CNN — The Biden administration is moving toward lifting a de facto ban on American military contractors deploying to Ukraine, four US officials familiar with the matter told CNN, to help the country’s military maintain and repair US-provided weapons systems. The change would mark another significant shift in the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, as the US looks for ways to give Ukraine’s military an upper hand against Russia.
The policy is still being worked on by administration officials and has not received final sign-off yet from President Joe Biden, officials said. “We have not made any decisions and any discussion of this is premature,” said one administration official. “The president is absolutely firm that he will not be sending US troops to Ukraine.” Once approved, the change would likely be enacted this year, officials said, and would allow the Pentagon to provide contracts to American companies for work inside Ukraine for the first time since Russia invaded in 2022. Officials said they hope it will speed up the maintenance and repairs of weapons systems being used by the Ukrainian military.
Over the last two years, Biden has insisted that all Americans, and particularly US troops, stay far away from the Ukrainian frontlines. The White House has been determined to limit both the danger to Americans and the perception, particularly by Russia, that the US military is engaged in combat there. The State Department has explicitly warned Americans against traveling to Ukraine since 2022. As a result, US-provided military equipment that has sustained significant damage in combat has had to be transported out of the country to Poland, Romania, or other NATO countries for repairs, a process which takes time. US troops are also available to help the Ukrainians with more routine maintenance and logistics, but only from afar via video chat or secure phone—an arrangement that has come with inherent limitations, since US troops and contractors are not able to work directly on the systems.
Administration officials began to seriously reconsider those restrictions over the last several months, officials said, as Russia continued to make gains on the battlefield and US funding for Ukraine stalled in Congress. Allowing experienced, US government-funded American contractors to maintain a presence in Ukraine means they will be able to help fix damaged, high-value equipment much faster, officials said. One advanced system that officials say will likely require regular maintenance is the F-16 fighter jet, which Ukraine is set to receive later this year. Companies bidding for the contracts would be required to develop robust risk mitigation plans to mitigate threats to their employees, an official said.
Comment: This is far more than I thought the Biden administration would do. I could see them turning a blind eye to Ukraine hiring US experts and maintenance people on Ukrainian contracts, but this move provides for US contractors on DoD contracts operating in Ukraine. Of course, those contractors will be targets, but the money will be good. Good God! What happened to the timid concept of escalation management?
How far is this from Colonel Lang’s idea of an AVG flying A-10s instead of P-40s? I bet there are plenty of F-16 pilots just chomping at the bit to have a real go at the Ivans.
TTG
Any contractor that signs up for this either does not value their life much or they are just mentally unstable. This isn’t an Afghanistan or Iraq base where it’s relatively safe with a guarded perimeter to include CAS and QRF.
Anyone and anything pointing something in Ukraine at Russian forces can be hit fairy easy. Might get away with it for a little while but so does a car running stop signs and red lights. Eventually gonna get your ass handed to you.
TTG: “How far is this from Colonel Lang’s idea of an AVG flying A-10s instead of P-40s? I bet there are plenty of F-16 pilots just chomping at the bit to have a real go at the Ivans.”
You are living in a fantasy world along with most americans. In this fantasy, we are always the good guys, everyone likes us and we always win.
Pray that we are let down gently and slowly. reintroduced to reality without too much pain.
the way things are heading, in my opinion, the ukraine army is going to break. we will be reviled for encouraging them into a fools errand – making war on russia.
walrus,
What you call a fools errand is Ukrainians defending themselves from a Russian invasion. Russia is making war on Ukraine. Our support of Ukraine is far more the action of a “good guy” than our invasion of Afghanistan, which started as an act of vengeance and continued out of pure obstinacy, or our second invasion of Iraq which was pure aggression and neocon fever dream.
Colonel Lang and I talked about this often. We both thought standing by Ukraine against a Russian invasion was an easy and righteous decision.
Walrus,
It’s the warrior mentality, something looked for in the selection process and fostered in fighter pilots. Everybody that goes to war can be labeled a fool, I suppose. The Col’s AVG idea is plenty viable. There would be a long line of guys signing up.
My bud who flew F15s told me he volunteered to help the Dutch and the Brits to train Ukrainian pilots and he wishes dearly the Ukrainians were given F15s because he absolutely wants to fly for them. He’s no fool, just a recently retired fighter pilot with a full career under his belt. Flew a ton of missions over Iraq. Pouting like a child about them turning him down due to his having never flown an F16. He knows he could be teaching weapon and SAM systems for them. Nope, they tell him, we got enough of that. Go home old man! He’s 42…
Only mentioning to pass on something he said about the training. He is not at all shocked at the long delay. Yes, you can take a fighter jock from an SU to an F16 and get him able to fly it in perhaps a 3 week crash program, but being able to do something with it is another matter. One must master everything one can hang on the wings, which is a lot of stuff, and in an array of scenarios. Typically a pilot spends a year as a wingman before he or she is considered really a fighter pilot. More to the point, the trainers know Ukraine is only going to have a handful of planes and pilots and putting them up in the current SAM environment and Russian AF experienced pilots half-trained would be a recipe for failure.
The US, from the beginning, has been giving Ukraine just enough help to keep the fighting stalemated. To maximize the number of men, on both sides, that will be pushed into the meat grinder.
It is the “dual containment” strategy from the Iran-Iraq war all over again.
This is just the latest tactic in the service of that overall strategy.
This will go down in the books as the FAFO war.
Put a large NATO trained and equipped army on the LoC. Many of whom believe it’s their righteous duty to kill or ethnically cleanse any Russians who live in the Donbass. And have already done plenty of that in the recent past just to show they mean business.
Pour in an increasing volume of artillery fire across the LoC. Deliberately screw up the UN approved peace settlement the Russians had been trying to get implemented for years.
Ignore all requests from Russia to move the army back. How did the losers in Washington and Brussels ever think they’d get away with such blatant provocation?
FAFO indeed and the politicians of the West who dreamed all this up should be impeached, the lot of them. Except for Scholz, who should be given a good long time in gaol as well for getting us all into this mess in the first place. True heir to Merkel for duplicity and the man who wrecked the only viable economy in the West.
Brilliant information war though. Have to give the politicians that. A real feat, persuading pretty well a billion people the war was “unprovoked”. Put it down as the FAFO war and move on to Cold War II.
Unprovoked?
Maybe, Maybe not. I tend to agree with the “Chicken Kiev” speech.
Something that went a lot further than it should have?
Yes.
When the Russian Offensive on Kiev failed, the Russians lost. The US was going to double down on Kiev and so would the EU. Too many frontline states have bad memories of the Eastern Bloc to go otherwise.
Clearly the idea that Putin would try to go further was nonsense. The war demonstrated he can barely cope with Ukraine.
On the other hand, if Kiev had fallen in around the time same we took to take Baghdad in 2003, Putin would have picked up a lot of “cred” and would have gained influence in Europe. He would likely have broken NATO and would have had no reason to go further.
On the other hand, Putin has demonstrated the US no longer has the economic power it had. It is the time of the ascendant BRICs and a country with the mineral wealth Russia has is tough to effectively boycott. McCain was right. It is a “Gas Station with nukes: but that counts a LOT on the World stage.
This is a race between the Ukrainian forces collapsing due to heavy losses and a smaller population and the Russians collapsing due to their Lines of Communications collapsing and their forces collapsing due traditional Russian lack of supply discipline and cut supply lines.
It also is apparent due to targeting success in Crimea and the fact that most Orthodox Churches in the “Occupied Territories” looking to Kiev and not Moscow, that the Russian support in the Donbas and Crimea clearly either did not justify this or has lost its justification over time.
Ukraine has been physically ravaged.
The RF, the US and NATO have come out of this with their reputations in shreds.
As the Delphic Oracle told the Lydian King, “if you go to war you will destroy a great empire.” The Oracle did not specify which one and today it can be all involved.
“It is a “Gas Station with nukes”
Hello … Do you have the slightest knowledge of the contributions ethnic Russians have made to mathematics and science?
To start, you might Google “Who invented the periodic table”.
At Wikipedia, there is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_mathematicians
That includes many outstanding Jewish mathematicians, but many are not Jewish.
As a path breaking contemporary example, a recipient of the Fields Medal, there is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Voevodsky
Pardon my rudeness,
but so many people are repeating that ignorant slur against Russia and Russians that a strong response is needed, IMO.
It only indicates their ignorance or bias.
I find broad agreement in EU that Russia represents an existential threat and many Americans agree that it also impacts our security. A security that has prevented a major war in Europe for very long and NATO is at the center of that. Our world is even more connected now than it has in the past and that is now being threatened by various authoritarian entities. At this point there is a containment policy at work and hopefully it will remain such. This is more like Cold War 2.0 than anything else and in the end, economics will matter like it did the last time and there the liberal world will still have an edge. Time and time again, it has been shown that the top down approach has a ceiling beyond where there is no further advancement and they end up where Reagan called the “ash heap of history”. You can quibble about the best way to wear them all down, but the seeds of their destruction is baked in the system. So, adding yeast is a good policy and it will get results.
Lars,
it’s wonderfull if the ,,liberal world” still has the edge, but it would be very nice from the ,,liberal world” to stop forcing and promoting satanism, gender ideology, colonialism, double standards and etc. in the ,,authoritarian or not so democratic states.”
“satanism”?
Some ways Russia is considering retaliating
for the U.S. supply of weapons to Ukraine:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/29/russia-ukraine-offensive-00165926
“Putin warns that this would be a major escalation,
and he threatened to retaliate
by providing weapons to Western adversaries elsewhere in the world.
…
He reinforced that argument by signing a mutual defense pact with North Korea in June and holding the door open for arms supplies to Pyongyang.
He declared that just as the West says Ukraine can decide how to use Western weapons,
Moscow could provide arms to North Korea and
“similarly say that we supply something to somebody
but have no control over what happens afterward” — an apparent hint at Pyongyang’s role as arms trader.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, noted
Moscow could arm anyone who considers the U.S. and its allies their enemies,
“regardless of their political beliefs and international recognition.” “
. . . and , arguably that could include US nationals . . . .
You know, every time I look at the ventral air intake on an F16 I think to myself: definitely not the jet you want to operate from Ukrainian “airfield”.
Still, go for it. I suspect the are a lot of RuAF fighter jocks just itching to have an encounter with an F16 flown by “exUSAF” pilots.