re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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In May, when Washington ordered 1,300 Stinger anti-air missiles to replace those sent to Ukraine, the chief executive of Raytheon, the defence company that makes them, replied: “It’s going to take us a little bit of time.”

Paris, meanwhile, has sent 18 Caesar howitzers to Kyiv — a quarter of its total stock of the high-tech artillery — but it will take French company Nexter about 18 months to make new ones.

The Ukraine war has exposed the skimpiness of western defence stockpiles — especially of unglamorous but crucial supplies such as artillery shells that have been the mainstay of fighting. Lack of production capacity, labour shortages and supply chain snafus — especially computer chips — mean long lead times to replenish them.

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Those scarcities may now be impinging on the West’s ability to quartermaster Kyiv’s war effort. Total annual US production of 155mm artillery shells, for example, would last less than two weeks of combat in Ukraine, according to Alex Vershinin, a US procurement expert who says the conflict marks “the return of industrial warfare”.

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As for the guided multiple-launch rocket systems made by Lockheed Martin that Kyiv has pleaded for so it can launch strikes behind enemy lines, the US has dispatched about a third of its total stock of 20,000-25,000 missiles.

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1. That’s a bit concerning
2. Sounds like a good way to create some good paying jobs and help stimulate the economy in this recession so we can replace and bolster stockpiles ASAP

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You know China is watching all of this too snd I’d bet they are pumping out shells as I type.

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Things like this have been pointed out by both military nerds and sociologists since before the war.

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Another thing regarding the effectiveness of Ukrainian rocket strikes. Many write about how to minimise losses from them. Aside from strenghtening air defence it is suggested to disperse ammunition storages, avoid bringing armoured vehicles to one base, avoid lining up helicopters in one line, and decentralise everything in general.

But you see what the problem is - you can decentralise, but this will be a completely different army, not the Russian-Soviet army. Decentralisation is contrary to the structure of not just the army itself but the whole state structure in general.

Indeed, along with distribution of ammunitions to different stockpiles, along with moving vehicles to various forests, also the powers must be transferred down - to these forests and stockpiles. But these powers for hundreds of years have been carefully focused in one location. And that is how the authority preserved itself. But here - decentralisation. This is worse than military losses.

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