Here’s an issue I’ve called out several times. At Federal Times Jordan Cohen calls attention to an Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General report that has found, well, that no one is minding the store:
On June 12, 2023, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General released a report evaluating the quality of the accountability controls for U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine through Poland.
The report’s findings suggest the lack of accountability is even worse than skeptics imagined.
Instead of losing the ability to monitor weapons once they arrive in Ukraine, as many assume, the accountability problems begin before they leave the United States. The lack of accountability can lead not only to weapons dispersion to criminal organizations but also reduces the ability for DoD to track the financial value of weapons sent – all of which potentially risks the security and prosperity of Americans.
The OIG report finds that the lack of accountability occurs for two reasons. First, the agencies responsible for transferring equipment were working at such a high speed they did not provide required information to the recipients in Poland, who are then supposed to send them in transit to Ukraine.
Second, the DoD personnel whose responsibility it was to ensure that transfers meet the accountability thresholds were given no “guidance to training†even when they “lacked logistics subject matter expertise.†As a result, DoD has incomplete documents and an inability to accurately count the number of small arms and light weapons that are being sent to Poland, making accounting for them upon their arrival impossible.
The speed argument is reasonable to some degree. The “nobody showed us how” argument to my eye reflects an astonishing lack of preparedness.
We should able to identify by serial number, type, and description every weapon we’ve sent to Ukraine. Why can’t we?
We have been sending Ukraine weapons since February 2022. That’s nearly a year and a half. By this point we should have some idea of what’s going on.
Failing to keep track comes with risks. They include no ability to determine whether the weapons arrived where they were supposed to, no ability to determine where they did arrive, and even the possibility of those weapons being used against us.
