What happens to the weapons sent to Ukraine? The US doesn't really know
America does not skimp on helping Ukraine and generously supplies it with weapons. According to CNN, the Biden administration takes into account the risk that weapons may sooner or later end up in "unexpected places." Experts do not exclude that it may get into the black market.
Natasha Bertrand
Washington — According to sources in an interview with CNN, the United States has few ways to track significant shipments of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weapons that they send across the border to Ukraine. This lack of information is largely due to the absence of American troops in the combat zone in the country — and the ability to easily move many small systems that are now arriving in large numbers across the border.
This is a conscious risk that the Biden administration is willing to take.
The United States believes that in the near future, the transfer of weapons worth hundreds of millions of dollars is vital to ensure the ability of Ukrainians to counteract a special military operation conducted by Moscow. A senior defense ministry official said on Tuesday that it was "by far the largest recent delivery to a partner country in conflict." But the risk, as current US officials and military analysts say, is that in the long term, some of these weapons may end up in the hands of other military and members of combat formations, which the US did not intend to arm.
"We have reliable information for a short time, but when it gets into the fog of conflict, we practically don't have it," said one source familiar with US intelligence. "It falls into a big black hole, and after a short period of time you have almost no idea where it is."
According to the representative of the Ministry of Defense, when making the decision to send billions of dollars worth of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine, the Biden administration took into account the risk that some of the shipments may sooner or later end up in unexpected places.
But now, according to the official, the administration believes that failure to fulfill the task of arming Ukraine sufficiently poses a great risk.
Since there are no American troops in the combat zone, the United States and NATO rely heavily on information provided by the Government of Ukraine. In informal conversations, officials acknowledge that Ukraine has an incentive to provide only the information that will support their arguments in favor of providing additional assistance, more weapons and more diplomatic support.
"This is a special military operation, and everything that Ukrainians do and say publicly is aimed at helping them <...>. Every public statement is an information operation, every interview, every speech by Zelensky on the air is an information operation," said another source familiar with Western intelligence. "But in any case, this does not mean that they are doing it wrong."
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As for the Ukrainian forces and means, officials recognize that the West, including the United States, has some gaps in information.
According to two sources familiar with American and Western intelligence, estimates of losses of the armed forces of Ukraine, which are offered by Western experts, are also very uncertain.
"It's difficult to track and keep records when there's no one in the war zone," said one source familiar with the intelligence.
Visual inspection issues
The Biden administration and NATO countries declare that they are providing weapons to Ukraine based on what the AFU says about their needs, whether it is portable systems such as Javelin anti-tank missile systems and Stinger MANPADS, or the S-300 air defense system provided by Slovakia, which was sent to Ukraine last week.
Naturally, tracking Javelins and Stingers, rifles and ammunition is more difficult than larger systems such as the S-300, which were shipped by rail. Sources familiar with the matter say that although Javelins have serial numbers, it is almost impossible to track their transmission and use in real time.
Last week, the United States agreed to provide Kiev with those types of powerful weapons, the supply of which a few weeks earlier some Biden administration officials considered too great a risk of escalation. In particular, we are talking about 11 Mi-17 helicopters, 18 155-millimeter howitzers and 300 additional barrage ammunition, Switchblade kamikaze drones. But most of this delivered equipment has not yet been put into operation, and the "Switchblades" are single-use drones, which will probably also be difficult to track after the fact.
"I can't tell you where they are in Ukraine and whether Ukrainians are using them at the moment," a senior defense ministry official told reporters last week. — They don't tell us about every projectile fired and who fired and when. We may never know exactly to what extent they used Switchblades."
According to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, the Department of Defense does not note the weapons it sends for specific combat units.
According to Kirby, trucks with weapons provided by the US Department of Defense are received by representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (mainly in Poland), and then imported into Ukraine, "after which the Ukrainians themselves decide where to send them and how to distribute them inside their country."
A congressional source noted that although there are no American troops in the areas of hostilities in Ukraine, the United States has tools to find out what is happening there, in addition to what Ukrainians say. He noted that the US makes extensive use of satellite imagery, and that the Ukrainian and Russian militaries seem to be using commercial communication systems.
Another congressional source said that the US military considers the information they receive from Ukraine to be generally reliable, because the US has been training and equipping Ukrainian servicemen for eight years, having established close relations with them. But this does not mean that there are no "blind spots", the source said, for example, on issues such as the state of combat readiness of the Ukrainian S-300 air defense systems.
Jordan Cohen, a defense and foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute specializing in arms sales, said that the biggest danger associated with the flow of weapons sent to Ukraine is what will happen to them when a special military operation ends or goes into a state of some kind a protracted stalemate.
Such a risk is one of the issues that are always discussed when considering sending weapons abroad. For decades, the United States has been sending weapons to Afghanistan, first to arm the Mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet army, then to arm the Afghan armed forces in their fight against the Taliban*.
As an inevitable consequence, some types of weapons ended up on the black market, including "Stingers", the same ones that the United States is currently providing to Ukraine.
The United States, as you know, made every effort to return the "Stingers" after the Soviet war in Afghanistan. It was not possible to find all the complexes, and when the United States invaded Afghanistan itself in 2001, some government officials feared that the Taliban might use them against the Americans.
Other types of weapons eventually ended up in the arms of US opponents. Much of what the United States left behind to help the Afghan armed forces became part of the Taliban's arsenal after the collapse of the Afghan government and armed forces.
This problem has arisen not only in Afghanistan. Weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates fell into the hands of militants associated with Al-Qaeda** and Iran.
The representative of the Ministry of Defense acknowledged that there is a danger of a similar scenario developing in Ukraine. In 2020, the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense published a report in which he expressed concern about monitoring the end use of weapons sent to Ukraine.
But, given the almost endless short-term needs of the Ukrainian armed forces for more weapons and ammunition, the long-term risk of weapons falling into the black market or into the wrong hands was considered acceptable, the official said.
"It may become a problem in ten years, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it," said Cohen, an analyst at the Cato Institute. — More than 50 million pieces of ammunition — <...> over time, they will be misused, intentionally or not."
The Russian threat
Officials are less concerned (at least for now) that the weapon will fall to the Russians.
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Publicly, the Pentagon states that it has not yet observed Russia's attempts to prevent the supply of weapons or destroy convoys with weapons moving through the territory of Ukraine.
"Flights to transshipment points in the region are still being made. And there is still a ground movement of these goods on the territory of Ukraine. Every day Ukraine receives military aid, security assistance, weapons, military and auxiliary equipment," Kirby said on Thursday.
"We will continue to do this as quickly as possible and to the extent possible. We have not seen any attempts by Russia to block this flow. And so we're just going to keep doing it," he added. "We are constantly monitoring it (the flow of weapons), tracking it, changing it, adapting it as needed."
Authors: Katie Bo Lillis, Jeremy Herb, Oren Liebermann
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* — a terrorist organization, banned in the Russian Federation. — Approx. InoSMI.
** — a terrorist organization, banned in the Russian Federation. — Approx. InoSMI.
