Secretly?

Is the U.S. giving Ukraine some weapons secretly?

By ALEXANDER WARD, LEE HUDSON and PAUL MCLEARY

Rumors are swirling around Washington that the United States has provided Ukraine with more weapons than the administration has announced publicly.

On Friday, a senior Pentagon official said the U.S. had been quietly supplying the Ukrainians with High-speed Anti-Radiation missiles — used for targeting radar systems — for some time. “[W]hen we first announced the initial provision of HARM missiles, the way that we characterized it in the announcement was not specific. We described that we were providing a counter-radar capability,” the official said.

Two days later, Yahoo! News published a story that argued the recent attacks on Russian targets in Crimea weren’t the result of special operations teams carrying explosives, as Ukraine suggests. Instead, the blasts were the result of long-range missile strikes, former U.S. special operators told MICHAEL WEISS and JAMES RUSHTON. But Ukraine doesn’t have any missiles with the range to strike Saki air base in Crimea, they noted — at least not with the missiles America and its partners publicly say they transferred.

One possibility, per Weiss and Rushton, is that the U.S. has secretly sent the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to Ukraine. If true — and it’s not clear that it is — that would go against what the administration has said publicly. In July, national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN told the Aspen Security Forum that sending those missiles would further provoke Russia and potentially instigate World War III.

Okay, so maybe NatSec Daily was overthinking things. But then today, two people familiar with the move said the U.S. included Excalibur precision-guided munitions in the Aug. 19 weapons package, even though the administration didn’t publicly announce them. Furthermore, a document sent by the administration Friday to lawmakers, and seen by NatSec Daily, lists what was in the latest $775 million package, noting that what goes to Ukraine isn’t “limited” to what’s featured in the notification.

We admit this is all speculation. No member of the administration confirmed or even hinted that there were secret shipments of weapons to Ukraine. Even if there were, there’s little to no chance they’d share a classified decision with us.

But if there's anything to the secret-weapons theory, some experts would be supportive of the more-quiet approach. “It’s gratifying that the administration appears to be talking less and doing more in terms of the weapons transfers. That’s good because it gives the Russians a little bit of uncertainty about what we’re doing,” said the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ TOM KARAKO.

The whispers about the U.S. giving Ukraine more than it lets on are only growing, not dying out. We’ll stay on it to see if it’s part of the D.C. rumor mill or there really is something to it.