US to Fund Drone-Bombing of Western Russia, the First $800M Already on the Way

A joint US-Ukrainian bombing campaign materializes through the back door

The US is giving Kiev $0.8 billion specifically to build long-range drones to be fired into western Russia. This is also only the first of many such payments to follow:

“The United States has agreed to give Ukraine $800 million in military aid that will go toward manufacturing long-range drones…”

“A Pentagon official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed the move…”

“President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a briefing with journalists Monday that the money was just the first U.S. disbursement for Kyiv’s weapons production and long-range capabilities.”

The New York Times describes this as a “consolation prize” for Ukraine after not getting Storm Shadows and JASSM cruise missiles along with the authorization and the help to fire them into western Russia.

“The decision to support long-range drone production in Ukraine may be a kind of consolation prize for Mr. Zelensky, who — despite repeated pleas — has so far failed to persuade Western partners to lift restrictions on using their long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia.”

As far as consolation prizes go this is a gargantuan one. $800 million buys 800 cruise missiles. For the same investment, thousands of long-range drones can eventually be built. A cruise missile is faster and less likely to be shot down, but it doesn’t matter that much. Taking up 40 percent of the European land mass, western Russia is vast, offering numerous targets and paths that can not all be covered by air defenses. Even if many are lost, several thousand drones still likely constitute far more destructive firepower, and a more complicated and persistent problem for Russia than 800 missiles.

It is useful to appreciate that even if the designations “cruise missile” and “long-range drone” are dissimilar these are not distinct types of weapons. In WW2 parlance they would both be deemed a “flying bomb” with the difference being propulsion. A traditional cruise missile is jet-powered, whereas the new long-range kamikaze drones are piston-powered, but they’re the same thing. A guided, self-propelled warhead capable of great distances in level flight. (ATACMS clocking in at $2 million is ballistic and is more distinct.)

The star of Ukraine’s strategic bombing campaign, the AN-196 Lyuty drone/flying bomb is 4 meters long, has a 7-meter wingspan, and delivers up to 250 kg of explosives. It has struck as far as 1500 km into Russia.

In high-profile attacks, the Ukrainian drone bombing campaign has dealt damage to Russian airbases, refineries, and ammo stockpiles deep in Russia, as well as closed down Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, but its bread-and-butter are attacks on the Russian electrical grid in the border regions, setting fire to rural power stations with the small-fry Rubaka drones.

Can Ukrainian manufacturing turn the first $0.8 billion and subsequent injections into a massive stream of heavy kamikaze drones? I don’t know. But I do know that when it comes to manufacturing small frontline drones Ukraine is immensely productive.

The Russians have a quantitative edge in the slightly more hi-tech stuff like “loitering munitions” (Lancet) and surveillance drones (Orlan), but in the category of the most basic drones which are the most widespread by far, there is a rough parity (troops on both sides complain the other side has more). Ukraine’s domestic drone production (mainly assembly from Chinese components) has perhaps been its biggest success story of the war. Despite government underfunding the sector is spitting out staggering numbers of weapons and innovating at break-neck speeds.

So there is more than a decent chance that between American financing and the lack of effective Chinese export controls, something similar can be replicated for heavier strategic drones. In fact, by getting funds, rather than ready-made US munitions Kiev benefits twice, because it still gets the firepower in the end, but it also develops capacity.

The US decision to dump billions into Ukraine’s long-range drone manufacturing rather than authorizing its own JASSMs and ATACMS is disappointing to Kiev because that campaign isn’t primarily about the weapons, it’s about drawing the US closer into the war, and making it more invested in its outcome.

“Lifting restrictions” sounds innocuous, but what hides behind that is a demand for a joint American-Ukrainian bombing campaign vs western Russia. Zelensky and the pliant Western media frame the issue as being that the US has transferred missiles, but is not allowing them to be fired into Russia (only into Crimea and Donbass).

This sidesteppes the reality that ATACMs and Storm Shadows are fired in what amounts to a joint US-Ukrainian operation with the US handling the bulk of the intelligence side.

The US provides the satellite imagery, based on which targets, and opportune times to strike them are selected. As well as the optimal flight paths to best avoid, surprise, and destroy Russian air defenses. It provides post-strike analysis based on which lessons are drawn (eg how best to stagger an attack), and decisions on whether to re-strike are made.

Michael Kofman of Carnegie, September 10, 2024

In short, American involvement doesn’t end with handing over the missiles, their effective employment requires ongoing intelligence support by the US.

Thus the Ukrainian pressure campaign was actually for the joint US-Ukrainian strike campaign against Crimea to be expanded to mainland Russia.

That is something Putin is very much aware of (in fact Putin has repeatedly simplified the whole matter to a claim that only NATO officers may press the launch button which is not true).

Indeed the first and only time that Putin ever drew a line in the sand in this war, publicly and clearly articulating additional US involvement would constitute the US entering the war directly and trigger a response was in September in relation to this possibility.

Biden and Starmer came close to defying Putin but then balked at the last yard. Mostly because there was no consensus within the US Government itself. The State Department was gung-ho, but the Pentagon, which does not want to copy the UK in seeing its missile stocks depleted, objected. Also, the intelligence agencies warned Putin wasn’t joking.

Nonetheless, how is funding the production of flying bombs in defense plants in Ukraine actually different from flying in Storm Shadows? It appeases Pentagon’s stockpile worries, and it introduces an additional step that muddies the waters. It also postpones the strike campaign for when the weapons are ready in numbers, but the essence is unchanged.

There is no chance that having paid for these weapons to be built, the US will then withdraw the satellite support required for their effective employment. So you still end up with a joint American-Ukrainian strike campaign against western Russia. A campaign in which the Ukrainians do the physical tasks of manipulating the weapons, but that owes its effectiveness and scale almost exclusively to US-provided funds and intelligence capabilities.

Yes, it was Russia which crossed Ukraine’s borders in 2022. But did Russia cross US borders? The US currently illegally occupies the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. If Russia paid Cuba to build and fire heavy kamikaze drones into the US mainland, would DC regard this as anything other than a Russian attack to be subdued with extreme force?

Once this campaign starts in earnest, Russia will find itself in a curious position of being on the other end of a US strike campaign, similar to minnows Libya, Yugoslavia and North Vietnam. If that passes without a drastic Russian counterblow, Moscow will cease to be a great power.

In my reading of the situation, Putin is very keen on preventing this from happening — not because of the loss of prestige to Russia, but because he is extremely reluctant to upset the wartime social contract he has offered Russians. One in which he goes unquestioned (long-tabling), but in return, the populace has the option to remain outside the war and not feel it. That changes if American-funded drones are crashing into electric stations, refineries, and apartment blocks.

Luckily for the US — and catastrophically for Russia — there are indices that Putin is so intent on avoiding this blow to regime legitimacy that he may call off Russia’s own, much more consequential, strategic bombing campaign in Ukraine if the Americans-Ukrainians will do likewise. (Such a truce already existed, was only scrapped because Kiev violated it. And would have probably been reinstated by now, if not for the Kursk invasion launched during the talks which Putin saw as more Ukrainian duplicity. Nonetheless, as Ukraine is being pushed out of Kursk the technical talks on mutually ending strikes on economic targets have popped back up.) More about that, and how that reassures the Imperials further intervention is safe, in another piece if time permits.

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