The U.S. has approved $325 million in new weapons aid for Ukraine, which arrives as a group of Republican lawmakers affirmed their opposition to further security assistance funding for Kyiv.
The new presidential drawdown package, with capabilities to be provided from existing Pentagon inventories, includes RTX’s [RTX] AIM-9M missiles, additional ammunition for
Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built HIMARS launchers, Boeing’s [BA] Avenger air defense systems, and more DPICM cluster munitions.
Ukraine will also receive .50 caliber machine guns “to counter unmanned aerial systems,” more 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, TOW missiles, Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems, over 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition and 59 light tactical vehicles, according to the Pentagon.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters the Biden administration is confident there will ultimately be enough bipartisan support to continue assisting Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s ongoing invasion, to include moving ahead on the latest supplemental spending request for further aid.
“There is a vocal, quite small minority of members who are raising questions. There is a very strong overwhelming majority of members, both Democrats and Republicans, who want to see a continue [of support for Ukraine],” Sullivan said during a press briefing on Thursday.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) sent a letter on Thursday, signed by over two dozen conservative GOP lawmakers, to Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young detailing their opposition to the administration’s supplemental spending request seeking $24 billion in continued aid for Ukraine.
“The vast majority of Congress remains unaware of how much the United States has spent to date in total on this conflict, information which is necessary for Congress to prudently exercise its appropriations power. It is difficult to envision a benign explanation for this lack of clarity,” the Republican lawmakers wrote in the letter.
The Biden administration in August sent Congress a new supplemental spending request, which includes $5 billion in further Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funding, which is used to award contracts to industry to meet Ukraine weapons needs, and another $4.5 billion to replace DoD weapons stocks and reimburse the department for services, education and training provided to Ukraine (Defense Daily, Aug. 10).
“We will want to see additional funding for Ukraine after the end of the fiscal year, so after September 30th, meaning that we would like additional resources from the Congress on October 1st to be able to ensure that there’s no disruption in the supply of funding to Ukraine,” Sullivan said on Thursday.
Thursday’s new weapons aid package was announced following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington, D.C., where he met with lawmakers, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon and with President Biden at the White House.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Zelenskyy told him Ukraine needs “ the air cover of the [forthcoming] F-16s and the ATACMS [long-range missiles],” and reiterated his own support for the additional supplemental to continue assisting Ukraine
“They need it and they’re going to get it,” McCaul said on Thursday. “As I said, the majority of the [Republican] majority support this. I know there’s some dissension on both sides…we will get it done. And there are a lot of political machinations right now, but I assure you we are going to get it passed”
While the Lockheed Martin-built ATACMS were not included in Thursday’s new weapons aid package, the Biden administration administration is reportedly nearing a decision to send a cluster-armed version of the weapon to Ukraine (Defense Daily, Sept. 21).
DoD noted the latest security assistance is once again funded from the additional $6.2 billion the Pentagon discovered after it overestimated the value of earlier aid provided to Ukraine.
Vance and Roy’s letter said the Pentagon’s accounting error on the Ukraine aid “further underscores the need for greater transparency from the administration.”
“When an executive department’s accounting mechanism may be altered or replaced to permit the provision of an additional $6 billion in defense articles or services to foreign governments (out of, very roughly, an overall authority of $25 billion), the Congress cannot make an accurate determination of the value of articles it might transmit to a foreign entity when voting on [presidential drawdown authority] limitations.”