Javelin Missiles: The Icon of Western Military Aid in Ukraine | International

In the early days of Russia’s war against Ukraine, few trusted kyiv’s military ability to hold out for more than a few days. But that idea faded as Russian strategic flaws in the offensive on the capital became evident and Ukrainian determination and ingenuity emerged to stop it. Western weapons have played a decisive role in helping to contain the aggression, especially anti-tank missiles. The one that has become iconic and a symbol of resistance is the American-made Javelin. This portable model has become so popular that it even has a meme where a virgin is seen carrying it on her shoulder and the motto “Holy Javelin”, and there are already Ukrainian newborns called Javelin.

Ukraine has received from the United States some 5,500 units of this type of missile, capable of destroying a tank up to four kilometers away. This Tuesday, US President Joe Biden praised the power of the country’s arms industry during a visit to one of the plants where the Javelin is manufactured. There he told the anecdote of the babies with the name of the projectile and urged the US Congress to approve the additional 31,000 million euros that he requested a week ago. “The Javelins are the icon of US military support for its allies, as it did with the Syrian rebels or now with Ukraine,” explains Yohann Michel, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS, in English) from Berlin.

man-portable missile launcher

Javelin (USA)

Ukraine has received training and military equipment such as Turkish anti-tank missiles or armed drones.

The Javelin’s missile can hit targets 4km away. The projectile takes a vertical trajectory which increases its effectiveness against armor.

man-portable missile launcher

Javelin (USA)

Ukraine has received training and military equipment such as Turkish anti-tank missiles or armed drones.

The Javelin’s missile can hit targets 4km away. The projectile takes a vertical trajectory which increases its effectiveness against armor.

man-portable missile launcher

Javelin (USA)

Ukraine has received training and military equipment such as Turkish anti-tank missiles or armed drones.

The Javelin’s missile can hit targets 4km away. The projectile takes a vertical trajectory which increases its effectiveness against armor.

Its characteristics were key to disrupting the type of offensive that Moscow planned in late February and early March around kyiv. “This is a very capable weapon, designed to attack the turret from above, which is usually the least protected area of ​​any tank,” Siemon Wezeman, an arms trading expert at the Stockholm International Institute for Research in Science, explains by email. Peace (SIPRI, in English). Added to this is the particular shape of Russian tanks, which is a vulnerability. “The effectiveness increases in this case because they store the ammunition in the turret or just below, with very little protection, unlike European or American tanks, which have it better protected,” he says. The result is that when the missile hits, it blows up the ammunition dump, “that’s why you’ve seen so many tanks with their turrets blown out,” he says.

In those early days, what was intended to be a swift and sweeping Russian swipe on the capital turned into images of long, heavy lines of tanks blocked on roads, exposed to Ukrainian fire and without encrypted communications being intercepted by defenders. It was then, in the midst of the Russian errors, that the Javelin gained prominence for its effectiveness. “This anti-tank missile has a system that does not need to be guided to reach the target [se llama dispara y olvídate], unlike older ones,” explains Wezeman, which makes it easier for the shooter to seek cover after shooting. In addition, according to the analyst, the Ukrainians use the Javelin “in a flexible way, with many ambushes against an enemy that seems to continue using tactics of the past with many armor in huge formations.”

Second phase of the war, similar strategy

Western countries have been increasing the number and capacity of weapons they send to Ukraine to help it organize its defense. The United States alone has sent around 3,400 million dollars in security elements, reports Reuters (about 3,023 million euros), with varied systems and ammunition, and the EU has committed 1,500 million. That includes training to use them. The Javelins require some training, and the advantage of Ukraine is that, as Wezeman explains, they already received these missiles in 2018 and had personnel “trained by the United States” since then.

Russia is now concentrating its forces in eastern and southern Ukraine, where progress is slow, after having to withdraw with heavy losses from the outskirts of kyiv, where the Russian Army has carried out massacres of civilians that the EU is investigating as crimes of war. In recent days, Moscow has launched missiles against railways to try to interrupt the flow of weapons being pumped by Western countries, which the Kremlin considers to be targets and about which it has shown its discomfort to the United States, threatening “unforeseeable consequences”.

In this second phase of the war, in the offensive on the Donbas region, anti-tank missiles will also be important. However, “if Ukraine wants to retain territory and carry out counter-offensives away from the guerrilla warfare that we expected it to do, it will need not only anti-tank, but also anti-aircraft systems, among others,” explains Michel. For analyst Wezeman, the Javelins will continue to be effective because the Russians not only use the same type of tank, with that design that makes them vulnerable, but they use them the same as at the beginning of the war. “There is no time to think up or produce new types of tanks or protections that can be added to them,” he says. “Russia basically continues to operate the way it did in the first few weeks and they keep running into new Javelins run by Ukrainian troops, who know they have a winning weapon that they are getting more units from.”

The Ukrainians ask for more weapons, also more Javelin. The United States has sent about a third of those it had in storage (the total inventory is not published), according to calculations by analyst Mark F. Cancian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington (CSIS, in English). This led some experts to wonder how many are still available for the US in a mid-April article titled Will the US run out of Javelin before Russia runs out of tanks?, Cancian picks up on this concern, explaining that replenishing stock takes time – it takes 32 months to make them. Added to this is the crisis in semiconductors, necessary for this type of technology, and the fact that more countries are rearming, which together could slow down the arrival of the requested Javelins in Ukraine. To avoid this possibility, Biden made it clear at the missile factory that a large part of the new aid that he is asking Congress will be to replace material that has already been sent.

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