Raytheon CEO Says the US is Transferring Weapons from the Middle East to Ukraine 

Gregory Hayes, the CEO of military industrial complex heavyweight Raytheon Technologies, said on November 30, 2022 that the US government is working with Middle Eastern partners to transfer air defense systems to Ukraine.

“The [Pentagon] is going to attempt to do some trading for us where we’ll take some from the [West Asian] countries that are our friends and some from our NATO allies, and try and get those into Ukraine early next year,” Hayes stated. According to a report by The Cradle, Hayes added that the weapons will be  “[backfilled] with new production over the next two years.”

Hayes did not list out which specific  countries the US would be working with to realize this plan.

The plan’s principal objective is to send National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) to Ukraine in the next three to six months. It wants to do so in order to avoid a two-year wait for new ones coming from Raytheon’s factory.

“Just because it takes 24 months to build, it doesn’t mean it’s going to take 24 months to get [to Ukraine],” he stated.

Five NATO members — Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, and Spain — u

se NASAMS. Additionally, Oman and Qatar use these systems per records from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Countries such as Australia, Chile, Finland, and Indonesia also operate the systems. The Biden regime allegedly gave the greenlight to approve the transfer of the air defense systems to Ukraine. 

Hayes made this public announcement a day following the US army’s decision to grant Raytheon a $1.2 billion contract to Raytheon for six NASAMS to Ukraine, which form part of the fifth Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) package which has a total value of $2.98 billion.

Since Russia initiated its special military operation in Ukraine at the end of February, the US Congress has given the go-ahead to over $60 billion in military and economic assistance to Ukraine. 

Several weeks ago, US President Joe Biden called on Congress to allocate an additional $38 billion in Ukraine aid. Should this proposal get Congress’s stamp of approval, the total amount of US taxpayer dollars being sent to American weapon manufacturers and Ukrainian authorities would end up at around $104 billion. 

The US is clearly going all in during this proxy conflict in Ukraine. None of this increased aid to Ukraine will create a positive outcome. It will only prolong the suffering in Ukraine and possibly result in its destruction given Russia’s escalatory dominance and the maximalist aims it may be compelled to pursue if the West continues dumping military aid into the country. 

The US government simply needs to stop sending aid to Ukraine and re-purpose its military resources towards defending our border.

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