Ukraine Is Building Its Own Tank-Killer Missiles to Fight Russia

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But will they work? 

Sebastien Roblin [2]

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In June 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko famously requested exactly 1,240 Javelin missiles—one for every former Soviet nuclear warhead that Ukraine voluntarily decommissioned in the 1990s. The former Soviet state was ruing its lack of deterrence after Russian tanks and artillery intervened in on behalf of a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

The infrared-guided Javelin is a fire-and-forget portable antitank weapon [3] whose export is strictly controlled by the United States. Finally, in December 2017, the State Department announced Poroshenko would receive his missiles for Christmas [4]—or at least a fraction of his request: just 220 Javelin missiles and thirty-five launch units.

This is not enough to meet Ukraine’s antitank needs. But analysts have already argued [5] that it would be more cost-effective to help Kiev domestically manufacture its own missiles instead. Ukraine was a major industrial center for the Soviet war machine, and much of that arms industry remains—if not necessarily in the best of shape [6]. In particular, Ukraine is producing two new families of antitank missiles which might allow it to counter new Russian tanks at much lower cost, and with fewer strings attached, than the Javelin.