20 MARCH 2023 COMMENT
Munitions scarcity raises questions about capacity to sustain high-intensity warfare
Since the outbreak of the first high-intensity conflict on the European subcontinent since WWII, one of the key strategic takeaways has been the fundamental failure of the global defence industry to meet the requisite level of production for munitions of all types. High-intensity warfare often dictates that the industrial capabilities of warring states must be re-purposed to support the war effort in order to offset surging demand for replacement equipment or munitions, a challenge which both Russia and Ukraine have struggled to overcome for the past year.
Recent estimates indicate that Russian forces are firing in excess of 20,000 artillery shells per day, with the Ukrainian armed forces firing around one-third of that at 6,000-7,000 per day in late February 2023. For Ukraine’s military allies in the West, the continued provision of munitions and other military aid to offset Ukraine’s material disadvantage has only highlighted the glaring flaws in their own defence industrial complexes. Smaller nations are having to increase defence budgets to restore pre-war stockpiles, while even the US defence industry is having to re-assess its capacity to sustain wartime levels of production across an expansive range of weapons systems and platforms.
Historical divergence in procurement priorities and defence spending has produced different challenges and limitations for the various nations currently involved in this conflict, with Russian forces facing a recurring lack of precision-guided munitions (PGM) throughout the conflict while Ukraine’s post-war defence industry has had extreme difficulty sustaining nearly all of the Ukrainian military’s material needs once Cold-War stockpiles were expended.
For the Russians, this issue stemmed from the lack of investment in both domestic infrastructure and industrial expertise, with Russian firms relying heavily on foreign suppliers in the West and beyond to acquire critical subcomponents such as semiconductors, INS/GNSS navigation modules and other microelectronics. Mimicking US strategy during the Gulf Wars, Russian forces expended a significant portion of their PGM stockpiles in attempted ‘decapitation’ strikes in February 2022, but once the main offensive had stalled and Western nations began implementing trade sanctions, the domestic defence industry was rendered almost entirely incapable of producing PGMs, let alone sustaining high wartime production rates. Attempts to offset this issue by re-purposing other weapons systems (i.e. employing anti-ship missiles for ground-attack roles) and by relying on significant Cold-War stockpiles of conventional munitions have also proven inadequate, as the lack of consistent maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) compounded by rampant corruption has rendered large proportions of those munitions unsafe or unfit for purpose.
https://www.aerospace-technology.com/comment/munitions-scarcity-high-intensity-warfare/
