PENTAGON ACCOUNTING EXPLAINS MISCOUNTING UKRAINE AID

May 18, 2023 -Durt Fibo

Today, high-placed officials in the US Defense bureaucracy publicly explained that the Pentagon has for several years overestimated the value of military equipment the USA has sent to Ukraine by some $3 billion. In what is being classified as an accounting error, the Pentagon used replacement cost to value the weapons aid, instead of the weaponry’s value when it was purchased then depreciated. They warned that it is possible the overvaluation of the weaponry could easily increase far beyond $3 billion as the Pentagon proceeds to examine their methodology.

This admission comes after many attacks on the use of US aid to Ukraine, broadly employed as a club swung by disreputable media and Republicans to maim the Democratic President and Senate majority. Near-constant accusations of embezzlement and intimations that US materiel was being misdirected to black markets, finally reconstituted themselves into the February 9, 2023 House proposal, H Res 113, titled the “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution,” “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement.” This bill was put forth by such foreign-policy luminaries as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, with co-sponsors including Lauren Boebert, Barry Moore of Alabama, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, Rep Massie of Kentucky, Rep Norman of South Carolina, and Representatives Miller of Illinois, Luna of Florida, and Matt Rosendale –proudly serving the 2nd District of Montana, These Junior Mint Bismarcks submitted the resolution to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Previously, in November of 2022, US House Republicans had floored a “privileged resolution” to audit funds allocated by Congress for any form of aid to Ukraine. Spurred on by then Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s threats to end “blank checks” to Ukraine, that resolution was headed by Marjory Taylor Greene, with her frontline forces of Matt Gaetz, Andrew Clyde, Thomas Massie and Barry More.

Following the Ukraine Fatigue Resolution, in the final week of February 2023, the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee began holding hearings on Ukraine aid oversight. Congress had already inserted a good many oversight provisions into the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. In the opening days of those hearings, high-grade Pentagon officials appeared to address ongoing U.S. support as well as the accountability and tracking measures designed to ensure that American-made weapons were used on the battlefield as intended. “We’re not just taking the Ukrainians words for it,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of Defense for policy, told the Armed Services Committee. “They provide us information on their inventories, their transfer logs, we have provided them handheld scanners, that data gets transmitted directly back to us so that we can keep custody.” Robert Storch, the Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general who accompanied Kahl, said his office is currently probing the issue. “We don’t go out and count the missiles,” he explained. “It’s up to the DoD to meet the requirements of the law and the policies that implement it, regarding monitoring, and then we do oversight to make sure that’s happening.”

Now the matter has exploded, because the US has sent weapons (heretofore) valued at about $21.1 billion to Ukraine from its stockpiles since sometime in the summer of 2021. Yet, all during this period, the Pentagon accounting was overstating the prices, using replacement costs to value the weapons aid instead of the materiel’s value when it was purchased and depreciated, the defense officials said today: “The services – the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines – were using, the current replacement cost of the item.”