WASHINGTON / KYIV : Behind closed doors in Washington, a discreet but intensifying effort is underway to push the United States toward supplying Ukraine with its most far-reaching conventional strike capability yet: ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to Kyiv Post. The campaign, described by those involved as deliberate and methodical rather than public or confrontational, is being driven by a familiar figure in U.S.–Ukraine defense diplomacy — Dan Rice.
Rice, the president of the American University in Kyiv and a former special adviser to Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, has emerged once again as a central intermediary between Kyiv’s strategic needs and Washington’s internal debates. His latest push comes as the war enters a phase defined by deep-strike warfare, long-range attrition, and growing questions about escalation, deterrence, and end-state leverage.
A Direct Appeal to the Pentagon
This week, Rice held a face-to-face meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a discussion Rice later characterized as “broad and comprehensive,” spanning battlefield realities, strategic trajectories, and Rice’s own extended experience inside Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.
According to Rice, the meeting included a direct and explicit request: that the United States consider transferring a limited, undisclosed number of ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. The missiles, capable of striking targets well over 1,000 kilometers away with high precision, would represent a qualitative leap beyond the systems Ukraine currently fields.
Rice has made clear that this was not a one-off appeal. He says he is raising the same proposal with every relevant U.S. official he meets — across the Pentagon, Congress, and the national security bureaucracy — framing it not as a symbolic escalation but as a narrowly tailored strategic tool.
From ATACMS to Tomahawks
Rice is not new to controversial weapons transfers. During earlier stages of the war, he played a significant behind-the-scenes role in helping build U.S. political support for the delivery of cluster munitions and later ATACMS ballistic missiles, both of which were initially considered politically and strategically sensitive.
Those transfers, once deemed unlikely, eventually materialized after months of internal debate in Washington. Rice now argues that the Tomahawk proposal follows a similar logic — incremental, controlled, and designed to change Moscow’s cost-benefit calculations rather than provoke uncontrolled escalation.
Unlike ATACMS, which have a maximum range of roughly 300 kilometers, Tomahawks would give Ukraine the ability to hold at risk military infrastructure, logistics hubs, and command centers far inside Russian territory. Rice contends that this depth of reach could fundamentally alter Russia’s sense of sanctuary.
The Case for “Limited and Undisclosed”
Central to Rice’s argument is restraint. He is not calling for large-scale transfers or public announcements. Instead, he has advocated for a small number of missiles delivered quietly, without disclosing quantities or deployment details.
Such an approach, he believes, would preserve strategic ambiguity while strengthening deterrence. The uncertainty alone, Rice argues, could force Russia to divert air defenses, relocate assets, and rethink operational planning across a much wider geographic area.
Supporters of this view say the proposal mirrors earlier U.S. decisions to quietly loosen targeting and range restrictions on Western-supplied weapons, steps that were often acknowledged only after the fact.
Resistance and Risk Calculations
Despite the quiet nature of the effort, resistance inside Washington remains significant. Critics warn that Tomahawks, long associated with U.S. power projection and strategic strikes, could be perceived by Moscow as a qualitatively different escalation — even if deployed in small numbers.
There are also logistical and doctrinal questions. Tomahawks are traditionally sea-launched or deployed from sophisticated ground platforms not currently operated by Ukraine. Integrating them would require training, secure basing, and close coordination, raising concerns about operational security and long-term sustainability.
Still, Rice and others argue that the war has already crossed multiple thresholds once thought untouchable, and that Western caution has repeatedly lagged behind battlefield realities.
A Broader Strategic Moment
The renewed push comes at a time when Ukraine’s leadership is increasingly vocal about the need for deeper strike capabilities to offset manpower constraints and Russia’s growing industrial output. Kyiv has consistently argued that without the ability to hit Russian military infrastructure far from the front, the war risks settling into a grinding stalemate that favors Moscow.
For Washington, the debate over Tomahawks reflects a larger strategic dilemma: how to continue supporting Ukraine decisively without becoming a direct party to the conflict, and how to shape an outcome that strengthens deterrence rather than merely prolongs fighting.
For now, the pressure remains quiet, conducted in offices rather than headlines. But as Rice’s campaign suggests, the question of America’s longest-range missiles is no longer theoretical. It is firmly on the table — and being pressed, deliberately, at the highest levels of U.S. defense decision-making.
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