The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are eating away at critical U.S. weapons stockpiles and could hamper the military’s ability to respond to China should a conflict arise in the Indo-Pacific, the top U.S. commander for that region said Tuesday.
Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo cautioned Tuesday that the U.S. providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel is now impeding his ability to respond in the Indo-Pacific, such as if China invades Taiwan.
“Up to this year, where most of the employment of weapons were really artillery pieces and short-range weapons, I had said, ‘not at all,'” when asked if the conflicts were hampering U.S. ability to respond to threats in the Indo-Pacific, Paparo said.
“It’s now eating into stocks, and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” he told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
China has ramped up its military pressure against Taiwan, including a massive military exercise that involved 125 warplanes in October, and has said annexing Taiwan is a historical inevitability.
China’s military has increased its encircling of Taiwan’s skies and waters in the past few years, holding joint drills with its warships and fighter jets on a near-daily basis near the democratically run island. The U.S., like most countries, does not recognize Taiwan as a country but is the island’s main partner and is bound by U.S. laws to provide it with the means to defend itself.
Ukraine just passed its 1,000th day since Russia invaded, and in that timeframe, the U.S. has provided more than $60.4 billion in military assistance, including three Patriot air defense systems and missiles, more than 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and ammunition, and the coveted longer-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, which Ukraine deployed in Russia for the first time on Tuesday.
In October, after Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles into Israel, the U.S. deployed one of its few Terminal High Altitude Area Defense batteries to Israel and about 100 troops to help operate it.
The U.S. also has regularly shipped air defense munitions as Israel presses its offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The conflicts have killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The outgoing Biden administration has committed to spending the remaining $7.1 billion in presidential drawdown authority — meaning weapons pulled from U.S. stockpiles — to send weapons to Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. It will announce another package this week, according to U.S. officials.
However, the ability to send the weapons will be limited by what is on the shelves, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Tuesday.
Paparo told the think tank audience that the push to get weapons to Ukraine and Israel has left the U.S. with too few munitions in reserves.
“We should replenish those stocks and then some,” Paparo said. “I was already dissatisfied with the magazine depth. I’m a little more dissatisfied with the magazine depth,” he said, referring to the number of munitions in reserve.
Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group.
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