The US failed to track more than $1 billion in military gear given Ukraine, Pentagon watchdog says
The US failed to track more than $1 billion in military gear given Ukraine, Pentagon watchdog says
Shortfalls in monitoring by American officials mean the U.S. cannot account for more than $1 billion in weapons and military equipment provided to Ukraine to fight invading Russian forces.
We didn't give it directly to Ukraine, which is why this is happening.
A bunch of countries were donating equipment through the same few routes thru the same countries.
Even if it was cataloged and documented properly, it takes time to go all thru the chain all the way to the end and hear back. Especially since all the countries are probably asking.
Who gives a fuck? We are destroying our greatest political rival for pennies on the dollar.
I mean it's 1 billion dollars of military equipment. Probably don't want that falling into the wrong hands.
That's just spare change for the Pentagon. Almost a rounding error when it comes to unaccounted for money in their audits.
This time around, 1,600 auditors combed through DOD’s $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities, conducting some 700 site visits. They found that half of DOD’s assets can’t be accounted for.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4313887-pentagon-fails-sixth-audit-in-a-row/
Second greatest after each other but it's close.
Pretty sure Russia only comes in second on that list (after China), but you're right about the rest of it.
Yeah, totally not a problem to have fascist groups armed with military gear running around in Europe. It was so much fun when that happened in the 80s.
This is dumb. Most likely they just weren’t catalogued correctly because they were rushing stuff to the front lines. Doubtful anything went missing it’s just paperwork errors.
Or - and this is heavily documented - the US Military has never passed any audit since they began being audited. This is just part of that.
Doesn't mean we don't support Ukraine. Just means we need to hold the military accountable for the funds provided.
the US Military has never passed any audit since they began being audited. This is just part of that.
That's mainly because there's a shit ton of agencies in the DOD, and they send money between themselves and non DOD agencies constantly.
If I pay you $100, but we lose the reciept, there's no missing money. Just a missing receipt.
However for those government audits, if we both were part of it then we'd each be off by $100. And rather than cancel those, they add them together and say combined we're "missing" $200
So the public hears about these huge numbers that probably don't matter, and hardly anyone hears the actual number of missing money to know if we really should be mad.
Hmmmm... where have I heard this before? 🤔
Oh! Right!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1
"The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
. . .
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover."
It's almost like the people in charge of this kind of thing REALLY should not be in charge of this kind of thing...
Meaning they didn't count each and every weapon fired and record exactly which Russian it hit.
Keep deluding yourself and others.
Arms sent to Ukraine will end up in criminal hands, says Interpol chief
Nato and EU sound alarm over risk of Ukraine weapons smuggling
That's peanuts compared to what they "lost" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Shortfalls in required monitoring by American officials mean the U.S. cannot track more than $1 billion in weapons and military equipment provided to Ukraine to fight invading Russian forces, according to a Pentagon audit released Thursday.
Citing what he said was Russian disinformation to the contrary, Ryder added, “The fact is, we observed the Ukrainians employing these capabilities on the battlefield.
House Republican opposition for months has stalled Biden’s request to Congress for $105 billion more for Ukraine, Israel and other national security objectives.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that there was no funding left for additional military aid packages to Ukraine.
The U.S. has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, including big systems such as air defense.
Kirby said administration officials “has for many months now been interested in improving accountability over the end use of material that is provided to Ukraine.”
The original article contains 531 words, the summary contains 154 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I'm sure sloppily executed arms proliferation has never come back to bite the US in it's ass, no biggie. At least we we're sending them to the reasonable side this time.
This isn't arms proliferation, this is providing support for a country defending itself from invasion.
If it's not accounted for it's exactly proliferation, it just ended up somewhere less horrible than usual, maybe anyway, we don't know.