March 12, 2024 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, the Pentagon unveiled its budget request for fiscal year 2025 (though Congress still hasn’t enacted FY24 budget), and even though the top line comes out at $850 billion, it doesn’t include $10 billion that the Pentagon says it needs to replace munitions that it has sent to Ukraine and other “partners.” The Pentagon hasn’t drafted another supplemental request in this budget, but it may well need one this year to pay for its bills being totaled in Europe and the Middle East, reported Defense News. “That would be a later decision,” a senior defense official told reporters on background.
If DOD does not get the $10 billion to backfill its stocks, the impact of that “ongoing hole” will ultimately be felt by the U.S. military’s own forces, said the senior DOD official. “We have not been able to, with the funding we have to date—and there’s a big funding piece waiting in the supplemental—replenish everything we’ve already given to Ukraine. So it would come back on our own readiness on our own stockpile to a certain extent if we can’t get new funding.”
