Lemmy.World

“We certainly understand and appreciate the urgency and are poised to move quickly,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.

The Pentagon is preparing to quickly approve a weapons package for Ukraine that includes urgently needed artillery and air defenses as Congress lines up votes to pass additional funding for the country, according to two U.S. officials.

The Biden administration has not made a final decision on how large the tranche would be and what will be in it, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive internal deliberations. But Defense Department officials are working on putting together a package of U.S. equipment that can move quickly through the bureaucratic process once the legislation passes and is signed by the president, one of the officials said.

“They will have that recommendation to the secretary very quickly, and that gets to the president shortly thereafter,” the official said.

Many U.S. weapons are already positioned in stores across Europe that could be pulled immediately for Ukraine, the first official said. Some materiel could reach Ukraine in days; others may take weeks.