Demilitarizing NATO

As the conflict in Ukraine enters its 9th month, everyone agrees that it has become largely a grinding war of attrition and logistics, in east Ukraine, reminiscent of World War 1 in the predominance of the return of artillery  -“the proverbial king of the battlefield”, as well as fortifications and trench warfare in defining the battlefield.

It is a true maxim in military affairs that “Amateurs talk strategy, but Professionals study logistics!”

Eventual victory in the conflict, whatever that looks like, may come down to brute military industrial capacity to produce such basic, unfashionable or sexy old-tech supplies, like artillery shells.

In line with its stated intervention goal of “demilitarization” Russian airstrikes have for months now battered and crippled the Kiev regime’s military industry.

Back in June, Kiev regime officials had decried that their own stocks of 152mm artillery shells, and just about everything else, were exhausted or destroyed, they are unable to produce more, and they are completely reliant on Western supplies. They depend completely on the supply of Western artillery and NATO standard 155mm and 105 mm shells for them.

Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence told the Guardian, “This is an artillery war now. The frontlines are now where the future will be decided,  and we are losing in terms of artillery. Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us. Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10- 15 Russian artillery pieces.”

The Kiev regime’s forces are using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, while Russian forces are firing from 50.000 up to 60,000. For those keeping count that’s more than a 10-1 artillery advantage to Russia in what everyone agrees is an artillery war.

Now we learn that the West itself is almost out of artillery shells and other useful military weapons to give to the Kiev regime. A Pentagon official told CNN that, the stockpiles of certain systems are “dwindling” after nearly nine months of sending supplies to Kyiv during the high-intensity war, as there’s “finite amount” of excess stocks which the US has available to send.”

The US military and military industrial complex are simply not geared up for this kind of industrial old-fashioned war. For decades they’ve been orientated towards high-tech boondoggles and for counter-insurgency war, and have not manufactured the quantities of basic ammunition needed to sustain an enduring, high-intensity land conflict with a near-peer adversary in Europe.

Frederick Kagan, a neocon senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute told Foreign Policy magazine that “NATO doesn’t really plan to fight wars like this, and by that I mean wars with a super intensive use of artillery systems and lots of tank and gun rounds. We were never stocked for this kind of war to begin with.”

In the U.S. the current total production rate for 155mm artillery shells is about 30,000 rounds per year. That is only 5 days supply for the Ukraine regime at current firing rates, or not even half a day’s worth for Russia. In a whole year of US production!

And hesitant US Defense companies say it would take years to retool and ramp up their production, even if they could be assured of long-term profitable contracts for such items. Which they cannot. Military industrial production lines cannot just be turned on and off at will. There is no war-time economy.
The so-called “arsenal of democracy” is proving bankrupt where it now counts.

The Biden administration has gotten so desperate that they are trying to seal a deal with South Korea on the other side of the world to supply 100,000 155mm artillery shells for the Kiev regime. That’s not even 20 day’s supply
And when that’s gone where will they scrape more from after that?

European NATO countries have also exhausted their own stocks and cannot even backfill them for their own militaries to replace what they have already sent to the Kiev regime in Ukraine.

Similarly the US has promised the Kiev regime another 18 HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems, to replace those Russia has destroyed. On contract. With a backlog. They will get them in a few years, after they are built.

This is why the bi-weekly military aid packages from the US to the Kiev regime have been steadily decreasing in terms of both quality and quantity. The collective West cannot even keep up with what the Kiev regime is currently spending or Russia is destroying.

Its so bad that NATO officials are now meeting and worriedly discussing how to support members if their own stockpiles fall below the levels needed just to meet their defense obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty.

Meanwhile despite tidal waves of wishful thinking & disinfo stories about Russia running out of this and that from the beginning of the conflict, almost none of it has been proven true. If bs fakenews production rate won conflicts the West would win hand’s down.

Meanwhile despite this the Russian missiles keep flying and the shells keep falling. The truth is that Russia has immense Soviet stockpiles of artillery shells and rockets to draw on, and since the Cold War an old-school military industrial complex geared to fight exactly this kind of land-centric artillery-heavy  industrial-scale war in Europe. This is Russia’s game they are playing.

With all indications that the Kremlin is setting in for a long conflict, the logistics math simply does not look good for NATO or their Kiev client regime.
Russia grinds slowly on, demilitarizing not just the Kiev regime in Ukraine, but now NATO as well.