US Javelin Missile Becomes Weapon of the Ukrainian Resistance

The Javelin anti-armor missile, the weapon of the Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invasion, was dedicated as “a saint,” with a meme of Mary Magdalene with one of these projectiles going viral on social networks.

After the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the United States has supplied 1,600 Javelin anti-armor systems to Ukraine. It was announced in the middle of this month that another 2,000 will be added, along with 7,000 anti-tank shells of other types.

Everything indicates that so far they are working; according to the U.S. and its allies, the advance of Russia, which is using armored cars, has been obstructed since the beginning of the invasion on Feb. 24 thanks to the Ukrainian resistance.

“Quite simply, the Javelin is the best missile system in the U.S. and probably the world,” said retired Col. Liam Collins, executive director of the Madison Policy Forum think tank.*

In this sense, he called to mind that in 2014 the Russian T-90 tanks that crossed the border in support of the separatists of the Donbas region of Ukraine were “impenetrable” to the anti-armor defenses available to the Ukrainians. “That’s why we had to supply them (the Ukrainians) with Javelins, capable of eliminating the most modern Russian tank, with the most armor and which is reactive, to put them out of the game,” he said.*

The Javelin is a missile of the “fire-and-forget” type. That is, once it is launched, it does not need any additional guidance, whether it be the illumination of the target or a cable to hit its target, or that its launcher remains in place.

In this way, the person who fires this missile, which can be carried on the shoulder, doesn’t have to expose himself, as happened with the old anti-tank shells, which “had to remain connected all the time with a heavy cable used to guide the missile,” Col. Collins said.*

For his part, Michael Patrick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, specified that the Javelin enables the shooter “to hide in a ditch, you begin to run or do what you need to not die, while the missile is tracking with infrared imagery.”*

The Javelin is light and hits the target from above and not sideways like other missiles, so it hits armored cars directly at their weak point; this can be done from two miles away.

Mulroy, founder of the Lobo Institute, a retired Marine and former CIA paramilitary operations officer, highlighted another quality: It costs about $200,000 compared to the about $20 million that a state-of-the-art tank can be worth.

The Javelins are developed and produced by American companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. They have gained a lot of notoriety thanks to a meme created by the Ukrainian-Polish-Canadian marketing specialist Christian Borys of “Saint Javelin:” a Mary Magdalene carrying this missile, that has gone viral in recent weeks.

Borys created a website on which he sells stickers and other products with the image of “Saint Javelin” for the purpose of raising funds to give humanitarian aid to Ukrainians.

“Saint Javelin” is a tribute to a missile that is effective for Ukrainians, because, as Collins assured, it has hardly any flaws. “That’s why it’s such a fabulous weapon, it has extremely high odds of succeeding because it’s a superior attack weapon that hits the weakest point,” he added.*

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.