The Return of Industrial Warfare
www.rusi.org
Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/289715

Jokes and SLS aside, interesting and insightful article on modern industrial war and capabilities in Russia and the West.

TLDR: To wage large scale industrial war you need a massive industrial and manufacturing base to supply your population and army. The West outsourced those capabilities. Oops.

In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.

Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 [Javelin] missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.

The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually

How fucking crazy is it the Russians can do this with like 1/10 the military budget?

Turns out a multibillion $ streaming service bloats your GDP, but doesn’t produce anything materially needed in case of war. Also turns out capitalism creates the conditions for its own undoing.

And we’ve been saying this shit from day fucking one.

  • @Danann
    2•2 years ago

    https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/06/08/the-us-is-heavily-reliant-on-china-and-russia-for-its-ammo-supply-chain-congress-wants-to-fix-that/

    Can’t forget the banger in that Russia, China, and Tajikistan are the only major suppliers of antimony.

    Or to summarize the article, a mineral that is critical in producing ammunition and that the United States has zero production of.

    The mineral antimony is critical to the defense-industrial supply chain and is needed to produce everything from armor-piercing bullets and explosives to nuclear weapons as well as sundry other military equipment, such as night vision goggles.

    After Japan cut off the U.S. supply of antimony from China during World War II, the United States began procuring the mineral from ore in an Idaho goldmine. However, that mine ceased production in 1997.

    “There is no domestic mine for antimony,” according to a 2020 report from the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency. “China is the largest producer of mined and refined antimony and a major source of imports for the United States.”

    The report noted that China is “losing market share with Russia, the world’s second-ranked producer,” with Tajikistan gaining ground in the global market as the world’s third-largest supplier of antimony.