40,000 US Weapons Sent to Ukraine Are Now Missing, Pentagon Finds

The US has sent more than $44 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia's invasion

A massive arsenal of weapons worth more than $1 billion that the U.S. sent to Ukraine has gone missing, according to a new report by the Pentagon.

The cache of shoulder-fired missiles, kamikaze drones , and other battlefield tools like night-vision devices — a total of 40,000 items — vanished due to a lack of close monitoring by American defense officials and diplomats according to a report released last week by the Defense Department's inspector general, according to The New York Times .

The U.S. has sent more than $44 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia's invasion.

The items were lost after being shipped to a U.S. military logistics hub in Poland, according to the report.

The reports states that some of the items may have reached Ukrainian battlefield, but were just not properly logged.

“It was beyond the scope of our evaluation to determine whether there has been diversion of such assistance,” the report states.

The inspector general's report was sent to Congress a day before a redacted version was released. The main conclusion is a concern that it will be difficult to keep tabs on further materials sent to the war-torn region.

"[Tracking will] be difficult as the inventory continues to change, and accuracy and completeness will likely only become more difficult over time,” reads a section of the report.

The investigation has offered a glimpse of the efforts that are being made to account for high-risk items rushed by the American military to Ukraine since the war with Russia began two years ago, according to the New York Times.

Since last June, the U.S. has delivered to Ukraine over 10,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 2,500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and about 750 Kamikaze Switchblade drones, 430 medium-range air-to-air missiles and 23,000 night vision devices, according to the newspaper.

In a November response to an earlier draft of the report, Alexandra N. Baker, the acting undersecretary of defense for policy, said that required accounting procedures, “are not practical in a dynamic and hostile wartime environment."