Rising cost of two wars for Pentagon

The Pentagon is seeking an extra $55 billion from Congress as the US faces the prospect of backing two long-running wars. Two supplementary requests of nearly $44 billion for arming Ukraine and more than $10 billion for Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, both sent to Congress this week, have underscored two growing challenges for the Pentagon: *The increasing cost of providing arms for two countries at war simultaneously. *The need to preserve sufficient stockpiles back home in the event of a third conflict where the US would be expected to intervene militarily. Mark Cancian, an American weapons expert and former Pentagon official, said much would depend on how long the war in Gaza continued. “If the war goes on for a long time, Israel will use up more and more of its own stockpiles and will rely on the US,” he said. Were China to attempt an invasion of Taiwan while the US was focused on Israel and Ukraine, the Pentagon might be forced to assess its priorities, Cancian, a senior adviser at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said. “I think it would be Israel first, then Ukraine and Taiwan third,” he said. The Pentagon insists it can cope with the demands of both Israel and Ukraine at the same time, and has taken huge strides in expanding America’s defence industrial base. More than $50 billion has been requested for this weapons-building expansion. Pentagon officials also point out that the weapons requirements from Ukraine and from Israel don’t always overlap, although both countries have appealed for large stocks of 155mm artillery shells. To meet that demand, the US had more than doubled production of 155mm shells in the last year and a half and was planning a six-fold increase by late 2024, Brigadier-General Pat Ryder, chief Pentagon spokesman, said. “For Israel and the Indo-Pacific, while there is certainly overlap in some equipment and munitions, there are significant operational differences in these theatres that drive our requirements,” Ryder said. “In Israel, we’re providing precision-guided and Iron Dome munitions which are not used in Ukraine. In the Indo-Pacific, we anticipate longer-range fires and systems which will be key to addressing the challenges we potentially could confront there,” he said. Meanwhile, there are daily shipments of arms arriving in Israel from the US. “We’re looking at every possible way to get Israel what it needs as fast as we can get it to them,” a senior US defence official said. Israel’s needs would be significantly smaller than Ukraine’s, Mark Cancian said. But if the war in Gaza continued for an extended period, some key systems might have to be diverted from Ukraine to Israel, he said. Realistic funding by Congress for the Pentagon to continue backing Ukraine and Israel could be the one obstacle in the US ability to support both countries at war. After weeks of wrangling within the Republican party over the choice of Speaker of the House of Representatives, the war-funding issues have been held in abeyance. The speaker crisis has been resolved with the appointment of Mike Johnson. But there are concerns in the Pentagon that some Republicans, already cautious about the rising cost of the war in Ukraine, might begin to focus their support more for Israel than for the Kyiv government. “One thing that is really important in terms of our ability to support both the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously is additional funding from Congress,” Christine Wormuth, US army secretary, said recently.