On the menu today: A perusal of recent U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, approved by the little-known but important Pentagon office that keeps track of American weapons and supply stockpiles; a look at U.S. artillery shell production, which is not quite where the Pentagon wanted to be by this point but is still more than doubled from September; and explaining why North Carolina Republicans still have a decent shot against former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in next year’s U.S. Senate race.
‘No Adverse Impact on U.S. Defense Readiness’
You may not have heard of the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, founded in 1961 as part of the Pentagon. One of its major tasks is to review potential arms sales from U.S. manufacturers to foreign countries and to determine whether a potential sale would have any negative consequences for U.S. national security interests. Back in 2019, the then-director of DSCA, Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, said the agency keeps an eye on 14,000 cases of open foreign military sales with 185 countries.
In the last few days, the DSCA announced a few new sales of arms and support equipment to Ukraine.
On Thursday, DSCA signed off on Ukraine buying $180 million in “equipment and services to support the training, sustainment, and refurbishment measures of existing U.S.-origin air defense systems” including “major modifications and maintenance support; spare parts, consumables and accessories, and repair and return support; personnel training and training equipment; U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services; and other related elements of logistics and program support.”
And right there, in the announcement: “There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.”
Also on Thursday, DSCA approved Ukraine’s purchase of $150 million worth of “M109 Self-Propelled Howitzer maintenance, repair, and overhaul capability and related equipment.” According to a 2023 report, “The Paladin’s ability to rapidly reposition after firing has made them a vexing challenge for Russian artillery troops.” “Ukraine operates a mix of M109 variants supplied by allies such as Norway, Italy, Belgium, Latvia, and the United States. As of early 2024, approximately 90 M109 systems of various modifications were in Ukrainian service.”
And then, right there, at the bottom of the announcement again: “There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.”
On Wednesday, DSCA approved a $172 million sale to Ukraine of the HAWK Phase III Missile System and Sustainment and related equipment. Now, if you’re looking to shoot down some Iranian Shahed drones or incoming Russian missiles, the HAWK surface-to-air missile has already proven capable of doing the job. (If you ever had the G.I. Joe Mobile Missile System toy, it was inspired by the HAWK.)
And hey, look what’s right there near the bottom again: “There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.”
Wait, there’s one more this week. Wednesday DSCA approved a sale of “Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and maintenance, repair, and overhaul capability and related equipment for an estimated cost of $150 million.” And — sing along with me! — “There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.”
Now, these are just the moves in the last few days. Back in May, DSCA approved “F-16 training and sustainment and related equipment for an estimated cost of $310.5 million.” Were you wondering if $310 million in F-16 training and sustainment would have an adverse effect on U.S. defense readiness? I’m glad you asked. Because it turns out — aw, you guessed it! — “There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.”
Some wag is likely to click through on the statements and observe that each one also declares, “The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region,” and contend that the deals are inconsequential. To that I would ask, how often does any one individual sale of a weapons system “alter the basic military balance in the region”? That’s a high bar to clear.
I keep hearing foreign policy voices who have never liked the idea of sending military assistance to Ukraine — or doing anything at all about Russian military aggression in Ukraine, really — insisting that sending U.S. arms to Ukraine is going to have an adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness.
You may have even seen arguments like, “When it comes down to talking resources, we are severely limited.”
And yet, over at the Pentagon, the guys whose job is to check to see if any particular transfer of arms is going to leave U.S. forces shorthanded in any potential future conflict, keep looking at the numbers and concluding everything looks just fine, and that the U.S. has sufficient numbers of these weapons systems, ammunition, and spare parts stockpiled everywhere they need them. Now, you could try to argue that these guys are getting it wrong in their calculations . . . over and over and over again. But these guys and their buddies are the ones whose necks would be on the line — literally and metaphorically — if we get into a conflict with China. So you would think they’d be highly motivated to avoid any shortages in any critical corner of the globe.
Hey, remember that short-lived pause on U.S. assistance to Ukraine at the beginning of the month? Remember how it was reportedly driven by “Pentagon concerns that the U.S. weapons stocks were dwindling too low”?
Isn’t it a little strange that these concerns would manifest out of the blue, if the Pentagon has an office whose job is to make sure arms transfers aren’t leaving any weapons stocks too low, and they’ve signed off on every previous transfer?
(Similarly, wasn’t it a little strange that apparently Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth didn’t bother to tell the White House that the Pentagon was pausing aid to Ukraine? I mean, love the decision or hate it, doesn’t that seem like the sort of thing the commander in chief ought at least to be informed about?)
Then there were the reports that the pause wasn’t driven by any shortage at all, just by a general desire to stop transferring arms to Ukraine:
The Defense Department held up a shipment of U.S. weapons for Ukraine this week over what officials said were concerns about its low stockpiles. But an analysis by senior military officers found that the aid package would not jeopardize the American military’s own ammunition supplies, according to three U.S. officials.
The move to halt the weapons shipment blindsided the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.
Critics of the decision included Republicans and Democrats who support aiding Ukraine’s fight against Russia. A leading House Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington, said it was disingenuous of the Pentagon to use military readiness to justify halting aid when the real reason appears to be simply to pursue an agenda of cutting off American aid to Ukraine.
“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the 3½ years of the Ukraine conflict,” Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.
Smith said that his staff has “seen the numbers” and, without going into detail, that there was no indication of a shortage that would justify suspending aid to Ukraine.
Within a couple of days, President Trump announced, “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons.”
Now, I’m not saying you have to trust a Democratic representative, even if he does share a name with the father of capitalism. But I would point out that if any of these transfers were indeed creating a critical shortage, wouldn’t or shouldn’t the Defense Security Cooperation Agency have noticed it much earlier? After all, they evaluate every potential transfer of arms for an “adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness.”
Now, are there weapons systems that we couldn’t sell or transfer to Ukraine, because of a limited supply? Absolutely. Ukrainian pilots aren’t trained to fly the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, but even if they were, we wouldn’t hand over any of those because we’ve got only 19 of them, and they cost about $2 billion a pop. (That may seem pricey, but when you absolutely, positively have to drop bunker-buster bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities, accept no substitutes.)
It is entirely reasonable for the U.S. or its allies to check the numbers and stockpiles and conclude, “Nope, sorry, we can’t spare that.” But we’ve got a lot of stuff, and U.S. arms manufacturers are rolling out new ones off the production line, every day. (So are the Ukrainians. Domestic defense manufacturing already accounts for almost 40 percent of weapons used by the Ukrainian military, and they’re aiming to get that to 50 percent within six months.)
As for artillery, in “September 2024, the U.S. was effectively producing just 18,000 complete 155mm artillery rounds per month. In the eight months since then, the U.S. defense industry has managed to double complete round production” — actually slightly more than doubled, to 40,000 per month. It’s not where the Pentagon wanted it to be by now — 75,000 rounds per month — but it is a significant improvement. And more is coming:
A new facility then opened in Mesquite, Texas, with the capacity to crank out 30,000 rounds a month, followed by another in Canada, which is just coming online at a rate of 10,000 a month, he said.
The latest, opening in April in Camden, Arkansas, will crank out another 50,000 per month. Another in Parsons, Kansas, should open later this summer, Reim said, with an estimated rate of 12,000 per month.
Once those are at full production, likely early next year, the Army will surpass that 100,000 rounds-per-month goal.
The September print issue of National Review (available online now) is a special in-depth look at the U.S. defense-industrial base.
The Rough Record of Red-State Senate Bids by Former Democratic Governors
You can’t blame Republicans for feeling glum about the news that North Carolina’s Democratic former governor, Roy Cooper, will run for the open U.S. Senate seat in the Tarheel State in 2026. In seven (!) statewide races since 2000, Cooper won all of them.
But North Carolina Republicans will point out that the state legislature has been under Republican control since 2010, which means Cooper signed GOP-shaped legislation into law his entire term. As the Durham-based The Assembly wrote in December, “No other North Carolina governor has seen his role so often reduced to trying to thwart his legislative adversaries. . . . Republicans, who had legislative supermajorities for four of Cooper’s eight years, have overridden 52 of his vetoes, another record.”
If Cooper is popular, it’s because he’s been satisfying a generally conservative state electorate by presiding over a generally conservative state government. As a Democratic Senate candidate, he’ll be a vote for Chuck Schumer to run the Senate.
And this is not the first time we’ve seen a seemingly popular former Democratic governor run for Senate in a Republican-leaning state. Back in 2018 in Tennessee, former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen ran for U.S. Senate against Republican Marsha Blackburn, and was even endorsed by Taylor Swift, back when that was a new thing. Blackburn won easily, 55 percent to 44 percent.
In 2016 in Ohio, former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland ran against Republican Rob Portman and lost, getting just 37 percent of the vote. That same year, former Democratic governor and senator Evan Bayh ran for the open Senate seat in Indiana and lost, with just 42 percent of the vote. In 2012, Bob Kerrey, former Nebraska governor and senator, attempted a comeback bid and won just 42 percent.
Sometimes a Democratic governor can make the jump to the Senate — John Hickenlooper of Colorado, New Hampshire’s Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, Virginia’s Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, and the so-called independent Angus King of Maine. But those are bluer states than North Carolina, which has voted for a Democrat in the presidential race only once since 1980 (Barack Obama in 2008, by about three-tenths of a percentage point).
The 68-year-old Cooper is the best candidate Democrats could have gotten in these circumstances, but that doesn’t mean he’s got this one in the bag.
ADDENDUM: An early edition of yesterday’s newsletter listed Unabomber Ted Kaczynski as among the most “notorious, widely despised, and high-profile figures in federal prison right now.” Some readers pointed out that Kaczynski died in 2023, so he’s extremely unlikely to still be in federal prison. I could admit I screwed up and relied on an outdated list of notorious figures in federal prison, but I think instead I’ll just start a conspiracy theory that Kaczynski faked his own death.