“Here’s why Biden reversed course on Ukraine’s F-16 request.”
“At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, President Biden told the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that he could not have American precision missile systems. The White House feared they could tip Russia into reaching for its tactical nuclear weapons.
Then he allowed them.
The same dynamic infused debates over providing tanks several months ago. Now Mr. Biden, who in February rejected F-16 fighter jets as unnecessary, met in Hiroshima on Friday with leaders of other major democracies and told them that he would allow Ukrainian pilots to be trained on the American-made warplanes. He added that in a few months, the allies would figure out how to begin delivering modern Western fighters to a Ukrainian force struggling to keep an aging, dwindling fleet of pieced-together, Soviet-made fighters in the air.”
“Russia’s Estimated Storage of Cruise Missiles, May 2023”
“The massive Russian missile attacks against Ukraine in recent days together with evidence of the increasing efficiency of Ukraine’s air and missile defense make it necessary to re-examine the state of Russia’s arsenal of cruise, ballistic and air-launched missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometers (Ukrainska Pravda, May 17; The Moscow Times; Kyiv Independent, May 18). The following estimates do not pretend to be complete or unquestionable, but they intend to initiate expert discussion regarding the correct assessment and understanding of Russia’s actual military capabilities. The proposed estimates are based on official Ukrainian data of those Russian missiles fired during the war, as published in the previous several months, as well as on expert estimates of Russia’s missile storage made in previous years and fragmented data from Russian sources regarding domestic production rates. It should be taken into account that the estimates presented below may be adjusted as new data appears.
For its part, Ukraine regularly publishes available statistics of each Russian missile attack, including the number and types of missiles (if available) and the number of fired and intercepted missiles. However, these statistics usually do not include missiles that detonated immediately or soon after firing. Overall, it is likely that the number of such missiles is insignificant. On January 3, the Ukrainian Armed Forces published an assessment of Russia’s missile storage and production rates (Twitter.com/oleksiireznikov, January 6). Based on this data, the picture of the Russian arsenal of cruise, tactical ballistic and air-launched missiles with a range over 300 kilometers after the latest attack on May 18 is estimated as follows:
…
Thus, it remains to be seen how these usage and production rates will affect Russian strategy in the long term. But to be sure, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been effective and resilient in wearing down the enemy ahead of their oft-discussed and much-anticipated counteroffensive.”
https://jamestown.org/program/russias-estimated-storage-of-cruise-missiles-may-2023/
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