for additional systems that it thus far has been denied. It now appears that the administration is determined not to let Russian President Vladimir Putin — whom Biden has publicly called a war criminal — to get his way in Ukraine. 

To that end, the administration should be prepared to pay for increased production of the systems that Ukraine desperately needs. It also should order that Kyiv’s request for more Javelins, Stingers, and other systems that it is about to receive are met on Kyiv’s timetable, and not be hamstrung by those who would prefer a business-as-usual approach while Ukrainians are doing their utmost to repel the Russian invader.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was under secretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy under secretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.