Document: Pentagon Knew Weapons Shipments for the Failed Ukraine "Counter-Offensive" Were a Logistical Disaster

Cover image from the July 2023 “Management Advisory” produced by the Department of Defense Inspector General. Obtained by MT

The office of Inspector General for the Department of Defense does not presumptively publish all its oversight reports, even though the purpose of an Inspector General is ostensibly to provide some measure of public accountability for the arcane operations of the Pentagon, which often take place under many layers of concealment. Back in July 2023, I noticed that a “Management Advisory” had been completed, but not published, as the “advisory” was said to contain “controlled unclassified information,” whatever that means. So I submitted a FOIA request. As usual, it took well over a year for the request to be processed, and I’ve now received the document.

You may recall that a great hype abounded ahead of the great Ukrainian counter-offensive of 2023, with the theory being that Ukraine would make decisive strides against hardening Russian front-lines, thanks to all the wonderful training and armaments the US and NATO affiliates had expeditiously provided.

What went unpublicized during that period was that DoD investigators had discovered a rather serious “impediment” to the planning and execution of these armament-supplying initiatives. Given the copious redactions to the document I received, it’s not clear what exactly this “impediment” was — but it was significant enough that an entire DoD IG report was devoted to the matter, urging that the “problem” be “promptly” remediated as it “may negatively affect” the capacity of the US European Command to “support Ukrainian forces.” Graciously, the censors did not redact the revelation that the unspecified “impediment” cost the US Government “an additional $1.6 million dollars,” on top of the baseline cost of the massive munitions-shipment program.

The report says that as early as December 2022 and January 2023, it was known that “DoD ammunition missions” were experiencing delays for reasons related to the US European Command’s agreement with Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail service. “As a result, there may be future delays and costs that are detrimental to Ukraine’s flow of critical ammunition,” the report warned.

During the run-up to the highly anticipated counter-offensive, it might have been of keen interest to the public to know that DoD investigators were privy to these highly “detrimental” problems. TV war pundits, known for little other than their chronic wrongness, were swarming the airwaves with prognostications that the counter-offensive would be “quite successful” at penetrating Russian defenses. Think Tankers were even postulating that the counter-offensive could enable Ukraine to recapture Crimea.

Amidst the rows of redactions, it’s noted that at one point “no rail service was available to transport the ammunition” the US was supposed to be delivering to Ukraine. At which point, the US Government was on the hook to spend an extra $1.6 million in “vessel charter costs” due to the unavailability of rail service. This cost apparently only captures a brief period in which the IG investigators were actively probing the matter, from January 2023 to March 2023, so it’s probable that the total costs associated with these mysterious “delays” are much higher.

Here’s an example of the copious redactions slapped on the document, concealing the precise reason why “ammunition transfers” were “not always executed in a timely manner.”

In their correspondence to me, the DoD IG enclosed a letter outlining the claimed justifications for their comically extensive redactions. In coordination with the US European Command, it was evidently decided that a huge percentage of the document, if publicized, could jeopardize unspecified “law enforcement” activities.

In any event, it might’ve been nice for US taxpayers and the Congress to have been made aware of this information nearly two years ago, when the imminent triumph of the “counter-offensive” was being feverishly trumpeted — only for those efforts to result in a catastrophic military failure, for reasons that were at least partially known to DoD investigators at the time. What’s followed ever since has been month after month of gruesome trench warfare, piecemeal US-backed escalation, a literal invasion and occupation of Russian territory by Ukraine using US resources, and an endless torrent of other nightmares. Yet for a critical period, Americans were being fed fanciful fortune-telling from Think Tank interventionists about a grand “counter-offensive” which, according to this report, could not even be supplied competently.

That it should take a prolonged FOIA process to get this information out to the public hampers real-time oversight and journalistic inquiry, but perhaps that’s the point.

You can read the entire document here:

Dodig 2023 092

5.7MB ∙ PDF file

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