Posted on 07/23/2014 7:50:35 AM PDT by lbryce
Last month, Ukraine quietly asked the United States and NATO for sensitive equipment to jam the radars that Russian anti-aircraft systems use to lock their missiles on planes. As the United States and NATO last month began to publicly acknowledge the sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft systems moving into rebel held areas of eastern Ukraine, the government in Kiev asked for gear that might be used to counter those weapons.
According to a former senior U.S. defense official who has worked closely with Ukraine’s military and a former head of state who has consulted with the government there, Kiev last month requested the radar jamming and detection equipment necessary to evade and counter the anti-aircraft systems Moscow was providing the country’s separatists.
Those anti-aircraft systems were almost certainly used to shoot down MH17, the Malaysian air passenger jet shot out of the sky last Thursday. U.S. officials have pointed the finger at Russia for providing that equipment, though no final assessment has been made of culpability for the incident.
Philip Karber, a former strategy adviser to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, has conducted detailed assessments of the country’s military since the crisis began this year. Karber returned from the Ukrainian front earlier this month. He told The Daily Beast, “I was told in June by the Ukrainians that one of their top five priorities that they had conveyed to the United States and NATO that month was to get help in electronic warfare,” which gives a military the ability to detect, spoof and jam the radars of enemy anti-aircraft missile batteries.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
I still fail to see what pressing national interest the U.S. has in Ukraine. This is a European problem. Let them deal with it.
Obama can’t be bothered to help our Ukrainian allies he’s got fundraisers to go to and golf games to play.
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