The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced an additional security assistance package for Ukraine worth up to USD 800 M (EUR 727.7 M) on 7 July 2023.
The package, aimed at providing key capabilities to support Ukraine’s counter-offensive operations, includes additional munitions for US-provided Patriot air defence systems and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) as Ukraine continues its push to reclaim territory seized by Russian forces.
It also contains additional artillery systems and ammunition, including dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs), which are cluster munitions that the Pentagon is providing for the first time to Ukraine after extensive consultation with Congress and US allies. The DPICMs, which will be drawn from DoD stocks, are designed to disperse submunitions from the air from 155 mm artillery rounds, allowing Ukraine to target broad swaths of entrenched Russian troops and equipment. The rounds can be fired from US-provided 155 mm artillery systems.
US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin H Kahl said the Pentagon is providing the new capability to Ukraine in order to meet the “urgency of the moment” as Ukrainians continue their counteroffensive. Kahl noted that the US will be able to immediately provide Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery at a critical time in its offensive.
Kahl told reporters on 7 July that Ukraine gave “assurances in writing” that it would not use the cluster munitions in urban areas “that are populated by civilians, and that there would be a careful accounting of where they use these weapons”.
US President Joe Biden said in an interview with CNN on 7 July that it was a “difficult decision” to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions for the first time, but that he had “discussed this with our allies, I discussed this with our friends up on the Hill,” adding, “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.”
The US DoD noted in a press release that the specific DPICM rounds being supplied to Ukraine “have been assessed to have a dud rate, or rate of unexploded submunitions released from each round, of 2.35%. That contrasts to the cluster munitions employed by Russia throughout Ukraine since the start of the war that have dud rates of up to 40%.”
The DoD added that Ukraine “has also committed to mine clearing efforts once the conflict ends to further minimise the potential impact of the rounds on civilians”.
This latest round of assistance marks the 42nd drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021. The Biden administration has committed more than USD 41.3 Bn in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Peter Felstead