The Department of Defense inspector general found that U.S. defense officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe failed to quickly or fully account for all of the nearly 40,000 weapons sent to Ukraine.
A new Pentagon report says more than $1 billion worth of missiles, suicide drones and night-vision equipment the United States sent to Ukraine were not properly tracked, raising concerns they could be stolen as Congress debates whether to send more military aid to Kyiv.
The Defense Department inspector general's report, released Thursday, found no evidence that any weapons were misused after they were shipped to a U.S. military logistics center in Poland or sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.
“Determining whether any diversion of such aid occurred is beyond the scope of our assessment,” the report said.
But it was discovered that US defense officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe failed to quickly or completely count nearly 40,000 weapons that by law should have been carefully monitored because their sensitive technology and relatively small size make them attractive rewards for arms smugglers.
The report was sent to Congress on Wednesday, and a copy was provided to The New York Times. On Thursday, the Pentagon's inspector general released a redacted version.
The high level of weapons that have been lost or missing from government databases “may increase the risk of theft or diversion,” the report said.
He concluded that even without better methods of tracking additional materials sent to Ukraine, it would be “difficult as the inventory continues to change, and accuracy and completeness will likely become more difficult over time.”.
The weapons reviewed in the report represent only a small fraction of the roughly $50 billion in military equipment the United States has sent to Ukraine since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and parts of eastern Donbas. Most of the weapons delivered to date — including tanks, air defense systems, artillery launchers, and ammunition — were seized after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Still, the Pentagon investigation offers the first glimpse of an effort to explain the riskiest instruments of American military power that have been rushed to Ukraine over the past two years. A growing number of lawmakers, skeptical of the value of Ukraine’s single largest military benefactor, are resisting sending more aid to Kyiv and demanding oversight.
The report did not specify how many of the 39,139 pieces of high-risk equipment provided to Ukraine in the years before and after the invasion were deemed “overdue,” but it did indicate that the potential losses amounted to about $1 billion out of the total $1.69 billion in weapons sent.
As of June last year, according to the latest available data, the United States had transferred to Ukraine more than 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 2,500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and about 750 Kamikaze Switchblade unmanned aerial vehicles, 430 medium-range air-to-air missiles, and 23,000 night vision devices.
According to Pentagon and State Department officials responsible for tracking the weapons, dangerous combat conditions made it nearly impossible to go to the front lines to ensure that the weapons were being used as intended.
The required accounting procedures are “impractical in the dynamic and hostile wartime environment,” Alexandra N. Baker, acting assistant secretary of defense for policy, wrote on Nov. 15 in a response to an earlier draft of the report.
She also said that there are not enough Defense Department staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to easily track all of the most sensitive weapons and equipment, which she said currently number more than 50,000 in Ukraine “and growing.”.
“It is beyond the capacity of the limited DoD personnel in the country to physically conduct an inventory, even if access were unrestricted,” Ms. Baker wrote in her response, a copy of which was included in the report.
