On Thursday, a Senate aide and a Defence official said that the Pentagon overestimated the value of the ammunition, missiles, and other equipment it sent to Ukraine by about $3 billion. Such an error may pave the way for supplying surplus weaponry to Kyiv to defend against Russian forces.
Overview
Two senior defence officials stated that the error resulted from assigning a higher value than was warranted to weaponry taken from US stocks and then shipped to Ukraine, as Reuters exclusively reported.
According to one of the top defence officials, “we’ve discovered inconsistencies in how we value the equipment that we’ve given” to Ukraine. The officials and the aide to the Senate spoke anonymously. According to the sources, the accounting adjustment was communicated to Congress.
The miscalculation occurred when officials overestimated some of the systems shipped to Ukraine, calculating the cost of replacing an item rather than the weapon’s worth. The Pentagon opted to draw from the stockpiles of older, existing equipment in many military aid packages because it can transfer such goods to Ukraine faster.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh stated, “During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from US stocks.”
She said the error had not stopped the US from supporting Ukraine or sending aid to the battlefield.
The Pentagon overcounted the value of weapons and other equipment sent to Ukraine by roughly $3 billion, an error that means more U.S. defense funds will be available to support the Ukrainian effort to beat back the Russian invasion https://t.co/xJRN7Q9tgs
— TIME (@TIME) May 18, 2023
In the case of 155-millimetre ammunition for Howitzer guns, which has been transferred to Ukraine in large quantities, each round costs almost $800 today. However, according to one of the senior defence officials, the real cost of each shell, which has been provided to the US military every year for decades, can be averaged at a far lower price.
A defence official said that, as the Pentagon investigates the situation more thoroughly, it’s possible that the cost of the overpriced weapons could exceed $3 billion.
Pentagon Error Raises Questions
The acknowledgement of error comes at a time when Congress is increasing pressure on the Pentagon to take responsibility for the billions of dollars it has spent deploying weapons, ammunition, and equipment to Ukraine, and some lawmakers are questioning whether that level of support should be maintained.
House Foreign Affairs and House Armed Services chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) slammed the Pentagon over the error. They stated in a joint statement, “The revelation of a three-billion-dollar accounting error discovered two months ago and only today shared with Congress is extremely problematic.” Additionally, they pointed out that “These funds could have been used for extra supplies and weapons for the upcoming counteroffensive, instead of rationing funds to last for the remainder of the fiscal year.”
US Representative Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “The Department of Defense’s change in evaluating the costs of arms sent to Ukraine is a major mistake.” He continued, “Its effect would be to underestimate future needs for our European allies. Our priority should be a Ukrainian victory over Putin. Unilaterally altering military aid calculations is an attempt at deception and undermines this goal.”
Members of Congress have regularly questioned Defence Department officials about how thoroughly the US monitors its help to Ukraine to ensure that money is not vulnerable to fraud or ends up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has stated that it has a “robust program” established to trace the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to monitor it after it arrives, depending on the sensitivity of each weapon system.
In late February, the Pentagon’s inspector general stated that his agency had discovered no indication that any of the billions of dollars in weaponry and supplies to Ukraine were lost to corruption or transferred into the wrong hands. He warned that the investigations were still in their early stages.
The Pentagon rectifying the mistake could also free up additional funds for essential weapons as Ukraine prepares for a long-anticipated counteroffensive that will need a great deal of military assistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the attack has been postponed due to insufficient supplies.
Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the United States has supplied Ukraine with almost $37 billion in military aid. Most of it has been in weapons systems, millions of munitions and ammunition rounds, and various vehicles, sensors, radars, and other equipment retrieved from Pentagon stockpiles and promptly sent to Ukraine.