Why Russia is leaving the US and NATO far behind in weapons production
“Since the end of the Cold War, the defense industries have not done much production work for the ministry,” explained William A. LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Global Security Forum in April.
This shocking statement by LaPlante is consistent with the response of the U.S. and NATO defense industries to the Russian invasion of Ukraine – a response that was, to say the least, disappointing.
In fact, Russia overproducing the entire NATO and the US in terms of ammunition, missiles and tanks, despite having a defence budget of only $100 billion and a GDP of $2 trillion in 2023. Compare this to the combined US/NATO defence budget of 1.47 trillion US dollars and a combined GDP of about $45 trillion.
How can this be?
In short, the United States and its NATO allies are fighting a war they would like to win, while Russia is fighting a war it believes it must win—an existential war. As a result, it is largely business as usual for the Pentagon and American defense contractors, with profits and revenues at the forefront. Sure, some contracts have been/are being accelerated to get the money flowing faster. But without real defense reform, there is no reason to believe defense contractors will not continue to deliver weapons systems like the F-35, the Ford-class aircraft carrier, and the Sentinel ICBM, albeit late and for billions more than originally promised.
But it is not just the large, complex programs that are being completed late and over budget. Even relatively simple projects such as the production of unguided artillery shells are being completed late and over budget.
As 2022 began, there was little doubt that the U.S. Army no longer viewed artillery as central to the battlefield as it once did. As evidence of this attitude, on May 21, 2021, just eight months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Army requested permission to Reduction in annual expenditure on 155 mm cartridges by half, reducing annual production to 75,357 rounds per year or about 6,200 per month.
But the story does not end there. It turns out that the Army has led the decline of the entire US artillery ammunition supply chain. The severity of this decline is demonstrated by a excellent investigative article Reuters report showing that U.S. production of 155mm cartridges had been plagued for years by manufacturing defects and safety problems.
In addition, plans to replace the aging U.S. artillery production facility in Virginia with a modern facility with significantly higher capacity were ten years behind schedule and had almost doubled in size. In other words, they were very late and way over budget.
But the most disturbing aspect of the U.S. Army and Congress’s poor maintenance of our artillery shell supply chain was brought to light by an internal 2021 U.S. Army document detailing “foreign dependence” on at least a dozen chemicals critical to the manufacture of artillery shells, which were sourced from China and India – countries with close trade ties to Russia, according to the Reuters investigation.
All this results in an artillery ammunition supply chain in very poor condition, especially compared to the 438,000 rounds per month. US ammunition factories could produce in 1980To restore the supply chain, the US Army requested 3.1 billion US dollars to increase production of 155 mm shells to 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. But Congress generously doubled that amount to $6.414 billion as part of the $95 billion Supplemental Security Act. signed by Biden on April 24.
The army’s plan to increase production to 100,000 rounds per month, or 1.2 million per year, by the end of 2025 sounds pretty good. But we have not yet seen that production rate in reality, and by the end of 2025 Ukraine may have lost the war.
Nevertheless, it is good to remember that the United States is not the only power involved in this Proxy war against Russia – other countries are also working to supply Ukraine with urgently needed artillery shells. And the biggest ammunition news From Europe, the arms giant Rheinmetall is bidding for 8.5 million eurosAs part of a 1.3 billion euro contract with the German Armed Forces, up to 700,000 artillery shells and 10,000 tons of gunpowder are to be produced annually from 2025.
So, if everything goes according to plan, the US and its NATO allies could produce almost 2 million 155mm shells per year by the end of 2025. This seems less impressive when you consider that since the beginning of the war until today, Russia has already increased its total annual production of artillery shells to three million shots.
This includes Increase in production of 152 mm shells by five timesfrom 400,000 rounds per year in January 2022 to two million rounds per year. In addition, Russia has reportedly been able to increase production of its 152 mm Krasnopol-M2 precision projectiles by a factor of 20according to Russian state sources.
These shells are more resistant to jamming than the $100,000 M982 Excalibur 155 mm precision projectiles that the US had supplied to Ukraine and which been rendered ineffective by Russian jammers.
But it is not enough to provide artillery shells, you also need artillery to fire the shells, and Ukrainian artillery is not only gruelingbut it too is being destroyed by Russia. And long before artillery tubes (barrels) fail completely due to wear and tear, they lose range and become less accurate. Both Ukraine and Russia are struggling with the wear and tear problem, so the question is who has the heavy industry to build artillery tubes.
Although there is not much information on artillery tube/barrel production rates, Russia exceeds US and NATO weapons production by operating its very large Soviet-era factories 24/7 to produce ammunition, vehicles and other militaryThis suggests that it probably does the same in the production of artillery tubes, as well as in the manufacture of brand new artillery.
On the other hand, there is little doubt that if the United States and its NATO allies truly believed their existence was threatened, they could spend billions implementing contingency measures that would enable them to outflank Russia, whose defense spending and GDP are only a fraction of the combined NATO/US GDP.
Such measures would also require a disruption of the status quo in defense procurement, so theoretically this is possible. But the US and its NATO allies do not seem to be in a hurry to establish comprehensive new industrial policies. Perhaps this is because they know that Putin will not launch an offensive without cause. Article 5 attack on a NATO country and that democracy will survive regardless of the outcome in Ukraine.
Consequently, while the Russian threat is a great argument for justifying the wasting of billions of dollars on defense contractors to replenish depleted weapons and ammunition stocks and to acquire new weapons, it is not a threat so great that it justifies disrupting the status quo that defense contractors have created – a status quo that offers less performance for the money every year during Achieving record profits and sales.
In contrast, Russia’s military buildup will continue to be that of a country that believes it is fighting an existential struggle for survival.
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