In an announcement by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a meeting is set to take place this week of senior national armaments directors from allied countries to lay out long-term plans for supplying Ukraine and rebuilding their own stock of arms.
“They will discuss how our defense industrial bases can best equip Ukraine’s future forces with the capabilities that they need,” Austin stated at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany at a meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group, which includes 50 countries in favor of flaring up the war in Ukraine.
The Pentagon’s arms acquisition chief Bill LaPlante announced on Friday the date of the meeting to be on September 28 in Brussels, telling reporters that the objective is to determine “how we can continue to work together to ramp up production of key capabilities and resolve supply chain issues and increase interoperability and interchangeability of our systems.”
At the start of the war, Ukraine’s military utilized arms and ammunition that were exhausted after a few months, especially crucial artillery and missile systems, leaving Ukrainian forces to rely wholly on NATO-standard arms – many of which are ending up on the black markets.
Although NATO countries do not all have the same weapons, their arms are compatible, so ammunition manufactured in one country in the alliance can be used by another, but restocking these arms is crucial because the excessive pumping of weapons into Ukraine has diminished the large amounts of arms that the allies had kept for their own defense. A prime example would be Germany, as it is Ukraine’s biggest financial and military supplier, providing Ukrainian forces with weapons its own army doesn’t have, followed by the US.
The EU announced in July 500 million euros for purchases over the next two years to resupply arms provided to Kiev, with the priority focused on more anti-armor and anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as155mm artillery pieces and ammunition.
European Commissioner Thierry Breton said at the time, “This has created a de facto vulnerability that now needs to be addressed urgently.”
The US, a primary arms supplier of Ukraine since the outset of the war, has already secured $15.2 billion worth of weaponry, including those compatible with NATO weaponry. Austin announced, on September 8, that US President Joe Biden had approved an extra $675 million weapons package, yet blamed Ukraine’s recording through hand receipts for losing track of the shockingly excessive amount of arms supplies.
Source: Agencies (edited by Al-Manar English Website)
