Don’t lose track of British weapons in Ukraine

While continuing to send arms to Kyiv, we must beware of adversaries stealing our military tech

At a period when the Ukrainian military is desperately in need of fresh arms supplies to support its war efforts, reports that sophisticated Western weaponry is falling into enemy hands can hardly be helpful.

From the start of the Ukraine war back in February, Nato nations have taken great care over the precise nature of the weaponry they have been prepared to provide. Most of the equipment has been supplied with the aim of enabling the Ukrainians to defend themselves, rather than enhancing their offensive capabilities.

Thus, one of Britain’s most important contributions has been the provision of NLAW anti-tank missiles, standard infantry equipment that has had a devastating impact on Russia’s poorly trained armoured units. Similarly, the medium-range missile systems provided by the US and UK have proved effective at disrupting Russia’s weapons supply lines without giving the Ukrainians the means to inflict a knock-out blow against the Russian military.

For the most part, however, the focus has been providing Ukraine with stocks of Soviet-era weapons, such as the recent offer to send 90 Sovietdesigned T-72 tanks, because the Ukrainians are used to fighting with them and there is no risk of sensitive Western technology falling into the hands of adversaries.

For while the West remains committed to helping Ukraine to achieve victory, Nato commanders are also well aware that hostile powers, such as Russia, Iran and China, are taking a keen interest in the technologies deployed on the Ukrainian battlefields to see if they might provide clues to how they could achieve a decisive advantage in any future conflict with the West.

This is why the reports that Moscow has handed over a cache of captured Western weaponry to Tehran in return for supplies of hundreds of Iranianmade drones is deeply troubling. According to recent intelligence, the equipment sent includes a Britishmade NLAW and its American equivalent, the Javelin anti-tank missile, as well as a US Stinger antiaircraft missile.

Most worryingly, these individual devices could provide the Iranians with the opportunity to reverseengineer them, enabling them to produce their own versions of the weapons for use in future conflicts – or perhaps, in the nearer future, to farm them out to proxies in the Middle East.

Iran has in the past been very adept at adopting sophisticated Western technology to build its own advanced stock. American military experts believe that the Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones, which have been used extensively in the Ukraine conflict, are modelled on a US drone that Iranians shot down in 2011.

There are similar, troubling risks concerning other hostile states. China’s new generation of J-20 stealth fighters, for example, bear a striking resemblance to the F-35 stealth warplane developed for use by Nato states. This is for the very simple reason that the Chinese stole the Western technology used to build the F-35.

Such experiences have understandably made Nato leaders cautious about just how much hi-tech weaponry they are prepared to give to Ukraine if there is a risk that it might fall into enemy hands. American military planners, in particular, will be mindful of the difficulties they encountered in the wake of the Afghan conflict in the 1980s when they provided Mujahideen rebels fighting Soviet forces with what were then state-of-the-art Stinger missiles.

After the war ended, the CIA found itself in a desperate race to recover the missiles before they fell into the hands of Islamist terror groups such as al-qaeda, amid concerns that they might be used to shoot down commercial airliners.

Concerns about where weaponry given to Ukraine might end up has consequently made the task of arming

Kyiv’s forces a delicate balancing act: on the one hand the West wants to provide Ukraine with the means to achieve victory; on the other it does not want to risk having, at some point in the future, its own forces or civilians staring into the barrel of Western technology.

This dilemma is made particularly acute at present by the increasing desperation of Ukraine’s leaders, who have made it clear they are in need of a rapid escalation of deliveries because stocks of Soviet-era equipment are in short supply.

There are various options Nato states can employ to ensure the long-term safety of their equipment. In some cases built-in obsolescence is the answer. A more extreme remedy is to take action to destroy the weaponry: US special forces sent to assassinate Osama bin Laden, the al-qaeda chief, in 2011 dynamited a Black Hawk helicopter to prevent it falling into enemy hands after it crashed during the operation.

It is unlikely that these extreme measures will be required in Ukraine, not least because the West has yet to provide such sophisticated weapons. None the less, if we want Ukraine to win the war, we still need to navigate the quandary of supplying adequately advanced equipment without compromising our own militaries.