Meanwhile, Paris has sent 18 Caesar shells to Kyiv – a quarter of its total stockpile of high-tech artillery – but it will take French company Nexter about 18 months to build new ones. The Ukraine war has exposed the flimsiness of Western defense stocks – especially unlikely but critical supplies such as the artillery shells that have been the mainstay of the fighting. Lack of production capacity, labor shortages and supply chain problems—especially computer chips—mean long lead times. The shortfalls, defense officials and analysts say, reveal Western complacency about potential threats since the end of the Cold War, now reflected in a desire to shore up Ukraine with military support. The fetishes for high-tech weapons and lean construction have obscured the importance of stockpiling basic kit, they add. “Ukraine was a lesson in how war is still often won through the classic elements of artillery, ground troops and occupation,” said Jamie Seay, a former director of NATO policy planning who is now a fellow at Chatham House, a British thought- Reservoir. “The military balance that has shifted from the old to the new must shift back.” These shortcomings may now be affecting the West’s ability to dominate Kiev’s war effort. The total annual US production of 155mm artillery shells, for example, would last less than two weeks of fighting in Ukraine, according to Alex Vershinin, a US procurement expert who says the conflict marks “the return of industrial warfare”. “It’s like the great shell crisis of World War I,” Shea said, recalling a scandal in 1915 when the massive use of artillery in trench warfare depleted British supplies, a shortage that led to heavy troop losses and the resignation of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith. Ben Wallace, the UK defense secretary, said Western countries would find it difficult to wage a protracted war comparable to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, as their stockpiles of ammunition “are inadequate for the threats we face”. During a simulated war game last year, the UK ran out of ammunition after eight days. No one believes that the West is going to exhaust its basic weapons by supplying Ukraine. Officials say most of the equipment supplied to Ukraine remains available or can be replaced with similar systems. Russia’s $66 billion defense budget last year, even when combined with China’s $293 billion in spending, dwarfs the combined budget of NATO members by more than $1.1 trillion. Stinger missiles are delivered to Ukraine © Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images Even so, a large part of this NATO spending has been on advanced systems, such as fighter jets, that have not been deployed by the West in this conflict. Much of Western defense over the past 20 years has been geared toward fighting insurgencies in the Middle East rather than being ready for heavy-duty battles with tanks and artillery like those in Ukraine. Supply problems were exacerbated by a decades-long emphasis on lean manufacturing, cost-effectiveness and industrial consolidation, which worked against military planners who wished to maintain costly weapons stockpiles. In the UK, low stocks meant it recently had to buy howitzers from a third party to send to Ukraine, according to information from a private Belgian dealer. In the US, the Pentagon works with just five major defense contractors. in the 1990s, the number was 51. “The received wisdom for a long time was that the West would never fight an industrial war again,” said one Western defense adviser. “As a result, almost no one has retained the ability to increase national production of basic equipment.” Western arms manufacturers are scrambling to secure supplies of rare parts and materials to make weapons and ammunition that, until recently, were in little demand. Some of the electronic components of the Stinger missiles, last built at scale 20 years ago, are no longer commercially available, according to Raytheon. Alex Cresswell, chief executive of Thales UK, which makes the NLAW anti-tank missiles in Ukraine, said “the UK has collapsed [defence] stocks, but they don’t invest enough to avoid obsolescence.” As for the multiple-launch guided missile systems manufactured by Lockheed Martin that Kyiv has requested so it can launch strikes behind enemy lines, the US has shipped about a third of its total stockpile of 20,000-25,000 missiles. But it can’t easily replace them with older versions because they use banned cluster munitions in their warheads, said Mark Kancian, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, congratulates Major General Gennady Zhidko in 2017 © Kremlin Pool/Alamy Russia is also suffering from supply problems, officials and analysts added. Defense manufacturer UralVagonZavod is reportedly running three shifts refurbishing old tanks. Ammunition supplies are partially replenished from a huge warehouse in Belarus. But the recent appointment of General Gennady Zhidko, a former deputy defense minister, as overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine gives the military “institutional firepower in Moscow. . . so he has a strong voice to make sure he has the economy he needs,” said Mark Galeotti, a UK-based Russia expert. Military experts are investigating the conflict in Ukraine for insights into the nature of modern warfare. The “number one” lesson so far is the importance of maintaining key stocks, said Jack Watling, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank. “This isn’t new, but it’s something we’ve been determined to ignore for a long time,” Watling said on a war podcast. “Cheap ammunition that you can use at scale is absolutely critical. . .[The west needs]to be much more disciplined in not always chasing the exquisite, but instead understanding how the exquisite enables the quite boring and mundane.” Additional reporting by Sylvia Pfeifer in London
