The Pentagon has a funding gap of about $10 billion to replace U.S. military weapons that have been shipped to Ukraine, a shortfall that will require additional funding from Congress to fill, senior Defense Department officials said Monday.
“We’re probably looking at providing about $10 billion to replace all the supplies we’re sending to Ukraine,” one official told VOA.
“We foresee no possible alternatives to supplementary funding [bill] Or add that money to an appropriations bill to get the complement that we need,” Deputy Defense Secretary Katherine Hicks told reporters.
Pentagon officials expect to receive funding to replenish those stockpiles in a supplemental request from the Biden administration, which includes billions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. However, Congress has yet to pass a supplemental aid bill amid disputes over spending and U.S. border security.
The shortfall is related to how the Pentagon accounts for aid to Ukraine. In June last year, the Pentagon said the value of arms shipments to Ukraine over the past two years had been overestimated by about $6.2 billion.
Officials told VOA at the time that in calculating the aid package, the Defense Department was calculating the cost of replacing the weapons provided to Ukraine, while the Defense Department said it should calculate the total cost of the systems actually sent.
The mistake gave the Pentagon the legal cover it needed to send more aid to Ukraine, but the question remains that more money is needed to replenish the U.S. military stockpile with newer, more expensive weapons.
Another defense official told VOA that failure to replenish U.S. stockpiles will have a negative impact on the military’s readiness.
The Defense Department still has about $4 billion in authority to provide aid to Ukraine, but Pentagon officials told reporters that providing additional aid without the ability to replenish U.S. weapons stockpiles would be a risk the Defense Department is not willing to take at this time.
But retired Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a defense analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that the United States could deliver some key weapons to Kyiv without affecting military readiness “because the Army no longer needs them.”
One of the weapons is a 155 mm cluster munition, which Montgomery said the United States does not use in its combat plans.
“This will soon provide Ukraine with 155 mm ammunition,” he said.
Another weapon that could be sent immediately without causing a loss to U.S. military readiness is the M113 armored vehicle.
“We have thousands of them that we are getting rid of. We can move these to Ukraine,” he told VOA.
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