WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will provide Ukraine additional Patriot missiles for its air defense systems as part of a massive $6 billion additional aid package, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Friday.



The missiles will be used to replenish previously supplied Patriot systems. The package also includes more munitions for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and additional gear to integrate Western air defense launchers, missiles and radars into Ukraine’s existing weaponry, much of which still dates back to the Soviet era.



Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the need for Patriots early Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of about 50 countries gathering virtually in a Pentagon-led meeting. The meeting fell on the second anniversary of the group, which Austin said has “moved heaven and earth” since April 2022 to source millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket systems, armored vehicles and even jets to help Ukraine rebuff Russia’s invasion.

Zelenskyy said at least seven Patriot systems are needed to protect Ukrainian cities. “We urgently need Patriot systems and missiles for them,” Zelenskyy said. “This is what can and should save lives right now.”

At a Pentagon press conference following the meeting, Austin said the U.S. was working with allies to resource additional Patriot systems but did not commit to sending more U.S. versions. He said he has been speaking one-on-one with a number of his European counterparts in recent days to hash out this issue and others.



“It’s not just Patriots that they need, they need other types of systems and interceptors as well,” Austin said. “I would caution us all in terms of making Patriot the silver bullet.”



Austin said he is asking allied nations to “accept a little bit more risk” as they consider what weapons to send to Ukraine. A number of nations have expressed some reluctance to send Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine because most don’t have very many and they belieive they need them for their own defense.

U.S. officials said the aid package will be funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term contracts with the defense industry and means that it could take many months or years for the weapons to arrive. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

The new funding — the largest tranche of USAI aid sent to date — also includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, as well as Switchblade and Puma drones, counter drone systems and artillery.

Russia is making daily tactical gains in eastern Ukraine, as criticism grows of Ukrainian military reporting

By Andrew Carey and Olga Voitovych, CNN

CNN — Vladimir Putin’s forces have made further gains in at least three locations along the eastern front in Ukraine – including for the first time in several months an advance in the northern Kharkiv region – highlighting again Kyiv’s need for ammunition and weapons from the United States and other allies.

The latest developments reflect the new tempo on the battlefield since the fall of the industrial town of Avdiivka in February.

Russia’s tactical advances are now daily. They are generally modest -– from a few hundred meters of territory to perhaps a kilometer at most – but they are usually taking place in several locations at once.

More short-term setbacks

Many Western analysts, along with Ukrainian officials, see Russia’s current stepped-up tempo as a precursor to a major offensive attempt later this spring. It is also assumed Moscow wants to take advantage of its significant advantage in ammunition before US supplies – greenlit last week after six months of political stasis – get to the frontlines.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that there will be more short-term setbacks for Ukraine, though without major strategic defeats.

“Russian forces will likely make significant tactical gains in the coming weeks as Ukraine waits for US security assistance to arrive at the front but remain unlikely to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses,” it writes.

Ukraine’s other major quantitative weakness, which also helps explain recent battlefield trajectories, is manpower. A new mobilization law comes into effect next month, which is expected to improve conscription processes. But Kyiv has proved highly reluctant to say clearly how many more soldiers it needs, while Moscow keeps increasing numbers.

“The quality (of Russian fighters) of course varies, but the quantitative advantage is a serious problem, Rob Lee of Foreign Policy Research Institute, writes on X.

“Without (its) manpower advantage, Russia’s artillery and airpower advantage would not be sufficient for Russia to make gains on the battlefield. The relative manpower situation is likely the most important factor that will determine the war’s trajectory, particularly if Russia can sustain recruiting 20-30k a month,” Lee adds.

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KYIV — Ukraine has been forced to make a tactical retreat from three villages in Donetsk, amid an intensifying Russian push in the region and the slow flow of military aid to Kyiv.

The commander in chief of Ukraine's army, Oleksandr Syrskyi, announced in a statement Sunday that Kyiv's forces had "moved to new frontiers west of Berdychi, Semenivka and Novomykhailivka to preserve the lives and health of our troops." Syrskyi cited Ukraine's dwindling supplies, in the face of the better-equipped Russian forces.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted the slow pace at which his country's allies have delivered the military assistance they've pledged, stressing the need for speed to allow Kyiv to hold its positions and to disrupt Russia's expected summer offensive.

​​​​​​​ In his statement, Syrskyi said the situation has worsened for Ukraine's troops over the past week, as Russia attempts to seize the strategic initiative and break through the front line. Moscow plans to take full control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and has concentrated attacks near Avdiivka, which Vladimir Putin's forces captured in February, and Chasiv Yar.

In Ukraine's south, Russian forces have intensified attacks around Robotyne and Verbove, which Kyiv recaptured from the invaders in 2023. But Ukrainian troops did manage to make some battlefield gains, advancing near the village of Veletens'ke and establishing control over the island of Nestryha on the Dnipro River in the Kherson region.

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Ukraine got a much-needed boost in its war against Russia when a long-delayed $61 billion aid package was passed by the US Congress last week.

But in an interview with CNN Sunday, Mark Herlting, a former US lieutenant general, said Ukraine still faces serious obstacles in its bid to win back territory seized by Russia, with a shortage of recruits at the top of the list.

"Ukraine needs the mobilization of more soldiers. They have been on the battlefield for two and a half years, and that just takes an incredible account of fatigue, psychological damage, and the toughness of being in the trenches in the front lines will really be a morale factor," said Hertling, a former commander of US Army forces in Europe.

Ukraine has long faced problems recruiting enough troops to renew its military, exhausted and badly depleted after more than two years of brutal war with Russia.

According to reports, units on the front line are seriously overstretched, and troops have to fight for weeks in some cases before they are rotated away from the front line to recuperate.

Its forces have also been experiencing serious artillery and ammunition shortages, but the passage of the US aid bill after months of delays is expected to alleviate these problems.

Hertling doesn't think weapons alone will allow Ukraine to regain the territories it has lost. "Truthfully, and I know some of my artillery brethren would chide me for this, but artillery and long-range systems do not win war," he said. "You have to take on and gain the terrain. Ukraine has not been able to do that to the extent they need to with some of the terrains they've lost to Russia."

The recruitment issue has long been divisive in Ukraine. The country's former supreme military commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, clashed with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over it, saying last year that Ukraine needed 500,000 more recruits.

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​​​​​​​Russia has also suffered steep losses in Ukraine, but it has a much larger population and has managed to boost the size of its military through drafts and by offering recruits relatively lucrative contracts.

Another US precision-guided weapon falls prey to Russian electronic warfare, US says

A U.S. defense official would not provide specifics, but is likely referring to Boeing’s Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb.

U.S.-provided precision-guided munitions have failed in mission after mission in Ukraine, taken down by Russian electronic warfare. On Wednesday, the Pentagon revealed the latest casualty.

A new ground-launched version of an air-to-ground weapon developed for Ukraine on a rapid timeline failed to hit targets in part because of Russian electro-magnetic warfare, Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, said at an event held by think tank CSIS.

LaPlante suggested that Ukraine may no longer be interested in the weapon. “When you send something to people in the fight of their lives that just doesn’t work, they’ll try it three times and they’ll just throw it aside,” said LaPlante.

The weapon LaPlante is referring to is very likely the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) based on his description, according to Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

A Boeing spokesperson did not confirm that LaPlante was referring to GLSDB, but said the company is “working closely with the [Defense Department] on spiral capability improvements to the ground-launch SDB system.” Spiral capability improvements refers to an iterative software development process.

The GLDSB boasts a range of 90 miles—double the range of the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMRLS) missiles Ukraine previously used to wreak havoc on Russia’s logistic centers. Funding for the weapon was approved in February 2023, and Ukraine was reportedly using the weapon by February 2024.

The weapon relies on GPS to navigate to its targets. It also has an inertial navigation system, which navigates to a target by estimating its position through the use of accelerometers and other devices.

But it is not the first GPS-guided weapon to fall afoul of Russian electronic warfare.

In congressional testimony in March, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Daniel Patt said the targeting system for the GPS-guided Excalibur round “dropped from 70 percent effectiveness to 6 percent effectiveness over a matter of a few months as new EW mechanisms came out” in Ukraine. Patt cited the work of Jack Watling, an expert at think-tank RUSI who has traveled to Ukraine multiple times to interview Ukrainian commanders.


Russian electronic warfare attacks have also directed GMLRS missiles off course, CNN reported last spring. The missiles are similarly guided by a GPS. Russia has also successfully used electronic warfare against GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which are retrofitted aerial bombs.

Russian electronic warfare on the U.S.’s “more precise capabilities is a challenge,” the commander of the chief U.S. aid coordinating group told an audience in December.

Clark, citing a presentation by Ukrainian soldiers, said the Russians use GPS spoofers to throw off the munitions. [size=33px]GPS spoofers work by [/size]sending[size=33px] false location data to GPS navigation devices. Because GPS signals are weak, a stronger, false signal can be sent to override the correct inputs. Russia has used GPS spoofing in Ukraine since at least [/size]2018[size=33px]. But advancements in technology mean spoofers can be created cheaply with just a [/size]software-defined radio[size=33px] and open-source software. [/size]
The weapons the spoofers are working against, meanwhile, are anything but cheap. A GMLRS missile costs around $160,000, while an Excalibur round can cost as much as $100,000. The GLDSB costs around $40,000.

However, the weapons were largely designed for a period before spoofers were so easy to set up, Clark said. “You didn't really see the advent of miniaturized, capable GPS spoofers until the last ten years or so, because you needed the micro-electronics to be able to do it,” Clark said.

Russia has saturated the front with electronic warfare, Clark said. Truck-mounted electronic warfare systems primarily focused on jamming drones are located every six to nine miles on Ukraine’s frontline, he said

Ukraine can also work to jam Russia’s systems, Clark added. Russia has mostly been using an analog of the JDAM, the KAB, which can also be misdirected by spoofing its guidance system.

And Ukraine is “fielding some systems now” for electronic warfare targeting of satellite navigation, Clark said. Still, since Russia is targeting civilian populations, “they may not care that much if they get spoofed.”