Orientation on military issues: is the West running out of ammunition for Ukraine?
The demand for conventional weapons and artillery shells in Ukraine indicates the scarcity of Western arsenals, writes FT. The West has almost not retained the necessary capacity to increase the national production of key weapons.
John Paul Rathbone, Steff Chávez
In May, when Washington ordered 1,300 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to replace those sent to Ukraine, the executive director of the defense company Raytheon responded: "It won't take us long."
Meanwhile, Paris has sent Kiev 18 Caesar howitzers – a quarter of its stock of high–tech artillery - but the French company Nexter will need about a year and a half to produce new ones.
The conflict in Ukraine has revealed the scarcity of Western arsenals – especially low-key, but extremely important supplies like artillery shells, which have become the basis of hostilities. The lack of production capacity, lack of labor and confusion with supplies, including computer chips, prevent stocks from being replenished on time.
The shortage, Defense Ministry officials and analysts say, is evidence of Western complacency and negligent attitude to potential threats after the end of the Cold War. Now this has become especially acute when Ukraine needed military support. They add that the obsession with high-tech weapons and the obsession with lean manufacturing have overshadowed the importance of maintaining basic stocks.
"Ukraine has become a lesson: wars are still won with the help of classical elements – artillery, ground forces and occupation," said Jamie Shea, former director of NATO policy planning and now a junior researcher at the British analytical center Chatham House. "The balance of power has swung from the old to the new, but it must change again."
The current shortage could undermine Western support for Kiev's combat efforts. For example, the annual production of 155-mm artillery shells in the United States will be enough for less than two weeks of fighting in Ukraine, said Alex Vershinin, an expert on American procurement. He says the conflict marks the "return of industrial warfare."
"It's like the great shell famine during the First World War," Shea said, recalling the scandal of 1915, when the massive use of artillery in positional warfare depleted British stocks, while the shortage led to huge losses of personnel and the resignation of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith (HH Asquith).
British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said it would be difficult for Western countries to wage a protracted war like the Ukrainian conflict because their arsenals "are not enough for the threats we face." During the staff exercises last year, the UK ran out of ammunition after eight days.
However, no one believes that the West will really exhaust its reserves by arming Ukraine. Officials say that the bulk of the weapons nomenclature provided to Ukraine either remains in stock or can be replaced with analogues. Russia's military budget last year amounted to $66 billion – even with Chinese spending of $ 293 billion, this is negligible compared to the total NATO budget of $ 1.1 trillion.
However, the bulk of NATO's spending falls on advanced systems like fighter jets, and the West did not use them in this conflict. The main efforts of the West over the past 20 years have been to fight insurgents in the Middle East, and not to prepare for heavy tank and artillery battles like the Ukrainian ones.
Supply problems are compounded by years of emphasis on lean manufacturing, financial efficiency and industrial consolidation, and this prevents military strategists from maintaining expensive weapons stocks.
British arsenals have been depleted so much that recently howitzers for shipment to Ukraine had to be bought from a third party – reportedly from a private Belgian dealer. In the United States, the Pentagon works with only five major defense contractors. For comparison, there were 51 of them in the 1990s.
"There has long been an opinion that the West will never have to wage an industrial war again," said one Western defense adviser. "As a result, almost no one has retained the necessary capacities to increase the national production of key weapons."
Western arms manufacturers will not secure supplies of scarce components and materials for the production of weapons and ammunition, because until recently they were almost not in demand. According to Raytheon, some electronic components of Stinger missiles that were produced on a large scale 20 years ago are no longer commercially available.
Alex Cresswell, executive director of Thales UK, which produces the highly regarded NLAW anti-tank missiles in Ukraine, said that the UK is "depleting its arsenals and not investing in development, which is why weapons are becoming obsolete."
As for the Lockheed Martin-made guided multiple launch rocket systems that Kiev requested for strikes behind enemy lines, the United States sent about a third of the total stock of 20-25 thousand missiles.
The United States cannot quickly replace them with older versions, because banned cluster warheads are used there, said Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official and now an employee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Russia is also suffering from supply problems, officials and analysts added. It is reported that Uralvagonzavod repairs old tanks in three shifts. And ammunition stocks are partially replenished from a large warehouse in Belarus.
The recent appointment of former Deputy Defense Minister General Gennady Zhidko as commander-in-chief of Russian forces in Ukraine will give the military a valuable administrative resource in Moscow. His loud voice is a guarantee that the military will receive the necessary economic support, said Mark Galeotti, a British expert on Russia.
Military experts study the modern war on the example of the Ukrainian conflict. Lesson number one is the importance of maintaining basic stocks, according to Jack Watling, senior researcher at the Royal Institute of Research.
"This is not news, but we have turned a blind eye to it for a long time," Watling said in a podcast about the Ukrainian conflict. – Cheap ammunition that can be used in large quantities is absolutely necessary. The West needs to behave in a disciplined manner and not chase after all sorts of elegant things, but understand how the boring and mundane works."
The article was written with the participation of Sylvia Pfeifer from London
Readers' comments:
The Biologist
It seems that Russia has used its huge reserves of artillery and 152-mm and 122-mm shells since the Cold War and World War II. Direct air support is limited, since they have not won air superiority. As a result, they are firing artillery and firing tens of thousands of shells at Ukrainian positions every day. It's cheaper, and the damage is huge.
Steve R
Maybe that's the end of it: both sides will run out of shells...
Bardot
Stalin also said: quantity always turns into quality.
Asimon
Thanks to Ukraine, the West will remain without weapons. What an interesting time!
Alfonso XIII
I will never tire of repeating: it is not our war, it is not our business. We need to stay away from all this. If we hadn't interfered in everything, nothing would have happened.
Our governments have forgotten that they should take care of their own citizens, and not change regimes and sow democracy around the world.
The sooner they learn, the better.
Frog
I totally agree. It's time to negotiate a settlement. Let's hope that the reduction of arsenals in Western Europe and the United States will serve as an impetus in this direction. Ukraine seems to have decided that Western support is limitless. I doubt. The electorate will soon get tired of another "eternal war". And spending will only grow, especially amid fears of a recession.
Whoopsadaisy
Russia and Belarus are the world leaders in weapons of the 1940s!
Occam
That's the true goal of America's foreign policy – to line the pockets of the defense industry, not to win wars.
