“It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the U.S. official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”

An Army spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The weapon, co-developed by Boeing and Saab, is made up of a precision-guided 250-pound bomb strapped to a rocket motor and fired from various ground launchers. The U.S. military has a similar version of the bomb that is air-launched, but a ground-launched version does not yet exist in U.S. inventory.

The Pentagon
announced last February that the Biden administration was providing the new bomb to Ukraine. But before sending the new version, the U.S. military needed to test the weapon — and that took many months.

The Army oversaw the testing of the new precision-guided bomb before providing its stamp of approval to send the weapon to Ukraine, according to an industry source.

The air-launched version was created in 2019, but despite successful tests, Boeing and Saab did not make a sale until the U.S. decided to donate it to Ukraine as part of an aid package.

The Biden administration has already provided Ukraine with a limited number of longer-range weapons. Last fall, officials
secretly sent a version of the Army Tactical Missile System, which carries warheads containing hundreds of cluster bomblets that can hit targets 100 miles away.