The US military is unable to properly track billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment sent to Ukraine, according to a new government watchdog report.
Washington has provided Kyiv with more than $40 billion in military aid since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.
However, an assessment from the US Department of Defense’s inspector general states that military personnel tasked with transferring weapons to the war-torn nation “did not fully implement standard operating procedures.”
It explained that the lack of logistics training for inexperienced personnel was the reason behind the failure.
As a result, the service could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped through an aerial port in Poland.
The report was based on an examination of three of five US military shipments.
‘Increased Risk’
The failure to track defense material was blamed on its servicemen, who failed to fill out the necessary paperwork.
The report cited a shipment of thousands of small arms, night vision goggles, and cold weather gear that turned out to have no manifest.
The problem forced personnel to open the shipping crates and manually count the items.
Such issues expose the US military to an “increased risk” of providing more or less equipment than what is authorized.
Although several shipments were not properly accounted for, the inspector general clarified that “we did not find any evidence of loss, theft, or diversion of defense items being provided to Ukraine.”