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.
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.
Alex Vershinin
A crucial point that gets glossed over constantly by people on Twitter furiously demanding that we supply Ukraine with everything it needs to ‘win the war’. Modern ammunition and weaponry are complex and take a long time to produce – not something you can order on Amazon with same-day delivery – and even the US may not have the stockpiles or the production capacity to resupply the Ukrainian army indefinitely.
On a slightly related note, ever since the start of hostilities I was struck by how well I could keep up with the news about military tactics and weapons deployment, and I think it’s mainly because… of my long-time experience playing strategy games, Civilization in particular. One good example are the different military doctrines of NATO and Russia, with NATO more focused on air combat with naval support and Russia relying heavily on artillery, tanks, and ground troops – another reason why the US doesn’t keep large stockpiles of ammunitions.
Another Civ lesson mirroring real-world strategy is precisely the importance of industrial capacity: you can overwhelm and defeat an opponent that has superior technology by flooding the battlefield with cheaper, less advanced units – if you have better production (unless the opponent has access to nukes, which could obliterate your armies in a couple of strikes). This is what makes China’s stance in the conflict so significant: with their manufacturing capacity, they could easily decide the winner by choosing a side. Maybe we should consider ourselves fortunate it didn’t side with Russia so far…
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