Except - they have. All Artillery Shell Plants in all NATO countries combined (minus Hungary, because f* Orban) are unable to produce enough shells just for the War in Ukraine.
The US has completely gutted their manufacturing base, and currently won't be able to compete in a peer conflict on a ling term basis.
Not enough shell and ammo production, not enough logistical capability, not enough ships, not enough dock capacity...
There is good reason for that: the US/NATO war plans are not to get into an artillery war in the first place. If there is artillery in the way the US/NATO plan is send an airplane with a few bombs to take it out. There is still some room for artillery in the army and so we produce some, but that isn't the major way to fight wars.
The Soviet plan - which both Russia and Ukraine are well trained in - was to use lots of artillery. In backing Ukraine NATO suddenly sees a need for some shells that they wouldn't use if it was them. But the Ukrainian generals know them and so that is what they want. (Note too the nobody has provided Ukraine anywhere near the number of airplanes needed to fight a NATO style war - even if all promised F16s arrive today with full training it isn't enough for a NATO war)
Let this be a lesson to all: you need to ensure your industrial base can actually step up and produce what you need for war. Thankfully you don't normally need it, but you are not in control of when someone will decide to attack. You are not in control of if NATO or other alliances fall apart. You have some input on both (please work for peace!), but there are factors outside your control involved.
That nobody is producing enough artillery shells almost 2 years later is criminal. I give Ukraine a small pass here only because evidence is post 2014 they were doing their best to build capacity, and that takes time. The rest of us didn't have the corruption and other problems that Ukraine has done internally, and so we should already have that in place. (or in place the ability to give Ukraine air supremacy so they don't need artillery - there are lots of options)
Yeah, precisely. Care to rebut? Care to say what your alternatives are? Leave Ukraine without artillery to support their defenses so Russia can come back in with their cluster munitions and landmines and take over cities?
IIRC the US is trying to spool up conventional arty shell production - it isn't as if this is a first option.
I’m surprised not to see any comments on Ukraine here yet.
USA and the west focussing on ‘super weapons’ like f22, f35, super carriers etc etc. and Ukraine is losing the war because they don’t have enough bullets and mortars, and we don’t have enough factories to increase production.
Ukraine inherited military doctrine and infrastructure from the Soviet Union just like Russia so while the US has a much bigger industrial capacity, it’s only setup to produce equipment for US/NATO military doctrine and infrastructure. The US uses lots of precision munitions and air support instead of artillery, which is where Ukraine is struggling the most.
Lots of equipment that can be used at the infantry level without much support works great like those anti-tank missile, but anything that requires a large logistics pipeline is largely off the table. For example Ukraine hasn’t even put the F16s it has received in the air yet because they’ve been training pilots and maintenance crews. It’s just not set up to fight a war the American way whereas Russia has a large industry manufacturing artillery shells to fall back on.
Well, of course, do you think the US is going to donate its aircraft carriers, F-35s, F-22s, B-2s, and nuke subs to Ukraine? The US isn't spending trillions on artillery rounds.
There are two important factors you are not considering.
The first is that it takes a long time train soldiers on complex weapon systems and the entire logistical supply chain required to support and maintain those weapon systems. Giving someone a weapon system without this makes the weapon system nigh useless to them. Look at how long it takes for American soldiers to become rated on new weapon systems.
The second is that weapon systems are designed to fit a specific war doctrine. Most weapon systems will have greatly degraded effectiveness deployed outside of the context in which they were intended to be used. US builds weapons for the way the US expects to fight. One of the reasons there is a shortage of artillery and related munitions, which is critical in Ukrainian doctrine, is that the US and many other NATO countries don't need much artillery and therefore don't have much of it nor the ability to manufacture vast quantities. And it is not feasible for Ukraine to radically change their war doctrine at this point such that NATO weapons would be more fit for purpose, it requires years of preparation to do this.
Basically, the US but more broadly NATO can't easily supply a war that is being fought the way the Ukrainians are fighting it because their militaries are not equipped to fight a war that way.
NATO/US has the insufficient productive (and logistic) capacity to match the Russian ‘operational tempo’ who in turn has the insufficient productive (and logistic) capacity to match the Ukraine ‘operational tempo’.
This war is catastrophic to Ukraine, but relatively costs pennies to western countries. They absolutely should continue armaments as long as Ukraine is willing to fight. Not doing so would mean allowing fascism and outright genocide to spread on European soil, and that would have an astronomical cost in the long run.
US and EU would be very, very shortsighted with their own interests if they didn't ship everything Ukraine wants.
The US/NATO/Europe are not really thrilled with countries waging war with their neighbors; especially long campaigns with lots of civilian death and destruction. And Russia has a lot of neighbors that could be next.
It's a lot cheaper to supply weapons to Ukraine to fight Russia than to fight Russia directly. And clearing out the old stockpiles is good for the companies that are making new stockpiles. If this war turns out to be a big waste of time and materiel and lives for Russia, maybe they don't do it again in the near future; maybe other countries with plans for border expansion see the results and don't do it in the near future either. (OTOH, maybe they see this and figure out air superiority and combined arms operations are important and work on that capability so they can get from invasion to occupation quickly)
Technically speaking, yeah. The US would much rather rely on strike warfare than grind out infantry over 155mm artillery. If US Military doctrine is ever made to rely on shelling your opponent and nothing else, America would have to surrender posthaste.
Practically speaking though, I wouldn't say NATO allies "force" Ukraine to do much besides make sure the war doesn't go nuclear. The biggest way they (especially the US) manipulates Ukraine is by offering conditional aid and creating red tape that Russia doesn't abide by. Ukraine wishes they had the ability to echo US doctrine, but circumstantially they are fighting a ground battle with last-generation weaponry.
This would have been categorically true circa-1970s.
Unfortunately, US industrial vertical integration now includes foundations placed in global low-labor-cost countries.
The crash vaccine manufacturing scaling program was possible because we were rich enough to throw mountains of money (of which we have the most) at any international supply problems.
If the Atlantic or Pacific had been hostile to commercial shipping, or countries hadn't cooperated, it would have had a very different result.
> We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
"We" are not. Ukrainians are dying and holding their own against a much larger country, with the help of NATO surplus equipment.
20,000-50,000 Ukrainians now have at least one limb amputated as a result of the war. [0] [1]
And Russia's military is not being decimated. It's holding its own with an elastic defense, that's making progress difficult and costly for a Ukrainian army that's trained halfway between Soviet mass doctrine and Western maneuver warfare.
At some point the Ukrainians will hopefully manage to exhaust Russia's logistics sufficient to break through their defense, but that's in no way a sure thing.
I am skeptical the US would really need it in a war, but our allies certainly will. The US has air superiority and integrated combat arms. Ukraine shows how essential artillery is without at least air superiority, and they have just a few years of integrating tanks and other vehicles into actions with their infantry.
No one is going to fuck with the US regardless of how many 155mm shells we have.
Ukraine can't say the same, because unlike the US, they agreed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. After all, we told them we had their backs. What could possibly go wrong?
"Can't", no. It all hangs on the U.S. at the moment, which could absolutely make enough shells for Ukraine if the funding authorization comes through. What's holding that up is politics, not limits in productive capacity.
It’s utterly bizarre that people keep insisting the US is fighting a war given we have zero troops and zero military hardware committed there.. Ukraine has destroyed hundreds of armored units and multiple $billion naval ships with literal 25-yr old weapons… all the fear of WWIII is premised on the US actually engaging since the Russians would suffer immediate and massive losses and the only way to save face would be to go nuclear.
reply