U.S. CAN RUSH WEAPONS TO ALLY ‘WITHIN DAYS’
Network of storage sites in the US and Europe would ease fast transfer if long-awaited US$61 billion in aid to Kyiv gets approval by lawmakers
The Pentagon could get weapons moving to Ukraine within days once Congress passes a longdelayed aid bill. That is because it has a network of storage sites in the United States and Europe that already hold the ammunition and air-defence components that Kyiv desperately needs.
Moving fast was critical, Central Intelligence Agency director Bill Burns said last week, since without additional help from the US, Ukraine could lose the war to Russia by the end of this year.
“We would like very much to be able to rush the security assistance in the volumes we think they need to be able to be successful,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said.
The House approved US$61 billion in funding for the war-torn country on Saturday after Speaker Mike Johnson pushed a larger foreign aid bill towards a vote despite threats from within his party that doing so could cost him his job. The bill still needs to clear the Senate.
After the House vote, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he was grateful “for the decision that keeps history on the right track”. He said on X, formerly Twitter, that the House action “will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives and help both of our nations to become stronger”.
US President Joe Biden has said he would sign it immediately.
If that happened, “we have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly”, Ryder said last week. “We can move within days.” The Pentagon has had supplies ready to go for months but has not moved them because it is out of money.
It has already spent all of the funding Congress had previously allocated to support Ukraine, providing more than US$44 billion worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
By December, the Pentagon was US$10 billion in the hole, because it is going to cost more now to replace the systems it sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.
As a result, the Pentagon’s frequent aid packages for Ukraine dried up because there has been no guarantee Congress would pass the additional funding needed to replenish the weapons the country has been sending to its ally.
The legislation would include more than US$20 billion to restock the Pentagon’s shelves and ensure that the military services have what they need to fight and protect the United States.
The lag in weapons deliveries has forced Ukrainian troops to spend months rationing their dwindling supply of munitions.
When an aid package for Ukraine is announced, the weapons are sometimes provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the military to immediately pull from its stockpiles.
Alternatively, weapons can be provided through security assistance, which funds longer-term contracts with the defence industry to obtain the systems.
The presidential drawdown authority has allowed the military to send billions of dollars worth of ammunition, air-defence missile launchers, tanks, vehicles and other equipment to Ukraine.
“In the past, we’ve seen weapons transferred via presidential drawdown authority arrive within a matter of days,” said Brad Bowman, director at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies centre on military and political power.
Those stocks are pulled from bases or storage facilities in the US or from European sites where the US has already positioned weapons to cut down on the amount of time it would take to deliver them once funding was approved.
As the war in Ukraine dragged on, the US began to send increasingly larger, more lethal and more expensive systems to the war front.
They included entire air defence systems, armoured vehicles, sophisticated missiles – even Abrams tanks.
Those systems cost more to replace, so the US military – in particular, the army – went deeper into debt. Compounding that, the military in some cases opted to replace older systems sent to Ukraine with pricier, higher-tech ones at home.
As a result, army leaders recently told Congress that without passage of the foreign aid bill, they would begin to run out of money and have to move funds from other accounts.
Army secretary Christine Wormuth and General Randy George, chief of staff of the army, said the branch would not have enough money to bring home troops serving in Europe or to train units in the US.