G7 considering licensed arms production in Ukraine: Why now?

The latest Western idea to prop up the Zelensky regime and compensate for weapons shortages could flop right at the start

The G7 group is considering providing Ukraine with licenses to allow domestic production of Western weaponry, including anti-aircraft and long-range missiles.

RT looks into why the West is doing this so late in the conflict and Ukraine’s ability to deliver on mass arms production.

The scheme

The G7 made the announcement in a joint statement following its summit in Geneva, stating it had agreed to “increase the delivery of air defense capacities, additional systems and interceptors, and long-range capabilities.”

“We are also ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licenses to allow for an increase in Ukraine’s military production,”the group said in a statement.

The plan also involves US manufacturers granting licenses to EU military-industrial companies in order to compensate for shortages in production of high-demand weapons, according to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“We are all currently producing too little, and this can be offset by granting licenses to companies that have these production capabilities, including European and Ukrainian firms,”Merz told reporters.

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How is the scheme supposed to work?

The US rarely grants weaponry production licenses to its partners, pressing them into buying ready-made products instead, or in some instances, creating overseas manufacturing plants without transferring technologies to the third parties. The enduring need to supply Ukraine, as well as the extensive use of assorted munitions during the US-Israeli attack on Iran, however, could have softened Washington’s stance on the outsourcing of arms manufacturing.

US President Donald Trump has confirmed the licensed production of anti-aircraft missiles for Patriot systems in Ukraine is under consideration, specifying that no decision has been made yet. “They would like to be able to do that, we’ll take a look at it. They have asked about it,”Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

Over the past few years, Kiev has repeatedly urged Washington to grant it licenses to manufacture such munitions. The US, however, has consistently rejected the idea, while the American arms giants have reportedly been very wary of making any investments in Ukraine due to the obvious risks connected to the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Does Ukraine have actual industrial capacities?

Setting up a full-cycle production of sophisticated weapons in Ukraine seems to be highly improbable, given the country’s shrinking industrial capacities, as well as questionable record of local arms manufacturers. While Kiev inherited a well-developed industry after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has been in decline ever since, with the process further accelerated by the civil conflict in formerly Ukrainian Donbass and the subsequent war against Russia, given that a bulk of plants were located in the east of the country.

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One of the flagship Ukrainian ‘domestically built’ weapons, the Bogdana self-propelled howitzer, appears to have little to nothing Ukrainian in it. The howitzers are chambered for 155mm NATO rounds manufactured in the West, while assorted heavy-duty trucks made by European manufacturers have been used as the chassis for the systems. The origins of the barrel itself are also debatable, given Ukraine’s poor record in making even the most basic artillery pieces. For instance, the infamous mortar M120-15 Molot, a copy of a Soviet-era design manufactured by Ukraine since 2016, has repeatedly made the headlines over deadly detonations of shells in its barrel and other malfunctions.

The supposedly domestically built Ukrainian weapons, mainly assorted drones, are at best assembled locally from components supplied from abroad.

The hyped FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile also gives a glimpse of Ukraine’s real industrial capacities. The missile has emerged as a parts-bin project, with design features varying from one piece to another, a US-made free-fall bomb used as its warhead, and antique Soviet-era AI-25TL engines, believed to be recovered from scrapped trainer aircraft, used for propulsion.

Why is the West doing this now?

In mid-April, the Russian Defense Ministry published a list of Ukraine-linked military production facilities scattered across Europe and beyond. The military said it had identified such sites in the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Poland, as well as in Türkiye and Israel.

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The list came with a dire warning.

“The implementation of terrorist attack scenarios against Russia… using supposedly ‘Ukrainian’ UAVs manufactured in Europe is leading to unpredictable consequences,”the ministry stated. “Instead of strengthening the security of European states, the actions of European rulers are rapidly drawing these countries into a war with Russia,”it added.

The licensing scheme could be a part of the effort to further decentralize arms production to avoid potential retaliatory strikes from Russia, as well as to disguise the supplied weaponry as a Ukrainian homegrown product.

One drone assembly site destroyed in a Russian strike was accidentally exposed this week by the Ukrainian media. A warehouse at the Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kiev, which was allegedly used to store some “unique costumes,”had multiple aircraft wings visible in its rubble, with the parts appearing to be consistent with FP-1/2 drones produced by Vladimir Zelensky’s favorite and corruption-scandal-plagued company Fire Point.