U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine Was Poorly Tracked, Pentagon Report Concludes

More than $1 billion worth of shoulder-fired missiles, kamikaze drones and night-vision devices that the United States has sent to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by American officials, a new Pentagon report concludes, raising concerns they could be stolen or smuggled at a time Congress is debating whether to send more military aid to Kyiv.

The report by the Defense Department’s inspector general, released on Thursday, offers no evidence that any of the weapons have been misused after being shipped to a U.S. military logistics hub in Poland or sent onward to Ukraine’s battlefields.

“It was beyond the scope of our evaluation to determine whether there has been diversion of such assistance,” the report stated.

But it found that American defense officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe had failed to quickly or fully account for nearly 40,000 weapons that by law should have been closely monitored because their sensitive technology and relatively small size makes them attractive bounty for arms smugglers.

The report was sent to Congress on Wednesday and a copy of it was provided to The New York Times. The Pentagon’s inspector general released a redacted version of it on Thursday.

The high rate of weapons that were missing or otherwise immediately unaccounted for in government databases “may increase the risk of theft or diversion,” the report found.

Even with better methods in place, it concluded, tracking additional materiel sent to Ukraine will “be difficult as the inventory continues to change, and accuracy and completeness will likely only become more difficult over time.”

The number of the weapons reviewed in the report represents only a small fraction of about $50 billion in military equipment that the United