Ukraine Aid Such as Howitzers, Night Vision Goggles Not Properly Tracked by Military

A Pentagon watchdog agency has found that military personnel struggled to properly account for some of the security aid that the Biden administration has sent to Ukraine, but noted that there was no evidence of theft or loss.

Defense Department "personnel did not have the required accountability of the thousands of defense items that they received and transferred," the department's inspector general wrote in a report released Monday.

The oversight agency noted that, in three of five aid shipments it observed at a Polish air base, "DoD personnel did not fully implement their standard operating procedures to account for defense items and could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped."

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Investigators cited military personnel for not filling out all the necessary forms or fully counting all the items that were being transferred to Ukrainian officials. Also, the services and agencies providing the aid often failed to provide the necessary information, and commanders did not offer the necessary training to personnel who lacked experience working in logistics.

The result was personnel making educated guesses or partial counts of shipments.

According to the report, one shipment that contained "thousands of small arms, night vision optic devices, and various types of cold weather gear" arrived without a manifest, in turn forcing Defense Department personnel to open crates in an effort to find out what was being shipped.

"But even then, the personnel could not verify whether the number of items they identified represented the true number shipped," investigators said.

In two separate shipments of M777 howitzers, the manifests lacked the right information, complicating verification -- though investigators did concede that the issue was less significant "because of the small quantity, large size, and ease of identifying and accounting for the M777."

In other instances when items were shipped without paperwork, military members would delay them in places like Dover Air Force Base, the report found.

Military.com reached out to the Office of the Secretary of Defense for a comment on the findings but was directed back to the inspector general's office.

The report recommended that William LaPlante, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, provide more guidance to the agencies shipping aid to ensure requirements are being met and that the personnel receiving and transferring these defense items in Poland get more training.

The latter suggestion was met with pushback from staff at the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, who argued that the training had to come from the combatant commander.

Congressional concern over accounting for gear and equipment meant for Ukraine became pronounced in February, and lawmakers pushed for the inspector general to look into the issue.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters in February that the department took "accountability of U.S. assistance to Ukraine very seriously" and added that there is "an active and proactive whole-of-government system ... to prevent the illicit diversion of weapons into Eastern Europe."

Ryder stressed that "to this date we have not seen any evidence of any type of widespread diversion of any of the assistance that we've provided."

The watchdog report noted that they "did not find any evidence of loss, theft, or diversion of defense items being provided to Ukraine" and that the issues they uncovered only increase the risk of "providing more or less equipment than authorized."

Conversely, investigators also praised the efforts of the military in moving the amount of equipment that has been offered as fast as it has. They noted that the base in Poland was able to sustain its operation pace by rotating two teams of personnel in 24-hour shifts, while crews at Dover were offloading and transferring aid equipment "within 1 to 2 hours of the aircraft's arrival."

As of February, the U.S. has provided approximately $31.7 billion worth of defense items to Ukraine.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

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