The era of the industrial war

By Costas Raptis

Quantity translates into quality. And in its confrontation with Russia, the West lags behind in terms of ammunition. Among roughly equivalent opponents, anyone with an industrial base capable of constantly supplying the battlefield with an advantage has the advantage. But the West is systematically deindustrialized.

This warning is addressed by the American lieutenant colonel e.a. Alex Versinin, a veteran of military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea, wrote an article on the Royal United Services Institute website entitled “The Return of Industrial Warfare.”

As he explains, the war in Ukraine confronts about 250,000 Ukrainian army men and 450,000 armed national guardsmen with 200,000 Russian army men and the self-proclaimed Donbass People’s Republics. The logistical challenge is enormous, especially with regard to ammunition, and is exacerbated for the Ukrainian side by the fact that Russia has the potential to invade the entire territory of Ukraine.

A reading of Russian Defense Ministry announcements leads Versinin to estimate that the Russian side uses an average of 7,176 artillery shells a day. This alone indicates the magnitude of the risk of ammunition production facing Ukraine’s allies, namely the United States, which they project as the “arsenal of democracy.”

According to Versinin, in order to prevail in a protracted war, a country must have either a strong industrial capacity to produce ammunition or the ability to quickly turn political production units into military use. For America, the latter only applies to small arms, due to the spread of gun ownership in the country, but not to larger systems.

In Western governments, either by bureaucratic mentality or by adopting models suitable only for the private sector, ammunition production has been steadily declining in recent years.

Two misconceptions contributed to this. The first is that the future of war is decided by high-precision remote-controlled weapons – but in Ukraine the first reason is “stupid” weapons systems, with mass consumption of ammunition, which are made more accurate thanks to the use of digital maps and drones. belief that the war industry can increase or decrease its turnover at will, but unlike the private economy sectors, which share the loss of orders from different customers, the war industry has only one buyer: the state. Any reduction in orders can lead to the closure of entire production chains, and then their revival hits the small number of skilled workers and even a labor-intensive sector.

Additional problems may arise from the role of subcontractors, who may be either insolvent or dependent on hostile forces (China’s rare earth monopoly is a prime example).

It is noteworthy that the ammunition markets in the US decreased by 36% in 2020. According to Versinin, the annual US production of ammunition is enough for two weeks of fighting in Ukraine. Britain has similar problems: in the ten-day Warfighter simulation exercise conducted last year with the participation of allied forces, the British ammunition stock appeared to be completely depleted in eight days.

For the Russian side, again, one can only speculate. Versinin considers it reasonable that Russia has 4,000 cruise missiles and ballistic missiles in its arsenal. Just in April, ODK Saturn, which makes engines for Kalibr missiles, made 500 new hires. And yet, the columnist concludes, we have not taken into account the potential of a manufacturing giant such as China, which has so far not been involved in sending military aid, but certainly, if the need arises, will not let Russia be defeated. from the West, especially due to lack of ammunition.