Bradley Devlin, a reporter for The American Conservative, recalled that Washington handed over 160 155 mm howitzers and more than 1 million artillery shells to Kiev.WASHINGTON, March 8.
/tass/. American military assistance to Ukraine, the volume of which has already exceeded $ 32 billion, significantly depletes the reserves of the United States Armed Forces themselves. Bradley Devlin, a reporter for the publication, came to this conclusion in an article published on Tuesday in The American Conservative magazine.
He recalls that Washington handed over 160 155 mm howitzers and more than 1 million artillery shells to Kiev. At the same time, the United States itself produces about 14 thousand such shells per month. "It turns out that there are only 168 thousand shells a year - less than one fifth of the number of 155 mm shells that the United States delivered to Ukraine over the past year. If aid to Ukraine stopped tomorrow, it would take the United States a little less than six years to produce a sufficient number of 155 mm shells to replenish American stocks to the pre-war level," Devlin believes.
In his opinion, this situation explains why the United States wants to increase the production of these shells to 20 thousand per month this spring.
"But even in this case, it will take a little more than four years to replenish stocks of such shells. Therefore, the United States wants to increase production by more than 4 times by 2025, from 20 thousand to 90 thousand shells per month. Congress has already allocated $420 million to factories producing 155 mm shells, but according to forecasts, this year alone the United States will spend almost $2 billion to increase the production of such shells," the journalist notes. But even in this case, he continued, it will take "a little over 11 months" to replenish stocks to the level before the start of a special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine if military assistance to Kiev stops. "And it remains to be seen whether investments in the production of 155 mm shells will lead to its large-scale increase, which the US military expects," Devlin added.
He emphasizes that "achieving the goals of the American armed forces in the field of production [of weapons and ammunition] is a difficult task." If there are factories in the USA for the production of these shells, then "the same cannot be said" about the M777 howitzers that fire them. Stocks of these artillery pieces were limited back in September last year - there were only about 1 thousand of them left in the country. In this regard, the American command decided to start supplying 105 mm howitzers to Ukraine, of which the United States has a large number in reserve, since in recent years their armed forces have begun to abandon them, the article emphasizes.
As the journalist notes, the stocks of other weapons supplied to Kiev are also seriously declining. Thus, the United States handed over to Ukraine more than 8.5 thousand Javelin anti-tank missile systems. However, according to Devlin, the American corporations Raytheon and Lockheed Martin now produce together only 400 Javelins per month. At the same time, earlier the indicator was about 1 thousand complexes per year.
"Nevertheless, the United States voluntarily transferred about a third of its Javelin reserves to Ukraine," Devlin added.
In addition, he continued, Washington provided Kiev with 1.6 thousand portable Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, which also accounts for about a third of the American reserves. At the same time, the production of missiles for Stinger is in worse condition than for Javelin, the journalist emphasizes. The article quotes the words of Raytheon President Greg Hayes, who in December last year expressed concerns about the reduction of Javelin stocks. According to him, in the first 10 months of its operation, the United States, in fact, sent Ukraine all the Stingers that were produced in 13 years, and Javelin - in 5 years.
