The Pentagon is planning to boost its production of artillery ammunition by 500% over the next two years as the US is depleting its military stockpiles by sending millions of shells to Ukraine, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the US has pledged to send Ukraine over one million 155mm artillery shells. Before the US Army began efforts to increase production, it produced 14,400 155mm shells a month, but under the new plans, the number could reach over 90,000 each month.
According to the Times, an Army report said the plan will involve expanding factories and bringing in new producers in an effort described as “the most aggressive modernization effort in nearly 40 years” of the US military-industrial complex.
The unguided 155mm shells that are fired out of Howitzers include parts produced by several arms manufacturers, including steel bodies made by General Dynamics and explosives mixed by BAE Systems. American Ordnance pours the explosives into the bodies, and several other contractors produce the fuzes that are screwed into the shells.
The US plans to dramatically ramp up ammunition production over the next two years show that the US is expecting to support Ukraine against Russia for years to come, and there is no sign that the fighting will end anytime soon.
What’s not clear is if the policy is sustainable, as US military officials have warned it may be hard to continue arming both the US and Ukraine as the war drags on. Ukrainian forces are estimated to be using about 90,000 rounds of artillery each month, which is more than double what the US and Europe can currently produce.
The US has had to dip into a little-known stockpile of weapons that it keeps in Israel to keep up with Ukraine’s artillery demand. The Pentagon also requested that US forces stationed in South Korea send equipment to Ukraine.
The only global cooperation the US knows how to do is total death and destruction, a million hundred foot circles of it at a time. Just imagine what could be built or fixed if such vast resources were used for something positive.
Sound good in a dream world, but that world only exists if China, Russia, Iran and N. Korea don’t exist. They do and they are aggressors. With that said, it doesn’t excuse our complete lack of diplomacy and decorum. All of them are guilty.
Just curious, how would you describe the US? A victim? You could add the “aggression” of those four countries together and it would pale in comparison to the King of aggressors.
No, I think we actually engaged them and lured them into this war by helping Ukrainian opposition overthrow the governmentin 2014, when Victoria Nueland was caught on tape saying F the EU. I think we are all living under corrupt, greedy lawless regimes that lie like a rug about everything, all thet time.
Exactly, and it’s those liars who have labelled those four nations simply aggressors. There’s always an ‘expert’ ready to dish one sided history and slippery slope arguments to say that all they will understand is violence. Pure projection, information operations targeting the real battlefield of value: your brain.
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. As far as the love of power over peace? All of them.
Well said Jackie, well said. Thank you, very much.
MIC kicking into high gear on borrowed money. Because we can just keep spending and never pay anything back, right? And if we default, we’ll just bomb whoever holds out bonds into forgiveness right? What a violent and awful system our MIC government is…
and that still is not at a replacement level rate of production. The US is run by imbeciles.
“The Pentagon is planning to boost its production of artillery ammunition
as the US is depleting its military stockpiles by sending millions of shells to Ukraine”
To little too late!
And the rich get richer.
Ukrainian forces are estimated to be using about 90,000 rounds of artillery each month
and every one of them is fired by ukraine forces inside of ukraine.
so they are literally destroying themself from the inside.
It is the everlasting “who profits?”
Cui Bono indeed.
Sounds like something the Chinese would want us to do, stupidly deplete our artillery stockpiles for a war that should have never happened if we had a competent government.
Cha ching!
And the money keeps rolling in!
I thought the aim of the U.S. was to bleed Russia in Ukraine, but it appears that the U.S. and NATO countries are the ones getting bled.
Both sides are being bled. The questions are which one is losing more blood, faster, and which one has more blood to lose.
I hear that in WWII, the Russians bled quite a bit but did not quit. I doubt, with the physical survival of their nation on the line, they will care one whit how much blood there is to shed. The US has declared war on the Russian Federation and no amount of BS you or anyone else can orate here or elsewhere can change that fact.
It does not matter what you or I think about the truth of the statement. It only matters how the Russian leadership regards the actions of the US government. I have seen my fill of duplicity of my government over the course of a lifetime to regard anything that comes out of Washington being worth even a warm bucket of spit.
Touche OB1!
Thank you Donna. You’re very nice!
Well, that’s part of the Russian regime’s problem.
While you can get dragged off to jail for calling the war a war, let alone protesting against it, it’s even harder for the current regime to blockade international news, etc. than it was for the Soviet Union to do so.
Which means the Russian people know that the idea that “the physical survival of their nation is on the line” is only true if they let their masters unleash nuclear armageddon.
Hint: The regime wouldn’t be pardoning violent criminals and mobilizing conscripts to keep up this nonsense if the war was very popular.
Of course, we also have some history here of offering this choice to young offenders: join the Army or go to jail.
And, as the economy has slowed, joining the all-volunteer military has become more attractive to those with limited job opportunities. Offering parole or pardons to imprisoned convicts in exchange for military service has not happened yet in the US, but I won’t be shocked if it does. And by the way, there seem to be a significant number of Russian volunteers in this war, just as a lot of Americans volunteered after the 9/11 attacks.
Addendum: the US will not be offering pardon or parole to incarcerated convicts in exchange for military service in my lifetime, because after this war is over there will be either: (a) A greatly diminished US that looks more like post-imperial Spain, or (b) A post-apocalyptic US that looks more like the moon. And this war is not going to last very much longer. After tanks, what? Fighter jets and bombers? Long-range missiles? How long before Russia really take this personally?
The Abrams tanks have shielding made from depleted uranium and fire shells with depleted uranium projectiles. These will land in Russian territory and Russia views them as ‘dirty bombs’, which is not false: they are radioactive, highly toxic, and persistent pollutants.
What does the US expect in return? Well, I guess, abject capitulation. And when that doesn’t happen? On to the next level of madness…
Yes, we do have that history in the US.
And we’ve been losing wars since 1945.
The very definition of obscenity.
You are my kind of guy OB1. 🙂
Wow, it is a bit of a sad commentary when the US cannot militarily fortify its friends and neighbors. What is the MIC up to? You can hardly make a world war in conditions such as this. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
The US thought that artillery was too old-school and boring. The DOD wanks were all getting high on smart bombs, remote-controlled drones, and cruise missiles. When they heard about how Israel rigged a remote-controlled machine gun to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist, they nearly came in their pants. It never occurred to them that simple artillery shells could tip the balance in the battlefield.