What Ukraine needs

 

 What Ukraine needs

Mark Montgomery recently returned from another trip to Ukraine, where the retired U.S. Navy rear admiral had several discussions with military officials from the defense ministry, Kyiv’s general staff, and more. Montgomery is the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington.

“They need two things from us. Just stone cold, need them,” he told The D Brief this week. “If they don't have them, they'll still survive, but there'll be a lot more Ukrainian deaths.” And those things are:

    “Persistent intel support, particularly for the defense—warning and maneuvering themselves to be in a better position on the defense; but also it helps on the offense,” he said. 

    “Specific munitions that only come from our [Defense Industrial Base, or] DIB. Trump has got to let the Europeans or Ukrainians be able to buy from our DIB. For all the European jaw, jaw, they're not building any Patriot [missile defense systems or munitions for those systems]. They're not building any [Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or] AMRAAMs. They're not building enough 155mm artillery shells. They're going to have to buy it from us using European money, or that frozen Russian money or Ukrainian money.”  

“I can tell they're conserving munitions when it comes to shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles,” Montgomery said. And this is incredibly unfortunate, he observed, because “Ukraine just does not move the needle” in terms of press coverage and international attention anymore. “I'm shocked at the lack of press. I'm in Israel a lot. I'm in Taiwan a lot. But the amount of cruise and ballistic missile attacks—you know how they had the April attack in the October attack in Israel? That attack was a consolidated three or four days of any three or four days in Ukraine. But they're just getting it again and again and again, you know, every three or four days. And we don't cover it much, and they're making hard choices” in terms of what to shoot down and what to let slam into Russia’s intended targets.

“Here's one of the things they're kicking ass with: shooting down drones and cruise missiles with F-16s,” he said. “The plane was made for it. It's fantastic. But what they really need, though, is to not use AIM-9 Xs and guns. It'd be great if we gave them a system called the APKWS—it's like a 2.75-inch rocket. If you remember the old Zuni rockets, I know that’s a long time ago, but they're fired from like a barrel launcher that the plane carries. The rockets are laser-guided.” But most notably, “They’re cheap—in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. And it's not a technology issue, because we've already sold them to their army,” Montgomery said. “Now we need to sell them to their air force; they're cheap enough. They could sell them those things and they'd have a great cost benefit on shooting down a cruise missile. It's even cheaper than a Shaheed [suicide drone].”
 
“I spent some time with the F-16 unit, and my first impression was that our Air Force did a great job training” the Ukrainians, he said. “These guys were converts from planes, but they were good and smart and use the weapons systems really well. We need to be creative and innovative and continue to help them, because they will hold off the Russians. Their resilience will outlast the Russians. But it can be brutal, even more brutal than it's been if we don't do that intelligence support.”

 “Their drone industry is obviously impressive,” he said while cautioning, “We would have trouble completely replicating it, because I think they still use a lot of Chinese parts. However, they're working on that. They're innovative in these systems. They're innovative in some of the kinetics, some of the weapon systems I see in building munitions. There's gonna be some great opportunities for [the U.S.] and the Ukrainians and maybe Taiwan too, to really create some useful carryover weapons.”

 One key to all this: “I think congressional support would go a long way,” Montgomery said. “I don't think there's opposition inside the administration; there just may not be momentum. But senators can provide the impetus to get working—these senators and congressmen like [Nebraska GOP] Rep. Don Bacon can get there and get the ball moving so that the administration then has to take some action.”

 Despite more than three years of constant missile and drone attacks, “The Ukrainians are not going to buckle,” Montgomery said after this latest visit. “I’ve seen nothing like it. I don't see any trend other than they're resilient, they're dogged, they're committed. In fact, I would tell you this time I saw more kids out than I've ever seen out. I mean, you know, they strike me as a big middle finger to Putin.”