WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – A new $2.2 billion U.S. arms package for Ukraine includes a new rocket-propelled precision bomb that could nearly double Kyiv’s strike range against the Russians, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said the new package includes the ground-launched small-diameter bombs (GLSDB), a munition that can fly up to 150 kilometers (93 miles), which would threaten Russian positions and depots far behind the front lines.
“This gives them a longer-range capability... that will enable them to conduct operations in defense of their country and to take back their sovereign territory,” Ryder said.
Ukraine had been asking the United States for munitions that can fly farther than the HIMARS rockets with an 80-kilometer (50-mile) range.
The GLSDB potentially gives Ukraine forces an ability to strike anywhere in the Russian-occupied Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and the northern part of occupied Crimea.
That could threaten key Russian supply lines, arms depots and air bases.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted his thanks to President Joe Biden for the new aid.
“The more long-range our weapons are and the more mobile our troops are the sooner Russia’s brutal aggression will end,” he said.
The GLSDB, made by Boeing and Saab, is a gliding rocket with a small bomb attached.
Saab says it can hit a target from any angle within one meter.
“The precision of GLSDB is so high it can hit within the radius of a car tire,” Saab said on its website.
Writing in December, John Hardie and Bradley Bowman of the Washington security think-tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies said the GLSDB can be launched from a variety of standard launchers, including the HIMARS and M270 MLRS systems already in use in Ukraine.
“But it can also be fired by non-traditional launchers, such as from
the back of an ordinary-looking truck or from a nondescript shipping container hidden in plain sight,” they said.
“That would make it more difficult for Russian forces to find and destroy the system.”
But they said it could take up to nine months for the first deliveries of the system to Ukraine.
The new arms package included a wide range of arms, ammunition and other equipment, including HIMARS ammunition, armored vehicles, Javelin anti-tank rockets, medical supplies and cold-weather gear.
The package also focuses on air defense, with two HAWK air defense units, anti-aircraft guns, air surveillance radars, counter-drone systems, and 190 heavy machine guns with thermal imagery sights to shoot down enemy drones.
It took to $29.3 billion the amount of total military aide from the U.S. to Ukraine since the war broke out on February 24, 2022.
The new package was announced just three weeks shy of the first anniversary of the war.
Despite Ukraine’s strong pushback, Russian forces still occupy some 20 percent of its territory, including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
Intense fighting continues along a long front line in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the supply of more advanced U.S. weaponry to Ukraine will only trigger more retaliatory strikes from Russia, up to the extent of Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
“All of Ukraine that remains under Kyiv’s rule will burn,” journalist Nadana Fridrikhson quoted him as saying in a written interview with her.
Fridrikhson asked Medvedev as deputy chairman of the Security Council whether the use of longer-range weapons might force Russia to negotiate with Kyiv.
“The result will be just the opposite,” Medvedev replied, in comments that Fridrikhson posted on her Telegram channel.
“Only moral freaks, of which there are enough both in the White House and in the Capitol, can argue like that.”
Asked what would happen if the weapons that Washington has promised Ukraine were to strike Crimea, Medvedev said Putin had addressed the matter clearly.
“We don’t set ourselves any limits and, depending on the nature of the threats, we’re ready to use all types of weapons. In accordance with our doctrinal documents, including the Fundamentals of Nuclear Deterrence,” he said. “I can assure you that the answer will be quick, tough and convincing.”
Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear strike after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”.