Posted on 06/19/2022 10:59:48 PM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
The war in Ukraine has proven that the age of industrial warfare is still here. The massive consumption of equipment, vehicles and ammunition requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply – quantity still has a quality of its own. The mass scale combat has pitted 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers, together with 450,000 recently mobilised citizen soldiers against about 200,000 Russian and separatist troops. The effort to arm, feed and supply these armies is a monumental task. Ammunition resupply is particularly onerous. For Ukraine, compounding this task are Russian deep fires capabilities, which target Ukrainian military industry and transportation networks throughout the depth of the country. The Russian army has also suffered from Ukrainian cross-border attacks and acts of sabotage, but at a smaller scale. The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.
This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. Currently, the West may not have the industrial capacity to fight a large-scale war. If the US government is planning to once again become the arsenal of democracy, then the existing capabilities of the US military-industrial base and the core assumptions that have driven its development need to be re-examined.
There is no exact ammunition consumption data available for the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Neither government publishes data, but an estimate of Russian ammunition consumption can be calculated using the official fire missions data provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense during its daily briefing.
Although these numbers mix tactical rockets with conventional, hard-shell artillery, it is not unreasonable to assume that a third of these missions were fired by rocket troops because they form a third of a motorised rifle brigade’s artillery force, with two other battalions being tube artillery. This suggests 390 daily missions fired by tube artillery. Each tube artillery strike is conducted by a battery of six guns total. However, combat and maintenance breakdowns are likely to reduce this number to four. With four guns per battery and four rounds per gun, the tube artillery fires about 6,240 rounds per day. We can estimate an additional 15% wastage for rounds that were set on the ground but abandoned when the battery moved in a hurry, rounds destroyed by Ukrainian strikes on ammunition dumps, or rounds fired but not reported to higher command levels. This number comes up to 7,176 artillery rounds a day. It should be noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense only reports fire missions by forces of the Russian Federation. These do not include formations from the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist republics, which are treated as different countries. The numbers are not perfect, but even if they are off by 50%, it still does not change the overall logistics challenge.
The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either.
Presently, the US is decreasing its artillery ammunition stockpiles. In 2020, artillery ammunition purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the plan is to reduce expenditure on 155mm artillery rounds to $174 million. This is equivalent to 75,357 M795 basic ‘dumb’ rounds for regular artillery, 1,400 XM1113 rounds for the M777, and 1,046 XM1113 rounds for Extended Round Artillery Cannons. Finally, there are $75 million dedicated for Excalibur precision-guided munitions that costs $176K per round, thus totaling 426 rounds. In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.
The US is not the only country facing this challenge. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.
Unfortunately, this is not only the case with artillery. Anti-tank Javelins and air-defence Stingers are in the same boat. The US shipped 7,000 Javelin missiles to Ukraine – roughly one-third of its stockpile – with more shipments to come. Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.
The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.
If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime
The initial stockpile in February 2022 is unknown, but considering expenditures and the requirement to hold substantial stockpiles back in case of war with NATO, it is unlikely that the Russians are worried. In fact, they seem to have enough to expend operational-level cruise missiles on tactical targets. The assumption that there are 4,000 cruise and ballistic missiles in the Russian inventory is not unreasonable. This production will probably increase despite Western sanctions. In April, ODK Saturn, which makes Kalibr missile motors, announced an additional 500 job openings. This suggests that even in this field, the West only has parity with Russia.
The first key assumption about future of combat is that precision-guided weapons will reduce overall ammunition consumption by requiring only one round to destroy the target. The war in Ukraine is challenging this assumption. Many ‘dumb’ indirect fire systems are achieving a great deal of precision without precision guidance, and still the overall ammunition consumption is massive. Part of the issue is that the digitisation of global maps, combined with a massive proliferation of drones, allows geolocation and targeting with increased precision, with video evidence demonstrating the ability to score first strike hits by indirect fires.
The second crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will. This mode of thinking was imported from the business sector and has spread through US government culture. In the civilian sector, customers can increase or decrease their orders. The producer may be hurt by a drop in orders but rarely is that drop catastrophic because usually there are multiple consumers and losses can be spread among consumers. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. Generating new capacity is very challenging, especially as there is so little manufacturing capacity left to draw skilled workers from. This is especially challenging because many older armament production systems are labour intensive to the point where they are practically built by hand, and it takes a long time to train a new workforce. The supply chain issues are also problematic because subcomponents may be produced by a subcontractor who either goes out of business, with loss of orders or retools for other customers or who relies on parts from overseas, possibly from a hostile country.
China’s near monopoly on rare earth materials is an obvious challenge here. Stinger missile production will not be completed until 2026, in part due to component shortages. US reports on the defence industrial base have made it clear that ramping up production in war-time may be challenging, if not impossible, due to supply chain issues and a lack of trained personnel due to the degradation of the US manufacturing base.
Finally, there is an assumption about overall ammunition consumption rates. The US government has always lowballed this number. From the Vietnam era to today, small arms plants have shrunk from five to just one. This was glaring at the height of the Iraq war, when US started to run low on small arms ammunition, causing the US government to buy British and Israeli ammunition during the initial stage of the war. At one point, the US had to dip into Vietnam and even Second World War-era ammo stockpiles of .50 calibre ammunition to feed the war effort. This was largely the result of incorrect assumptions about how effective US troops would be. Indeed, the Government Accountability Office estimated that it took 250,000 rounds to kill one insurgent. Luckily for the US, its gun culture ensured that small arms ammunition industry has a civilian component in the US. This is not the case with other types of ammunition, as shown earlier with Javelin and Stinger missiles. Without access to government methodology, it is impossible to understand why US government estimates were off, but there is a risk that the same errors were made with other types of munitions.
The war in Ukraine demonstrates that war between peer or near-peer adversaries demands the existence of a technically advanced, mass scale, industrial-age production capability. The Russian onslaught consumes ammunition at rates that massively exceed US forecasts and ammunition production. For the US to act as the arsenal of democracy in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner and the scale at which the US organises its industrial base. This situation is especially critical because behind the Russian invasion stands the world’s manufacturing capital – China. As the US begins to expend more and more of its stockpiles to keep Ukraine in the war, China has yet to provide any meaningful military assistance to Russia. The West must assume that China will not allow Russia to be defeated, especially due to a lack of ammunition. If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must first radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime.
The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.
Disdain for Washington bureaucrats, unelected civil “servants”, and the various alphabet agencies (which have either become bloated or unfit for purpose, like the FBI or the EPA) has been a very common sentiment on FR for years. Where have you been?
Disdain for Washington bureaucrats and disdain for Russian ignorance of US law have nothing to do with where I’ve been these last 15 years. Squirrels.
And who exactly are you alleging to be Russian?
Please, be specific.
It would help the forum to know which of the 3 letter agencies sign your paycheck.
Flawed Assumptions
Russian Mechanized Brigades may have three artillery Battalions, not just two. And with the recent consolidation of surviving units from the Feb-March attack, it is likely that more reformed Brigades will have three artillery Battalions as those troops will have been attrited far less that combat troops.
So that’s one assumption which the author gets wrong. Not his fault, as unit formations change fast on an active large scale front. The point being: his conclusion of 7,000 odd shells being fired a day by Russian forces across a 1500km front, is wildly different from the battlefield estimate of 50,000. Unless of course he meant 7,000 rounds per day per battalion which make more sense.
As for the argument that more accurate shells will make a difference when fire at the rate of on shell per target - I agree it is a great concept in limited wars, but very short sighted in large scale intense artillery wars. This is even more egregious because the ZSU lacks dedicated long range and endurance drones that counter the Russian dedicated artillery Orlon-10 drone.
One huge problem in increasing US production of weapons is the yelling and screaming about cost. The more politicians pound the cost line, the more the public turns against the idea of spending money. Back long ago in a far away time, increasing weapons production was a matter of how many, how fast, rather than cost.
estimate Russian stockpiles - even going so far as to imply that the high rate of consumption (of missiles) must necessarily mean that they have massive stockpiles.
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Russian artillery and equipment stock pile sizes: just imagine that there is enough of both to fight WWII all over again, or conquer the world - they are that large (on paper).
In reality, as far as equipment goes to use that ammo, most of it will have to be refurbished (an expensive process that has recently begun).
Most of that equipment has been stored in the Far East in huge open air compounds. Most of that is rusted, stripped for parts, never move again equipment. For example Russia is credited with having over 10,000 tanks, never mind that the only ones that may work are those that were maintained indoors on a weekly basis.
And many of those are 2d Gen WWII tanks, like the T-62 - just now arriving on the battlefield with the DPR’s 1AK. The actual number of working Russian tanks T-64-T90 series was 2,500 - with half deployed to the Ukraine at the start of the Feb invasion.
Unless the Russians have a huge stockpile of replacement tubes (something no one has yet mentioned), the tube’s rifling becomes worn and has to be replaced after so many rounds have been fired or lose accuracy. They still fire, but need more tubes to fire at the same target.
As far as the Author separating tube fired artillery from rocket fired artillery (and not even mentioning that Russia uses the VKF as glorified artillery), that is a big disservice. MLRS systems are even more terrifying to be on the receiving end, this includes the Russian phosphorous-based thermobaric TOS-1A systems.
Whatever the Author imagines the rate the US needs to ramp up production of shells - multiply by 10 or 100. You don’t want to achieve mere parity, but overwhelming superiority ... or lose and die.
Overnight huh? It takes years to build up that infrastructure sunshine.
China now has custody of the American Arsenal of Democracy. Effete and failing civilization America has turned over all the hard work to China and is bringing in millions of uneducated foreigners to do what low class work remains that cannot be assigned to China. That sort of thing only works for a great power if it first colonizes the country that it sends its industry to.
My question did NOT concern artillery, but rather missiles - which I explicitly referenced. (Am not saying that artillery is unimportant - only that I am interested here in missiles.)
I was referring specifically to the passage of the above article discussing missiles:
The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.
This is an admittedly somewhat confusing passage, insofar as it makes and mixes statements about wildly diverse parameters.
I am not interested, per se, in the production rate of missiles, nor in the consumption rate.
Rather, I want to know only if the consumption rate exceeds the (current) production rate.
In other words: Will Russia "run out of" or have to "drastically scale back" its consumption of battlefield missiles in the foreseeable future?
In other words: Can Russia's hithertofore extravagant consumption of missiles be continued indefinitely? Or, once they exhaust their stockpiles and can then rely only on daily factory output, will they have to drastically scale back their consumption to match daily factory output?
Regards,
Overnight huh? It takes years to build up that infrastructure sunshine.
The mere "announcement" (if it were indeed credible) could conceivably have the desired effect almost immediately.
Regards,
I think the US military wouldn’t fight the same way as Ukraine because of the Air Force and therefore wouldn’t use a large number of Stingers and Javelins.
You are engaged in a fantasy fueled by wishful thinking and projection. We have a large number of both Russian and Ukrainian expats living in our community. Only California and New York have larger numbers. But for years Washington State has been the preferred location for Eastern European immigrants to relocate to.
Most people cannot tell them apart, in the same way that most people cannot tell Swedes and Norwegians apart. In normal times there is little to no animosity between them. Most have relocated not because they have been persecuted but for the same reason that other groups have come here... increased economic opportunity. Few have any real allegiance to the corrupt Ukrainian regime or the Russian communists.
Some of the younger Ukrainians and Russians here most of whom left the two countries when they were children or were actually born here have been whipped into a nationalistic fervor by the nonstop propaganda. The older people see this conflict for what it is... which would take a much longer post to explain to someone such as yourself who has been heavily influenced by the propaganda campaign. But one thing that is STRIKING... is that few if any Ukrainians or Russians living here are making any attempt to return to Russia or Ukraine to join in the fight. Unlike the neocons and easily influenced here at Free Republic... their actions show clearly that they feel that it is none of their business despite having friends and relatives who have been caught up in this mess.
If the expats living in this country on both sides want nothing to do with it why should the rest of us? The “sanctions” are costing us far more than the $40 Billion recently approved by congress. Every time you visit the grocery store, every time you fill up your fuel tank, every time you realize that the value of your savings of retirement has already been reduced by a large percentage in just the last few months... you are looking at the real cost of this lunacy.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/mar/26/why-ukrainian-refugees-prefer-resettling-in-washin/
I pity the poor people currently trying to carry on and live their lives in Ukraine. Their corrupt leadership is currently lining their own pockets with the billions and billions of dollars and Euros being sent to them. They do not care about the people... they just want the money. And Russia... they have seen the revenue from their exports of fuel, food and fertilizer increase by two to three times since the conflict began. Both sides want the huge amounts of cash to keep coming their way. Neither side cares much if anything about the human meat grinder that has been created.
That is why Ukraine will win, as long as they don't lose their nerve and surrender prematurely.
You are a fool... the only winners are those who are receiving the payola... Russian and Ukrainian leadership. Everyone else is losing. This is not a football game. The Russians have lost some equipment and personnel... do you think their leadership really cares when they are currently receiving record amounts of money for their exports, and they are clearly demonstrating the impotence of the West. We are giving them what they want... money and prestige. Their equipment and personnel losses are trivial compared to the 100s of $Billions in increased revenue.
And the Ukrainian leadership? The current regime was put into power by Soros and Western Intelligence agencies who have been playing their twisted game pushing us all toward “the great reset”. The untold billions of dollars that Zelinski and Co. are currently pocketing is unfathomable to most. He and his family have all received British passports and when this game is up far into the future, he and his family and friends will happily live out their lives abroad enjoying their unimaginable wealth.
At the same time those still living in Ukraine will be trying to rebuild cities and industrial facilities that were bombed and shelled to rubble by the Russians and even their own forces in many cases. For the actual people who have to live through this there will be no winning, just pain, misfortune, and death. The munitions the Russian's are using have been stockpiled for decades, they were produced for a tiny fraction of the cost of Western "smart weapons". The Russians have an almost limitless supply available to them right now. They are using them to pulverize Ukraine to bits while impotent Western leadership panders to corrupt Ukrainian leadership by promising fabulously expensive weapons systems, most are like the current order of stinger missiles which won't be completed until 2026. The stupidity is sickening. Your stupidity and grandiose fantasizing is sickening as well.
Well it was confusingt = so I’ll try again
Production rate
Determined by how many embargoed chips can be smuggled it, and if they cannot get the chips, what work arounds they come up with.
Case in point: the artillery drone, Orlon-10, responsible for most of the artillery successes in Ukraine was recently downgraded for lack of chips to make new ones:
The circuit board used for navigation was not dependent on GPS making it resistant to some anti-UAV guns. The Orlon-10 flew using optical ground information. However, Russians cannot make new boards and so they replaced the old board with a primitive GPS based circuit board. Now it is susceptible to GPS attacks. Its better for Russian Artillery, but easier to shoot down.
Can they do something similar with other missiles? Who knows? Whatever workaround they devise, it will not be the same critter.
Consumption rate
Many indications point to a dwindling stockpile evidenced by using very expensive anti-ship missiles designed to hit moving targets being used to hit stationary targets. Despite Western calculations of large supplies, it many be an overestimation, like the number of troops in the RGF, the number of tanks and so on - all of which have been derived from old figures, never updated since the fall of the USSR.
An indication of this reasoning for missiles may, if it has not already, be in the declining accuracy, types fired, and quantity fired: how many missiles of what type used to hit one target, how many missed or were shot down, and how many similar targets not fired on. Of course, most of this type of information will be held close, but some will leak out.
Only time will tell.
Very nuanced response. Thanks!
Regards,
It seems very obvious that you have never purchased surplus eastern block munitions or firearms. As a collector of vintage firearms... I can tell you two things that might but probably will not change your perspective just a bit.
1st, the firearms are packed in so much cosmoline (heavy grease with rust inhibitors and preservatives) that it sometimes takes hours to get the weapon clean enough to use. The barrels, the internal mechanisms everything is nearly if not completely filled. The weapons typically seem to have been dropped into a vat of this grease that has been heated until it turns into a liquid that is then allowed to solidify before they are pulled back out. Then they are wrapped in greased paper or plastic depending on the era to further prevent moisture from getting to the metal parts.
The only rust that you might find was likely on the weapon when it was packed.
The ammunition is usually sealed and then placed in sealed metal containers which are placed in cardboard or wooden boxes to protect them further depending on the era that it was packed in. The propellant and primers in Eastern European munitions are formulated for long life as well. I have fired 80 year old Eastern block ammunition on many occasions and it typically performs like it was new. Domestic ammunition with boxer style primers and not stored in a sealed container... good luck. In some cases it will not even fire.
I can only imagine the prep work done to preserve larger and more valuable artillery pieces and their munitions. Your theories sound plausible. But in real life in this situation you are speculating and just don't know what you are talking about. I have never seen much if any rust on any of the vintage Eastern Block firearms that I have purchased, and genuine Russian pieces are typically the most well preserved of them all.
There are many many images of the huge Orc equipment storage areas and everything you say applies to Western, not Russian equipment.
Its not a perspective, its not a theory; it is a documented fact, which if you spent more time learning about you subject, you would not say such inane things about stored Orc equipment.
Tanks, for one, must have weekly and sometimes daily maintenance - stored open air tanks have not had any maintenance in decades. And its highly doubtful if the word ‘космолин’ is even in Orc maintenance vocabulary. This is about heavy weapons, not light arms.
How Many Tanks Does Russia Really Have? And Where Are They?
Includes a brief description of Orc military unit conventions and example of how one unit had several name changes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhgVrKJJoA&t=619s
We try. Thanks for the reply.
So the proof of your theory is a YouTube video from “Covert Cabal”??? LOL!!!
I have no doubt that there are places where defunct equipment is rotting in Russia. I took a look at the video and there was nothing but meaningless Google Earth Pro images along with blather that had nothing to do with actual Russian weapons system storage procedure which the producer of the video admitted that he had no knowledge of. Maybe one day you will be able to give us your definitions of “documented fact” which obviously differs from what other people understand this to mean. In your case it seems to mean some combination of wishful thinking and fantasy combined with confirmation bias provided by a Youtube poster.
The only US government check I get is Social Security, and that is not a paycheck, it is a benefit for 40 years of labor. The only other govt. paycheck I ever received was for a local government education job around 40 years ago.
This also helped answer a question I had asked earlier. Two months ago I read information that a lot of chips had been stolen from military equipment by low level Russian workers to earn a bit of extra money. This while oligarchs were neglecting the same equipment and pocketing the large amounts of maintenance money. It sounded as though Russia was being nibbled to death by ducks, and by wolves.
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