White House’s race against the clock on Ukraine aid: President Joe Biden says he’s routing some $7.9 billion in military support to Ukraine, including $5.5 billion in congressionally-authorized funds that are set to expire if not accessed by the end of the month. That also includes a $2.4 billion commitment to buy weapons from American manufacturers (instead of reducing U.S. military stockpiles) as well as money to help build up Ukraine’s defense industrial base, the president said in a statement Thursday.
And in a new first, Biden authorized Ukraine’s use of the Joint Standoff Weapon long-range munition as part of a $375 million arms package announced Wednesday by the Defense Department. The JSOW weapons are also known as glide bombs. They have a range of around 75 miles, and can be launched from the F-16s now flown by some of Ukraine’s pilots, ABC News reported Wednesday.
He also wants to send Ukraine another Patriot air defense battery, which Biden said “builds on my decision earlier this year to divert U.S. air defense exports to Ukraine” ahead of other customers around the world.
And Biden authorized expanded training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots, adding 18 training slots for 2025. “My message is clear: The United States will provide Ukraine with the support it needs to win this war,” the president said.
One catch for that nearly $6 billion set to expire on Monday: “The U.S. won’t be allowed to introduce new types of equipment that haven’t been in previous shipments,” Politico reported Wednesday with the fine print.
Not included in these new announcements: Permission to attack targets inside Russia using U.S.-provided weapons, which Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy has been requesting for several months as his troops occupy a small foothold in Russia’s western Kursk region.
Zelenskyy thanked Biden and “both parties, Republicans and Democrats, as well as the entire American people…for finding a way to allocate the remaining security assistance to Ukraine and ensure that the Presidential authority is not expired by the end of the US financial year,” he wrote on social media Thursday.
Additional reading:
Elsewhere in Washington: GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson told Zelenskyy to “immediately fire” his U.S. ambassador because the Ukrainian president visited an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. The House Speaker made his demand in a Wednesday letter to Zelenskyy, arguing that the visit “in a politically contested battleground state” was “clearly election interference.” The GOP-led House Oversight Committee also said it’s opened an investigation into the Scranton trip.
The visit “was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican,” Johnson said in his letter. “Additionally, as I have clearly stated in the past, all foreign nations should avoid opining on or interfering in American domestic politics,” the House Speaker wrote.
Worth noting:
- Zelenskyy visited Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox in July.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited former President Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago in late July and Johnson similarly had no objections.
- Nor did Johnson object when Hungary’s far-right Viktor Orban visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago immediately after the NATO summit in mid-July.
Meanwhile, Trump said Wednesday the Ukrainian people are “dead” and the country is “demolished” as he addressed voters at a campaign stop in North Carolina. “Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelenskyy money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said, according to the Associated Press.
“If they made a bad deal [that is, not fighting back] it would’ve been much better,” he said. “They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years,” Trump said, and claimed, “What deal can we make? It’s demolished. The people are dead. The country is in rubble.”
Related reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1931, the keel of USS Ranger (CV-4), the first American purpose-built aircraft carrier, was laid down in Newport News, Virginia.
Lawmakers avert a shutdown, for now. The U.S. government will now stay open at least through Dec. 20 under the stopgap funding bill passed Wednesday in both the House and the Senate, which gives Congress until then to pass funding bills for the 2025 fiscal year that begins in five days.
Also included: $231 million for the Secret Service following the two recent assassination attempts on Trump.
The bill passed the lower chamber in a 341-82 vote, with Speaker Johnson needing the support of 209 Democrats with 132 Republicans to advance the measure. It then advanced through the upper chamber in a 78-18 vote.
Additional reading: “How every senator voted on the stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown,” via the Washington Post.
New: The U.S. Army finally reached its yearly recruiting goal, officials announced Thursday in a razor-thin confirmation of what Army leaders said they were anticipating in April.
The service added 55,300 new soldiers during the current fiscal year, which ends in just five days; that’s 300 above the Army’s target for FY24. That total includes 12,000 soldiers processed through a preparatory course designed to assist volunteers who do not initially meet all the requirements to enlist.
Reminder: The Army failed to meet its recruiting goals for the last two years as the service (and the world) gradually emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic. (The Navy and Air Force also fell short in 2023.)
Trendspotting: “We’re seeing an increase in the enlistment age,” one official said Thursday. That shows how the service has looked beyond the typical high school graduate to Americans working in the private sector. That includes outreach to digital job boards, for example, and emphasizing benefits like the G.I. Bill, officials said.
ICYMI: The Army is advancing its ground robot plans after awarding Rheinmetall and HDT a contract to make a robotic transport vehicle for small units on Tuesday. Breaking Defense has more.
Also: The INDOPACOM commander recently met with his Chinese counterpart. Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad interviewed Adm. Samuel Paparo at the recent Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defense Conference in Hawaii. Read, here.
Lastly today: Officials tout AI-powered sub-hunting as AUKUS defense chiefs converge. A collaborative, AI-powered effort to hunt enemy submarines shows that AUKUS is working, U.S. defense officials said ahead of a meeting of the U.S., UK, and Australian defense chiefs in London. “It’s a change in how we do things and how we’re doing it with allies and partners,” a defense official said Tuesday at the Pentagon.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in London for a Thursday meeting with his counterparts to review progress and planning for various tech-development projects, just days after the three-year anniversary of the trilateral defense-cooperation pact. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams, who is traveling with the secretary, filed this report. Stay tuned for more.
