The Economist June 4th 2022 Europe 27American weaponsGetting the upgrade
U
kraine’s defenceministry recently
released unusual aerial footage of the
war in Donbas. It did not show Ukraine’s
successes against Russia, but rather its vul-
nerabilities: pockmarked fields being
blasted by salvos of incoming Russian
rockets. “This is what the largest and most
horrific war of the 21st century looks like,”
said the tweet on May 26th. “Ukraine is rea-
dy to strike back. To do this, we need nato-
style mlrs. Immediately.”
Belatedly, Western allies are respond-
ing. President Joe Biden announced on
May 31st that he would send “more ad-
vanced rocket systems and munitions that
will enable them to more precisely strike
key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.”
The Pentagon said it would send a first
consignment of four m142 High Mobility
Artillery Rocket Systems (himars), cur-
rently pre-positioned in Europe. Each car-
ries a pod of six gps-guided missiles, accu-
rate over distances as far as 70-84km—
about three times the range of the howit-
zers that America has supplied thus far. Re-
ports say Germany and Britain are likely to
provide himars’s older cousin, the m 270
Multiple Launch Rocket System (mlrs),
which fires the same family of missiles.
Given that Ukrainian troops will re-
quire three weeks of training, the weapons
may arrive too late to save the city of Seve-
rodonetsk (see earlier story). And himars
comes with conditions. America will not
provide the bigger Army Tactical Missile
System (atacms), which has a range ofabout 300km. And Ukraine has had to pro-
mise not to fire the weapons at Russian ter-
ritory.
As the war has shifted from close-in
battles around Kyiv and Kharkiv to artillery
duels in the open terrain of Donbas, the
Russians have made use of their over-
whelming firepower, including rocket ar-
tillery such as the Uragan and the Smerch,
which are less accurate and slower to move
than himars. Ukraine has some of these
too, but struggles to get new supplies.
Why the delay in providing the more ef-
fective Western systems? American offi-
cials say they had to wait for the money—
supplemental funding of $40bn in
humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine
was only signed into law on May 21st—and
were giving priority to weapons that Uk-
raine could use quickly. But America is also
worried about escalation with Russia.
Writing in the New York Times, Mr Biden
was at pains to reassure the Kremlin.
America sought neither war with Russia,
nor to unseat President Vladimir Putin.
Unless nato were attacked, it would not be
directly involved in the conflict. “We do
not want to prolong the war just to inflict
pain on Russia,” Mr Biden wrote. He also
warned of “severe consequences” if Russia
used any kind of nuclear weapon.
Built on the chassis of a Bradley tracked
armoured vehicle, mlrs carries two pods,
with a total of 12 missiles. Early versions
fired “dumb” rockets that scattered bom-
blets over wide areas. Later munitions,
called gmlrs, were guided by satellite;
cluster warheads were superseded by tung-
sten balls (akin to a shotgun) or single war-
heads (aka “the 70km sniper rifle”). hi-
mars packs less punch, having just one
pod, but is wheeled rather than tracked,
and is faster. It can thus “shoot and scoot”
more nimbly to avoid counter-battery fire.
Jeff Edmonds of the Centre for Naval
Analyses, an American think-tank, argues
that gmlrs will be of most use against
command-and-control centres and other
“high-value targets”. To be most effective,
they will need to be combined with drones
and other means of target-spotting. De-
spite talk of himars being a “game-chang-
er”, Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s under-sec-
retary for policy, is cautious about its im-
pact. “No system is going to turn the war.
This is a battle of national will,” he says. “It
is a grinding, hard conflict...it will stretch
on for a long time.” WASHINGTON, DC
America sends advanced missiles to help Ukraine fend off RussiaThe right stuffGermany and UkraineThe reluctant giant
“T
he warraises many questions. Can
violence be fought with violence?
Can [true] peace only be established if
force is not employed?” This pronounce-
ment by Olaf Scholz raised a fair few eye-
brows when tweeted, in a cryptic transla-
tion from the original German, by Ger-
many’s delegation to nato. The delegation
failed to explain that the chancellor had
been speaking at a convention of German
Catholics. It was a gathering of pacifists
(who, as it happened, spent most of their
powwow discussing whether Jesus was
transgender). So perhaps Mr Scholz was
questioning pacifism, rather than endors-
ing it? It was just one of countless exam-
ples of the German leader’s inept commu-
nication over the war in Ukraine.
Germany is getting criticism from ma-
ny sides for its apparent reluctance to sup-
port Ukraine with military kit, which is tar-
nishing its reputation within the eu and
nato. “Germany ‘breaks its promise’ to
give Kyiv more heavy weapons,” declared a
recent headline in theTimes. “There is a
clear absence of political will within the
German government to deliver heavy
weapons to Ukraine,” lamented Andrij
Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germa-
ny, to Politico, an online newspaper.
In fact, even in proportion to its mighty
economic size, Germany is more or less in
line with the average member of the euin
providing hardware and funding for mili-
tary equipment, though admittedly much
of it has still to arrive in Ukraine. But de-
spite this, Mr Scholz keeps being singledBERLIN
Accusations of dithering are damaging
Germany’s international image