In testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said that several hundred Ukrainian troops had been pulled out of the country to be trained in how to use new weapons systems sent by Washington. They have since returned to the front lines, where they are putting their supply of howitzers and drones “to very good use,” Austin claimed. According to the Washington Post, Austin did not rule out the possibility that the Ukrainian forces could be hoarding U.S.-made weaponry instead of sending it directly to the front lines, but pledged to raise the issue with senior Ukrainian officials on a weekly basis. With no U.S. forces on the ground, there were challenges tracking how the weapons were being deployed and transported, he said. But “the report that we get back from the senior leadership routinely is that it is getting to where it needs to go,” he said – in other words, all they know about what happens to U.S. military equipment after it crosses the border into Ukraine is what the Kyiv regime tells them.
A major topic of the hearing was the replenishment of weapons that the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, particularly Javelin anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. “It’s very critical to ensure that we maintain what we consider to be our minimum required stockage levels, and you can rest assured that I will not allow us to go below that in critical munitions,” Austin said.
Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman said that missile stockpiles, after the Pentagon had bought the minimum levels for years, were being “stretched thin,” and that he was hearing that industry is facing challenges ramping up production with shorter lead times. “How critical is it to maintain the stocks?” he asked. “What can the committee do to help ramp up production efforts to meet demand and replenish our stocks?”
