Pentagon Says Air Defense Missiles for Israel and Ukraine Are ‘Apples and Oranges’

On Tuesday at a Pentagon briefing spokeswoman Sabrina Singh was asked by a DC reporter why would the US not send America’s best air defense system, called THAADS, to NATO to help protect skies there from possible Russian missile strikes, or even to the eastern edge of the Atlantic Alliance to knock down real missiles bombarding Ukrainian homes and businesses across the border.

That is because, the United States’ senior Defense Department press officer said, Ukraine doesn’t really need it.

“Okay, so different capabilities, different wars, different regions. The commitments also to Israel and Ukraine are different…you’re talking about different capabilities being moved and what’s needed for – should Iran attack again, is a THAAD. For engagements from what Russia is doing in Ukraine, different capabilities such as, as you know, I don’t need to go through the long list. But not to use this expression, but it is a little bit of apples and oranges here.”

The Pentagon over the weekend authorized the deployment of a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery, with crew, to Israel to beef up defenses against surface-to-surface missiles launched by Iran.

The deployment of equipment and US service personnel was in response to Iranian missile strikes on  April 13 and Oct. 1, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said.

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The announcement comes with the promise of further support and follows criticism within Australia of the government’s slowness to act.

Iran, according to official Israeli counts fired “about” 120 ballistic weapons at Israel on Oct. 1. Israeli air defenses backstopped by US warships and French and British combat aircraft reportedly destroyed 99% of incoming weapons. April 13 saw similar near-total obliteration of the Iranian missile strike, thanks to a powerful, integrated anti-ballistic missile network, news reports said.

Comparatively, Ukrainian air defenses have been doing a lot worse.

Over the same April-October time window the Kremlin, using mostly its own weapons but augmenting its strikes with imported Iranian and North Korean missiles, according to Ukrainian Air Force counts, launched a total of 956 missiles of all types at Ukrainian homes, businesses and military targets.

Air defenses claimed 402 missiles were shot down. The kill percentage over the past two and a half months was, per those official numbers, visibly worsening for Kyiv, with only 120 – most with warheads powerful enough to level an apartment building – reported destroyed out of 386 launched.

Ukrainian officials led by President Volodymyr Zelensky have questioned why an air defense network unable to stop more than one out of three Russian missiles counts as not really needing serious American help, while if one out of one hundred missiles fired at Israel get through, it’s still in America’s national interest to send a THAAD battery with uniformed US service personnel to Israel.

The Beltway-focused publication POLITICO reported the answer on Wednesday: “‘The tough answer that Ukrainians may not like to hear but is unfortunately true is that we can take the risk of shooting down Iranian missiles over Israel without triggering direct war with Tehran that could lead to nuclear war,’ a senior US Senate aide who works on Ukraine policy told POLITICO. ‘There’s a lot more risk in trying that with Russia.’ Two Biden administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly, made the same point.”

In June 2023, following Russia’s first-ever deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus, US President Joe Biden said much the same thing, calling the threat of Russia actually using an atomic weapon in future “real.”

In September 2024, according to reports led by The New York Times, the US updated its nuclear war doctrine and placed additional emphasis on strikes originating from outside Russia.

However, Russia’s own nuclear war doctrine also was recently updated. Per the Kremlin’s announced stance on when it would or not employ a nuclear weapon, America arming Ukraine (or any other state) with advanced anti-missile weapons could not – despite Biden’s declaration – even conceivably be grounds for Russia to go nuclear.

The Kremlin on Sept. 25 announced it had expanded the range of possible situations in which Russia might use nuclear weapons in a first strike, adding to longstanding rules about maintaining a second-strike capacity the possible trigger being “aggression by a non-nuclear state with the support or participation of a nuclear state.”

A second, new pre-condition for Russian nuclear weapons employment would be, per statements made in a nationally televised Russian National Security Council meeting, was “the reception of reliable information of the massed launch of an air- or space-based attack against Russia…or the crossing of Russia’s border by those weapons.”

Chairing the meeting, Putin said that the widened national security doctrine was specifically intended to make Russia capable of deterring, or if needed, responding to massed attacks by modern weapons capable of carrying nuclear devices or attacking Russian nuclear weapons capacity.

 The new threat includes attacking “strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic missiles and other flying systems,” Putin said.

The doctrine said nothing about Russian nuclear weapon employment in case of air defense systems’ deployment to a country Russia was at war with. In past statements, Putin has repeatedly said Russia would use nuclear weapons only if the existence of the Russian state was directly threatened.

White House National Security Strategic Communications Advisor John Kirby during a June 26 briefing conceded that the actual threat of nuclear war is relatively low, saying in part “Russia is a nuclear power. We have been monitoring as best we can Russian strategic posture, their nuclear capabilities. That continues. And we’ve seen no indication – outside of the blustery rhetoric, we’ve seen no indication that there is any intent to use nuclear weapons inside Ukraine.”

The US supports Ukraine’s fight against Russia, but America must balance its interests worldwide and neither US personnel nor THAAD will deploy to help Ukraine fight off Russian missile attacks, Singh said.