The US Army is speeding up the process of acquiring weapons in order to speed up the fulfillment of unrealized contracts needed to replenish US weapons stocks depleted by arms deliveries to Ukraine. Doug Bush, the army's chief weapons buyer, said this, Reuters reports.

He said the acceleration of the contracts hinges on the simultaneous execution of processes that used to be carried out sequentially and is based on lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic.

Ukraine has relied heavily on the United States for weapons, and Washington has shipped some $17.9 billion worth of weapons since the war began.

According to the latest Pentagon contract data, contracts worth $2.6 billion have been awarded to replace weapons delivered to Ukraine since Washington began using special presidential spending reduction authority (PDA), which allows rapid transfer of weapons without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

The United States has awarded about $1 billion in contracts to arms manufacturers since the second half of October, mostly for ammunition and missiles, signaling an accelerated pace of contract decisions.

Bush said this rate of reduction exceeds the Pentagon's internal spending rate benchmarks by 15 percent.

He noted the Army received its first tranche of funds to replace weapons sent to Ukraine on May 3, and then received funds every few weeks thereafter. Each tranche ranged from a few hundred million to nearly a billion, he said, and the rate of receipt of funds is closely tied to the awarding of new contracts for weapons replacements.