Inspector General Robert P. Storch announced today that the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General released the “Audit of the DoD’s Controls for Validating and Responding to Ukraine’s Requests for Military Equipment and Assistance.”
“This audit highlights that coordination between the United States and partner nations can be challenging,” said IG Storch. “Effective coordination is critical to ensure that the Ukrainian Armed Forces receive the military equipment needed to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion.”
The audit found that the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), its Service Component Commands, and the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine (SAG-U) (collectively, the Commands) updated controls to fill capability gaps and established the Future Forces Ukraine Working Group to review requests for military assistance; however, the Commands did not document the roles, responsibilities, processes, or procedures for validating Ukraine requests. According to Command officials, the lack of documentation was due to the fast-paced nature of the effort and the sense of urgency to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a result, although Command officials communicated and coordinated support requests for military equipment and assistance, they did not ensure seamless operations to validate Ukraine’s requests.
The audit also identified that although the DoD coordinated at multiple levels on Ukraine’s requests for military equipment and assistance with partner nations, challenges made coordination with partner nations difficult and impacted effectiveness. For example, DoD officials experienced difficulties with managing the military equipment donations from nearly 50 partner nations, classification levels of information regarding the donations, and some partner nations wishing to remain discreet donors.
The DoD OIG issued two recommendations to USEUCOM officials to address the lack of documented roles, responsibilities, processes, and procedures for validating Ukraine’s requests for military equipment and assistance and to mitigate coordination challenges with partner nations regarding the classification level of information.
The DoD OIG is committed to closely monitoring USEUCOM’s progress toward fully implementing the recommendations, ensuring accountability and continuous improvement of DoD’s operations.