US Struggling to Resupply Depleted Javelin & Stinger Stocks
Stinger Missile
As the alliance of Western countries, determined to prop up the Kiev regime, continues to funnel military and financial assistance to Ukraine, the US and its NATO allies are increasingly hard put to assemble enough weapons to ship into the conflagration area while topping up their own diminishing stockpiles, media reported.US stockpiles of Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have been extensively depleted, as Washington continues to funnel military assistance to Ukraine.Losses are equivalent to years’ worth of production, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes was cited by media as saying.As of May, Washington had delivered 5,500 Javelins and 1,400 Stingers to Ukraine, but the continuing conflagration in Ukraine and the drive to supply the Kiev regime with a steady stream of military aid “has burned through existing weapons stocks,” said Hayes, as he addressed a panel on the Ukraine conflict at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
“The problem is we have consumed so much supply in the first ten months of the war… We’ve essentially used up 13 years’ worth of Stinger production and five years’ worth of Javelin production… So the question is, how are we going to resupply, restock inventories,” Hayes told the gathering.
Russia’s Special Operation in UkraineUkraine ‘Testing-Ground’ for New NATO Weapons15 November, 17:28 GMTBack in April 2022, Haynes said that the Pentagon had not bought a new Stinger system from Raytheon since 2004. The Arlington, Virginia- based multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate has produced Stingers since 1977. In May, Raytheon won a $624 million contract with the US Army to backfill its Stinger stockpiles. Raytheon is also churning out 400 Javelins a month, but that appears to not be sufficient to restock.In an effort to top up the dwindling stocks, the Pentagon has awarded around $6 billion in new contracts to the defense industry, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said at the panel.“Just in the last month, for example, we’ve given contracts to Raytheon for six batteries of NASAMS. We’ve also given contracts for Excalibur. We’ve also put out contracts to General Dynamics, IMT Defense and one other company to increase production of 155 millimeter ammo, which has been critical to the Ukrainians,” she said,She added that this production might be “ramped up further.”
AfricaWeapons Sent to Ukraine ‘Beginning to Filter’ to Africa, Nigerian President Says3 December, 04:05 GMTEarlier reports underscored that the Pentagon had purportedly spent over $2.6 billion on replacing weaponry the US has sent to Ukraine, where Russia is conducting a special military operation. The United States has been forced to speed up its weapons acquisition programs to compensate for the vast quantities of armaments shipped to Ukraine in recent months, it was stated.Maintenance of the Western-supplied armaments to Ukraine was also becoming a nagging headache for the Pentagon, an earlier report stated, as overused weapons were either being destroyed or damaged. Nevertheless, the alliance of Western countries, spearheaded by Washington, appears intent on continuing to funnel military and financial assistance to Ukraine, thus fanning the flames of the Ukraine conflagration.Moscow has consistently pointed out that military aid to Kiev is only drawing out the conflict further. Furthermore, there have been reports of US weaponry heading to Ukraine “vanishing,” only to resurface on the black market. Smuggled arms coming from Ukraine have begun to appear in more and more countries. Last month, Finnish police said a portion of the “huge quantities” of weapons being shipped to Ukraine had made their way to Finland. There have been reports of smuggled guns also surfacing in Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Earlier, an American news outlet also admitted in August that a shockingly high number of arms bound for Ukraine end up stolen.
WorldNATO ‘Running Low’ on Weapons for Ukraine as 20 of its Members Are ‘Pretty Tapped Out’27 November, 06:27 GMTNevertheless, despite the myriad problems facing the Western coalition providing weapons support for Ukraine, the United States and its allies, which have sent tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Kiev over the past nine months, show no intention of allowing the arms flow to stall.
