The Pentagon announced Tuesday it miscalculated the value of U.S. military equipment it had taken from its stocks and given to Ukraine, and now has an extra $6.2 billion more in equipment it can send.
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh announced at a press conference that in its “regular oversight” of its authority to transfer U.S. military equipment to Ukraine, “we discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine.
She said that in a “significant number of cases,” the U.S. military services had used replacement costs for the transferred equipment rather than the net book value of the equipment, which ended up overestimating the value of the equipment provided to Ukraine.
“Once we discovered this misvaluation, the Comptroller reissued guidance on March 31st clarifying how to value equipment in line with the financial management regulation and DOD policy to ensure we use the most accurate of accounting methods,” Singh said.
She said the amount the DOD overestimated for fiscal year 2023 was $3.6 billion for fiscal year 2023 and $2.6 billion for fiscal year 2022, for a combined total of $6.2 billion.
Singh said the miscalculation did not affect any prior transfers to Ukraine, and that the Pentagon “retains the authority to utilize” the “recaptured” authority to transfer that amount of equipment.
The news that the Pentagon would pony up an extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine was met with outrage from the right and the left.
Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator tweeted: “A $6.2 BILLION DOLLAR ACCOUNTING ERROR?!”
Joe Kent, a Republican candidate for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in Washington, tweeted: “This is absurd. The DOD cannot be allowed to operate like this. Make the DOD account for every penny, show congress & the American ppl exactly where our money is going.
“Secure our border w/spare 3 billion the DOD bean counters just ‘found,'” he added.
Prior to the accounting error, the Department of Defense had calculated that it has send more than $40.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including more than $40 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
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