The US Department of Defense has admitted not only that it is out of money to procure replacement weapons after vast amounts of America's weaponry were shipped to Ukraine over the past two years, but the US defense budget is vastly overdrawn, to the tune of $10 billion.
In focus here are dwindling US stockpiles for America's defense needs, and yet as The Associated Press reports Tuesday, the Biden administration has almost magically come up with hundreds of millions more (found some "cost savings" we are told)... for Ukraine:
The Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced Tuesday.
It’s the Pentagon’s first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn’t until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren’t just out of money to buy replacement weapons, they are $10 billion overdrawn.
In announcing the new $300 million, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, "When Russian troops advance and its guns fire, Ukraine does not have enough ammunition to fire back."
In recent months, defense industry journals have run article after article warning of the dangers of the Pentagon's currently depleted arms and ammunition stockpiles.
For example, last December RealClearDefense sounded the alarm over what it called "A Shrunken Arsenal: The Alarming Decline of U.S. Munitions".
The publication imagined what would happen if the US military were to suddenly be drawn into a hot war with China, and concluded it might not last very long...
In a U.S. fight with China, American forces will likely burn through munitions stocks within three weeks. Even with a surge of the U.S. industrial base, replenishing stocks will take more than six months. In the interim, the U.S. will be without sufficient bombs and bullets for its cutting-edge systems, such as fifth-generation fighter jets and High Mobility Rocket Launcher Systems, and anti-air missiles needed to protect our nuclear aircraft carriers and bases in the Pacific.
It should be recalled that last year Washington even took the unprecedented step of tapping into its stockpile of 155mm rounds held in Israel, to send hundreds of thousands to Ukraine forces.
And yet, none of this appears to have made a difference, given now the widespread acknowledgement that Kiev forces are losing ground, and simply desperately trying to hold front line positions, amid a dire shortage of manpower and ammo.
