WASHINGTON — The US has failed to properly track more than $1 billion-worth of high-tech weapons systems sent to Ukraine, though inventory processes are getting better, according to a new report from the Pentagon’s inspector general.
“While the DoD has improved execution of EEUM [enhanced end-use monitoring] since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the DoD did not comply with the EEUM program requirements for defense article accountability in a hostile environment,” says the partially redacted report, published Wednesday.
The report says that as of June 2023, though US European Command’s Office of Defense Cooperation-Ukraine and the Ukrainian military “conducted some required inventories, […] serial numbers for more than $1.005 billion of the total $1.699 billion (59 percent of the total value) of EEUM-designated defense articles remained delinquent.”
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As the name implies, enhanced end-use monitoring articles refers to higher-end systems that require closer tracking than regular end-use monitoring articles. According to the IG, that includes a host of missiles and their launch systems — from Tomahawks to Stingers — as well as some unmanned aerial vehicles and even night vision goggles. LEE FERRAN
