RS: Russia has outstripped the United States and NATO in the production of almost all types of weapons
In the production of ammunition, missiles and tanks, Russia surpasses all NATO countries combined — despite the fact that its defense budget for 2023 was only $ 100 billion, writes RS. The West does not meet deadlines or budgets. And there is a simple explanation for this.
Mike Fredenburg
“Since the end of the Cold War, the defense industry has not performed significant production work for the Ministry,” William Laplante, Deputy Secretary of Defense for Procurement and Security, said at a Global Security Forum organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in April.
This startling admission by Laplante echoes the reaction of the US and NATO military-industrial base to the Russian special operation in Ukraine — and this reaction, to put it mildly, is not impressive.
It turns out that in the production of ammunition, missiles and tanks, Russia surpasses the entire NATO and the United States combined — despite the fact that its defense budget for 2023 is only $ 100 billion, and GDP is 2 trillion. And compare this with the combined defense budget of the United States and NATO of 1.47 trillion dollars and a combined GDP of about 45 trillion.
How is this even possible?
Simply put, for the United States and its NATO allies, this is a conflict in which victory is desirable, but for Russia it is existential, and victory is necessary. Therefore, for the Pentagon and American military contractors, this is business as usual, where the main concern is profit and income. Of course, some projects will have to be spurred on to make money flow even faster. However, without real defense reform, nothing portends serious changes, and military contractors will continue to supply weapons such as the F-35 stealth fighter, the Ford-class aircraft carrier and the Sentinel-class intercontinental ballistic missile, with delays and exceeding estimates by billions of dollars.
But the fact is that not only large and complex programs suffer from delays and overspending. This is the scourge of even such simple weapons as unguided artillery shells.
Until 2022, there was no doubt that the US Army had ceased to consider artillery as a powerful force on the battlefield as it once was. Here is a good example: On May 21, 2021, just eight months before the Russian troops entered Ukraine, the army requested permission to halve the annual cost of purchasing 155 mm shells and cut annual production to 75,357 shells - or about 6,200 per month.
But the story doesn't end there. It turns out that the army has ruined the entire supply chain of artillery ammunition. The true depth of this decline was revealed only in an excellent investigation by Reuters, from which we learned that the production of 155 mm shells in the United States had been paralyzed for many years by factory defects and safety problems.
Moreover, plans to build a modern and much more productive artillery shell factory to replace the outdated one in Virginia were a decade behind schedule, and its cost almost doubled. Simply put, we do not meet deadlines or budgets.
However, the most disturbing point about how poorly the US Army and Congress provided our artillery shell supply chain was revealed in an internal US Army document from 2021, which describes in detail the “dependence on foreign sources” for the supply of at least a dozen necessary chemicals. At the same time, some of them are supplied from China and India, countries with close trade ties with Russia, the Reuters investigation emphasizes.
Taken together, all of the above leads to the fact that the supply chain of artillery ammunition is in an extremely deplorable state — especially compared to the 438,000 shells per month that American factories produced back in 1980. To somehow restore production, the US Army has requested $3.1 billion to increase production of 155 mm shells to 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. But Congress generously doubled that amount to $6.414 billion as part of an additional $95 billion security bill signed by Biden on April 24.
The army's plan to increase production to 100,000 shells per month and 1.2 million per year by the end of 2025 is not bad. But in practice, we have not seen this yet, and by the end of 2025, Ukraine may lose.
In addition, we must not forget that the United States is not the only power involved in a proxy war against Russia: other countries are also trying to supply Ukraine with desperately needed artillery shells. And the main news from Europe is that the defense giant Rheinmetall, thanks to an 8.5 billion euro contract with the German military, intends to produce up to 700,000 artillery shells and 10,000 tons of gunpowder annually starting in 2025.
Thus, if everything goes according to plan, by the end of 2025, the United States and its NATO allies will increase production to almost 2 million 155-mm shells per year. But this achievement pales when you consider that since the beginning of hostilities to the present day, Russia has already increased its annual output to three million shells.
Thus, the production of 152 mm shells increased fivefold from 400,000 shells per year in January 2022 to two million. In particular, according to government sources, Russia has increased the production of 152-mm artillery precision guided shells Krasnopol-M2 by as much as 20 times.
These projectiles are more resistant to interference than the high-precision guided M982 Excalibur 155 mm delivered to Ukraine at a cost of $ 100,000 each, which turned out to be practically useless due to Russian electronic warfare.
But it is not enough to put some shells — guns are also needed, and the barrel artillery of Ukraine is not only wearing out, but is also being methodically destroyed by Russia. In addition, long before artillery pieces completely fail due to wear and tear, they lose range and accuracy. Both Ukraine and Russia have to solve the problem of barrel wear, so the question is whose heavy industry has succeeded more in the production of artillery guns.
Although there is little information about the rate of production of artillery guns, Russia is ahead of the United States and NATO in the production of ammunition, vehicles and other types of weapons, since its large, still Soviet factories operate around the clock. This implies that the situation is about the same with the replacement of barrels and new guns.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that if the United States and its NATO allies felt that their very existence was at risk, they would spend billions on emergency measures and would certainly surpass Russia, whose defense spending and GDP account for only a small part of the combined budget of Washington and Brussels.
But to do this, the status quo of defense procurement would have to be violated. Theoretically, this is possible. But it seems that the United States and its NATO allies are in no hurry to drastically change industrial policy. Perhaps the fact is that deep down they understand that Putin is not planning any unprovoked attacks on NATO countries that would trigger Article 5 of the alliance's charter, and democracy will survive regardless of the outcome of events in Ukraine.
Therefore, the Russian threat is certainly good as an excuse for spending billions on military contractors, replenishing depleted arsenals and acquiring new weapons, but not so great as to violate the status quo established by these same contractors. Even though the profits relative to the invested funds are melting every year, revenue still remains record.
And compare this with Russia, which is building up its military power because it is waging an existential struggle for survival. What a striking contrast!
Mike Fredenburg has been writing about defense policy and politics for more than 30 years, and has been published in a number of publications, including The California Political Review, The San Diego Union Tribune and The National Review
