The Russians are buying back the artillery shells they sold the North Koreans 25 years ago. Probably at a good price.
I’ve read that our own production lines are only capable of making a few hundred shells a week, about what would normally be used in practice firing. If push comes to shove, maybe we can buy a few back from th Taliban.
Russians have used an estimated 7 million artillery shells in the six month invasion of Ukraine. Annual Russian artillery shell replenishment is estimated at 1.6-1.7 million shells of all types.
A farewell to arms. By year end Russia will be left almost without shells, artillery and armored vehicles
One of the underestimated problems is the finite number of Russian artillery shells and guns. There is a common perception among experts, observers, and concerned citizens that Russia had inherited a vast stock of artillery equipment from the Soviet Union. The problem is that Soviet artillery shells could not be stored for long and as early as summer 2002, during the second Chechen campaign, the Russian army faced a shortage of 122 mm and 152 mm shells.
Of course, this does not mean that the entire Soviet artillery arsenal should be written off. For example, solid-propellant rockets for multiple rocket launchers are much less sensitive to long-term storage than rounds for rifled artillery, most of which, at the very least, were long overdue for restorative repair. Moreover, the arsenal was thoroughly depleted not only by the two Chechen wars and the short-lived Georgian campaign, but also by the military campaign in Ukraine in 2014-2015 and, probably, even more so by the campaign in Syria.
At the same time, it should be understood that the rate of shell consumption during the two Chechen wars was many times lower than during the current war, when it reaches 40,000-60,000 shells of all types per day during high intensity combat operations, dropping to 24,000 per day during periods of so-called «lulls».
It is worth trying to estimate the rate of Russian artillery shell production, given the fact that it was relatively small in the 1990s and 2000s, and was at its peak in the 2010s. However, even that rate of production of existing projectiles, as well as the rate of developing and creating new ammunition, did not seem to suit the Ministry of Defense. Therefore, in 2014, a large-scale program was launched to restore shells that had survived in artillery and missile arsenals. By the end of 2017, this program restored 1.7 million munitions and missiles of all types, that is, about 570,000 per year. It was particularly emphasized that their production from scratch would have cost the budget 117 billion rubles, or 39 billion rubles per year.
Based on these figures, it is possible to estimate the volume of artillery ammunition production itself. If we look at the earnings of the corresponding industrial enterprises and conglomerates, we will see that during those years they ranged between 80-100 billion rubles. The earnings, of course, also include civilian products, which in some enterprises account for 25-30% of the total revenue. As a consequence, the ratio between recovered and newly produced munitions can be estimated, albeit roughly, as 1:2. Or for each 570,000 shells restored, there are up to 1.14 million new ones. Thus, the total annual rate of replenishment of artillery arsenals in the 2010s did not exceed 1.6-1.7 million shells of all types. It is worth mentioning an interesting detail: the supply of rockets of all types in 2017, for example, amounted to only 10,700.
As a result, it turns out that during the six months of aggression against Ukraine, Russia should have spent at least 7 million shells, not counting the losses of frontline depots as a result of Ukrainian strikes. In other words, if the intensity of the war remains at its current level, Moscow will face a tangible shell shortage by the end of 2022 and will have to reduce its use of artillery in order to save munitions.
https://theins.ru/en/politics/254573