They range from short-range heat-seeking systems such as the Humvee-mounted Avenger to the high-end, radar-guided Patriot, which can engage aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. To help defend against such attacks, its Western allies have donated a wide variety of systems. Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, including power plants and residential buildings, have come under increasing attack from Russian missiles and one-way drones, often launched from outside Ukraine's territory. Western countries have in the first weeks of 2023 pledged heavy armour, such as modern tanks, and rocket-launched glide bombs – Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) that can hit small targets up to 150 km (93 miles) away. It obviously had a big impact in that first month.” “HIMARS was not really a capability Ukraine had before,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Almost immediately, Russian command centres and supply depots far behind the front lines were hit. The rocket artillery vehicles - the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System - carry munitions that can hit a target a few metres in diameter from distances of nearly 80 km (50 miles). In the months after, artillery ammunition came, then Western artillery and vehicles.
“You could make an argument for the March 22 security assistance package that included Javelins and other anti-tank munitions” as being one of the highest-impact arms shipments of the war, said Ankit Panda, a Stanton Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Within weeks, shipments of military support from Ukraine’s allies began to arrive and helped bend the trajectory of a war that already seemed to be going badly for the Russian military. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Ukraine’s military fought back with the equipment it had on hand: Soviet-era aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery, and a scattering of Western-supplied weapons such as Javelin anti-tank missiles.
0 kommentar(er)
