Pentagon Says Accounting Mistake Frees Up $3 Billion More for Ukraine
“These funds could have been used for extra supplies and weapons for the upcoming counteroffensive, instead of rationing funds to last for the remainder of the fiscal year,” Representatives Michael McCaul of Texas, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Mike D. Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a joint statement.
They called on the administration to “make up for this precious lost time” by sending long-range missile and cluster munitions to Ukraine, which it has resisted doing.
Administration officials said their mistake was one of improper valuation, explaining that they had been calculating the price of each item based on how much it would cost to replace it with new equipment, instead of its sale value, which is lower. They plan to make the same change in an assessment of their remaining authority to send Taiwan weapons from existing Pentagon stocks, according to administration and congressional officials.
“This overvaluation has not constrained our support to Ukraine nor impacted our ability to flow capabilities to the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Congressional staff members expressed a combination of incredulity that it had taken the administration 15 months of war to identify such a basic and yet pivotal accounting mistake. Some said they thought that the revision might be a way for officials to maintain supplies at a time when available funds for Ukraine were in danger of running out.
Source: The New York Times
