The US Department of Defense on Saturday, December 7, issued a press release announcing another package of defense assistance to Ukraine worth almost a billion dollars (988 million) under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) program, where weapons for Ukraine are ordered directly from defense companies. This is the 22nd defense assistance package under this program.
The peculiarity of this defense aid package is that the list of weapons is limited to three items, despite the rather large sum of nearly one billion dollars.
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It includes ammunition for HIMARS missile systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as various equipment, spare parts, and other items needed to repair artillery systems, tanks, and other armored vehicles.
In comparison, the $725 million package earlier this month included a much broader range of weapons, ranging from various types of missiles to artillery ammunition and different kinds of mines.
At the same time, it is worth mentioning that Washington is expected to organize an avalanche of weapons for Kyiv within 45 days, worth $6 billion.
One of the options we previously considered was the transfer of decommissioned or soon-to-be-decommissioned weapons under presidential authority, with subsequent repairs in Ukraine funded through the USAI program.
Given that the new package includes a clause on the repair of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery systems, it is possible that the US decided to follow this scenario.
Earlier Defense Express reported about an important detail to understand about the contract on 40 Advanced IFVs for Ukraine.
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