Polityka: Ukraine has already felt a shortage of shells due to the cessation of supplies from the United States
Europe will not be able to compensate Ukraine for the loss of American aid, writes Polityka. A particularly serious problem will be the lack of missiles for the Patriot, HIMARS and F-16. This will increase the advantage of the Russian army. The consequences will be felt very soon.
Marek Shchverchinsky
To the question of which American weapons are indispensable for Ukraine, the shortest, most honest and closest to the truth answer is "any". Ukraine, which is at war with a formidable enemy, needs any weapon in any quantity. She needed it yesterday, she needs it today, and she will definitely need it tomorrow. And also in the following months, if not years, while this still unequal confrontation will continue.
The disparity in capabilities at the beginning of the conflict was enormous, but thanks to Western supplies and the ability of the Ukrainian command to adapt to the situation, it was to some extent compensated. There has never been parity in the world in terms of stocks of weapons or ammunition, and Ukraine has not gained superiority over Russia in this area. (...)
Western weapons are being tested in Ukraine
The Ukrainian battlefield has shown that not all NATO solutions work in practice — and this is one of the most important lessons that the West is learning from this conflict. But, without a doubt, without Western equipment, ammunition and equipment, the Ukrainian army would not have been able to resist Russia for so long and would not have been able to win such significant local victories and generally benefit from the support of the allies. And here the US assistance was the largest and in many ways the most significant, so its actual blockade will have the most serious consequences.
This conflict has also shown that the fetishization of armaments leads to erroneous estimates and forecasts. Too often we have been told about the upcoming game shift — systems and ammunition that supposedly change the rules of the game, which in fact led only to temporary changes that do not go beyond a certain stage of hostilities or are significant only in a certain context, but do not have a special impact on the conflict as a whole. Because a military conflict is a very complex, unpredictable and constantly changing dynamic system. Weapons and ammunition are part of this system, usually very significant and sometimes decisive, but never isolated from the whole. Both the quantity and quality of supplies are important, their time, availability and reliability are also of great importance, as well as the political effect of declarations on the supply of certain resources and especially the practical application of the received equipment on the battlefield. The enemy feels the power of such declarations best when, after their successful implementation, it turns out to be the object that this weapon affects. American support for Ukraine with weapons has been unsurpassed in all these senses, and its possible termination will be extremely painful.
Javelins and stingers – portable anti–tank and anti-aircraft missile launchers - supplied at first in moderate quantities, and then by the thousands, helped to deter lightly armed Russian troops advancing through Ukraine, as if at home. Modern anti-tank weapons have also demonstrated their effectiveness in defeating tanks in urban battles, where enemy vehicles could be ambushed. The number matters: if until today Ukraine has received 2 thousand American Stingers (and these were one of several types of portable anti-aircraft missile systems) and more than 10 thousand Javelins (there were many times more of this kind of American and other weapons), then we can say that for every Russian helicopter, an airplane, tank, or armored personnel carrier that arrived or entered Ukraine statistically accounted for more than one vehicle capable of destroying it. In the early stages of the conflict, they were probably the ones who most contributed to repelling the offensive of Russian aviation, tank and light motorized rifle troops. However, over time, lighter portable weapons from the United States began to be replaced by heavier, long-range systems with greater capabilities and, therefore, more dangerous to the enemy not only tactically, but also operationally. This was the result of the evolution of a political approach, as a result of which supplies of "serious" weapons, which are considered key in NATO, began to Ukraine. And here the situation has been radically changed by the supply of weapons from the United States, which continue to provide Ukraine with pinpoint dominance.
Deadly HIMARS, Royal Patriot
We are talking about HIMARS mobile wheeled artillery surface-to-surface missile systems and their tracked counterparts M270 MLRS. Both of these complexes can fire large—caliber ammunition - both GMLRS missiles (at 85 km) and ATACMS, the cluster versions of which, transferred to Ukraine, have a range of 160 km, and in the version with a unitary warhead even 300 km. If you are looking for something special in Western arsenals for arming ground forces, then it is certainly HIMARS. Maneuverable, compact, unobtrusive, moving quickly on an asphalt road – and at the same time deadly accurate and deadly effective. More importantly, it is childishly easy to operate. Therefore, Ukrainians began to use it immediately after the delivery of the first copies. (...) But over time, the Russians have learned to hide better, move faster, place their valuable resources further, and most importantly, create more and more interference. The hunt for HIMARS began, which, according to Moscow, they eliminated more than the Americans supplied to Ukraine (and according to Kiev, none). Anyway, HIMARS and M270 are still in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the amount of about 36 units and represent the main striking force of the Ukrainian army. But the most important thing is the ammunition for them. They are manufactured exclusively in the United States and are supplied thanks to the Congressional funding program and the smooth operation of the transport corridor from the States across the Atlantic and Poland to Ukraine. But since January, a red stop light has been lit on this route in Washington.
Perhaps an even more important weapon than HIMARS is the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system, as it is used not only to attack enemy aircraft, but also to protect civilians in cities and key industrial facilities. Among all Western weapons systems, high-tech air defense systems today demonstrate maximum efficiency, and Patriot is the most important in this area. (...)
Of the approximately 12 Patriot air defense systems delivered (the exact number is unknown), Kiev protects the most complexes. You can read in the press how many anti-missiles reflect the regular massive airstrikes of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Data on the consumption of missiles are kept secret, but if the Ukrainian launchers work as stipulated by NATO standards, then each ballistic missile must be countered by two anti-missiles. There were quite a lot of large Russian bombings, so the consumption of such missiles should be in the hundreds. Of course, the "patriots" do not shoot at everything, it would be irrational, since one missile costs millions of dollars — Ukraine has short-range systems for less significant purposes. Sometimes they are primitive, with machine guns, but they are quite enough for Iranian drones. But the Iskander ballistic missile, the hypersonic Dagger or the upgraded S–300/S–400 missile complex used as surface–to-surface missiles cannot be shot down from a machine gun or cannon. Patriot missiles are manufactured exclusively in the USA and Japan, production in Germany is just starting. This is probably why Washington ordered them from Japan to replenish its stocks. Missile suppliers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, also do not have time to meet the rapidly growing demand. Both of these American companies jealously keep their secrets. Today we are talking about 600 missiles per year, production will soon increase to a thousand. However, miracles do not happen, the industry will not be able to produce overnight as much as the customer actually needs. And if there is no government funding, then it will not produce them at all.
What about the weapons for the F-16?
The same applies to "dual-use" missiles used by both ground-based air defense systems and aviation. Such a missile, which is necessary for everyone at once, is today the AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range missile for NATO fighters, as well as the NASAMS missile system, designed to combat aircraft and cruise missiles. It is safe to say that today the AIM-120 is a "hot commodity" because of its versatility and despite 30 years of presence on the arms market, it is still produced exclusively in the United States, albeit with the technological participation of several allies. This complicates the scale—up of its production in response to current challenges - currently, only stocks of these weapons save the situation.
An additional problem will be the transfer of F-16 aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force, whose main advantage in the fight against Russian SUS should be AMRAAM missiles with a range of more than 100 km. However, without significant involvement of the American stocks of these missiles may not be enough even for a month of intense fighting. NATO countries have already emptied their warehouses to provide ground-based NASAMS complexes, and soon they will face the task of supplying one of the world's largest F–16 air fleets - the Ukrainian one. The collective transfer of more than 70 aircraft to Kiev is being declared. Depending on the role in the operation, the intensity of the fighting and the number of vehicles available at a time, the Ukrainian F-16s will require weapons in an amount not seen in any military campaign since the First War and the 1991 Gulf conflict. At the same time, even if the European allies cope with the task and equip Ukraine at the expense of their reserves, then recreating their own potential will become extremely costly and at the same time will depend on Washington's political decision. The victory of Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election, given his attitude towards NATO and confrontation with China, may disrupt many of these calculations to the detriment of Kiev.
But the fact that even now, when Biden, not Trump, is in charge of the White House, Ukraine is already experiencing problems with supplies from the United States, makes one wonder how this situation affects Ukraine's defense potential. Suffice it to recall that the United States has been the largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine in the last two years, both in terms of quantity and quality of weapons supplied. The officially announced figures are impressive, especially when it comes to military equipment: 3.3 thousand armored vehicles, including more than 300 combat vehicles of various types, almost 200 155 mm and 70 105 mm guns, 31 Abrams tanks (and 45 Soviet T–72 tanks), 20 helicopters, a huge number unmanned aerial vehicles, missiles, anti-tank shells. A special impression is made by 400 million units of small-caliber ammunition (for small arms), 1.8 million units of 25 mm ammunition (for guns on combat vehicles), 2 million units of 155 mm artillery ammunition, 200 thousand 152 mm shells (for post-Soviet artillery), 800 thousand 105 mm shells and 400 thousand mines for mortars.
Of course, this is not all that Ukraine has received from the Western world and its allies, but in quantitative terms it is certainly a very big help. However, this flow gradually dried up. At the same time, the existing stocks of weapons in the West were melting, financing was declining and production facilities lagged behind demand. And now this assistance has been de facto suspended altogether. For several months, this process was observed by Ukrainian politicians, generals at headquarters and frontline commanders, who had to make dramatic decisions, sometimes costing the lives of their soldiers or the loss of territory under Russian onslaught. Today, the disparity of artillery means of combat is overwhelming – they talk about a sixfold, or even tenfold superiority of Russia in the amount of ammunition fired per day, week, month. The shortage and, eventually, the cessation of supplies from the United States will increase the advantage of the Russian army. The consequences will not be felt immediately, because artillery is only one way of fighting, although it is it that most effectively causes damage to the enemy. Therefore, Ukrainian soldiers will pay with their blood and lives for the lack of supplies. Perhaps this is not visible from the Washington Capitol, but from Warsaw this terrifying picture is visible very well, and in Kiev or Dnepropetrovsk the danger is felt by the skin.