GAO faults Pentagon over tracking of shipments of arms, supplies to Ukraine

The Pentagon lacks clear rules and standards for tracking billions of dollars worth of weapons and military equipment the U.S. government has provided Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office said in a report this week.

Much of more than $40 billion in security assistance sent to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022 has come in the form of an “unprecedented” amount of military firepower, including tanks, artillery systems and armored personnel carriers. The Defense Department has taken days to complete deliveries that typically take weeks, the GAO said Wednesday in a report to Congress, and some of the delivery data itself may not be accurate. Congress is at a stalemate on another aid package for Kyiv.

“Also, [the Defense Department] modified its monitoring approach during the ongoing conflict but has not assessed whether it sufficiently guards against equipment loss or misuse,” the congressional watchdog agency said.

Current Pentagon guidance on presidential “drawdown” authority — which allows President Biden to transfer weapons and equipment directly from military stocks — doesn’t “clearly define” at what point in the process the donated items should be recorded as being delivered or how military officials are to confirm delivery, the GAO investigators said.

“As a result, [Department of Defense] officials sometimes record defense articles as ’delivered’ while they are in transit, weeks before they arrive in Ukraine,” the GAO report said.

The urgent circumstances of the Ukrainian war have forced the Pentagon to alter some “traditional” procedures used to track and monitor military weapons and sensitive equipment sent there.

The Defense Department “has been unable to directly observe some sensitive defense articles and has allowed Ukrainian officials to self-report the status of such articles. However, [the Pentagon] has not formally assessed the effectiveness of its modified approach,” according to the GAO report. “By conducting such assessment, DoD will better understand whether its adjusted monitoring approach ensures that defense articles are used for the purposes for which they were provided.”

The GAO made eight recommendations to the Defense Department, including urging the Pentagon to improve the accuracy of its delivery data and evaluate its end-use monitoring in Ukraine. The Defense Department agreed with five of the recommendations and partially agreed with two others. Pentagon officials pushed back against a GAO recommendation to clarify guidance for documenting alleged end-use violations, however.

“GAO maintains that additional guidance is necessary to ensure DoD properly records allegations,” according to Wednesday’s report.