Ukraine’s defense against Russia is being supported by billions of dollars in military aid from NATO countries. One of the most capable and expensive weapon systems supplied is the FGM-148 Javelin, a US-made anti-armor weapon that costs around $176,000 each.
“We don’t know where or when the next kinetic war is going to be, and producing new weapons, growing production lines takes time,” said Cynthia Cook, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This may be a time when we want to think about how we invest to increase inventory of precision-guided weapons and other weapons and missiles.”
Although the Javelin has been praised for For the Ukrainian government, the actual effectiveness of the weapons system remains difficult to independently verify outside of anecdotal accounts from the battlefield.
“We don’t have people on the ground, and I think that’s a political decision that we need to reconsider,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Waltz, R-Florida, a former U.S. Army Green Beret. “We could help them be more effective if we had advisers on their side, but we would have to do it in very small numbers, very selectively and quietly.
Watch the video above to find out what the Javelin is, how it was used, and what is needed for the US to produce more of them.