The Biden administration will be sending $250 million more in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to support its ongoing counteroffensive against Russia.
The military aid package will utilize the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which means that the Pentagon will take the weapons from existing U.S. stockpiles and quickly ship them to Ukraine. It marks the Biden administration’s 45th drawdown of equipment from its own stocks to Ukraine since August 2021.
The package includes AIM-9M missiles for air defense, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 155 mm and 105 mm artillery ammunition, mine-clearing equipment, Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets, more than 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition, medical vehicles, and demolition munitions for obstacle clearing.
“The package will help Ukrainian forces on the battlefield and support its air defenses as Russia continues to launch brutal, brutal strikes against the people of Ukraine, including attacks this past week,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Aug. 29.
The $250 million package is being funded by an “accounting error” that was announced in June, when the Pentagon stated that it had overcounted the value of the weapons that it had sent to Ukraine over the past two years by $6.2 billion.
The error occurred because U.S. military officials didn’t base their calculations on the actual value of what was pulled from the Pentagon’s weapons stockpile and sent to Ukraine but instead accounted for the replacement value of those weapons, according to Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh. Newly produced weapons usually cost more than the old ones they replace.
The United States would have already run out of funding for the year to provide additional stockpile equipment to Ukraine, but the erroneous overvaluing of the equipment essentially freed up an additional $6.2 billion in funding.
With the latest package, the United States has sent Ukraine more than $43 billion worth of military assistance since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
