According to an announcement from the Ministry of Defence, the UK government and defence industry are set to bolster their support for Ukraine.
Ukraine will now be able to use UK Export Finance to purchase military equipment from British companies.
Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, Maria Eagle, met with Ukrainian officials and UK defence industry leaders in Ukraine to kick-start negotiations for contracts under the newly signed Defence Export Support Treaty.
This treaty, established during President Zelenskyy’s recent visit to the UK, enables Ukraine to draw on £3.5 billion of export finance to acquire military equipment from UK companies.
“The UK stands united with Ukraine. Our government has already pledged to step up support, confirming £3bn a year to support Ukraine and a new package of crucial ammunition, anti-armour missiles and artillery guns,” said Maria Eagle. “My visit is another demonstration of our commitment to work in partnership with industry to boost production of essential military kit, both for Ukraine and to replenish UK stocks.”
During her visit, Eagle met with Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Strategic Industries for European Integration, Serhiy Boyev, and the Ukrainian National Armaments Director, Oleksandr Serhii. She also toured UK industrial facilities in Ukraine to observe how the UK is enhancing Ukraine’s industrial capacity.
This visit follows closely on the heels of meetings held in London with President Zelenskyy and industry leaders, where the UK defence industry’s provision of critical equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces was highlighted.
UK firms are collaborating with local partners in Ukraine to provide maintenance and repair services for UK-supplied weapons and to ensure vehicles and equipment are operational.
It will be interesting to see what they buy given the UK defence industry is more focused on components than finished systems. Many of the finished systems we do produce are too high end to sell Ukraine like Typhoon, Astute and T26.
Land Ceptor would seem like an obvious choice.
I would imagine it may come in the form of lots of Brimstone, LMM, NLAW, etc. rather than complete (expensive and complex) systems. Although your suggestion of Land Ceptor is a good one that would fit their needs very well.
It’d be nice to see if we couldn’t sell them a bunch of Foxhound or other MRAP-style vehicles; we still need to decide on those ourselves and I’d love to replace our stalled JLTV order with a domestic one. If Ukraine bought them in quantity too, may just be what’s needed.
I can’t see them getting involved in Ajax, and I think they’re really loving their tracked IFVs, so Boxer is unlikely to cut it- except in RCH 155 form.
Maybe they’ll get involved in drones with us? The UK is leading the European drone initiative alongside Lithuania (or is it Latvia?), and we’re supposed to be providing them with all kinds of UAVs of different classes that aren’t even in British inventory (or development programmes).
One hopes that more mature developments of SuperCat based ASRAAM and Brimstone and LMM based mobile solutions are high priority projects.
Good point about SupaCat/ASRAAM- I’d forgotten about that. Mid-ranged SAMs that can hit stuff at 6000 m+ altitude are needed to stop the Russians from flying UAVs deep into Ukrainian airspace hunting for targets of opportunity for their Iskanders etc. which is apparently happening quite a lot at the moment.
Why are we sending Ukraine £3billion/ year when we have been told there is a £20billion hole in our finances.
Wait. We give money to Ukraine, who then use it to buy kit from British companies?
Why not just send the kit and save on time and admin?
Presumably we haven’t got enough left.
We certainly have not got enough artillery kit to send any more.
Totally agree Graham
They’ve largely had all the AS90s if I’m not mistaken.
Artificial boost to GDP?
It’s pretty sensible really. Ukraine spend the money here, the companies pay corporation tax, the employees pay income tax and NI so a decent chunk of it comes back to the treasury.
Why not just buy the kit directly and have it shipped?
Ukraine gets to choose what it wants, as opposed to us guessing.
It’s money Ukraine is borrowing from us to buy UK content. We provide cheap loans and guarantees and they get to select what they want to spend it on.
It differs from direct military aid where we buy stuff and send it to them for free.
Much of the US and German aid is on the same basis.
Exactly the US and France have been doing this for decades we seem to be a little slow to catch on.
What’s artificial about it?
Instead of us just handing them equipment over which would not reflect through GDP, we hand them the money and they spend it themselves as a foreign arms sale…. Hence a boost to GDP
No I get that. But we’d have to replace whatever we supplied to them, and purchase from (hopefully) UK arms manufacturers.
Well if they order and buy it then one presumes the Companies supply the orders as they would any other order perhaps with added priority that’s all. Upon such basis most companies would consider enhancing their ability to produce as is the capitalist way. Not too unlike people on here saying if we give a priority sale of one or more T-26 to Norway we would need to up the overall production speed for ourselves to minimalist delay while gaining a welcome boost to Bae and our economy.
We have sent a huge amount of ageing kit. This is all about UKR buying new kit from manufacturers. Are you suggesting HMG pays for the kit that UKR orders? Our defence budget is not sufficient for that. It is not even big enough to buy all the kit our own armed forces needs.
Got to see some FV432s pootling across Ukraine when Boxer finally reaching IOC.
I would not be surprised….and Warriors, no doubt.
Yes, both very likely.
This way it can come from a different budget, and we get all the GDP boosts etc. Win win
Is this part of the circular economy…..?
I still think it would be great to include them with project Tempest and stand back and watch the Russian froth at the mouth.
To be clear, is “export finance” gifted money or loaned money?
Meteor (ever been fitted on an F-16?), Starstreak, Martlet, UAVs esp. with laser designator, Brimstone, MSI-DS Terrahawk, 155mm and 105mm ammunition.