Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.
Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.
Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN.
The US military set a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025 — less than half of the Russian monthly output — and even that number is now out of reach with $60 billion in Ukraine funding stalled in Congress, a senior Army official told reporters last week.
“What we are in now is a production war,” a senior NATO official told CNN. “The outcome in Ukraine depends on how each side is equipped to conduct this war.”
Unfortunately for Ukrainian efforts they're going to have to pivot to an even more mobile strategy as Russia increases bombardment. So pretty much all Ukrainian emplacements will become semi permissive and all ground troops are going to be sleeping in non permissive environments. I cannot imagine the toll of having to sleep through shelling, then ruck a few kilometers to bivouac, only to be shelled again.
I really hope the Ukrainians can get better air support and run sorties where these russian guns are. Because unfortunately, they cannot rely on a consistent supply of shells from the west. Slava Ukraini.
Agreed, they're in a very difficult situation without being able to project air power which is traditionally the way you defeat artillery. Hopefully they're cooking up some black magic with their drones.
I know that Canada just approved 80000 70mm air to ground missles for Ukraine, which is a decent, if short term, supply. I think a good fleet of modern aircraft is what Ukraine really needs to regain its momentum. Can't do a whole lot when the enemy has basically free reign of the artillery war.
It's also war economy (Russia) vs non-war economy (Europe/US) which is a big difference. Plus even if you would move into a war economy, to ramp up production will cost time.
Can you really say the US doesn't have a war economy though? It's only not been at war for like 6 years of the last 200.
Even the US occupation of Syria, bombing of Yemen, and forces fighting in Niger + Somalia are all a fraction of the US's military production, since it's the biggest arms dealer in the world.
The US economy is still largely a civilian economy (except the Military-Industrial Complex which goes brrrrrrrt). A true war economy hasn't occurred in the US since WWII, when the 2/3rds of the American economy were geared for mass production of wartime goods.
18 separate shipyards were (combined) producing a new Liberty Ship almost every day. Ford completed a car every 69 seconds. The Willow Run bomber factory made 1 plane an hour by March 1944. The industrial scale here was massive.
In contrast, the Global War on Terror type counterinsurgency campaigns could be done without the US in full hardcore war economy mode.
The United States fought for 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was business as usual back home. There was no rationing. There were no steel drives. I don't even remember them pushing war bonds. We did not have a draft. Most changes to civilian life involved airport security.
During WWII, they drafted so many men they had to shut down major league baseball. They tried to outlaw sliced bread because the steel for the slicers was needed for tanks and ships. Civilians had to ration food and production of most consumer goods stopped. Oh, and as a result of wartime industrialization, the United States became the world's richest nation, the world's only superpower and the world's first nuclear power. In four years.
Meanwhile Ukraine has been doing remarkably well with the scraps we've let them dumpster dive. If I understand the situation correctly, we've been giving them our old stuff that was due to be disposed of because it's cheaper to let the Ukrainians lodge our old stuff firmly in Russian torsos than it is to dismantle. Same with the F-16's they're getting soon. These aren't new, a few NATO nations are retiring them in favor of new F-35s. Those F-16's are 1970's technology, but they're a step up from the Soviet-era MiG's they're working with now.
The last time the US had a war economy was during WWII. There were some larger programmes during the cold war and the US continues to spend a fuckton on the military-industrial complex but none of that comes even close to actually occupying the US's economy. War economy means that the necessities of war are the overarching organisational principle of the economy, it's when you suddenly can't get hold of tea sieves because the factory producing them switched over to churn out ammunition casings. When it couldn't produce tea sieves if it wanted to because it wouldn't get an allotment of steel for that purpose because the war needs it elsewhere. Depending on how dire things are you may or may not be allowed as a factory owner to continue producing tea sieves with whatever materials you can get that aren't needed for war, but that's not a given: If war needs be, even the most liberal of economies turn into command economies and military procurement might say "we need those machines of yours", your option is then to cave or be expropriated. In Russia's case add Gulag to that.
Yes, the US doesn't have a war economy. The US has an industrial military complex that excels at producing low quality crap for extremely high prices - our defense contractors are extremely inefficient and are basically just a really poorly targeted version of social welfare.
The US actually gearing up for a war economy would take a fucking miracle in the modern world - even if we were being actively invaded it's likely most of the capital would just flee.
Why are we still restricting what weapon systems we send to Ukraine? American doctrine for beating superior numbers calls for advanced technology. If we’re going to ask them to fight like us, we need to give them what they need.
To be clear: we need to send more. Lots more. I'm never quite sure how to frame these things, because I'm in favor of sending more, but I also like accurate information.
However, Russia has always favored quantity over quality. They don't really do smart guided artillery shells. It doesn't matter if they make three times more if they also need ten times more to hit the target.
i mean, it does also kind of matter though, if those shells miss they're just going to hit civilian locations. Which in it of itself could technically be considered advantageous.
There aren't any civilian locations on the front. There's really not much of anything there anymore, except trenches, mines, fields, and holes from artillery.
US boots will not touch Ukrainian soil until NATO boots do. Europe would have to bring the US into it. It's always been a proxy war. US gear and Ukrainian blood.
I would have been better for Ukraine for troops to be there on day 1, but it's better for the "western powers" to have a weakened Russia after a drawn out war so you know what we went with
And if we already have problems making shells, merely sending in the troops wouldn’t exactly help. Besides, very politically expensive to open up what would be a long war
Those shells aren't going to do them much good sitting in rear area warehouses though. They lose trucks like a gambler loses money in Nevada. And if they move the warehouses closer to compensate they get blown up too.
So they can make 10 million if they want. They can only deliver so much to the front line.