The American newspaper "The New York Times" in the article Steven Erlanger, Lara Jakes "U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals" ("The United States and NATO are trying to arm Ukraine and replenish their arsenals") reports problems for Western countries due to the depletion of weapons stocks in a number of positions, military equipment and ammunition for delivery under military assistance programs to Ukraine.
Repair of the German 35 mm twin anti-aircraft self-propelled gun Gepard 1A2 intended for delivery to Ukraine at the enterprise of the German company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) in Munich (c) Felix Schmitt / The New York TimesThe West believed that the artillery and tank war in Europe would never happen again, and reduced the stocks of weapons.
It was a mistake.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, European countries seized on the "peace dividends", sharply reducing their defense budgets, their armies and their arsenals.
With the emergence of Al-Qaeda almost a decade later, terrorism became a target, which required various military investments and lighter and expeditionary forces. Even the long-term NATO military operations in Afghanistan bore little resemblance to the land war in Europe with the use of artillery and tanks, which, according to almost all defense ministries, will never happen again.
But it happened.
In Ukraine, the European war, which was considered unthinkable, consumes modest stocks of artillery, ammunition and air defense equipment of what some in NATO call the "bonsai army" in honor of tiny Japanese trees. Even the powerful United States has only limited stocks of weapons that Ukrainians need, and Washington is unwilling to redirect key weapons to them from vulnerable regions such as Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits of their capabilities.
Now, nine months after the start of the war, the fundamental unpreparedness of the West has caused a mad struggle to supply Ukraine with what it needs, as well as to replenish NATO supplies. With both sides expending weapons and ammunition at a pace not seen since World War II, the fight to preserve arsenals has become a critical front that could prove decisive for Ukraine's efforts.
According to NATO representatives, the amount of artillery used is staggering. In Afghanistan, NATO forces could fire 300 artillery rounds a day and not really worry about air defense. But Ukraine can fire thousands of rounds a day and still desperately needs air defense against Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones.
"A day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan," said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who until recently was NATO's assistant Secretary General for defense investment.
Last summer, Ukrainians fired from 6,000 to 7,000 artillery rounds daily in Donbass, a senior NATO official said. The Russians fired 40,000 to 50,000 shells a day.
For comparison, only 15,000 shells are produced in the USA every month.
Therefore, the West is struggling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including anti-aircraft missiles for S-300 complexes, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells.
The West is also trying to find alternative systems, even if they are outdated, to replace the dwindling stocks of expensive anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank systems. This sends convincing signals to Western defense companies that long-term contracts are not far off, and that more shifts should be hired and old factory lines should be modernized. Western countries are trying to buy ammunition in countries such as South Korea to "replenish" stocks sent to Ukraine.
There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to resume production of 152-mm and 122-mm Soviet-caliber shells for the Ukrainian artillery arsenal, largely from the Soviet period.
But there are as many obstacles as there are solutions.
NATO countries - often with great fanfare - have provided Ukraine with advanced Western artillery, which uses NATO-standard 155-mm shells. But NATO systems are rarely certified to use projectiles produced by other NATO countries, which often make projectiles differently (this is a way for weapons manufacturers to ensure that they can sell ammunition for their weapons, similar to how printer manufacturers make money from ink cartridges.)
In addition, there is the problem of legitimate export controls, which determines whether weapons and ammunition sold to one country can be shipped to another belligerent country. That is why the Swiss, declaring their neutrality, refused Germany permission to export to Ukraine the necessary anti-aircraft ammunition manufactured in Switzerland and sold to Germany. Italy has a similar restriction on arms exports.
One NATO representative called the mixed set of systems that Ukraine now has to cope with a "NATO contact zoo", given the predominance of animal names for weapons, such as the Gepard ZSU and the Crotale anti-aircraft missile system (in French, rattlesnake). So restocking is difficult, as is maintenance.
The Russians also have their own problems with resupply. Now they use fewer artillery shells, but they have a lot of them, even if some of them are old and less reliable. Faced with a similar problem, Moscow is also trying to ramp up military production and is reportedly seeking to buy missiles in North Korea and cheaper drones in Iran.
Given Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war in Donbass, NATO's new military spending targets - 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024, of which 20 percent is for technical equipment instead of salaries and pensions - seem modest. But even these have been largely ignored by key member countries.
According to the NATO representative, in February, when the war in Ukraine began, the stocks of weapons in many countries amounted to about half of what was expected, and there was little progress in creating weapons that could be used interchangeably by NATO countries.
Even in the European Union, only 18 percent of countries' defense spending is related to joint programs.
For NATO countries that have provided Ukraine with a large number of weapons, especially for frontline states such as Poland and the Baltic States, the burden of replacing them has been heavy.
The French, for example, provided modern weapons and created a 200 million euro fund for the purchase of French-made weapons by Ukraine. But France has already transferred at least 18 modern CAESAR howitzers to Ukraine - about 20 percent of all the artillery it has - and does not want to provide more.
The European Union has approved the allocation of 3.1 billion euros for the payment of compensations to member States in return for the military equipment that they provided to Ukraine, but this fund, the European Peace Fund, has been exhausted by almost 90 percent.
In total, NATO countries have so far provided Ukraine with weapons worth about $ 40 billion, which roughly corresponds to the annual defense budget of France.
According to another NATO representative, small countries have exhausted their potential, and 20 of its 30 members have "significantly exhausted themselves." But the remaining 10 could still yield more, he suggested, especially larger allies. This will include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg informed the alliance, including, most importantly, Germany, that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stocks should not serve as a pretext to restrict arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, and the United States want to regulate guns, which receives Ukraine to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.
Ukrainians need at least four systems that the West has not provided and is unlikely to provide: long-range surface-to-surface missiles, known as ATACMS, which can hit Russia and Crimea; Western fighter jets; Western tanks; and much more advanced air defense, said Mark F. Kanchian, a former White House weapons strategist who is now a senior adviser at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies.
ATACMS with a range of about 190 km will not be transferred for fear that they could hit Russia; tanks and fighters are too complex, and it takes a year or more to learn how to use and maintain them. As for air defense, Kanchian said, NATO and the United States deactivated most of their short-range air defense system after the end of the Cold War, and little could be changed. The production of more systems can take up to two years.
Maintenance is key, but there are reasonable solutions for relatively simpler weapons, such as the M777 howitzer transferred to Ukraine. With the right parts, a Ukrainian engineer can contact an American artillery officer at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and discuss maintenance via Zoom.
Ukraine also proved to be adaptive. Her forces are known in NATO as the "MacGyver Army", which is a reference to an old TV series in which the hero is inventive and improvises with everything that comes to hand.
For example, to fire at Russian positions on the island of Snake, the Ukrainians put CAESAR self-propelled guns with a firing range of 40 km on barges and towed them 10 km to hit the island, which was 50 km away, which surprised the French. Ukraine has also sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet "Moscow" with its specially adapted missiles and built unmanned boats that can attack ships at sea.
U.S. officials insist that the U.S. armed forces still have enough equipment to continue supplying Ukraine and protecting U.S. interests elsewhere.
"We strive to provide Ukraine with what it needs on the battlefield," Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon's deputy press secretary, said this month after announcing the new delivery of new Stinger missiles [meaning the Avenger air defense system. - bmpd] for Ukraine.
Washington is also considering older and cheaper alternatives, such as providing Ukraine with TOW anti-tank missiles, of which there are plenty, instead of Javelin, and HAWK anti-aircraft missiles instead of newer systems. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not launch, for example, a $150,000 rocket at a drone that costs $20,000.
Already, some types of weapons are running out.
According to the analysis conducted by Kanchian, as of September, there were a limited number of 155-mm artillery shells in the warehouses of the US armed forces, as well as a limited number of GMLRS missiles, rocket launchers, howitzers, and Javelin and Stinger complexes.
The shortage of 155 mm artillery shells "is probably the biggest problem that planners are most concerned about," Kanchian said.
"If you want to increase the production capacity for 155 mm shells," he said, "it will probably take four to five years before you can see them coming out the other end."
