WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army on Monday said it would need Congress to approve additional funding to ensure the Pentagon’s munitions production and acquisition plans can simultaneously meet the needs of both Israel and Ukraine.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth commented that the U.S. House of Representatives is effectively paralyzed as Republicans work to select a new speaker. She said the Army was still reviewing Israeli requests for support.
“One thing that is really important in terms of the munitions in particular and our ability to support both potentially the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously is additional funding from Congress to be able to increase our capacity, in terms of our capacity to expand production and then to also pay for the munitions themselves,” Wormuth told reporters at an Army event.
“We need additional support from Congress. So I hope we’ll see that soon.”
President Biden asked Congress last week to approve a $24 billion aid package to Ukraine which is still pending. It follows actions over the summer that included the Pentagon discovering in June that it had overvalued the worth of armaments supplied to Ukraine by $6.2 billion due to an accounting error, the Pentagon still has around $5.4 billion of PDA that Congress has allocated.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Grant McCool)
