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.
That will be very helpful, for the weapons makers. Those shells are likely to be way too late for Kiev.
Can’t be too much money being made in artillery production or we would have had a lot more laying around.
Hopefully they (the MIC) are not of the opinion of using it or losing it.
What Biden says may not be what he means. I would not rule out the possibility that the shells are for NATO.
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.
This is Biden’s war now.
Hasn’t it been since 2014?
And Putin has nothing to do with it???
KH:
Feel free to chime in. Offer us your theory or comments on Putin’s position in all of this….
Why do you not ask the same question of Adolfo de Jesus? I’m getting the feeling you don’t like me. Don’t worry you be joining a lot company.
I make a habit of trying not to dislike people especially of varying opinions. I try to keep an open mind. Feel free to expound.
Do I really have to explain to you?
Okay, STFU. 😉
Somebody is having a bad day.
He’ll be up for the honor of ending it.. Just like Russia done for WW2 🇷🇺=☮️
On the US side, it’s now Biden’s. When you inherit something, that ironically you started, and then escalate to the point of direct war with a real enemy, then it’s on you. On Russia’s side it’s obviously Putin’s war. The Ukrainian side is inconsequential and that should be obvious to them. They’re serving a purpose.
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.
Up to 90K per month, eventually. While Ukraine has been firing 6K every day, and would need to fire many more if it hoped to be able to match Russia in the artillery battle.
Does not compute.
This is a depressing article. It has taken way too long to acknowledge this problem, and as mentioned in another post even now it’s like the US still considers this to be a minor issue as we do not seem to be in a hurry to rectify the situation.
There was a time I believed that with our overwhelmingly large military, and with NATO outside the US militarily outspending Russia by more than 2 to 1, that we would overwhelm them with numerical superiority. It seems that I was wrong.
It is possible that we will get a SURPRISE moment when huge stockpiles of weapons turn into a VERY huge US offensive somewhere sometime. Bit not likely.
The world would be an even more dangerous place if Russia thought it was facing a military defeat.
Well said RD.
The potential danger increases the longer “Russia” keeps throwing good blood and treasure after bad.
That is the official US line. I am not sure that Russia will lose.
If the US is really sending its announced forces to Ukraine and little more, then Russia will flat out win. US/NATO forces will get ground down over time, with each year repeating last year where Russian offensives took a lot more land than the US ones.
If we are sending 10x the number of tanks and artillery shells and HIMARs and Patriots in unannounced packages, then our satellite intelligence resources should allow us to defeat them. This, of course, would include Russian cities and European cities and US cities absorbing conventional missile hits.
Biden says what he is authorized to say. If he is telling the truth, then the war will be a victory for Russia in a year or two. If he is lying a little, we will lose in 5 years. If he is lying a lot, then we can stalemate Russia, possibly with very fluid battle lines.
What I do absolutely know is that the crap that the US MSM, including the public US military news sites, are reporting total nonsense.
I completely agree. Nicely summed up WA.
No, wrong again. It is we who are throwing Ukrainian blood and treasure away. It is we who are responsible for the level of violence we are sponsoring – at Ukrainian expense. I say this based on the reported statements re the talks in March 2022. We talked the Ukrainians into continuing the fight. We deliberately made their battle look winnable. We are without honor.
What we are doing is absolutely unacceptable. We have crippled Europe and opened the territory there to potential violence.
We do not need to concern ourselves whatsoever with what the Russians are willing to sacrifice. They are agents of their own destiny.
None of this would have come to pass had we not deliberately encouraged it – both before February 2022 and since. We have completely lost our way and no longer warrant respect from the world community.
No amount of BS is going to mask the basic fact of our role in fomenting this nightmare.
You seem to think that only one side can throw blood and treasure away. That’s not the case.
Yes, the Russian regime is the agent of its own destiny. And its subjects are paying for its unwise use of that agency, just like the other regimes’ subjects are paying for their rulers’ idiocy.
The thing is, the Russian regime’s opponents have a lot more blood and treasure to waste, and probably a lot more they can waste without being overthrown, than the Russian regime does. And they seem to intend to stick with their own brutal decisions in that respect.
I don’t disagree that Russia can make its own choices and that it is expending a lot of treasure and lives in this conflict. I do believe that the US set a trap that Russia could not evade: either watch Ukraine destroy the Donbas or launch a military invasion to prevent that. I believe that Russia hoped until late February of 2022 that negotiations could be carried out to settle the argument, and that they only invaded Ukraine after Ukraine massed its forces against the Donbas (and the US blew off negotiating). Perhaps I am wrong on that, but the very-gradual turning-up of the force dial by Russia suggests to me that they are trying to achieve their goals with a minimum of force. In contrast to the US approach (in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere) of maximally destructive ‘shock-and-awe’ force application.
As to whether Russia’s opponents have enough lives and treasure to wear down Russia, the urgency I see in the US efforts to escalate this war suggest to me that the US war proponents (primarily neoconservatives) believe that they have a very narrow window of time in which to bring Russia down, leading them to make increasingly risky bets on how far they can escalate the war before it goes out of control.
As usual, I hope I’m wrong but I think I’m right about this: Russia remains in reactive mode and takes the minimal steps to maintain military superiority toward achieving its explicitly defined aims, while the US remains in aggressive mode and takes increasingly aggressive military steps (despite the flashing red lights and ringing alarms).
I suppose it’s possible that Russia “remains” in a “mode” that it has never before displayed, but it seems unlikely.
Then again, the Russian regime waited for eight years for Donetsk and Luhansk to magically fall into its hands with minimal investment of force before finally deciding to escalate to open war, so I suppose that doctrine might have taken hold some time between the Chechnya/Georgia wars and now in a way that’s difficult to get over.
The more likely explanation is that the regime expected Georgia and got Chechnya on steroids, then discovered that ordering 100 tanks/trucks/rounds of ammunition and paying for 100 tanks/trucks/rounds of ammunition isn’t the same thing as finding 100 tanks/trucks/rounds of ammunition on tap when needed if you happened to have put the oligarchs of one of the most corrupt countries in the world in charge of procurement.
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!
They don’t seem to be in a hurry.
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.
Plus which side wants it more. As you know motivation is also a factor.
Entirely relevant.
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.