He fills a spot that has been vacant since Carter’s first week in office, when Adm. John Kirby stepped down. Kirby has since become the spokesperson for the Department of State.

Cook is moving from his current role as Bloomberg TV’s cChief Washington cCorrespondent. He previously covered the Pentagon for NBC.

In a statement, Carter said Cook’s “years of experience in the national media, coupled with his personal integrity and nonpartisan approach, make him an ideal fit to represent this institution during a crucial period for our nation and our military.”

Cook will formally take over the position in July.

Email: amehta@defensenews.com

Twitter: @AaronMehta

The administration announced in early April that the fiscal 2022 budget request asks for $753 billion in national security funding, including $715 billion for the Defense Department. Further details were omitted during the release of the so-called skinny budget, a process common for new administrations who need extra time to build out their first budget request.

The budget request is not expected to include reliable numbers for Future Years Defense Program projections. It is expected the budget request will feature attempts to divest existing systems, something Congress often moves to reverse during the markup process.

Republican lawmakers have hit back at the $715 billion figure, saying it does not match a need — articulated under the previous administration — for annual 3-5 percent growth in defense spending. Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, are looking for ways to cut spending further.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has formally announced Heidi Shyu as his nominee for undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and Meredith Berger as his nominee for assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment.

The announcement confirmed Defense News’s reporting from the morning that the two nominations were coming. The White House also announced that Frank Kendall, a longtime Pentagon acquisition official, would be Biden’s nominee for Air Force secretary and that Gina Ortiz Jones will be the Air Force undersecretary pick, both picks reported earlier in the day by Defense News.

The White House also announced it intent to nominate Michael Connor, currently a partner in the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, as assistant secretary of the Army for civil works and Caroline Krass to be the Pentagon’s general counsel. Krass, a former special assistant for national security issues during the Obama administration, is currently senior vice president & general counsel, general Insurance and deputy general counsel of American International Group.

The selections continue a process of filling out the department’s top jobs after a slow start. They also continue a trend of selecting minority and female candidates for top jobs across the department, a trend the administration has previously pledged to focus on.

Shyu served as the Army’s top acquisition official from September 21, 2012, to January 31, 2016. Much of her career before her government service was with Raytheon, where she worked on a number of business units that will be relevant to the R&E enterprise, including unmanned, space and electronic warfare programs; she ended her Raytheon career as vice president of technology strategy for the Space and Airborne Systems business unit.

According to news reports, the Taiwan-born Shyu immigrated to the U.S. at age 10. Democratic senators Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the first Thai-American elected to Congress, and Maizie Hirono of Hawaii, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, have previously pressured the Biden team to add more Asian-American Pacific Islander representation across the administration. Shyu would be the highest ranking Asian-American civilian at the Pentagon, if confirmed by the Senate.

The undersecretary for research and engineering is the department’s top technology development job, with the mandate to focus on producing next-generation capabilities.

Berger has held various policy roles within DoD and the Environmental Protection Agency. During the Obama administration, Berger served as deputy chief of staff to Navy secretary Ray Mabus, and is now part of his consultancy group, as well as a non-resident fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2017, he laid the keel for the future USS Fort Lauderdale, as the ship’s official sponsor.

Berger’s selection comes as the Defense Department is shifting how it addresses climate change and as it considers moving more into alternative energy.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., lauded the nominees as “a dynamic slate of nominees who will help safeguard the nation, support our service men and women, and help lead the Pentagon into the future.” Each would have to be vetted and evaluated, and he would work to hold nomination hearings in a timely manner.

That total is the highest since the think tank SIPRI began tracking military spending in 1988. The top five largest military spenders contributed to 62 percent of that total.

The U.S. ($778 billion, 39 percent of overall spending) easily outpaced its closest competitors, with China ($252 billion, 13 percent), India ($72.9 billion, 3.7 percent), Russia ($61.7 billion, 3.1 percent) and the United Kingdom ($59.2 billion, 3 percent) rounding out the top group.

Overall, the U.S. and China represent 52 percent of all military spending for the year.

Rounding out the top 10 are Saudi Arabia ($57.5 billion), Germany ($52.8 billion), France, ($52.7 billion), Japan ($49.1 billion) and South Korea ($45.7 billion). No other country accounted for 2 percent or more of overall military expenditure in 2020.

While 2020 was an unprecedented year globally, military expenditures stayed steady overall, said Diego Lopes da Silva, a researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.

“We can say with some certainty that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on global military spending in 2020,’ Lopes da Silva said in a news release. “It remains to be seen whether countries will maintain this level of military spending through a second year of the pandemic.”

COVID-19 did have one impact on the data set: As global economies struggled in 2020, defense spending as a percentage of national gross domestic product reached a global average of 2.4 percent in 2020, up from 2.2 percent in 2019 — the biggest year-on-year rise since 2009, according to SIPRI.

While that change was due more to GDPs coming down than to nations actively increasing their defense spending, it did allow three NATO nations to break the 2 percent GDP spending target that had previously not done so, by SIPRI’s estimation.

Researchers relay on estimations for China’s defense spending, but its annual 2020 figures appear to represent a 1.9 percent increase from 2019 — the 26th year in a row that China’s military spending has increased, and the longest such streak SIPRI has tracked. Overall, in the last decade, China has increased its military spending by 76 percent.

“China stands out as the only major spender in the world not to increase its military burden in 2020 despite increasing its military expenditure, because of its positive GDP growth last year,” Nan Tian, SIPRI senior researcher, said in a statement. “The ongoing growth in Chinese spending is due in part to the country’s long-term military modernization and expansion plans, in line with a stated desire to catch up with other leading military powers.”

After a three month stretch with no nominations, the White House has now announced its intent to nominate 12 Pentagon officials in the last 20 days. It has also filled out other top national security jobs at both the Departments of State and Energy.

The nominees announced Friday:

Brenda “Sue” Fulton for assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs. Part of the first West Point graduating class to include women, Fulton has a long history of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in the military. She helped lead efforts to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and fought against the ban on transgender servicemembers, and in 2012 she and her wife were the first same-sex couple to wed in West Point’s Cadet Chapel.

Christopher Maier for assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low intensity conflict. Maier joined the Pentagon earlier this year as the principal deputy for the SOLIC role. The former head of the Defeat-ISIS task force, Maier previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism during the Obama administration. He was also the author of the 2011 National Strategy for Counterterrorism.

Deborah Rosenblum for assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense. Rosenblum is currently executive vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the same non-profit that housed Jill Hruby, Biden’s choice to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), , an agency with the Department of Energy which oversees the development of America’s nuclear warheads. She previously served as vice president at The Cohen Group consultancy. Over the course of her career, Rosenblum has focused heavily on nuclear issues, including multiple rounds of negotiations with North Korea. She joins a group of non-proliferation experts that have been tapped by the administration for top nuclear roles.

Shawn Skelly for assistant secretary of defense for readiness. Skelly spent 20 years in the Navy, largely flying the S-3 Viking anti-submarine aircraft. A former special assistant to the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, she has industry experience with both ITT Exelis and CACI International. A former commissioner on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service and vice-president of the Out in National Security group, Skelly became the first transgender veteran to serve as presidential appointee in 2013.

Jessica Lewis for assistant secretary of state, bureau of political-military affairs. A former National Security Advisor and Foreign Policy Advisor for Senate Majority/Minority Leader Harry Reid, Lewis is now the staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., for whom she worked previously. If confirmed, Lewis would have a major hand in issues around arms sales for partners and allies, overseen by Menendez in the Senate. In a statement, Menendez called Lewis “a trailblazer for women in national security, and her steady and reliable diplomatic hand has served our nation greatly in times of chaos and calm.”

Donald Lu for assistant secretary of state, bureau of south and central Asian affairs. A career member of the foreign service, Lu has served as ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic since 2018. Over the course of his career he has had posting at India, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Pakistan. Per his bio, he reads and speaks Albanian, Russian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, West African Krio, Hindi and Urdu. If confirmed, he will have a key role in shaping U.S. policy for a portfolio that contains Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, among others.

Additionally, on Thursday, the White House announced its intent to nominate Frank Rose as the principal deputy administrator of the NNSA. Rose, currently of the Brookings Institution, served as assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance from 2014-2017 and is a well known commentator on nuclear issues.

Lawmakers from both parties leveled pointed questions at Pentagon officials over whether it’s worthwhile to study extending the life of the 50-year-old Minuteman III as an alternative to its $100 billion replacement program, the Air Force’s Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.

In the lead up to the Biden administration’s far-reaching nuclear posture review, left-leaning lawmakers say the Pentagon’s $1.2 trillion nuclear modernization plans are a money pit and question whether the United States could deter its rivals for less with only its bombers and submarines. Conservative lawmakers worried GBSD needs protection from cancellation are opposing further analysis by the Pentagon.

Progressives last month offered legislation to scrap GBSD and shift $1 billion from the program to help develop a COVID vaccine ― potentially a long shot after the panel rejected a similar measure to defund GBSD last year, in a bipartisan vote.

Northrop Grumman, which the Air Force awarded a $13.3 billion contract in September to develop GBSD, has a lot riding on the outcome of the debate. So do the states that host the Minuteman III, deployed across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

GBSD’s high-powered defenders from both parties include Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., who vowed in public remarks to be “working to make sure that this program stays on track.”

Wednesday’s venue was a hearing before the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee, where the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Mike Turner, said he’d been told of a recently-initiated Pentagon study into the cost-effectiveness of cannibalizing parts from 200 Minuteman III’s to stretch the lives of other 200.

Turner, of Ohio, asked Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense, Strategy, Plans and Capabilities Melissa Dalton whether a study by the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office was ongoing, as he’d heard, and why.

“Every time this has been studied, it’s been seen as ill-advised, to look at any life extension of Minuteman III ― not just merely for costs but also for capabilities,” Turner said. “Ms. Dalton, are you aware of this study, did you approve it and what is in this study?”

Amid Turner’s questions, Dalton said she wasn’t aware any such study was underway but said she’d look into it and keep Turner informed. The GBSD program would be examined, she said, in the course of drafting the Biden administration’s nuclear posture review and national defense strategy.

As the strategic reviews look at threats and current capabilities to counter them, “we will of course be looking at at cost and what is the right balance of the mix of programs that may be necessary to have a safe, effective, and secure nuclear deterrent well into the future,” she said.

Sources previously told Defense News that either a CAPE analysis was underway or under discussion.

The hearing’s sharpest exchanges were between California Democratic Rep. John Garamendi, whose amendment to require DoD study a life-extension to 2050 died in committee last year, and U.S. Strategic Command’s chief, Adm. Charles Richard, who argues the Minuteman IIIs is dangerously obsolete.

When Richard said the Defense Department had reported several times to Congress ― in a 2019 analysis most recently ― that a life-extension would not be cost-effective, Garamendi cut him off to say the assumption in DoD’s analysis was that Minuteman III’s life could be extended. Then Richard grew more emphatic.

“From an operational point of view, I do not see an operational reason to even attempt to do that,” Richard replied. “The Minuteman III is 1970s-era, designed to go against Soviet analog defenses. I need a weapon that will work and make it to the target, and to expect that, in the timeframes you’re talking about, to penetrate potentially advanced Russian and Chinese systems is going to be a challenge.”

When Garamendi cited 2019 testimony that it would be technologically feasible to extend the life of the propulsion and guidance systems one more time (the witness then was Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, then the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration), Richard pointed out that the Air Force would be the best source of any cost analysis and the defense secretary the ultimate decider.

“Now don’t go off talking to me about the secretary of defense. We’re talking about the viability of the Minuteman III,” Garamendi said. “If I’m incorrect and it is not possible to extend it one more time, then please provide the written documentation to that.”

Richard said, as an operational commander, he wasn’t sure it was technically possible to extend the life of the Minuteman III or harden its command-and-control systems from a cyber attack, as those systems were “designed before the internet.”

“Why are you not sure? It’s your business to be sure,” Garamendi said, prompting Richard to fire back: “Exactly. That’s why I need a new one.” Then Garamendi’s time expired.

Later, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney pushed back, saying her colleagues’ solution to Russia and China’s nuclear buildup and expansion programs, “is for us to risk our own security, to tie our own hands with ‘no-first use,’ to reduce our own capabilities, to delay yet again modernization.”

While China is estimated to have about 320 warheads ― much less than the U.S. and Russia ― Richard said its arsenal is undergoing “a breathtaking expansion.” By way of contrast, Richard went on to say the long list of scarce parts for America’s Minuteman III includes a launch switch for control centers that no company will manufacture anymore.

“It’s like asking a company to make a dial-up modem. There’s no profit in doing something like that,” Richard said. “The Air Force has been consistently pulling rabbits out of the hat to solve these problems. I’m afraid there’s a point where they won’t be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat and the system won’t work.”

The request, rolled out Friday, amounts to a slight decrease for the Pentagon when adjusted for inflation, and it’s well shy of the Trump administration’s projected $722 billion request for FY22. The proposal would also end the off-budget funding pool known the overseas contingency operations, or OCO, account.

The first installment of Biden’s budget plan contained only top-line discretionary spending numbers. A more detailed budget is expected in May or June, although that is not expected to include reliable numbers for the Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP, projections.

Lawmakers, for years under the Budget Control Act caps, have carved spending deals with rough parity between defense and nondefense spending. With the BCA expired, Biden wants to boost nondefense by 16 percent, to $769 billion. (Administration officials tout the number as 3.3 percent of gross domestic product, which is roughly equal to a 30-year average.)

“A chunk of this budget request, on the defense side in particular, is to pay for the pay raise for men and women in uniform, and then the civilians that support them; I think that’s something we could find support for on both sides of the aisle” an administration official told reporters Friday. “The focus will be on investments on nondefense, but also ensuring the Defense Department he can continue its strategic goals as we outcompete China, and as we ensure that the men and women in uniform have everything that they need.”

The overall national security top line of $753 billion includes $38 billion not earmarked for the Pentagon. While the budget document does not spell out where that money is going, a large chunk of that is traditionally tied up in the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within the Energy Department that handles nuclear warheads.

For the defense industry, budget documents teased an emphasis on shipbuilding, which dovetails with the Pentagon’s focus on China and Indo-Pacific. It comes amid a push from seapower advocates and after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said he would advocate for “heavy investment” in sea-, air- and space-centric platforms, with “bloodletting” in other areas of the budget.

The defense top line is unlikely to satisfy key Republicans, who have claimed the Department of Defense needs a 3-5 percent annual increase to stay ahead of China and other evolving threats, nor progressives, who have asked for cuts of as much as 10 percent.

That’s not a bad thing, said Roman Schweizer, a defense industry analyst with Cowen.

“As we’ve said before, a flattish number would be positive because the Biden Admin will be signaling to Congress that it doesn’t want big cuts in defense,” Schweizer wrote in a note sent to investors Friday. “In Washington, when both sides are angry, that’s called a compromise. There will be a lot of griping along the way, but it’s the kind of outcome that probably makes sense.”

There will be no separate OCO request, the administration official said. Though intended as a wartime account, OCO became a tool to skirt congressionally mandated budget caps, with critics in both parties.

“Both sides of the aisle considered [OCO] a budgetary gimmick given that many of the overseas operations that they supported had been around for many, many years,” the administration official said. “So we had bipartisan interest in ensuring that those things were accomplished in the base defense budget. That’s what you’ll see presented from us today.”

Skinny on details

The document broadly discusses defense issues, with almost no dollar figures appended to any priorities. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks issued a memo in February outlining her biggest programmatic focus areas. While several of those areas are highlighted, dollar figures are currently missing.

Statements about global security are heavily weighed toward the State Department having the lead — a trend since the start of the Biden administration. For instance, the document pledges a “significant increase in resources to strengthen and defend democracies throughout the world, advance human rights, fight corruption, and counter authoritarianism.”

The only place where specific funding streams are called out comes when broadly discussing the need to update information and cybersecurity systems, which will include “$500 million for the Technology Modernization Fund, an additional $110 million for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and $750 million as a reserve for Federal agency information technology enhancements.”

However, there are some hints as to the administration’s defense-budget thinking:

• China as the top challenge. The budget identifies China as the “top challenge,” and calls out the need to “leverage” the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. That would seem to imply that most, if not all, of what U.S. Indo-Pacific Command head Adm. Phil Davidson has sought will be included in the budget request.
• R&D focus. Throughout the document, there is a focus on research and development for new technologies across the government, and the DoD is no exception. The budget request “prioritizes defense research, development, test, and evaluation funding to invest in breakthrough technologies that would drive innovation and underpin the development of next-generation defense capabilities.”
• Cuts are coming. Paying for R&D and new capabilities requires cuts elsewhere, something previewed in the Biden administration’s early strategic guidance. The budget request supports the “DOD’s plan to divest legacy systems and programs to redirect resources from low- to high-priority programs, platforms, and systems. Some legacy force structure is too costly to maintain and operate, and no longer provides the capabilities needed to address national security challenges. The discretionary request enables DOD to reinvest savings associated with divestitures and other efficiencies to higher priority investments.”
• Shipbuilding as a priority. Figuring out the right balance of shipbuilding was a major focus for President Donald Trump’s national security team, and it remains so for the Biden administration. Although details are thin, the budget document proposes “executable and responsible investments” in the fleet, including “the recapitalization of the Nation’s strategic ballistic missile submarine fleet, and invests in remotely operated and autonomous systems and the next generation attack submarine program.” Speaking to reporters Friday afternoon, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said “certainly shipbuilding is something the secretary is going to be focused on, with a mind towards making sure we have the right mix of capabilities now and into the future.”
• Nuclear on track for now? One of the biggest questions facing the defense budget is about nuclear spending, particularly around the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, America’s replacement for its intercontinental ballistic missiles. Opponents have pushed for GBSD to be paused while alternatives are studied, but advocates say the program must stay on track or risk total derailment. An early sign of what the Biden administration has decided to do: “While the Administration is reviewing the U.S. nuclear posture, the discretionary request supports ongoing nuclear modernization programs while ensuring that these efforts are sustainable.”
• Long-range fires wins out. “The safety and security of the Nation requires a strong, sustainable, and responsive mix of long-range strike capabilities,” according to the document, echoing a major focus from the Pentagon as it moves toward its new joint war-fighting plan. The budget invests in “the development and testing of hypersonic strike capabilities while enhancing existing long-range strike capabilities to bolster deterrence and improve survivability and response timelines.”
• Climate and energy. Discussions about climate change as a security issue were a sensitive subject during the Trump administration, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made it clear early in his tenure that the issue will be front and center for him. The budget request includes money to “plan for and mitigate impacts of climate change and improve the resilience of DOD facilities and operations. The discretionary request also invests in power and energy research and development in order to improve installation and platform energy performance and optimize military capability.”
• Biological threats. In the post-pandemic world, the DoD may play a major part in gearing the U.S. up for another biological threat. At a time when a think tank is calling for tripling the biological threat R&D funding, Biden’s budget will fund “programs that support biological threat reduction in cooperation with global partners, emerging infectious disease surveillance, biosafety and biosecurity, and medical countermeasure research and development.”

Budgets traditionally are released in February, but a delay is common for the first budget request of a new administration. Budget planning takes most of the previous year, and a new team can only change so much without an extended timeline.

The Pentagon’s budget planning has been particularly difficult this transition, according to officials who point blame at Trump appointees they say blocked Biden’s landing team from seeing the budget documents until just before the inauguration.

The budget, initially set to be rolled out last week, was reportedly delayed in a disagreement about the size of the defense budget.

During her Feb. 8 confirmation hearing, Hicks told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that she was concerned about the budget schedule.

“I think the biggest challenge that I will face, if confirmed, because of this is around budget transparency,” she said then. “Typically that information is shared with the transition team because the administration will owe to Congress a president’s budget submission in the spring.

“So the inability to look at that information … I think it will cause some delay in the timeline by which we can give budget quality information back to Congress. So that would be the area [where] I would ask for a little relief or understanding.”

Michael Brown, the head of the Defense Innovation Unit, was announced as the nominee for undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment (A&S), the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer. Biden tapped Ronald Moultrie, who has had a long career in the intelligence world, for the job of undersecretary for intelligence and security, the top civilian intelligence role at DoD.

Biden’s other nominee, Mike McCord, would serve his second stint as undersecretary-comptroller, the department’s top financial official. McCord’s nomination was first reported by Defense News.

The three men represent the first DoD nominations announced since Dec. 30, a span of over three months.

Brown, a former CEO of Symantec, joined the DoD in September 2018 to lead DIU, a small office dedicated to increasing ties between the department and commercial technology firms. He has gained a reputation in Congress as a China hawk thanks to his co-authorship of a departmental report about Chinese influence in American tech companies.

While Brown does not have experience running major defense programs, sources say the Biden team wanted to bring in someone with experience from outside DoD for the A&S job and pointed to his software background as useful at a time when the department is increasingly leaning on digital tools. He will also have to manage the department’s procurement response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed weaknesses in the global defense supply chain.

Moultrie has held roles with the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and as a Russian linguist in the U.S. military. He retired in 2015 as the National Security Agency’s director of operations, joining a number of boards in the years since.

He published an article in 2020 on Worth.com outlining challenges he faced because of race throughout his career. Moultrie, who is Black, would join the department at a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is putting increasing focus on racial tensions within the military. “Writing this story has been cathartic,” he concluded in the article last year. “My reluctance has been overtaken by a sense of moral obligation to embolden others to come forward.”

If confirmed McCord would return to the job he held in the comptroller’s office from June 2014 until the end of the Obama administration in 2017.

The comptroller serves as the chief financial officer for the Department of Defense, with oversight of the more than $700 billion defense budget. The position also comes with the responsibility of managing the department’s annual audit, an effort that began under McCord’s successor, David Norquist.

McCord, who also spent time as the deputy comptroller, was part of Biden’s transition landing team at the department. Since leaving government, he has held a number of different roles, including as director for civil-military programs at the Stennis Center for Public Service and on the board of trustees for the Aerospace Corp.

During that time period, American and coalition costs for rotary-wing transportation hit $773 million. How much of that should be reimbursed is effectively impossible to know, according to the auditors.

For the 38 members of the Resolute Support coalition, American air transportation is vital for moving from the central hub in Kabul and Bagram Airfield to four outposts located in Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Kandahar and Laghman. But auditors discovered that the Department of Defense “did not request reimbursement for air transportation services provided to Coalition partners” between September 2017 and September 2020, despite a standing requirement to do so.

When it comes to transportation, coalition partners in Afghanistan are divided into two categories. “Lift and Sustain Coalition partners” have their costs covered by the DoD, as those partners would be unable to participate in the Resolute Support mission without the U.S. paying those expenses. There are 21 members in this category.

The “Pay-to-Play” category contains 17 members: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. They are supposed to reimburse the U.S. for the costs associated with using American transportation capabilities in Afghanistan. (Iceland no longer participates in the mission, but did during the time period studied by auditors.)

However, auditors place no blame on the coalition members for the unpaid funds. Instead, they found breakdowns in the two Pentagon offices that are supposed to track the information: U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Multinational Logistics (USFOR-A-MNL) and the logistics division of U.S. Army Central (ARCENT).

“USFOR-A MNL did not obtain flight data, determine rates, or establish an agreement with Coalition partners for air transportation services. In addition, the ARCENT Logistics Directorate did not have internal controls in place to identify if orders were initiated” inside a government system, the auditors found. “We confirmed that ACSA coordinators did not initiate any orders for air transportation services for any of the 17 Pay-to-Play Coalition partners. Furthermore, in September 2020, the ACSA program manager stated that USFOR-A MNL personnel had never billed Coalition partners for air transportation services.”

Put simply, those offices never set up a way to track who was using American assets, where they went and how much those nations should be charged; there was also no system to allow the U.S. to ask for a monetary refund. And because no tracking was done, American taxpayers have no way of knowing how much money partners should have been paying.

“The DoD paid $773 million for air transportation services provided to U.S. personnel, Pay-to-Play Coalition partners, and Lift and Sustain Coalition partners from September 2017 through September 2020,” auditors found. While the 17 Pay-to-Play countries only make up part of that, “because USFOR-A did not receive or track Coalition partner flight usage data, the exact cost of air transportation services provided to Pay-to-Play Coalition partners cannot be determined.”

As a result of the IG’s findings, new procedures are being implemented:

• The IG recommended that USFOR-A-MNL begin gathering flight usage data, determine a per-person unit cost for moving partners around the country and sort out how to bill the partner nations. Army Col. Michael Scarpulla, the chief of staff for the deputy commanding general for operations in Afghanistan, concurred with both recommendations and pledged work would begin quickly, with the first bills submitted in the second quarter of 2021; a quarterly format will follow.
• The IG also recommended that ARCENT “conduct a review of all reimbursable services provided in Afghanistan to Coalition partners and establish internal controls” for tracing such information going forward. Army leadership agreed, with plans for monthly checkups on the information to ensure it is correctly tracked and billed.

Overall, the IG seems satisfied that these issues will be resolved, declaring concerns either closed or closed pending the results of billing efforts.

“It is clear that Ukraine is not unique among the list of countries who are supported by the U.S. government,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, now chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Defense Reforms think tank, said in a recent telephone interview from Kyiv. “But it is also clear that Ukraine provides a lot of security for the U.S.”

The package, announced March 1, included two Mark VI patrol boats as well as “counter-artillery radars and tactical equipment; continued support for a satellite imagery and analysis capability; and equipment to support military medical treatment and combat evacuation procedures,” per the Pentagon.

That marked the first military aid to Ukraine under the Biden administration, and more could be coming; there is another $150 million appropriated by Congress for the fiscal 2021 Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, but that money is gated off until the U.S. Defense and State departments jointly certify there has been “sufficient progress” made by Ukraine on military reform efforts.

Danylyuk, who has advised Ukraine’s government in modernizing its armed forces, particularly its special forces, argued two key points that make Ukraine worthy of increased aid. The first is that country’s 1994 decision to remove from its soil nearly 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles and nearly 2,000 nuclear warheads in exchange for a guarantee of sovereignty from Russia.

The second, and far more current, argument he made is that by taking on Russia in the Donbas and elsewhere, Ukraine is expending its own blood and treasure to protect U.S. allies like Poland and the Baltics, and ultimately America itself.

“Ukraine deserves much bigger support from a moral point of view and from a very practical point of view,” Danylyuk said. “No disrespect, but Ukraine deserves more than Egypt or Jordan.” Those two countries receive significant military aid from the U.S.

Specifically, Danylyuk said he would like to see the U.S have more high-level military-to-military interactions to discuss mutual tactical and strategic objectives.

Luke Coffey, an international affairs expert with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation think tank, believes relations between the U.S. and Ukraine will be easier under the Biden administration than during the last 18 months of the Trump administration, when arms support for Ukraine became tied up in the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

“I think where we’ll see a change will be in terms of the rhetoric that’s used about Ukraine and its Euro-Atlantic aspirations in NATO and the European Union,” Coffey predicted. “But also I think we’ll see more funding and financial support” from the U.S.

While Coffey is skeptical there will be a shift toward major American military exercises in Ukraine, Ian Brzezinski, a European expert with the Atlantic Council, said such an expansion is needed, feasible and would be a strong sign of support for Ukraine.

“Right now, we basically do ship visits and tactical training for the military,” Brzezinski said. “What about sending a brigade or battalion into Ukraine for a few months? That would provide a higher-intensity level of engagement and training for the Ukrainians, and it would complicate Russian planning by demonstrating that one cannot ignore the risk of U.S. intervention in Ukraine in the event Moscow acts radically again.”

“The top officials of the Biden administration largely come from the Obama team. They’re seasoned, they have a new leader, but it’s not yet fully clear how their policies are going to differ from the Obama years. They need to articulate and demonstrate that they [are] less averse to conflict and will [be] more assertive in combatting aggression,” he added. “Some of their initial statements and actions are obviously useful in this regard but do not yet clearly distinguish the administration from the Obama years.”

Regarding the recently released military assistance package to Ukraine, Brzezinski said: “Clearly the Ukrainians need this, but there is more the U.S. can and should do.”

Equipment wish list

In terms of material items, Danylyuk said more air defense and anti-missile systems are needed. He specifically cited the Patriot and Tomahawk missiles as something Ukraine desires.

The Patriot makes sense on paper, as it would come heavily into play should Russia ever fully invade Ukraine, said Brzezinski. “The Russians are all about using missiles to shut down an adversary’s command-and-control structures, critical sensors, and logistical systems; that’s why Ukraine needs more robust air and missile defense capacities,” he said.

But he noted the level and type of missile defense capabilities the U.S. can and should provide would be in part determined by Ukraine’s capacity to afford and properly use those systems.

That same concern would exist for any high-end fighter aircraft — something Danylyuk said is another priority. The Ukrainian Air Force heavily relies on obsolete Soviet airframes, and “we need to replace them with something more modern,” he said.

When asked if Ukraine is interested in a fifth-generation fighter like the F-35, Danylyuk said the stealth fighter is on the list of air assets Ukraine would eventually like to have.

Updating Ukrainian air capabilities makes sense to Coffey, but Ukraine “shouldn’t try to be a peer-to-peer competitor with Russia in the skies.”

More directly, “there’s no way, in my opinion, that Ukraine should even remotely consider a platform like the F-35 right now,” Coffey said, given the unit cost and operational requirements for the advanced fighter. “For the type of threat that they face and are involved in right now, I don’t see how they could feasibly purchase F-35s.”

Instead, Coffey suggested Ukraine should look to alternatives for air power, including Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 unmanned systems that have proven effective against Russian equipment in Libya, in Syria and during the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Danylyuk also said he would like to see more joint U.S.-Ukraine weapons systems development programs. “That could be very useful,” he said.