The West is racing to stop Ukraine's guns falling silent

President Biden, pictured visiting the Javelin assembly line in Alabama, has been forced to increase production CREDIT: JONATHAN ERNST/ REUTERS

Nato stockpiles were depleted to arm Kyiv – but the defence industry must ramp up
production once more

The essence of Ukraine’s war is its dependence on the West for the influx of weapons, military vehicles and ammunition that has kept its military able to confront the Russian invaders.

The supply lifeline meant Russia’s initial blitzkrieg-style rush of infantry, armour, artillery and supporting air strikes mostly ground to a halt amid mounting casualties. The invaders inch forwards, consolidating and deepening their hold on conquered Ukrainian territory.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s defenders fiercely contest every street corner, road junction and field - and have launched an offensive of their own to reclaim the occupied city of Kherson.

Their ability to continue fighting back rests on the steady supply of Western arms, ammunition and materiel.

Yet a problem has begun to emerge which threatens that steady supply. Most Western weaponry supplied to Ukraine has either come from ready-use war stockpiles or from long term stores of vehicles and materiel that is obsolete by NATO standards. After six months of full intensity war fighting - and with winter on the horizon - those stocks are starting to run low.

Supply chain crisis

Earlier this week The Wall Street Journal reported that much American military aid “has come directly from US inventory, depleting stockpiles intended for unexpected threats”. 

An unnamed US defence official told the newspaper that reserves of 155mm artillery shells were running “uncomfortably low” after the supply of 806,000 rounds to Ukraine. Production, inevitably, now needs to rise. 

Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, added: “There are some problems you can buy your way out of. This is one of them.” 

The military-industrial complex – Dwight Eisenhower’s description of the manufacturers and suppliers to the world’s armed forces – must step up to the mark. A debate is now under way between Nato governments, their own militaries and their treasuries about not only the quantity of materiel they want to supply to Ukraine, but the knock-on effect on their own nations of emptying their stockpiles. 

Trevor Taylor, a research fellow from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), says the biggest challenge for Ukraine’s Western supporters is placing fresh contracts with defence suppliers, especially as Ukraine starts mounting full-scale counterattacks to regain lost territory. 

“Offensive actions require more munitions and effort than do defensive actions,” says Taylor. 

“But the military intent, what they can realistically think about mounting, is a function of the supplies they can get from outside.” 

Two key factors for keeping a military offensive going are the rate at which army units consume ammunition and the speed with which their comrades can resupply them. 

Ukraine’s artillery regiments are firing around 6,000 shells a day, according to estimates from Rusi. Even the simplest artillery ammunition needs time to make, and lead times for the increasingly complex weapon systems employed by modern militaries make forward planning to head off a supply crisis ever more important. 

Nicholas Drummond, a defence industry analyst and former British Army officer, thinks part of the supply problem lies with politicians and generals who embraced post-Cold War peace dividend-driven thinking for far too long. 

“Essentially, the Russo-Ukrainian war has exposed years of under-investment across many areas of defence, but particularly in war stocks of ammunition,” he says. 

Telegraph

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