A number of Western mass media have published publications where they talked about the possibility of the US supplying Ukraine with more weapons than is officially disclosed in the Pentagon reports. In particular, Yahoo.news and Politico asked this question, and after talking with their sources in Washington, came to the conclusion - yes. Saying, ATACMS is already in Ukraine, and high-precision Excalibur is delivered without additional announcements.
In particular, there are indeed confirmed cases where the US did not focus on the names of the weapons being transferred. The best example yet is the situation with HARM anti-radar missiles. Officially, the transfer of these missiles was reported on August 19.
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According to the report, it was directly indicated that AGM-88 HARMs were provided. But they had been transferred in July, as reported by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl during a briefing on August 8.
For the first time, on July 25, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksiy Reznikov, announced the receipt of yet-to-be-named anti-radar missiles, referring to the $270 million aid package as of July 22.
But there was no mention of such a weapon in that package, only about additional missiles to HIMARS, which even prompted Defense Express to look up options with an anti-radar missile for HIMARS.
In this case, we can perceive the phrase in the Pentagon press release "this aid package includes..." as: "includes", but is not "limited". Or take into account that such regular wording as "other equipment" may include anything.
You will see below the official notification of the Pentagon regarding the transfer of weapons, including AGM-88 HARMs being transferred.
Moreover, to the direct question regarding the silence of the transfer of AGM-88 HARM missiles, the Pentagon officials answered that they had previously written (they did not specify when and where exactly) that they planned to provide anti-radar means for Ukraine.
In this case, obviously, we can only state that the USA may not announce the entire list of weapons transferred to Ukraine. Moreover, even in case of certain types of weapons supply, they can be disguised under general names. For example, the supply of still unnamed high-precision projectiles for 155-mm artillery. And it could be both M982 Excalibur and M712 Copperhead, or M1156 PGK.
Similarly, the wording "additional ammunition for HIMARS" can include any missiles for this system.
But again, it is far from a fact that no other long-range weapons were transferred without announcement. In particular, those weapons, which can quite unexpectedly be integrated into Ukrainian aircraft. For example, stealth cruise missiles with a flight range of up to 300 km, such as SLAM-ER.
In any case, the method chosen by the Pentagon for the announcement of the transfer of weapons is much better: to public announcement for us to assess the scale of military aid, but to keep secrets until the last moment for surprises.
The same happened to Brimstone missiles, when in Great Britain they continued to talk about the difficulty of integrating them into land-based launchers and promised to deliver them soon, the fragments of these missiles had already been published by the russians.
Read more: Ukrainian Air Force Hints That Not Only MiG-29s Used to Launch HARM Missiles
