Why the West won’t just give Ukraine all the weapons it wants

The logic behind the slow-build approach to military aid.

When President Joe Biden was asked recently whether the U.S. would provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, his response couldn’t have been clearer.

“No,” he said.

But does he really mean it?

Given the issue, some skepticism is understandable. After all, for months U.S. officials demurred on sending M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine — citing the difficulties involved in maintaining, fueling and training troops to operate them — before reversing course as part of a deal that will also allow European countries to send their German-made Leopard tanks. Before that, these officials repeatedly made the case that Patriot missile interceptors — another weapons system that was high on the Ukrainians’ wish list — were inappropriate for Ukraine’s needs. Until suddenly they weren’t.

So it’s little surprise that Ukrainian officials, who began lobbying allies for fighter jets almost as soon as the tanks decision was made, are confident that it’s “only a matter of time” before they receive the F-16s. The Washington Post has reported that officials within the Pentagon haven’t taken Biden’s “no” very seriously and suspect that the decision will be “M1-ed” — a new term meaning the White House will eventually overcome its reluctance. The Ukrainians are still waiting for that: There were no announcements about planes at a high-level meeting of Western defense ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.

A decision to send F-16s started to look more likely last week during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the United Kingdom, when the British government announced it would begin training Ukrainian fighter pilots on NATO jets and would “investigate what jets we might be able to give.” The U.K. was similarly out in front on the tanks decision, agreeing to send Ukraine some of its Challenger 2s several days before the U.S. and Germany decided to send their own tanks.

Even if a decision to send F-16s does come soon, Ukraine is unlikely to stop pressing for other high-end weaponry. Other systems on Kyiv’s wish list include ATACMS — a long-range missile that can be fired from the already provided HIMARS launchers — and advanced offensive drones.

For Ukrainians, this dynamic — in which each individual weapons system is subject to months of political debate in Western capitals and ultimately cleared for delivery — is deeply frustrating. As Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba put it last month, referring to Germany, “It’s always a similar pattern: First they say no, then they fiercely defend their decision, only to say yes in the end.”

Ukrainians are now asking for an end to this pattern, arguing that the only way to bring the war to a close is to give the Ukrainian military everything it needs to win. They see the arguments against more ambitious military aid as excuses, if not something more nefarious.

“The pattern of stop-start arms transfers is because we are fighting enemy disinformation,” Hanna Hopko, a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament who now runs the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, told Grid in an email. “The need now is to think in terms of great power and great responsibility. We have to focus on the victory of Ukraine (defeating Russia faster), not on inflation, energy security, and poll numbers in western nations.”

Ukraine’s staunchest supporters in the West are starting to lose patience as well. In a recent piece in Foreign Affairs, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul made the argument that “at this stage, incrementally expanding military and economic assistance is likely to only prolong the war indefinitely” and that “rather than providing ATACMs in March, Reapers [drones] in June, and jets in September, NATO should go for a Big Bang.”

The idea of a massive military aid package that would allow Ukraine’s armed forces to quickly go on the offensive and overwhelm Russian resistance certainly sounds more appealing than the slow-moving and bloody trench warfare that now seems to be the most likely scenario for the next few months of this war. But the “Big Bang” approach has drawbacks as well.

Changing battlefield

The Biden administration’s argument when it comes to Ukraine aid is that with each new system, it makes a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the Ukrainians need the specific weapons, and whether the U.S. and its allies can afford to provide them.

In a recent press briefing, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told Grid, “These are discussions that we have with our Ukrainian partners to determine, in the first instance, what it is that they need. We then have these conversations between and among partners and allies to determine what it is that any given partner has and what would be appropriate for us to do.”

Ukraine’s needs have changed, U.S. officials say, because the war itself has changed. During a recent event sponsored by the Defense Writers Group, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Grid, “It was a different fight a year ago, as small, decentralized teams of Ukrainians attacked Russian supply lines that are bogged down on a single road because of poor logistics, poor planning. Now we’re looking at much larger forces dug in and making all-out assault against Ukrainian forces.”

Back then, shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapons like the Javelin and Stinger were critical. Now, heavier armor is needed — not only due to the nature of the fighting but also because Ukraine has lost so much heavy equipment during the war. At the beginning of the conflict, tanks were less of a priority because Ukraine already had around 800 Soviet-model T-64s and T-72s. It may now have lost as many as half of those.

Still, it would strain credulity to think such decisions are made solely with battlefield needs in mind. Both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley reportedly advised Biden against sending M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, citing how difficult they are to maintain and how long it takes to train personnel on them. (Given all the shortcomings of the M1 cited by U.S. officials over the past few months, one might reasonably ask why the American military is still using them.) As late as Jan. 20, following a meeting with allied defense chiefs in Ramstein, Germany, Austin batted away questions about the tanks, saying, “What we’re really focused on is making sure that Ukraine has the capability that it needs to be successful right now.” Five days later, Biden announced that the U.S. would provide 31 M1s to Ukraine.

It’s doubtful that Ukraine’s battlefield needs had changed dramatically in less than a week; more likely, the political incentives — namely, giving German Chancellor Olaf Scholz the political cover he needed to provide the Leopard tanks — had become overwhelming.

Escalation fears

On the first day of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened any countries that might “hinder us, and … create threats for our country” with “such consequences that you have never experienced in your history.” By “consequences,” it was fairly clear he was referring to Russia’s nuclear arsenal — the world’s largest. But it was less clear how he defined “hinder” or “create threats.”

From the beginning, the U.S. and other NATO countries have sought to balance the goals of helping Ukraine fight back with concerns about sparking a wider — and potentially nuclear — conflict.

It’s debatable which of these goals takes precedence. According to the Washington Post, Milley carried a notecard in his briefcase for several months listing U.S. strategic goals in Ukraine. The first was “Don’t have a kinetic conflict between the U.S. military and NATO with Russia,” while “Empower Ukraine and give them the means to fight” was fourth.

In a December joint press conference with Zelenskyy, during the Ukrainian president’s visit to Washington, Biden was asked by a Ukrainian reporter, “Can we make a long story short and give Ukraine all capabilities it needs and liberate all territories rather sooner than later?” The U.S. president stressed the importance of maintaining the support of all NATO allies and said, “They’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third World War.”

This “third World War” argument is why the U.S. quickly ruled out sending troops to Ukraine or setting up a no-fly zone that could lead to direct fire between U.S. and Russian aircraft.

But it’s also true that Washington’s comfort level with sending heavy weaponry has increased dramatically since the early days of the war.

So the gradual amping up of support, one weapons system at a time, can be viewed as a form of “salami tactics”; as in, a slice of something (Javelin anti-tank weapons) in one month; another weapon system a couple of months later and so forth. The thinking being, a major deployment of tanks and aircraft shipped to Ukraine all at once might provoke a catastrophic Russian response; each gradual increase in support does not.

Putin or other senior Russian officials have typically threatened some response to each of the Western weapons shipments, but the retaliation has never materialized. As nuclear analyst Joe Cirincione has written, by gradually ratcheting up aid, “Joe Biden has carefully threaded the nuclear needle.”

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Grid, “The Russians have laid down two red lines: One is no NATO troops in Ukraine, and the other one is no invasion of Russian territory. And the U.S. and NATO have respected those red lines. Tanks and Patriots and HIMARS and everything else don’t contravene those two red lines.”

Arguably, fighter jets would be in a different category, as they would give Ukraine greater capability to strike within Russian territory. But Ukraine already has some Soviet-era aircraft in its arsenal and has already used drones to strike within Russia. It seems unlikely that F-16s would push Putin to start World War III when previous weapons upgrades did not. But given the stakes, NATO governments are treading very carefully.

Training and logistics

Another limiting factor in the pace of weapons deliveries to Ukraine may be the ability of the Ukrainians to absorb them.

To be fair, Ukraine’s armed forces have shown repeatedly that they are able to speed up the normal training timetables for NATO weapons systems. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, recently told Grid that “the Ukrainians have demonstrated time and time again that they can learn how to use anything in about one-third the time the rest of us can.” With the Polish military’s assistance, they are currently working to reduce the training time on the Leopard tanks from 10 weeks to five, and Ukrainian officials say their pilots could learn to fly the F-16 in about six months, rather than the typical nine.

Still, six months is a long time in a war as fast-changing as this one. U.S. officials clearly worry that Ukrainian troops won’t be ready to use these systems in time for them to make a difference. The counterargument is that if Western countries had agreed to send jets and train Ukrainian pilots six months ago, they’d be ready for action now. This seems to be what motivated Britain’s decision last week to begin training Ukrainian pilots on their Typhoon jets before actually agreeing to send them.

In the specific case of the F-16, there are concerns that the significant infrastructure and support systems these jets require to operate effectively, particularly given Russia’s extensive network of air defenses and surface-to-air missiles, would divert scarce resources from other Ukrainian goals.

There’s also the challenge of getting all the various vehicles, artillery and air defense systems from various countries to work together as one cohesive system, and how to make sure there are trained personnel to maintain each system and keep them all running. The Ukrainians have sometimes referred to their multinational arsenal as a “petting zoo.” A slow but steady flow of new systems — rather than everything, all at once — gives Ukrainian logistics specialists time to integrate all the new hardware.

Sustainability

Before the war, Western countries avoided giving so-called offensive weapons to Ukraine out of fear of provoking a Russian invasion. Besides, many experts argued that Western weaponry would make no difference in the face of Russia’s clearly superior military. Even after Russia’s initial attempt to take Kyiv failed and it became clear that this would be a fairer fight than many anticipated, it seemed plausible that it would end quickly either in Ukrainian defeat, Russian military collapse or a negotiated settlement. Sending some of the world’s most advanced and expensive military systems to Ukraine, where they could be destroyed or captured, was not a no-brainer until the Ukrainians demonstrated they could effectively use them.

Now, it’s clear that both sides are dug in for a long war absent some unexpected development.

Over time, Western nations have gradually provided more and more advanced weapons systems in hopes of breaking the stalemate. And, politically, each successive weapons system debate has become a sort of litmus test for the West’s willingness to support Ukraine.

In the end, however, it is unlikely that any individual system will be a silver bullet that breaks the stalemate. Rather than who is fielding the most advanced military technology, victory in this conflict is more likely to come down to which side can continue to supply simple things like artillery shells to the battlefield for longer. That will be less a matter of risk calculation than of how much Western countries are willing to mobilize their arms industries to keep the flow going. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Tuesday that “the current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production.”

Meanwhile, the gradual ratcheting-up dynamic may soon come to an end simply because — beyond fighter jets and long-range missiles — there aren’t many more weapons systems the West is holding back. After that, the question will not be what weapons the West is giving to Ukraine, but how many of them and for how long.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

Joshua Keating

Why the West won’t just give Ukraine all the weapons it wants