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Western nations scramble to keep up with military supplies for Ukraine [1]
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Date: 2022-11-27
This is a photo from n a military exercise on Guam - but it illustrates that getting supplies to the battle space is not something that can be ignored for long.
In a follow up to yesterday’s post linking to a NY Times article reporting on the increasing need to maintain artillery being used in Ukraine by shipping it to Poland for refurbishment, the latest from the Times is a report on how the Ukraine war is burning through Western armory stockpiles. Steven Erlanger and Lara Jakes have been looking at the situation.
BRUSSELS — When the Soviet Union collapsed, European nations grabbed the “peace dividend,” drastically shrinking their defense budgets, their armies and their arsenals. With the rise of Al Qaeda nearly a decade later, terrorism became the target, requiring different military investments and lighter, more expeditionary forces. Even NATO’s long engagement in Afghanistan bore little resemblance to a land war in Europe, heavy on artillery and tanks, that nearly all defense ministries thought would never recur. But it has. In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to drag Russia back to the glory days of the Soviet Empire have also brought back a kind of warfare that had seemingly gone out of style. The Russian military’s use of brute force is putting a huge toll on arsenals.
The amount of artillery being used is staggering, NATO officials say. In Afghanistan, NATO forces might have fired even 300 artillery rounds a day and had no real worries about air defense. But Ukraine can fire thousands of rounds daily and remains desperate for air defense against Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones. “A day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan,” said Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who until recently was NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment. Last summer in the Donbas region, the Ukrainians were firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery rounds each day, a senior NATO official said. The Russians were firing 40,000 to 50,000 rounds per day. By comparison, the United States produces only 15,000 rounds each month.
To be fair, Putin expected the invasion of Ukraine to be a relatively simple affair that would quickly overrun the country. There were reports that the column of armor that was headed for Kyiv was found to include parade uniforms in their gear, in anticipation of a victory parade. To also be fair, many in the West didn’t think Ukraine would be able to hold out for long either — but here we are.
Maxim 47. Don't expect the enemy to cooperate in the creation of your dream engagement.
The NY Times article goes into some of the problems with sustainability the West is experiencing — the time needed to ramp up production, interoperability between weapons systems and munitions coming from different NATO members, legal controls on arms shipments, and the need to be able to keep supplies available for other trouble spots around the world.
Maxim 55. It's only too many weapons if they're pointing in the wrong direction.
The article also (barely) acknowledges Russia is having troubles of its own when it comes to keeping its forces equipped and supplied. Mark Sumner’s latest reports Russian troops are dying of hypothermia because they don’t have winter weather gear — and they are cannibalizing nuclear missiles just to have something to lob at Ukraine.
There have been suggestions in comments that articles like this are appearing now in the news as an effort by the tankies to decrease support for continuing to aid Ukraine. That’s certainly the direction the Republican Party wants to go, according to this report by Mark Sumner.
The NY Times article goes on to say that Western aid suppliers are holding back some systems Ukraine has asked for because 1) some of them would just take too long to get into service, 2) to ensure Ukraine can’t extend its reach to attack targets in Russia, and 3) are also demanding Ukraine become more efficient, as in not expending $100,000 munitions to take out a $20,000 drone. But Ukraine has also proven to be remarkably inventive…
..Its forces are known inside NATO as “the MacGyver Army,” a reference to an old television series in which the hero is inventive and improvisational with whatever comes to hand. To shell Russian positions at Snake Island, for instance, the Ukrainians put Caesars, with a 40-kilometer range, on barges and towed them out 10 kilometers to hit the island, which was 50 kilometers away, astonishing the French. Ukraine also sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with its own adapted missiles, and has built drones that can attack ships at sea.
Maxim 50. If it only works in exactly the way the manufacturer intended, it is defective.
And, there are other ways of dealing with supply issues, as the NY Times article notes:
Maintenance is key, but there are clever answers for relatively simpler equipment, like the M-777 howitzer given to Ukraine. With the right parts, a Ukrainian engineer can link up to an American artillery officer in Fort Sill, Okla., and get talked through maintenance over Zoom.
The importance of supply is something that militaries have been coping with as far back as humans have been in conflict. It’s not a coincidence that “For want of a nail” turns up in many different countries over the centuries, as it summarizes how important it is in war to have what you need when you need it — and know what it is you need. The friction of war has a way of bringing out failures of planning and execution that might otherwise go by without acknowledgment.
It’s still logistics.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/27/2138591/-Western-nations-scramble-to-keep-up-with-military-supplies-for-Ukraine
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