A former US officer explains why Washington is sending so much “lost” weapons to Ukraine.
Published on 22.1.2023
Sputnik reports that the Pentagon has had its ears fired again for losing track of $220 billion worth of equipment supplied to contractors, as revealed in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Washington now fears being audited on its massive aid to Ukraine, an idea that has been raised by several Republican parliamentarians.
This “lost” armament is indeed tested on the Ukrainian ground, which serves as a real laboratory for the American forces, Karen Kwiatkowski, retired lieutenant-colonel of the US Air Force, told Sputnik.
“The idea of testing your weapons and their applications in the field, in a real combat scenario, against a real +enemy+ army, is an integral part of the justifications for this combat and this rapid aid to a lost cause”, declares thus the former officer.
The United States is also taking advantage of the conflict to “drain stocks” and therefore guarantee future orders for the arms industry, which should be running at full speed well after the Ukrainian conflict, adds Karen Kwiatkowski.
Some senior US officials also share directing links with military contractors, such as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who served on the board of directors of missile manufacturer Raytheon.
lips are sealed
All these reasons mean that the Pentagon is in no hurry to see its aid to Ukraine studied. There is also a lack of political will to try to see things more clearly. Congress, for example, has not appointed any inspector general to verify the military aid sent to Ukraine, as it did for the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is therefore likely that we will never know the exact amount of military aid allocated to kyiv, said Scott Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the Marine Corps, to Sputnik.
“Trying to go back and figure out how tens of billions of dollars were spent is mission impossible. Even with all the proper mechanisms in place, it is very difficult to fully monitor how funds are used in such a heated conflict zone like Ukraine,” he says.
In early December, several Republicans rallied to a resolution to review US military and economic aid to Ukraine.
Carried by the representative of Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the resolution was unsurprisingly rejected in committee by the Democrats.
