re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Imagine if Biden sent 100k American soldiers to their death

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I don't understand why the internet seems to discount the importance of this. To me, the news that Russia is running out of shells is a complete gamechanger. I've seen several "experts" downplaying the news, and I just don't get that at all. I don't understand how Russia can possibly stop Ukraine from taking back its territory if it doesn't have artillery shells. Why isn't this being treated as big news? I feel like I must be missing something.

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Western officials have been talking up Russia’s ammo crunch for months. In September they said that Russia had turned to North Korea for replenishment. In November Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, spoke of “significant shortages”. At a briefing on December 12th a senior American defence official said that, at current rates of use, Russia could sustain “fully serviceable” tube and rocket artillery ammunition only until early 2023.

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Next year, Russian forces may have to start using “degraded” shells and rockets, some of which were made more than 40 years ago, a senior military official told reporters at a Dec. 12 briefing.

The Russian military is facing two problems simultaneously: They are firing artillery at extremely high rates and they are also having difficulties producing new munitions, Air Force Brig Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Thursday.

“It is important to point out that we do assess that Russia does have a deep inventory of degraded ammunition – artillery – from which they can draw,” Ryder said at a Pentagon news conference. “But, again, the challenge here is: By using older ammunition, you do run into the potential of effectiveness, dud rates, and confidence in whether or not it’s going to explode as expected.”

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However, the Russian military has fired so many shells and rockets since it invaded Ukraine in late February that it would cost roughly $92.74 billion to replace the entire range of munitions that have been used, Hlib Parfonov, an analyst with the Jamestown Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., wrote in a recent article.

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While Russia’s armaments industry is struggling to catch up with the need for more artillery rounds, any country would find it challenging to ramp up munitions production in a short period of time, he said.

The munitions shortage may prove to be temporary as Russia ramps up production of advanced conventional shells and rockets in the coming year, Williams said.

“Production of ammunition is not a particularly sophisticated process and expansion of production would not be inhibited by most of the sanctions since the materials and machinery required for this type of production are readily available to the Russians,” Williams said.

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Ultimately, the Russians will likely try to replenish their stocks of new ammunition through domestic production, refurbishment of old stocks and foreign suppliers, the official said. "This is why it's not surprising that they're reaching out to countries like Iran and North Korea to try to obtain some more dependable ammunition."

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Do they surrender to Ukraine, get rounded up by the Russians an get shot or end up in some gulag? Are they roaming around no mans land in postapocolyptic tribes?

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As of last month, the United States had already provided more than 1 million rounds of artillery shells and more than 115,000 mortar rounds to Ukraine.

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But Ukraine’s suppliers are also starting to feel the strain. While there are no publicly available numbers to document just how acute the problem is, a defense official acknowledged to the Wall Street Journal in August that American supplies of 155-millimeter shells — the standard rounds for most NATO artillery systems — were “uncomfortably low” and “not at the level we would like to go into combat.” One U.S. defense official recently told the New York Times that Ukrainians are firing artillery at an unsustainable rate “under the false assumption that the West’s supply of ordnance is unlimited.

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The issue is even more acute for European countries, many of which have scaled back their stockpiles in recent years. Speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum last week, NATO’s senior military officer, Adm. Robert Bauer of the Netherlands, said, “We all know that when winter comes, animals start making sure that they’re stocked in terms of food. We have not done that, NATO and the allies. We didn’t believe it was going to be winter.”

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The U.S. Army has put out an industry survey to identify U.S. and Canadian companies that could ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. (They’re currently produced only at government facilities.) But some experts say it could take as long as four or five years before these investments pay off.

Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $521 million contract to replenish stocks of the guided missiles used by HIMARS. Eastern Europe’s factories are now churning out weapons, ammunition and other military supplies at rates not seen since the Cold War.

Bauer also urged countries to dig deep and get creative in their efforts. “If nations start looking around in their ammunition warehouses, you might be surprised that you find ammunition for weapons systems you don’t have any longer but that are now being used in Ukraine,” he said. “So you can give away something that is not hurtful to yourself.”

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Very often, munitions production is kept at a ‘minimum sustaining rate,’” Bradley Martin, director of the Rand Corporation’s National Security Supply Chain Institute, told Grid. “Nations say, ‘We know we need a certain amount to fight, but we’re confident that if we had a war, we could expand [production.]’”

The problem is, the capacity of industry to expand turns out to be less than advertised. As Bauer put it, “Everything that we have in terms of our industries is based on ‘just in time, just enough,’ and by now we know it’s not enough and it’s too late.” In the case of the war in Ukraine, industry leaders say post-covid supply chain issues and labor shortages that are affecting all sectors of the economy haven’t helped matters. Reuters notes that Lockheed Martin has recently posted more than 15 job listings related to HIMARS production “including supply chain quality engineers, purchasing analysts, and testing engineers.”

Meanwhile, “surging” production is tougher for more advanced systems such as the GMLRS, the precision-guided rockets fired by the HIMARS systems. A recent report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that if the U.S. sent Ukraine about a third of its supply of these rockets, that would amount to some 8,000 to 10,000 rockets. That might last Ukraine several months, and the U.S. produces only about 5,000 GMLRS each year.

Martin said getting industry to ramp up production will require a long-term policy shift away from a just-in-time model. “If we’re just paying for enough weapons to keep the factory open, that’s all they’re going to make,” he said. “If we expect them to beyond that, we need to not only buy more weapons but also probably negotiate long-term, five-year type of contracts so they can be confident in expanding their production capability.”

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A lack of production capacity, a dearth of specialized workers, supply-chain bottlenecks, high costs of financing and even environmental regulations are putting a brake on efforts to increase output, presenting the West and Ukraine with a fresh challenge for next year.

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Yet Ukraine’s military fortunes also depend on European countries, such as Germany, that let their defense industry atrophy in peacetime and are struggling to catch up as they focus on securing energy supplies.

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At the height of the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire stock of the British military, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

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Ukraine uses up to 40,000 artillery shells of the NATO caliber 155 mm each month, while the entire annual production of such projectiles in Europe is around 300,000, according to Michal Strnad, owner of Czechoslovak Group AS, a Czech company that produces around 30% of Europe’s output of such munitions.

European production capacity is grossly inadequate,” Mr. Strnad said. Even if the war were to stop overnight, Europe would need up to 15 years to resupply its stocks at current production rates, he said.

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At present, Germany doesn’t have enough ammunition to last more than two weeks in case of a Russian attack, German officials said, falling well short of NATO requirements that members should stock enough ammunition for at least 30 days of combat.

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One obstacle to rapid rearmament is recent European Union legislation that declared weapons manufacturing not sustainable, cutting it off from some private funding, said Hans Christoph Atzpodien, head of the German defense-industry association.

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I don't understand why the internet seems to discount the importance of this.

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Yet, I keep reading these stuff that says, "Oh, but Russia is going to ramp up its ammo production."

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