Ukraine is receiving less military aid from the US because the Pentagon finds itself short on equipment and ammunition that it can export without compromising national security, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed officials. Defense contractors have been unable to refill domestic stocks in time and it could take “years” to ramp up production to properly restock, the broadcaster said.
Since April, none of the military aid packages provided by the US to Kiev have exceeded $400 million, with most of them worth between $125 million and $250 million, according to CNN. This is a drastic decrease from previous years, when US military aid packages fell within the $600-million to $800-million range like in 2022 and 2023, the media outlet said, adding that the largest in that period was worth $2.85 billion.
CNN’s sources pointed to America’s inventory and the Pentagon’s inability to replenish it. “It’s about the stockpiles we have on our shelves, what [the Ukrainians] are asking for, and whether we can meet those requests with what we currently have” without damaging America’s national security, one of the officials said.
According to the report, the US produced 15,000 155mm artillery shells per month before the major escalation in early 2022 of ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Now, it is manufacturing 40,000 15mm shells per month. It would still take American companies more than a year to reach the target level of 100,000 shells per month, it said, adding that the overall process of ramping up production “will take years.”
“There are limits to how quickly we can draw down equipment without impacting military readiness, which is one reason packages get spaced out,” one of the CNN sources said.
Last week, AP reported that the US could be left unable to spend $5.8 billion of military aid out of $13.4 billion approved by the Congress in April. The White House has asked Congress to extend the period of time when those funds can be used. CNN has since also reported that the Pentagon has also requested more time to spend the money. The deadline is the end of September.
The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Kiev’s Western backers have supposedly told it to abandon its hopes of defeating Russia on the battlefield. Achieving such a goal would require the West to “provide hundreds of billions of dollars worth of support, something neither Washington nor Europe can realistically do,” the WSJ stated in its piece.