Anonymous Hill Staffer Tries, Fails to Use ‘Classified’ Data to Refute J.D. Vance on Ukraine Aid

An anonymous staffer tried and failed to use “classified” data to refute Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) claim that aid to Ukraine would not compensate for the country’s lack of manpower and America’s inability to produce munitions for the proxy war against Russia.

The Senate is expected to pass a bill granting Ukraine $60 billion in aid Tuesday, which President Joe Biden believes could mean the difference between a Ukrainian victory and a defeat to Russia. The war has continued for over three years, seemingly without end, and it appears that the incoming aid would only continue the Ukraine-Russia conflict. This also arises as a Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft-sponsored poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans support a diplomatic end to the conflict.

Vance has argued that, even if America were to provide more aid to Ukraine, it would do little good to turn the tide of the war, citing that Ukraine does not have the manpower, nor can America produce the munitions necessary to help Ukraine win the war.

The Ohio senator wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times:

Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.

“Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong.  This $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor,” Vance continued. “But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.”

He continued:

Consider our ability to produce 155-millimeter artillery shells. Last year, Ukraine’s defense minister estimated that the country’s base-line requirement for these shells was over four million per year but that it could fire up to seven million if that many were available. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 percent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025.

…

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors [PAC-3 interceptors] per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 per year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.

“The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict,” Vance added.

One leading Ukraine hawk, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), attacked, Vance, saying, “I challenge JD Vance to go to Ukraine and get a briefing from the Ukrainian military and talk to the Ukrainian people, then tell me what you think.”

“Quit talking about things you don’t know anything about until you go,” he added.

To combat Vance’s argument, one congressional aide claimed that the actual number of PAC-3 interceptors Ukraine needs is much smaller; however, conveniently, the aide claimed that this information is classified.

“The real number is classified, and it is much smaller,” the aide said, referring to the number of artillery shells Ukraine needs.

The aide continued, “So the whole basis of the [Vance] analysis is fundamentally flawed. That makes everything that comes after it sort of pointless.”

Despite the congressional aide’s “classified” claim, Ukraine’s own defense minister’s comments reinforce Vance’s argument.

The Ukrainian defense minister said, “If we were not limited by the amount of available artillery shells, we could use the full ammunition set, which is 594,000 shells per month [7.128 million a year],” he said, referring to the capacity of the artillery systems available to Ukraine. “According to our estimates, for the successful execution of battlefield tasks, the minimum need is at least 60 per cent of the full ammunition set, or 356,400 shells per month. [4.277 million a year].”

Dan Caldwell, the Defense Priorities public policy adviser, wrote, “If for the sake of argument the Ukrainians only wind up needing just a fifth of the projection in the above FT article because of a change in strategy, that would still exceed the 100k or so shells per month that the U.S. is projected to produce by the end of 2025.”

Caldwell added, “I bet the “anonymous Senate staffer” knows this and can’t actually refute @JDVance1 and others who point out that the math doesn’t work for Ukraine. So they are playing the “classified intelligence says otherwise” card since so many reporters still fall for that trick.”

A senior Ukrainian military officer has also echoed Vance’s argument about PAC-3 interceptors, “You can’t plan a war with an annual production of 150-160 Patriot missiles. We fired those in a month,” he said [meaning they’d need 1800-1920 a year], sounding the alarm that his men were running out of ammunition. “If we wait until autumn, until mid-October, they will hit the energy infrastructure again. This is a certainty. This winter will be even more difficult than the previous one.”

Given the West’s inability to ramp up defense production, at the Munich Security Conference, Vance issued a “wake up” call urging Europe to increase its defense production.

“And what I’m telling you is that we live in a world of scarcity, a world of scarcity and weapons manufacturing and America’s capacity to make the critical machinery of war, and that world of scarcity is what I’m trying to get us all to wake up to. In that world of scarcity, we can’t support Ukraine and the Middle East and contingencies in East Asia. It just doesn’t make any sense. The math doesn’t work out in terms of weapons manufacturing,” he said.

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.