US Delivery of Longer-Range Rockets to Ukraine Pushed Back to 2024

At the start of the year, reports surfaced suggesting that the US leadership intended to boost Kiev’s capability to strike at distant targets. As yet another multimillion-dollar package for Kiev was being assembled, it was revealed that part of the funds would be used to procure Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) for the Ukrainian forces.

As Ukraine faces dwindling foreign support amid its failed counteroffensive, its hopes of getting longer-range GLSDB rockets from the US this year have been dashed, Reuters reported.

Supplies of the Boeing-made Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs were originally planned for early 2023, but the schedule has been pushed back until sometime next year, according to the Pentagon and quoted sources. While Boeing may deliver the GLSDB rockets in late December, several months of testing will be needed after that.

The explanation offered for the delay was that production could not begin without government-supplied materials, and negotiating a new contract took time. The agreement was only signed in March, which deferred delivery to the US military towards the end of the current year.

“We anticipate providing this key capability in the early 2024 timeframe after successful verification," a Pentagon spokesman said.

GLSDBs, produced by the Swedish Saab Group and Boeing, are a modified version of the US corporation’s GBU-39/B precision-guided glide bomb, adapted for use in multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). The GLSDB, capable of hitting targets up to 150 kilometers away, can be fired from multiple launch rocket systems such as HIMARS.

Ukraine has already received huge quantities of advanced military hardware from the US and its allies, including everything from multiple launch rocket systems and armored vehicles to M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks. But the Kiev regime has constantly demanded long-range rockets capable of striking deep within Russia.

Last year, reports surfaced that Boeing had offered to supply Ukraine with high-precision ammunition for ground missile systems that would allow it to strike far beyond the front lines. At the time it was stated that the Pentagon was studying Boeing's proposal amid declining US and allied military stockpiles. It was optimistically claimed that the GLSDBs could be delivered as early as spring 2023.

Earlier in the year, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that its air defense systems had shot down a GLSDB for the first time. That was followed by another the following month and seven more in October.

"Air defense systems intercepted 18 HIMARS MLRS shells and one GLSDB guided missile over the day," the ministry said in a statement in late March.

However, a US official and an insider told Reuters the US had not supplied any of these bombs to Ukraine.

The delay in US attempts to further boost Kiev’s capability to strike at distant targets comes as a bitter blame game unfolds in Kiev amid its botched counteroffensive, which yielded few results apart from huge losses in manpower and military hardware. The resulting Zelensky-Zaluzhny spat has already had a visible impact on Kiev’s internal politics.

Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny had undercut President Volodymyr Zelensky’s optimistic appraisal of the front-line situation in an op-ed for The Economist, admitting that the summer counteroffensive had reached a “stalemate,” and that there would be no “deep and beautiful breakthrough” against Russia, regardless of what “NATO textbooks” say.

Zelensky was quick to retort during a press conference with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in early November that “this is not a stalemate,” and later sacked several of Zaluzhny's allies. That was followed by an escalating string of events — including the mysterious bomb explosion death of one of the commander’s key aides, Gennady Chastyakov, and this week’s poisoning of Marianna Budanova, wife of the Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate chief Kyrylo Budanov.

As a fierce internal power struggle unfolds in Kiev, Ukrainian ‘fatigue’ increasingly manifests itself in the US and EU, threatening to dash Kiev’s hopes for continued NATO funding.

Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against further involvement in the conflict. Providing Kiev with more powerful weaponry is a deliberate escalation of the conflagration by Washington, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said earlier this year.

"Washington sees no boundaries in seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. The transfer of increasingly powerful weapons to the Kiev regime is a deliberate escalation of the conflict by the United States," Antonov said.

He added that any attempts to inflict damage on Russia are doomed to failure, and "the sooner the United States realizes this, the sooner the current conflict will end." Russia previously sent a diplomatic note to all countries on the issue of arms supplies to Ukraine, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noting that any cargo containing weapons for Ukraine would become a legitimate target for Russia.