Micaela Burrow – The Daily Caller Oct 17, 2022
- The U.S. has sent billions in military aid to Ukraine, depleting its own stocks of some weapons and munitions that some fear could weaken the American military should conflict erupt in other parts of the globe.
- While it’s not too late for the U.S. to adapt to increased demand for weapons, doing so will require increased investment in production to maintain U.S. military preparedness, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- “If we get this right, we would not only accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine, but meaningfully change Beijing’s willingness to engage in aggression in the future,” Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe told the DCNF.
Ukrainian service personnel unpack US supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles. Click to enlarge
The U.S. needs to seriously invest more in weapons and ammunition if it wants to continue supporting Ukraine and brace for conflict with other great powers, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Global efforts to support Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion have triggered billions in spending to bolster Ukraine’s military, depleting U.S. stocks and raising concerns that the West may cripple its military opposite the rising threat from China. The U.S. will have to dramatically ramp up production, or otherwise risk further weakening the U.S. arsenal and adversely affecting America’s ability to react to dangers from China and other potential foes, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“For U.S. policy makers, the critical question regarding our policy towards Ukraine is quickly becoming more a what we can do for Ukraine, not necessarily what we should do,” Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America and vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together, told the DCNF. “U.S. stockpiles of munitions are becoming dangerously depleted and it will take years for U.S. production capacity to catch up.” (RELATED: NATO Can’t Keep Up With Ukraine’s Latest Weapons Demand After Putin Once Again Escalates Attacks: REPORT)
As of Oct. 14, the U.S. has committed $17.6 billion in security assistance since the Russian invasion; since August, the Pentagon has withdrawn $10.5 in weapons and equipment directly from U.S. stocks via the president’s executive drawdown privilege.
That includes over 1,400 Stingers, over 8,500 Javelins, 38 coveted High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and eight National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), according to a fact sheet dated Oct. 4. It also includes thousands of electronic communications and surveillance systems as well as “funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.”
All of that aid has put the largest strain on the defense-industrial base since the Korean War, experts told the DCNF.
The U.S. has “pretty much run out of 155 millimeter Howitzers and 155 millimeter ammunition” after sending roughly 900,000 of the highly effective rounds to Ukraine, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly worked on defense budget and acquisition issues for the Department of Defense (DOD), told the DCNF.
“The problem isn’t that there isn’t money,” Cancian said to the DCNF. “The problem is that the [DOD] is a bit slow putting that money on contract, and then of course the equipment will have to be produced.”
Accelerated production for systems like Javelins should have begun in May, not in September, when the Pentagon finally put in a funding request to Congress, said Cancian. “They were just late, slow to react to events,” he added.
The Pentagon’s latent preparation for long-term conflict in Ukraine won’t immediately impact the progress of the war itself, as the U.S. can continue with substitutions while the defense industry catches up on production of the latest, most advanced systems, Cancian said. However, it does increase the amount of risk the U.S. takes on by sustaining lower inventories in the meantime.
“We are making real tradeoffs against other national security priorities,” Caldwell also told the DCNF.
Unusual aggression from China and North Korea has brought home the concern that the U.S. might find itself engaged in great power conflict, which would put very different strains on the U.S. economy and defense industry than those the U.S. has grown familiar with during the 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, experts explained.
A land-based conflict with North Korea, for example, would require the same types of equipment the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, Cancian told the DCNF. “The risk would be a Korean War kind of situation,” he said, because “ground forces participate heavily.”
Upgrading production capacity is “crucial for our ability to deter China, sell more munitions to allies and partners and maintain our unique industrial workforce in this area,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said to the DCNF.
To make up for a shortage in some munitions, the U.S. has substituted alternatives, such as 105 mm artillery rounds for the 155 mm, which is not likely to have much effect on the battlefield, Cancian explained to the DCNF. The U.S. could also purchase more weapons off the international market, as well as continue pressuring allies to uphold their verbal commitments.
The latter option may be exemplified in the latest Ukrainian aid package, announced Friday, which includes $725 million mostly for ammunition rather than the long-range weapons platforms Ukraine has requested, according to Reuters. Other allies, such as Germany and Spain, have supplied the additional air defense platforms in high demand following Russia’s renewed missile campaign against Ukraine.
Congress should also authorize a supplemental warfighting budget of around $20 billion for 2023, keeping pace with the current rate of spending on Ukraine, Center for American Progress senior fellow and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb explained to the DCNF.
The U.S. could also more aggressively employ the Defense Production Act, implemented during the Korean War, which experts said was the last time the U.S. defense industry experienced the level of heightened demand felt today. That could further exacerbate supply chain issues and increase the burden on taxpayers, however, Caldwell explained.
Korb disagreed.
“In the overall scheme of things, it’s not that expensive,” Korb said, especially given that the Senate’s version of the defense budget for 2023, currently under debate, clocked in at $847 billion. “This is a horrible war, but compared to Iraq and Afghanistan or Vietnam, it’s not, in terms of expenditures.”
Congress authorized $147 billion in procurement spending in the defense budget for 2022; spending on defense articles in 2023 could be even larger, with the Senate seeking $157 billion for procurement.
Rebuilding the U.S. military’s arsenal is critical to its ability to meet future challenges, according to Inhofe. “If we get this right, we would not only accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine, but meaningfully change Beijing’s willingness to engage in aggression in the future,” he said.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The American elite is desperate to destroy what’s left of “their” country so sure, give the store away and keep the borders open.
Despite appearances, more Americans become aware everyday who the real enemy is. This is not a Ukrainian issue. This is a national destruction issue.
Look, here we have a total misunderstanding of what is going on.
The US will not send large numbers of troops to Europe. Sure, they have a token presence, but that is all. The US Isn’t going to start a nuclear war, because the US will be destroyed. Forget about idiots shooting off their gobs.
The US will not get directly involved in Taiwan. Again, forget the gobsters.
Sure, the US is depleting their munitions, so more debt, more MIC profits.
This morning, Ritter says there aren’t mercenaries in UKraine… As I stated, before the Russians launched their SMO (I hoped it were an invasion), I said the NWO would have huge numbers of mercenaries in UKraine, and ready to go into UKraine. I think Ritter said $300 per day. That’s $109k per year, and if they live, that we be a huge bonus, probably bumping up to $300k. But this is just your regular mercenary rate. If you are ex special forces, or an elite soldier, say, from the paras, then you are probably looking at big money, $600k and higher, and this is tax free, paid into an account that no one can touch, and that if you should die, your nominated family can access. It’s paid loyalty.
And the CIA and MI6 have staggering budgets, aside from their private businesses, markets activity, which they have all the inside knowledge, so they never loose money, and then you have their global durgs businesses.
We’ve had some Russian disclosures about mercenaries, but this doesn’t serve the Russians well. Too much flabber about Amerikans, Brits, Poles, and others, being slaughtered in UKraine, probably doesn’t work in Russias favour, but it also doesn’t work for the NWO, because some will ask who’s paying?
these psychopaths turn the US into a war-monger nation. they don’t have any shame speaking openly about destroying nation after nation, “This is a horrible war, but compared to Iraq and Afghanistan or Vietnam, it’s not, in terms of expenditures.”
The US does ABC, the UK does XYZ, no the evil minority in charge in the US or the UK are doing whatsoever they want.
The average man or woman is never asked what their opinion is.
Sending critical stockpiles of weapons to Ukraine plays to the same rulebook as siphoning off the US Strategic Reserves – keep kicking the can down the road. And in the wings wait China and Russia – both waiting for an opportunity to trounce the US from global leadership. At a point where America is unable to adequately defend the homeland in a sustained manner the Chinese will invade from the Pacific coast and the Russians from the Eastern sea board and the US will fall. This could all happen before the year is over.
The same as in the Ukraine now happened in Georgia in 2008 :
2 Exerpts from a Google Research Article :
When George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton as president in January 2001, Bush sought to extend NATO’s jurisdiction at a faster pace than Clinton, which he proceeded to do, as 7 European nations joined NATO during the Bush presidency (2001-09). Bush, as with Clinton, chose to enlarge NATO not out of security reasons, but in order to increase US hegemony and to broaden the market for the war industry. Bush also planned to absorb the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, an ambition which had been expressed clearly in April 2008 at a NATO conference in Romania.
It came despite the warning of William J. Burns, at the time the US Ambassador to Russia, and who is the current CIA Director. In a memorandum of February 2008, Burns wrote that Russia would strongly resist US attempts to incorporate the Ukrainians and Georgians into NATO. Burns’ memo was dispatched to various US bodies including the National Security Council and Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was sent to the Secretary of State (Condoleezza Rice) and Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates).
In Washington’s attempt to negate Russia’s influence, the Bush administration had dispatched 200 US military advisers to Georgia, a Caucasus nation directly bordering Russia to the north. Aside from its strategic significance on the map, Georgia is an oil transport hub where infrastructure passes through like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which is managed by a consortium in which British Petroleum (BP) is the largest shareholder;
Founded in 1913 the Federal Reserve, headquartered in Washington, is indeed very powerful. In 2012 for example the Federal Reserve, which is effectively controlled by some of the West’s most influential banks, amassed that year at least $9.5 trillion, which amounted to about 65% of America’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Quite a number of Americans believe the Federal Reserve to be a government-controlled banking institution, but this view is mistaken. The Federal Reserve, as mentioned, is overseen by private interests and America’s largest banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
These US banks are closely connected to their European counterparts such as Deutsche Bank, Barclays and BNP Paribas. Also intertwined with the Federal Reserve and the other banks are the energy multinationals ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum (BP).
The strongest branch of the Federal Reserve is the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which fell under the control of 8 long-established banking families. Only 4 of these dynasties hail from largely American backgrounds, which are Goldman Sachs, the Rockefellers, Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb. The other 4 are the Rothschilds in Paris and London, the Warburgs from Germany, the Lazards from France and Israel Moses Sieff from Britain.
These families were still privately controlling the Federal Reserve into the 21st century. They have continued to hold sway over the international financial system, and became even wealthier in the aftermath of the 2007-08 financial crisis,
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-private-interests-banking-dynasties-control-washington/5796169
‘Sending’. Apparently not ‘arriving’. So the question is; Where is all the money and arms going?
Oh! That’s right! It’s the US’s favorite laundry.
This war is meant for the MIC to stay in business and make more money@profit. Sick b@stards.
the real enemy is the military industrial complex that designs and manufactures weapons
l always have a good old chuckle when ‘experts’ are worried..there’s nothing quite as entertaining as an ‘expert’ worrying..
ln fact being extremely worried and also an expert is exactly how l like ’em..
and rightly so…
Good point Occams.
What I don’t understand is how anyone can pretend “our” countries are NOT at war with Russia when the fighting would have been over months ago had “we” not kept it going by supplying all the weaponry the demented poofter Zelensky could wish for.
If YOU (meaning anyone) were to give my least favourite neighbour bricks to throw at MY windows, I’d throw them back at YOUR windows, as well as his.
@ FJFJ
USA was always a warmonger nation !
Chesterton beat me to it in commenting about the exalted “experts”. If the vicious covid-1984 war being waged on humanity by the predator class has taught us anything, it’s that the “experts” are more full of shit than a porta-potty at a Mexican burrito festival and should be laughed out of the room at best, but more appropriately, curb-stomped and hanged from highway overpasses.
“The U.S. needs to seriously invest more in weapons and ammunition if it wants to continue supporting Ukraine and brace for conflict with other great powers, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.” .. Not only no, but f*k no. What the Jew.S.S.A. needs to do is the exact opposite. All shipments of arms and money to Jewkraine and Israhell should stop immediately if not sooner. They, the DC criminal cartel destroying the country, need to mind their f*cking business, put out the nation-wide dumpster fire of degradation and destruction, secure the country’s own borders, and get their house in order.
But none of that will happen, of course, because it doesn’t suit the satanic agenda of organized Jewry.
US will not be supplying anybody weapons (including its military) for long. China is tightening down the screws on integrated circuits and the materials that make them. When you haven’t got ICs, those smart weapons turn into fishing weights. Good luck Uncle Sammy.
Apparently, only 2% of grain exports from Ukraine reached the poorer nations such as Africa as was lobbied.
So…..rest sold on black market?
This seguays into recent Renegade Tribune article that Russia is a major player in human trafficking ie bringing Non White refugees into Europe. Greece has sent approx. 50 Russian human traffickers to prison.
So..adding the aforementioned up…Africans will starve and millions more will want to escape to Europe and Russia will assist them. Who needs to send Russian troops when EU will welcome in these refugee invaders as a Russian “proxy ” army ?
Simply stated…. NATO and Putin’s mutual goal is to scorch- earth Ukraine of European Stock and divide the spoils.
While we focus on Ukraine and choose sides…we are not paying attention to the bigger picture/s .