The Dispatch Podcast - What We're Paying for in Ukraine | Explainer: Mark Cancian

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

Mark Cancian, senior adviser with CSIS International Security Program, joins Mary to discuss the ongoing battle for aid to Ukraine and its intersection with U.S. defense capabilities and stockpiles. The Agenda: -Breaking down the quantity and quality of aid provided by the U.S. to Ukraine -Where Ukraine would be without the U.S. -Does the U.S. need to provide continuous aid? -Maintaining stockpiles -Is the stalled supplemental aid package DOA? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Dispatch podcast. My name is Mary Trimble, and I'm a reporter for the morning dispatch. Saturday, February 24th, marked the two-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I spoke to Mark Kansian, senior advisor to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, think tank here in D.C., about U.S. support for Ukraine, what we mean when we talk about aid to Ukraine, and what the war has revealed about our own defense industrial base and readiness for future. conflicts. If you enjoy our conversation, I'd encourage you to check out a live stream with reporters currently on the ground in Ukraine. You can listen to that discussion in the SCIF if you become a dispatch member. Thanks for listening. Mark Hansi and welcome to the dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me on the show. So you and I have talked several times over the last year or so about the ongoing battle for aid to Ukraine and the ways that that has played out. And the ways that it's

intersected with the U.S.'s own defense capabilities and stockpiles. You are someone who knows about which you speak because of your background. Would you mind just briefly explaining to our listeners, sort of where you come from on this issue? Sure. I have three elements in my professional background. I was in the Marine Corps for 37 years active in reserve, did four combat tours during that time. I was in the Pentagon as a senior civilian looking with a staff that overlooked military forces and acquisition. And then for the last eight or so years, I've been at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is a think tank in Washington, D.C., where I write about military operations, forces, and budgets.

So obviously the sort of preeminent issue over the last two years, as we're approaching the two-year anniversary of the war with Ukraine, has been how the U.S. will respond to Russia's invasion. How would you characterize both the quality and the quantity of the aid the U.S. has given to Ukraine? since Russia invaded two years ago Saturday? Well, the quantity and quality have both been very great. Starting with the quality, we have given the Ukrainians top-of-the-line equipment. That is the same equipment that we use to equip our own forces. We have not been giving them obsolescent or hand-me-downs,

which has been the case with some allies over the years. and the quantity has been quite substantial. The total amount of aid, now that includes everything, has been $113 billion. The military part of that is about $50 billion. Now, some people criticize the amounts for not being sufficient, and you can make the argument the ISA should have started more quickly. Maybe some of the packages should have been larger. But the aid has been very substantial and has, along with what other allies and partners have provided, particularly NATO and the EU, given the Ukrainians a qualitative advantage and also allowed them to equip their vastly expanded military forces. If you could sort of indulge in a counterfactual,

where do you think Ukraine would be without the aid that the U.S. has provided over the last two years? Well, if without the U.S. aid and the aid from other countries, Russia would have been in Kiev in mid-March. The Ukrainians could not have held out without the enormous amounts of aid from the United States and other countries. For example, early on, the United States sent a lot of javelins. Those were instrumental in stopping the Russian advance towards Kiev. And javelins, I say, because there was a whole variety of anti-tank missiles that the United States and others provided. But that was key. Without those additional munitions, the Ukrainians could not have held out, regardless of how determined they were.

And you mentioned the defense of Kiev. The first year of the war seemed to be marked by these incredible Ukrainian successes. The second year has been more defined by, it seems, this failed counteroffensive or at least not as successful as the Ukrainians and their allies would have liked. What do the Ukrainians need now? It seems like the, as I said, victories have been fewer and further between for Ukrainians just this week. They pulled out of the city of Avdivka that had resisted, you know, Russian occupation in one form or another for a decade. What do they need on the battlefield now? Well, first, I think your characterization of military operations is essentially correct.

In the first year, you have a phase where the Ukrainians are on the defensive, fighting a desperate resistance, but very successful. And the Russians pulled back from Kiev. They pull back from Kharkiv. You get front lines stabilized, essentially where they are today. But the Ukrainians launched two counterattacks. In the fall of 2022, one captured a lot of territory east of Kharkiv, and the other one pushed the Russians out of Kurson.

There was a lot of hope last spring, a little over a year ago, going into a Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Ukrainians received a lot of training and equipment, but the results of that were disappointing. The Ukrainians were not able to get through the Russian defensive zone, which the Russians have been working on for six months. So where are we and what do the Ukrainians need? Well, the first thing to note is that there's no magic bullet. Now, there's no piece of equipment that we can give the Ukrainians that will allow them to break through the Russian lines. So it will be a shortcut to victory over the course of the two years.

We've seen successive weapons that got a lot of attention and there was hope that this would be a game changer. We've heard that many times. Javelin, High Mars, Patriot, now we hear it about F-16s. And while all of these are useful and add to the Ukrainian military capability, there's no such thing as a game-changing piece of equipment. Ukrainian military capabilities are the sum total of all of the equipment they've received. So the first answer is, the Ukrainians need to continue to receive equipment at the level that they've been receiving it for the last two years, this needs to cover a wide spectrum of

capabilities from the things that people think about, you know, like artillery shells and air defense missiles, you know, to the very boring stuff like engineer equipment, trucks, medical supplies, and, you know, all of the equipment that goes with a modern military, because militaries in combat need a continuous flow of weapons, munitions, and supplies. They use up supplies, they fire munitions, and equipment gets destroyed. And if that flow is interrupted, then military forces will decline and collapse. So the key thing right now is to keep that flow going. Having said that, there are probably some things that deserve extra attention.

Air defense missiles have been running low and aid is reestablished. I think those will be high on the list as well. as artillery, for example, a lot of focus on F-16s, and those are useful, but the numbers are going to be very small. Yeah. Would you put into context for us? You mentioned artillery. It has often been said that this is a very artillery heavy war.

What are sort of the frontline conditions we're talking about that makes this an artillery heavy war? And when we say artillery heavy, how many rounds are we talking about? What are, if you have some numbers to sort of put around these phrases that we throw around when we talk about this war? Yes, it is an artillery heavy war. And that, I think, surprised most observers. There was a lot of talk about future ground combat being long range, precision strike. And those capabilities have been very important.

But what we're seeing on the front line looks a lot like World War I. You've got trench lines and strong points and the extensive use of unguided. artillery projectiles. And to give you a sense about the numbers, the Ukrainians, particularly at the height of the counteroffensive, we're firing something like 200,000 rounds per month. And to put that into perspective, before the war, the U.S. was producing about 100,000 rounds per year. The United States has now bumped that up. We're probably at about 30,000 rounds per month, but nowhere near the expenditures that the Ukrainians have required. The United States has sent something like a million and a half rounds, and the Europeans

have sent many also. But this is a race about whether Europeans can increase their production in order to sustain the Ukrainians. To look at the other side, the Russians and the Soviets before them never threw anything away. So, you know, they had mountains of artillery shells and old tanks and old vehicles. We're seeing a lot of those on the battlefield. But they were firing something like a million rounds per month.

So between the Ukrainians at maybe 200,000, the Russians at a million, it gives you a sense about just how much artillery fire there was. Do you think that the Russians can sustain that? that high level of artillery fire? The short answer is no, not at that level of a million a month. Even the Russian stocks get low. Now, they are getting additional artillery munitions from the North Koreans, and that has helped.

They've increased their own production. It's a little hard to say where they'll end up it, but maybe in the 300,000 to 500,000 per month, more than the Ukrainians, but not at the level that they were firing at the first two years. And so we've sort of talked around it, but anyone listening to this likely knows that a supplemental aid package for Ukraine is stalled in Congress. It passed the Senate, but it's not clear what its fate is in the House, whether it will be taken up when they come back from recess. which we're recording this on Tuesday morning, the House is currently in recess.

Describe to me, obviously, that the fate of the bill is uncertain, whether it survives sort of in its current form, also uncertain and down to some political machinations. But describe to me, if you will, what has been proposed in this roughly $60 billion package of aid to Ukraine. And I'd love to circle back to that phrase as well. Yes. The aid to Ukraine is 60 plus billion because there's some funding proposed for humanitarian assistance, a large chunk of which might end up with Ukraine. But it's important to note that the phrase aid to Ukraine is a misnomer because about 60% of all of the aid to Ukraine is spent in the United States and about 90% of the military aid is spent in the United States.

when here's criticisms that the United States is sending pallets of dollars to the Ukrainian government. And, of course, that's not at all true. On the military side, there are three elements of aid. There is U.S. equipment that is sent to Ukraine. That's the drawdown of existing U.S. equipment, and then there's money to backfill that. But that's equipment and munitions and supplies that can get there pretty quickly. Then there's money for Ukraine to buy new equipment. That's really more for rebuilding the Ukrainian military after the war. But this would be newly produced equipment. There's money for what are

essentially services, that is training and maintenance and intelligence support. And then finally, there's money for U.S. forces. U.S. has surged military forces to Eastern Europe. Those are down to about 10,000, but they have continuing costs there. So there's a chunk of money for U.S. military forces. In addition, there are three other pieces. One piece is humanitarian assistance, and some of that is in Ukraine itself. Some of it is in Eastern Europe and around the world to mitigate the effects of the war in Ukraine. And then some chunk of it is spent in the United States for Ukrainian refugees. And then finally, there's a small. small chunk of money that goes to other U.S. agencies like Treasury gets some money to enforce

sanctions. Oversight groups get money, you know, to make sure that, you know, the aid is spent appropriately. And so you mentioned as part of this package, the presidential drawdown authority. Could you describe a little bit sort of a little bit more what that mechanism is? Yeah, start there and we'll talk about that mechanism. The presidential drawdown authority is often very confusing. It's a provision that's been around since the early 1960s, although it's been at a very low level, like $100 billion a year, mostly giving obsolescent equipment to allies and partners. But for the war in Ukraine, that authority has been greatly increased. And in every aid package, there is a provision that says that the president is authorized to provide to Ukraine up to X billion dollars.

worth of U.S. military equipment. Now, Congress also provides money to backfill. Now, there's no requirement in the statutory language to backfill equipment, but of course, the numbers here are so large that the Pentagon needs that money. There's a little risk because of the gap between the time when you send some piece of equipment to Ukraine and when you get a replacement, but the Pentagon has made a judgment that is acceptable. The great advantage of the drawdown authority is that equipment can get there very quickly. You don't have to wait for production coming out of a defense industry, which takes years. You can take stocks immediately.

Some of it will arrive within a couple of weeks. Some of it may take several months, but it arrives pretty quickly. And that's very important for the Ukrainians. And when you see announcements, you know, they've gone to announce today that they are providing $20 million worth of aid to Ukraine, it's. that drawdown authority in addition to commitments for new production. And if I'm remembering correctly, the last time we had one of those drawdowns was late December of last year, correct me if I've missed this. But is that still money being

used that was appropriated in September of 22? Is that the last time we had a supplemental for Ukraine? The last announcement, I believe, was the middle of January, and DOD said that that was the end of their funding. Now, there is a little gap between the authority. The DOD has more authority, but they don't have any more funding, and they've been reluctant to send more equipment for which they don't have money to backfill. The funding comes from the last supplemental, which was actually a year ago in, I believe it passed in December as part of the omnibus. There hasn't been another supplemental since then. The administration proposed one in August that sort of went nowhere, and then they proposed a large supplemental of $106 billion covering Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and the border.

And I believe that came out in October. And so you just mentioned the other two countries involved in the original supplemental request, Taiwan and Israel, or the Indo-Pacific in Israel, if you prefer. It's clear that the U.S. is thinking about more than just Ukraine, it's thinking about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and Gaza, and also a potential future war between the U.S. and China, if China. invades Taiwan. So you've laid out sort of what the Ukrainians are using, what they need, air defense, artillery. Are any of, in the Venn diagram of these three theaters, are there anything, are there any weapons or munitions that are, that are in the, the overlap of that venn diagram that both Israel and Ukraine or Israel and Taiwan or, uh, or, uh, or. or Taiwan and Ukraine will all need?

Yeah, this is a question that has been asked frequently because it's concerns about whether the United States can support three allies at the same time. It's important for us to step back and note that our aid packages for Ukraine are by far the largest, looking back two years and looking ahead because that's a much larger war,

and of course it pits two nation states against each other. The Israelis have about $14 billion of aid in this proposed supplemental. Most of that is for the future that is rebuilding the Israeli military postwar and developing certain kinds of weapons, particularly air defense weapons. There's a little money for current operations. There's some overlap with Ukraine. Fortunately, not too much. There are precision air drop munitions, for example. The Israelis have needed a lot of those.

Ukraine also has used some, but because their air force is quite small. And the United States' inventory of these munitions is quite large. That has not been much of a constraint. They have asked for artillery ammunition, and of course, that is something that the Ukrainians need. On the other hand, the Israelis have needed iron dough. which is an air defense system that the Ukrainians don't use, so that has not been a problem. Looking at Taiwan, there is, again, some overlap, but fortunately not too much, though. Any conflict in the Western Pacific would mostly be an air and naval conflict, whereas what we're

seeing in Ukraine is mostly a ground conflict. So the Taiwanese need air-delivered munitions, long. range, precision anti-ship munitions, for example, and Ukraine really does not need those, or at least not in very large quantities. There is some overlap because the Taiwanese are now focusing more on their ground forces, so they're asking for high Mars, for example, and rocket munitions as well as things like javelin. And there, there is some overlap, and the Taiwanese are probably going to have to wait since they are not. currently in military operations.

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and as well as the potential for armed conflict in the future? Well, that's a key element, because with time, all of these shortfalls can be made good. We were talking a minute ago about this Venn diagram in what the Ukrainians need, what the Israelis need, and what the Taiwanese need. And with enough time, the defense industrial base can produce enough equipment for all of them. The problem is you have two wars that are ongoing. Taiwanese are very nervous. So what the United States has tried to do is to expand production in its defense industrial base. The problem there is that before this war, the war in Ukraine, the industrial base had been sized and designed. to produce weapons and munitions efficiently at peacetime production rates.

When the Cold War ended, there was something called the Final Supper, where the Secretary of Defense got defense industry together and said, the budgets in the future are not going to support all of you. You need to consolidate and downsize for this post-coil war environment, and they did that in a big way. And as a result, they squeezed out all of the excess, capacity and focused on producing at peacetime production rates. And the reason they did that, of course, is for efficiency, but also, you know, many outside critics when they see

extra capacity, they say, you know, that's wasteful. You have a factory that can make 200 widgets a year and you're only buying 100. That's waste. The problem is that that wasteful excess is also very useful for surge capacity. So when we went into the Warren Ukraine and it became clear that we were going to have to surge production. There wasn't much there. I mean, there's some production capacity. So several things have happened. First, the Department of Defense has asked for more money to put into the industrial base to expand production. They've also asked for and received from Congress permission to do what are called multi-year contracts so that defense industry has a commitment for future production and

therefore is willing to make investments in their facilities. One of the concerns the industry had articulated was essentially, show me the money. In other words, DOD, you tell me that you want more production. But we are unwilling to expand our facilities without being confident that the orders will be there in the future. otherwise, you know, in a year this war may end. And, you know, we have these expanded facilities, which are now considered wasteful by many.

So they wanted that commitment. The multi-year procurement does that. And then DOD has been putting money into its budget plans. They did that for FY24, which came out a year ago. And then when FY25 comes out next month, I expect to see more of that. The problem here is time. We have been able to increase production of some items.

We were talking about artillery previously. Before the war, it was down to about 8,000 rounds per month. Now it's up to about 30,000 rounds month, and this is 155 millimeter. The United States wants to get up to 90,000, but that's going to take another year or two. So when we talk about sort of individual weapons, it seems to me that there's probably a lot. somewhere where someone at the Pentagon says we would prefer if the number of one five five millimeter artillery in our stockpiles didn't dip below this level on how many things or how many pieces of material might you say we're getting close to to those levels

and is there any sort of give and take on on the the amount of risk that the Pentagon is willing to take on as we wait, as you say, for these shortfalls to be made good. Well, this is a very sensitive question. You've put your finger on. The numbers are classified, but we can infer some sense about where those lines are. And to take one example, javelin, which we gave a lot of to Ukraine early on in the conflict, we probably gave them about 40, of our stockpile. And it seems that the Pentagon at that point said, that's as far as we are comfortable going. So since then, we've sent whatever our new production is, but not dipping further into our stockpile. And the reason the Pentagon says we're not comfortable is that there

are other potential conflicts for which the Pentagon has to be prepared. For example, we could have a conflict on the Korean Peninsula. The North Koreans could end up in a war with the South and North Koreans, of course, being very belligerent. There could be conflicts with Iran. There could be a conflict in a couple of years around the Baltic states with Russian aggression there. So to be prepared for these other possible conflicts, there's a level that the Pentagon doesn't want to go below. Now, the president could direct the Pentagon to accept that risk, to accept additional risk. But, of course, then, you know, that gets very sensitive. And we've seen that limit hit on a couple of other items.

For example, stingers, which are air defense missiles. We've seen it on things like artillery and high mars, you know, the rocket launchers. And there, what the Pentagon has done basically is every spare system that it has, it has sent to Ukraine, every training pool, every maintenance pool, it has sent to Ukraine. But it has not been willing to take equipment out of existing units and send that to Ukraine. Now, the United States could do that. You know, we could say late deploying reserve units will only have half of their equipment. allowance, and we're going to send the other half to Ukraine, but again, that increases risk and then, you know, also getting this sort of institutional politics. So Pentagon has been unwilling

to go beyond what it has done so far. To your mind, has the war in Ukraine and the U.S.'s reaction revealed anything about the preparedness of the defense industrial base, put us in a better or more agile position for future conflicts. I mean, if we zoom out to 10,000 feet, where is the U.S. defense industrial base in its preparedness two years after the war in Ukraine began? Well, there's no question that the war in Ukraine and tensions over Taiwan have greatly increased the appreciation for the need for stock. piles and larger stockpiles and surge capability. Before the war in Ukraine, the United States, ever since the end of the Cold War, had really been prepared for regional conflicts against

opponents like Iraq and counterinsurgency and had sized its inventories based on those much lower requirements. Many analysts in the services had recognized that great power conflict would put much greater demands on inventories. But in peacetime, it's very difficult to put money against those kinds of requirements. You know, the problem with like a stockpile of artillery shells, for example, is they just sit there. You know, if you go out and buy a ship or an airplane, it's out there every day and people can see it. And it's part of the active force. If you buy a lot of artillery shells or a lot of missiles, they're sitting in, you know, a

bunker someplace and, you know, 20 years from now, then you demilitarize it if you don't use it. So they always had a hard time competing, even though everyone recognized that a great power of conflict would probably require more. Now we've made that transition between what we see in Ukraine and analyses about what a war with China over Taiwan would require. We're building up that industrial base. The caution is that when the war in Ukraine ends, as it will someday, the United States will have to continue those investments and not turn around and say, well, that's all that surge capacity is wasteful. Let's get rid of it. Let's get efficient in our defense industry. And then we'll be back to where we were before. Well, Mark, those were

my big questions for you. But my last sort of gimmee question is, is there anything that we are missing in this conversation, anything that we haven't talked about? anything that I should have asked you and didn't, you know, something we're getting wrong when we're looking at this, at this big picture? I think there are two things we have to keep in mind on the big picture. The first is that most of this money is spent in the United States. This is not sent to foreign countries. And as a result, it benefits many communities as well as the national security of the United States. The other big thing is that we are equipping allies and partners. There are no U.S. forces involved in any of these conflicts. There are no U.S. forces in Ukraine,

none in Israel, none in Taiwan. We have allies who want to defend themselves, but they need equipment to do that. This is very different from the situation we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's also much cheaper. Those wars were extremely expensive because we had, you U.S. forces involved. Here, we don't. We just have to equip our allies and partners. That's a very cheap way to maintain national security. Well, we will leave it there. Mark Kansy and thanks so much for joining us on the Dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me on the show. You know what I'm going to do.