If there's one thing NATO needs to immediately address with its own supply chain, much less support for Ukraine, it's that artillery production has been woefully underprioritized.
That Russia alone is outproducing the combined efforts of NATO should have heads rolling in every procurement office in the West.
One estimate put Russian production at 7x that of NATO.
It's fine and dandy to point out that that discrepancy is partly going into air and naval munitions but that's just not an excuse for there not to be parity, much less a reverse in the production gap.
How do I start an artillery shell manufacturing company? Not how do I make them, how do I get a contract without producing one and how can I start producing them without legal authority? How do I get that authority?
"how do I start a company making these huge medical robots they use for surgery?" The answer is "you don't". You start off with a small company that does small things. You gain experience. And by the time you get to making an artillery shell, you know what people you need to hire, you have a network of people that probably includes someone in the military procurement. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Maybe if certain NATO countries like Germany, Canada, and France listened to Trump, Obama, or Bush and actually put 2% into defense spending it wouldn't be this bad. They are three of the largest economies in NATO, and have been coasting for decades on appropriate spending.
Why would they need production capacity to produce a product that is useless for the NATO military doctrine? That's just not how NATO countries wage war. Of course they don't have a good production capacity of a tool they are not likely to use. And even if they wanted to start to produce them at the start of the war, it wouldn't be ready today, it takes a lot of time and resources to build production capacity from scratch.
Yeah but the poor IDF really need US taxpayers help! Heaven forbid it turns into a fair fight! /s
Seriously, though. Hamas is so ridiculously outgunned that I can't imagine any good reason to continue supplying weapons to IDF. If they can't get the job done with what arms have been given then maybe they're not really trying to get the job done at all.
Ukraine is limited to firing 2,000 artillery shells a day, roughly one-third of Russia's capacity, the country's defense minister, Rustem Umerov, said in a letter seen by Bloomberg.
Writing to his EU counterparts, Umerov urged the bloc to fulfill its commitment of one million artillery shells as Ukraine's capacities are stretched thin across a 930-mile front line, the outlet reported.
As of November, the bloc had sent just 300,000 of the promised ammunition, an unnamed senior EU official told Politico, adding that it will be "very difficult to reach" the total by March.
The US has acknowledged the problem, with Celeste Wallander, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, telling reporters in January that the Pentagon is aware of concerns that Ukraine's armed forces "do not have the stocks and the stores of ammunition that they require."
Martin Herem, commander of Estonia's defense forces, told Bloomberg last week that he believes Russia is now capable of producing several million shells a year.
In December, one soldier told The Times of London that he now declines to target small groups of Russians, considering it not worth the expense in ammunition.
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It doesn't seem that the Russian people are happy with this war either. I really feel there is an opportunity here to get the Russian people to stab Putin in the back. While I don't understand why Putin has any backers but it's clear so many Russians are suffering as well.
Especially considering how close Ukrainians, Belorussians, and European Russians are to each other in language and culture; you would think they could find some common ground. I know Ukrainians and Russians, losing their families for Putin's cause would be stupid.