Posted on 06/12/2025 7:04:19 AM PDT by lasereye
Ukraine's defense industry is urging the West to abandon its longtime fixation on high-end, expensive weaponry in favor of cheaper, mass-produced arms, the kind needed to survive and win a grinding war of attrition against an adversary like Russia.
Serhiy Goncharov, the CEO of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries — which represents about 100 Ukrainian companies — told Business Insider the West's long-standing focus on fielding limited numbers of cutting-edge systems could be a serious disadvantage in a protracted conflict. Those systems are good to have, but mass is key.
The war in Ukraine shows that instead of a handful of ultraprecise, expensive weapons, countries need a massive supply of good enough firepower, Goncharov said.
He said the expensive weapons such as the US military's M982 Excalibur guided munition (each shell costs $100,000) "don't work" when the other side has electronic warfare systems and the kind of traditional artillery rounds that are 30 times cheaper in tremendous supply.
Goncharov pointed to the M107, a self-propelled gun that was first fielded by the US in the 1960s, as an example of inexpensive firepower that can be effective in large numbers.
"You don't need 10 Archers from the Swedish that are probably one of the best artillery systems in the world," he said, referring to the artillery system made by BAE Systems that was given to Ukraine by Sweden. Instead, you need 200 cheap howitzers, such as the Bohdana one that Ukraine makes.
The significant rate of ammo and equipment attrition in a fight such as this means a constant supply of weaponry is needed to keep fighting, especially when there isn't any guarantee the high-end weapons will be the game changers promised.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I think the expensive stuff makes sense for the Air Force and Navy. A howitzer that requires $100K shells makes no sense. My non-expert opinion.
Agree. Expensive stuff for nuclear war, inexpensive readily manufactured stuff for conventional wars. Need to go in that direction.
I admit, I didn’t read the entire article but I agree with the premise. I see no need for manned aircraft today, or manned warships in our very near future.
I was thinking this same thing during the Iraq War, when we were using million dollar Patriot missiles to shoot down one thousand dollar missiles. That can’t go on forever if your adversary has enough cheap missiles.
Consider exactly what its going to take for a nation of 15-18 million people totally dependent on external support, to win a “ war of attrition” against a self-sufficient war-experienced nation of 140 million
No surprise there - the west's entire approach to the Ukraine war is wrong...
American defense contractors are not in the business of producing weapons to win wars. They are in the business of producing reams of documentation for products with no guarantees.
Everyone is finding out there are easier ways to mass kill people than tanks and bombs.
Ain’t that special?
Clearly, Serhiy Goncharov has never been to Washington DC or Northern Virginia, and seen the offices of defense contractors, their lobbyists, their homes/estates, or the vast bureaucracy and DC economy they support.
Cheap, durable, disposable weapons are not where the money is.
We moved beyond the Excaliber, 100K per round a long time ago. Probably why we gave them to the Ukrainians.
We moved on to smart fuse systems for ordinary 155mm howitzer rounds. Cost about 5k and accurate to 5 meters.
About 100 times as effective as using mass artillery, for targets you want to kill. That is, you have to use 100 dumb artillery rounds to make the kill you can make with one “smart” artillery round.
Of course, if you want to chew up an area, instead of a precise target, then mass produced dumb artillery shells are cheaper.
There is a lot of validity to this. Defense contractors make more money on fewer gold plated items. The reality is you need weapons that are good enough and cheap so you can produce them in huge volume.
That was basically the story in Europe in WWII. There wasn’t a single Allied tank that was as good as the Tiger or the Panther. Germany made a combined 6,000 of the two types. The US made 50,000 inferior Shermans and the Russians made (during the war) 50,000 inferior T-34s. The two allied tanks were inferior but at least they were competitive. The German tanks were better but 6,000 vs 100,000 just doesn’t work unless the qualitative difference is absolutely gigantic and it wasn’t.
In the 1980s we had over 2 million people in the military with about 900 Rangers and (I think) about 1200 green berets, in other words a big military for fighting the big war and SOP for surgical special operations.
We need that with weaponry, a massive stock of death and destruction dealing armaments (and the number of troops needed to use them and to endure the resulting large losses of major war) and a supply of the game changing high tech wonder tools that can be used to make the unexpected surgical strikes and to change the direction of a war, or to deliver shock blows at the right moments, similar to the proper use of commandos, uses that burst out and destroy logistics, and take out command centers and enemy high tech targets in precision strikes.
We need a mixture of both, so this discussion emerging from the wake up call in Europe needs to grow, and with the hope that we find the right balance, a balance that currently seems off, and that includes manpower and the need for more martial, male based military personnel and more warrior oriented leadership.
SOF, not SOP.
To make a boxing analogy, styles make fights. It seems to me that which side prevails in a war depends on how their weaponry is used, as much as its quantity or quality. In the same way that a fighter may win over a boxer or a boxer may outpoint a fighter or (i) vice versa</i>, which side prevails depends on a canny strategy of balancing strength against weakness, and the timely seizure of fleeting opportunities. To say that quantity will always assure success in war, overlooks many prominent historical examples of the opposite. Consider how Cortez and just 600 Spaniards with cannon and steel swords, concurred the empire of the Aztecs.
One thing they can’t replace is all the troops Ukraine has lost. They are running out of males of fighting age.
But Raytheon can’t rake in billions on a $500 bomber drone!
It's more evidence of how the defense industry has been run as business, peddling costly costly weapons for profit rather producing the type and quantity of artillery needed to win a war.
“quantity has a quality of its own” - Zhukov or Stalin, no one is quite sure...
Weapon quantity works when you have sufficient troops trained to use them adequately. For some time now, new Ukrainian recruits may be the disabled elderly or teen boys (even some mentally handicapped ‘serve’) with 2 hours of training. These are conscripts forcibly dragged away from home and given a few hours of training before being shipped to the front lines. At that point, advanced weaponry may be preferable if the person operating it is adequately trained, because numerous dead conscripts are short lived, hard to replace and highly inefficient on the battle field.
Why not? Just make a billion of them
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