Concerns Mount In The U.S. As Weapons Are 'Dangerously Depleted' Due To Shipments To Ukraine

‘Dangerously Depleted’: The US Is Sending So Many Weapons To Ukraine That Experts Are Starting To Worry

Micaela Burrow

Global efforts to support Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion have triggered billions in spending to bolster Ukraine’s military, depleting U.S. stocks and raising concerns that the West may cripple its military opposite the rising threat from China. The U.S. will have to dramatically ramp up production, or otherwise risk further weakening the U.S. arsenal and adversely affecting America’s ability to react to dangers from China and other potential foes, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“For U.S. policy makers, the critical question regarding our policy towards Ukraine is quickly becoming more a what we can do for Ukraine, not necessarily what we should do,” Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America and vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together, told the DCNF. “U.S. stockpiles of munitions are becoming dangerously depleted and it will take years for U.S. production capacity to catch up.”

As of Oct. 14, the U.S. has committed $17.6 billion in security assistance since the Russian invasion; since August, the Pentagon has withdrawn $10.5 in weapons and equipment directly from U.S. stocks via the president’s executive drawdown privilege.

That includes over 1,400 Stingers, over 8,500 Javelins, 38 coveted High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and eight National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), according to a fact sheet dated Oct. 4. It also includes thousands of electronic communications and surveillance systems as well as “funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.”

All of that aid has put the largest strain on the defense-industrial base since the Korean War, experts told the DCNF.

The U.S. has “pretty much run out of 155 millimeter Howitzers and 155 millimeter ammunition” after sending roughly 900,000 of the highly effective rounds to Ukraine, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly worked on defense budget and acquisition issues for the Department of Defense (DOD), told the DCNF.

“The problem isn’t that there isn’t money,” Cancian said to the DCNF. “The problem is that the [DOD] is a bit slow putting that money on contract, and then of course the equipment will have to be produced.”

Accelerated production for systems like Javelins should have begun in May, not in September, when the Pentagon finally put in a funding request to Congress, said Cancian. “They were just late, slow to react to events,” he added.