Pentagon: $1B in Ukraine military aid poorly tracked

Nearly 40K weapons are unaccounted for

More than $1 billion worth of shoulder-fired missiles, kamikaze drones and night-vision goggles the United States has sent to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by U.S. officials, a new Pentagon report concluded, raising concerns they could be stolen or smuggled at a time when Congress is debating whether to send more military aid to Ukraine.

The report by the Defense Department’s inspector general, released Thursday, offers no evidence any of the weapons have been misused after being shipped to a U.S. military logistics hub in Poland or sent onward to Ukraine’s front lines.

But it found U.S. defense officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe had failed to quickly or fully account for many of the nearly 40,000 weapons that by law should have been closely monitored because their battlefield impact, sensitive technology and relatively small size makes them attractive bounty for arms smugglers.

“These are identified as the items — that because of their sensitivity, their vulnerability to diversion or misuse or the consequences of that — it’s particularly important to have this additional tracking and accountability in place,” Robert Storch, the Pentagon’s inspector general, who is also the lead watchdog for U.S. aid sent to help Ukraine’s war effort, said in an interview Thursday.

The report was sent to Congress on Wednesday and a copy of it was provided to The New York Times. The Pentagon’s inspector general released a redacted version Thursday. It did not investigate whether any weapons had been diverted for illicit use, which “was beyond the scope of our evaluation to determine,” it noted.

The number of weapons reviewed in the report represents only a small fraction of about $50 billion in military equipment that the United States has sent Ukraine since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region. Most of the weapons that have been delivered so far — including tanks, air-defense systems, artillery launchers and ammunition — were pledged after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Yet the investigation offers a first glimpse of efforts to account for the most sensitive tools of American military might that have been rushed to Ukraine in the last two years. In that time, as concerns grew the flood of weapons would inevitably lead to arms trafficking, lawmakers have demanded strict oversight of the shipments.

The findings released Thursday will almost certainly fuel skepticism in Congress over providing more military aid to Ukraine. Already, House Republicans are blocking a spending plan that would provide an additional $61 billion for the war effort. Combined with Ukraine’s long history of corruption and arms smuggling, the demand for closer accounting is certain to rise.

The report did not detail how many of the 39,139 highrisk pieces of materiel given to Ukraine were considered “delinquent” but it put the potential loss at about $1 billion.

As of June, the latest data available, the United States had given Ukraine nearly 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 2,500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and about 750 kamikaze Switchblade drones, 430 medium-range air-to-air missiles and 23,000 night-vision goggles. It also provided launcher parts for the Javelins and Stingers that were to be kept in stockpiles even after the missiles were fired.

As much as 60% of the arms and equipment that were provided as of June were “delinquent,” either because they were delayed in being inventoried in a database designed to track them, or because they were never added after they left American or allied military stockpiles.