WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even as the military remains deeply in debt and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it needs has taken from its supplies to help Kiev in its desperate situation. fight against Russia, senior defense officials said Tuesday.
It is the first security package announced by the Pentagon for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it had run out of replenishment funds. Only in recent days did officials publicly acknowledge that not only were they out of replenishment money, but that they were also $10 billion in the red.
The replenishment funds have allowed the Pentagon to take existing munitions, air defense systems and other weapons from its reserve inventories under Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), send them to Ukraine and then draw up contracts to replace those weapons.
One of the senior defense officials who briefed reporters said the package was a “one-time effort” — unless Congress passes a stalled supplemental spending bill that includes about $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine, or more cost savings are found. It is expected to include anti-aircraft missiles, artillery shells and armor systems, the official said.
The aid announcement comes as Polish leaders are in Washington to pressure the US to break the impasse over replenishing funds for Ukraine at a crucial moment in the war. Polish President Andrzej Duda met with Democratic and Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Tuesday and was scheduled to meet President Joe Biden later in the day.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has so far declined to bring up the $95 billion package, which includes aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. In an effort to put pressure on the Republican chairman, Democrats in the House of Representatives have launched a protracted effort to force a vote through a discharge petition. This rarely successful procedure would require the support of a majority of lawmakers, or 218 members, to put the aid package to a vote.
The situation in Ukraine has become even more dire as frontline units are rationing ammunition while facing a much better supplied Russian force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly begged Congress for help, but Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have been unwilling to put the Ukrainian aid to a vote. They say any aid must first meet border security needs.
Pentagon officials said during budget talks Monday that they were confident the additional deficit could close the $10 billion shortfall.
“If we don’t get the $10 billion, we would have to find other resources,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. “Right now, we’re very focused on the need for that supplement.”
The senior defense officials who briefed reporters said the Pentagon was able to achieve cost savings of about $300 million in previous contracts with Ukraine and, given the battlefield situation, decided to use those savings to go ahead and buy more weapons to steer. Officials said the cost savings effectively offset the new package and keep replenishment spending underwater at $10 billion.
This is the second time in less than nine months that the Pentagon has “found” money to use for additional arms shipments to Ukraine. Last June, defense officials said they had overestimated the value of weapons the US had sent to Ukraine over the past two years by $6.2 billion.
At the time, Pentagon officials said an investigation found the military services used replacement costs instead of the book value of equipment taken from Pentagon stockpiles and sent to Ukraine. The discovery resulted in a surplus that the department used for presidential admissions packages until the end of December.
The United States has committed more than $44.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of the Biden administration, including more than $44.2 billion since the Russian invasion began on February 24, 2022.
The Pentagon is running a $10 billion deficit in its replenishment account, partly due to inflationary pressures, and partly because the new systems the Pentagon is trying to replace old systems with are more expensive, such as the upcoming Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, which the Pentagon uses. The Army is purchasing to replace the Long-Range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS.
The vast majority of these munitions come from army stockpiles due to the nature of conventional land warfare in Ukraine.
The months without further U.S. support have hurt operations, and Ukrainian troops last month withdrew from the eastern city of Avdiivka, where outnumbered defenders had held off a Russian attack for four months.
CIA Director William Burns told Congress that entire Ukrainian units had told him in recent days that they had only a few dozen artillery shells and other munitions left. Burns called the withdrawal from Avdiivka a failure of ammunition resupply, not a failure of Ukrainian will.
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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed.