US aid bolsters Ukraine's defense till 2025 amid political uncertainty

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States last week. He addressed the United Nations General Assembly and met with outgoing President Joe Biden and the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in the November 5 elections—current Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Andrzej Kohut, an American studies expert from the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, assessed this as an attempt to leverage the momentum that the Biden administration in Washington created for the authorities in Kyiv.

According to him, the trip's main goal was to present the Ukrainian "victory plan" and persuade the Biden administration to increase American aid to Kyiv. Kohut noted that Washington did not officially respond to the Ukrainian demands, but administration representatives did so anonymously through the media.

Unofficial press leaks indicate that the Americans saw the same expectations that Ukraine had previously expressed in a maximalist version: to bring Ukraine into NATO as quickly as possible, allow the use of American missiles to attack targets deep within Russia and maximize aid to Kyiv. If we assess Zelensky's visit in terms of persuading the Americans to the victory plan, there is rather no success.

However, Zelensky did not return empty-handed from Washington. President Biden announced that military aid to Ukraine was valued at around $8 billion. This is part of the package the US Congress passed in April, worth $61 billion.

The latest tranche of $8 billion in aid to Ukraine is financed from two sources. Firstly, $5.5 billion under the so-called Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). This mechanism allows the US president to transfer arms, military equipment, and ammunition already held in American military units or warehouses to Ukraine.

Jacek Tarociński, a military analyst at CSW, pointed out that the federal government had to react quickly because this opportunity expired at the end of September. The US fiscal year ends then, and before Zelensky visited Washington, $5.55 billion was still available. Meanwhile, since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the USA has provided Ukraine with aid worth over $45 billion through this method. Tarociński noted that President Biden passed the authority to use this package to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, thus avoiding the necessity to spend these funds by the end of September.

Kyiv's second source of aid announced last week is $2.4 billion as part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). This involves ordering weapons, equipment, and ammunition from the American arms industry. The Pentagon has already officially declared that such an order was placed. This order mainly includes ammunition for air defence systems such as Patriot and NASAMS, unmanned and anti-drone systems, listed in Tarociński.

Andrzej Kohut from CSW noted that although $2.4 billion are at the Pentagon's disposal for another year, until the end of September 2025, President Biden pressed for them to be spent by the end of his term, i.e., by the second half of January.

The Biden administration fears that if the president changes in the White House, even if these funds are still available, they might not be used at all or only in a much more limited extent. Hence the pressure to utilize everything the package approved by Congress in April 2024, which in total amounts to $61 billion, allows for by the end of Biden's term, said Kohut.

American analyses indicate that for Ukraine to maintain its engagement in the war, it needs American assistance worth between half a billion and a billion dollars per month. It could be assumed that the eight billion now directed should suffice for Ukraine until the end of February, assessed Tarociński.

Meanwhile, on January 20, 2025, a new US president will be inaugurated. A little earlier, the new Congress term will begin at the beginning of January. This is because, on November 5, Americans will not only choose a new president—elections will also be held for the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

Regardless of who will have the majority in both houses of Congress, polls indicate that it will be small, which means instability and difficulties in passing the subsequent package for Ukraine as it was in the ending term, notes Tarociński.

Andrzej Kohut cautions that it is currently impossible to predict the outcome of the presidential elections. If Harris wins, we can assume she will strive to maintain Biden's policy direction. This results from her statements about what was supposed to appear during her conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, which she mentioned even in the presidential debate. The question is, of course, whether she will be able to continue Biden's policy because this requires, among other things, passing further aid packages in Congress, whose future composition is also unknown, noted the Americanist from CSW.

Regarding a potential Donald Trump administration, it is probably hard to doubt that Trump's announcements are not just campaign slogans. Looking at what is being formed behind Trump and what political plans are being written there, it seems that the potential Republican administration will aim to freeze this conflict as quickly as possible and start peace negotiations. On the one hand, they might pressure Ukraine, withholding financial and military aid. On the other hand, they might move in the opposite direction and, for example, threaten the Kremlin with a radical increase in aid to Ukraine if these negotiations do not start. However, it seems that peace negotiations in one form or another will be a goal the Republicans will set, believes Kohut.

He also noted that President Zelensky visited an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania during his visit to the USA. Among Republican voters and politicians, this was quite commonly received as an unequivocal siding of Zelensky with Kamala Harris and the Democrats.

At the beginning of 2024, when the aid package for Ukraine in the US Congress was dragging on (finally adopted in April), the American newspaper "Wall Street Journal" reported that Ukrainians were saving artillery ammunition because they were uncertain when the next deliveries would arrive. Could this scenario repeat itself at the beginning of 2025, when the funds from the tranche announced last week will run out, and a new administration and new balance of power in Congress will take over in Washington? Jacek Tarociński admitted that this could happen.

The CSW expert noted that Ukraine cannot afford risky offensive actions. It must remain in defence and plan long-term defence because there is no certainty about what will happen next.

During the meeting with Zelensky, Biden announced that Ukraine would receive another Patriot air defence system battery. This will be the third such battery. Unlike the previous two, which were sourced from operational units, this one should be sourced from stocks. It will comprise older radars, fire control systems, launchers, etc. They will be refurbished in factories, which will probably take some time plus training for Ukrainians, said Tarociński. In his opinion, this process could take up to half a year.

During the July NATO summit in Washington, President Biden announced that the PAC-3 missiles currently coming off the production line for the Patriot system would be redirected to Kyiv to shorten delivery times. Now, the White House has approved funds for this purpose. - Only now is this materializing; the time between the announcement and the materialization is quite long, assessed Tarociński. Consequently, other US export clients will have to reckon with delays in ammunition deliveries for the Patriots. - This mainly concerns Switzerland, added the CSW expert.

On Friday, Biden also announced that Ukraine would receive AGM-154 JSOW. These are glide bombs, a type of weapon resembling guided bombs. While in US and Allied aviation, guided armaments are usually constructed so that a regular bomb receives a guidance kit, the JSOW was built from the ground up to hit the target precisely—it has guidance devices, small foldable wings, but no propulsion, so it approaches the target like a glider.

Two of the three JSOW versions carry cluster munitions, meaning they drop many smaller bombs on area targets such as air defence groupings, troop concentrations, or ammunition depots. The third JSOW version, equipped with a penetrating warhead, is suitable for destroying enemy fortifications.

The JSOW range is up to 130 kilometers, provided the bomb is dropped from a high altitude. However, Ukrainians do not fly high because the Russians have extensive ground-based air defenses, and their aircraft are in the sky. As a result, the JSOW range will be quite limited, noted Tarociński.

The JSOW has not been produced since 2005. It was replaced by AGM-158 JASSM missiles, which have a greater range in US aviation. Nonetheless, the JSOW is a good weapon; he assessed it as much cheaper than the JASSM.

What about even longer-range weapons, which Ukrainians are increasingly loudly asking for? President Biden has not decided to provide the longer-range missiles that Ukrainians were seeking - neither the JASSM type nor the ATACMS for the HIMARS ground rocket launchers. In the case of ATACMS, Ukraine received older missiles with a range of 180 kilometers, but not the newest ones with 300 kilometers. Everything will depend on the next administration, said Tarociński.

After the conversation with Zelensky, Biden also announced that Americans would train 18 Ukrainian multi-role F-16 pilots. According to Tarociński, this is both a lot and little.

As he explained, for the Americans, it is a lot because the US armed forces conduct pilot training for many allied and partner countries, and training capabilities are already significantly limited due to shortages in infrastructure and instructors themselves. - This is a significant effort for the Americans. The fact that they will train 18 Ukrainian pilots means that 18 pilots from other countries or US air forces will not be able to be trained at that time - he explained.

At the same time, said Tarociński, 18 pilots is not much from the Ukrainian perspective. - Ukraine needs to train at least one and a half, preferably two pilots for each offered F-16, which means that 18 pilots will allow for the operational use of 12 aircraft. So far, Ukraine has received few F-16s, but over time, this number will increase. Pilots also perish - we have already had reports of the loss of the first machine and the death of a pilot - he reminded.

Ukrainian pilots are trained by Americans, the French and British, who train Ukrainians from scratch. A training centre has also been established in Romania. The CSW expert believes that combining all these efforts will most likely meet Ukrainian needs, though not as quickly as Kyiv would want or expect.

Last week, the White House announced that on October 12, President Biden would host the Ramstein Group summit in Germany, and among the participants will be the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ramstein Group, formed in response to Russia's invasion, is an alliance of over 50 countries and organizations that devised a mechanism for regular military aid to Ukraine through weapon supplies, soldier training, and equipment repair.