Esmond Birnie
THE ARMS industry makes a big deal of end-use certificates, which identify a government agency of the importing state that will use their weapons. Despite this, there is still a thriving illicit market for weapons in conflict zones and embargoed destinations around the world. The Ukraine theatre of war is no exception. In the first year of the war, NLAW (next-generation light anti-tank weapon) effectors – a Northern Irish-made missile system launched from the shoulder against tanks – were much hyped. Thales, which manufacturers the NLAW’s in Belfast, was quick to claim: “Due to its agility, reliability and accuracy, the NLAW has played an important role in Ukraine’s defense.”
Last December, Dr Esmond Birnie – who currently works as a senior economist (economic research) at the University of Ulster but in the past was a UUP MLA – heaped praised on Thales.
“Sometimes an individual weapon becomes synonymous with the outcome of a particular war: the British Spitfire plane or Russian T-34 tank during the Second World War, for example. It is too early to say that the Saab/Thales NLAW light anti-tank missile system won the war for Ukraine against the Russian invasion but news that the UK Ministry of Defence is to buy $280m of those missiles during 2024-26 is evidence of that weapon’s effectiveness,” Birnie said.
Then British defence secretary Ben Wallace claimed the NLAW played a “decisive role” in Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.
It was a surprise then, on a recent episode of Ukraine: The Latest, the Telegraph’s daily podcast on the war, that the newspaper’s defence associate editor, Dominic Nicholls, posited: “I have heard anecdotally from people fighting in Ukraine that the NLAW has in reputational terms had a bit of a dip and I’m told that this is because a lot of them were flying over targets, the BMPs and tanks and what have you”.
Nicholls speculated that this may be “because the firer had not selected OTA, the Overfly Top Attack mode of the missile. They’re doing that because either they had not been trained correctly or, in the heat of the moment, had forgotten their training.”
Interestingly, Daniel Ridley – who has served with the British army and as a Ukrainian marine – was also on the podcast. He runs the Trident Defence Initiative, a team of ex-Nato instructors in Ukraine training the Ukrainian army. When asked about NLAWs, Ridley ventured that, in recent months, “I have personally seen a lot less of them in Ukraine. I don’t know how factual that is, just what I’ve visualised, less of the NLAW.”
Significantly, evidence has already been revealed documenting the fact that some NLAWs sent to Ukraine have ended up in the hands of prominent neo-Nazi’s (see The Phoenix 2/6/23). And in the last month Hamas has released a video showing a supply of AT4 and NLAW anti-tank missiles, claiming they were obtained from Ukrainian arms smugglers. Articles have appeared in the New York Times, and on France 24, Al Jazeera etc assessing the veracity of these claims. Some speculate that it is part of Russian government disinformation but Goldhawk finds it intriguing that just as there are reports of NLAWs disappearing in Ukraine, there are reports of them appearing in Gaza.
