{"id":283462,"date":"2024-03-12T05:05:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T05:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=283462"},"modified":"2024-03-13T13:31:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T13:31:23","slug":"exclusive-russia-producing-three-times-more-artillery-shells-than-us-and-europe-for-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=283462","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Russia producing three times more artillery shells than US and Europe for Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katie Bo Lillis<\/strong><\/a>, Natasha Bertrand<\/a>, Oren Liebermann<\/a> and Haley Britzky<\/a> \u2013 CNN March 11, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.<\/p>\n

Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv,\u00a0a senior European intelligence official told CNN.<\/p>\n

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Artillery in action in Bakhmut. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The US military set a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025 \u2014\u00a0less than half of the Russian monthly output \u2014\u00a0and even that number is now out of reach with $60 billion in Ukraine funding stalled<\/a> in Congress, a senior Army official told reporters last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are in now is a production war,\u201d\u00a0a\u00a0senior NATO official told CNN. \u201cThe outcome in Ukraine depends on how each side is equipped to conduct this war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials say Russia is currently firing around 10,000 shells a day, compared to just 2,000 a day from the Ukrainian side. The ratio is worse in some places along the 600-mile front, according to\u00a0a European intelligence official.<\/p>\n

The shortfall comes at perhaps the most perilous moment for Ukraine\u2019s war effort since Russia first marched on Kyiv in February 2022. US money for arming Ukraine has run out and Republican opposition in Congress has effectively halted giving any more.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Russia recently took<\/a> the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka and is widely seen as having the initiative on the battlefield. Ukraine is struggling not just with ammunition but also growing manpower shortages on the front lines.<\/p>\n

The US and its allies have given Ukraine a number of highly sophisticated systems, including the M-1 Abrams tank and, soon, F-16 fighter jets. But military analysts say the war will likely be won or lost based on who fires the most artillery shells.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe number one issue that we\u2019re watching right now is the munitions,\u201d the NATO official said. \u201cIt\u2019s those artillery shells, because that\u2019s where Russia really [is] mounting a significant production advantage and mounting a significant advantage on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russian war machine in \u2018full gear\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Russia is running artillery factories \u201c24\/7\u201d on rotating 12-hour shifts, the NATO official said. About 3.5 million Russians now work in the defense sector, up from somewhere between 2 and 2.5 million before the war. Russia is also importing ammunition: Iran sent at least 300,000 artillery shells last year \u2014\u00a0\u201cprobably more than that,\u201d the official said \u2014\u00a0and North Korea provided at least 6,700 containers of ammunition carrying millions of shells.<\/p>\n

Russia has \u201cput everything they have in the game,\u201d the intelligence official said. \u201cTheir war machine works in full gear.\u201d<\/p>\n

A rough equivalent in the US would be if President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act, a US official said, which gives the president power to order companies to produce equipment expeditiously to support the nation\u2019s national defense.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s ramp-up\u00a0is still not enough to meet\u00a0its\u00a0needs, US and Western officials say, and Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term. There is also a limit to Russian production capacity, officials say: Russian factories will likely hit a peak sometime in the next year.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s still far beyond what the US and Europe are producing for Ukraine \u2014 especially without additional US funding.<\/p>\n

Competing with Putin\u2019s managed economy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

European nations are trying to make up the shortfall. A German defense company announced last month that it plans to open an ammunition factory in Ukraine that it said will produce hundreds of thousands of 155mm caliber bullets each year. In Germany, the same company broke ground on a new factory expected to eventually produce around 200,000 artillery shells per year.<\/p>\n

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Donated by the West, Ukrainian Army tanks on the battlefields of Ukraine. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

US and Western officials insist that although Russia has been able to jump-start its factory lines, in part because it has the advantage of being a managed economy under the control of an autocrat, capitalist western nations will eventually catch up and produce better equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can actually control the economy, then you can probably move a little bit faster than other countries out there,\u201d Lt. Gen. Steven Basham, the deputy commander of US European Command, told CNN in an interview last week. But, he said, \u201cthe West will have more sustaining power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe West is just starting their\u00a0ramp-up\u00a0of building the infrastructure to add in the munitions capability that is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the money was still flowing, the US Army expanded<\/a> production of artillery shells in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia\u2019s output is 24\/7. I mean, huge, immense,\u201d one European lawmaker said. \u201cWe should not underestimate their will to outlast us with patience, and with resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intelligence officials believe that\u00a0neither side is poised to make any large gains imminently<\/a>, but\u00a0the overall math favors Moscow in the long run \u2014\u00a0particularly if additional US aid does not materialize.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going well, but it all depends,\u201d said one source familiar with Western intelligence. \u201cIf aid restarts and comes quick, all is not lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Targeting Ukraine\u2019s weapons productio<\/strong>n<\/h2>\n

Russia has also recently targeted Ukraine\u2019s domestic defense production with its long-range weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were talking about this last fall, we would have talked about how they were targeting critical infrastructure,\u201d the NATO official said. \u201cNow what we see is some critical infrastructure targeting, but also a lot of targeting the Ukrainian defense industrial base.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the senior NATO official, Russia is producing between 115 to 130 long-range missiles, and 300 to 350 one-way attack drones based on an Iranian model provided by Tehran, each month. Although before the war, Russia had a stockpile of thousands of long-range missiles in its arsenal, today it is hovering around 700, the official said.<\/p>\n

The Russians have lately conserved those weapons to use in large volleys to try to overwhelm Ukrainian missile defenses. And they have compensated by increasing their use of drones, sending out on average four times as many drones per month as they did last winter.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Russia\u2019s biggest challenge has been in tank and other armored vehicle production. It is churning out about 125 tanks a month, but the vast majority are\u00a0older models that have been refurbished. About 86% of the main battle tanks Russia produced in 2023 were refurbished, the NATO official said. And although Russia has about 5,000 tanks in storage, \u201cprobably a large percentage of those can\u2019t be refurbished and are only good for cannibalizing parts,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

Moscow has lost at least 2,700 tanks, more than twice the total number that they deployed initially to Ukraine in February of 2022, when the invasion began.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s \u2018transformed\u2019 economy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Officials are also closely watching Russia\u2019s economy for signs of how the interplay between a super-charged defense sector, Western sanctions, and Putin\u2019s efforts to gird his economy for war impact Russia\u2019s ability to sustain the conflict.<\/p>\n

The war has absolutely \u201ctransformed\u201d Russia\u2019s economy, the NATO official said, from the post-Soviet period when oil was the leading sector. Now, defense is the largest sector of the Russian economy, and oil is paying for it.<\/p>\n

That creates some long-term imbalances that will likely be problematic for Russia, but for now, it\u2019s working, the NATO official and Basham, the US European Command official, both said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the short term \u2014 say, the next 18 months or so\u00a0\u2014 it may be unsophisticated, but it\u2019s a durable economy,\u201d the NATO official said.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon is weighing whether to tap into the last remaining source of funding it has\u00a0\u2014 but it has previously been reluctant to spend any of that remaining money without assurances it would be reimbursed by Congress, because taking from DoD stockpiles with no plan to replenish that equipment could impact US military readiness, CNN has previously reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf no more US aid coming, do the Ukrainians change how they feel about negotiating?\u201d the source familiar with Western intelligence said.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s military-industrial capacity is now up to speed and the West cannot keep up <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":271466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283466,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283462\/revisions\/283466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/271466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}