Here’s why Ukraine will never get the artillery shells it needs to catch up with Russia
Corporate capitalism’s ill-suited for war production. Military industries hesitate to invest in new factories to boost production not knowing when the war will end. Unlike Russia's command economy.
Why are artillery shells so all-fired important in war? Military experts still say that artillery is key to the outcome of wars.
Western publications increasingly coincide with Russian ones.
I found support for this in Western publications but would encourage the reader to keep researching this. (Some believe that air superiority is also vital, but if that is so, then Russia also has the edge in this field as well)
https://osgamers.com/faq/why-artillery-is-god-of-war
Russia produces 3x more shells than combined West
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CNN gives Russia the edge
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Let’s talk artillery shells.
A Russian author wrote some time ago that the reason corporate capitalism is ill suited for armaments production is that, when a special situation, eg, war, arises, it may become necessary to build new production facilities. However, in a capitalist system, the administrators of the company must make the decision whether to build or not to build based on a reasonably expected date of the war’s end.
If the new factory is built and the war ends abruptly after or during this construction, the company loses a lot of money and may even go bankrupt for lack of new orders.
In Russia, by contrast, the government absorbs the losses, and in fact, may decide simply to overproduce and save the surplus for an unknown contingency. After all, someone always wants to destroy Russia.
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
Mar 17, 2024
VLAD SHLEPCHENKO
THE OUTCOME OF THE OPERATION IN UKRAINE HAS BEEN CALCULATED: THE NUMBERS OF ALL MUNITIONS FROM RUSSIA, THE USA AND EUROPE ARE NAMED
In the third year of the Northern Military District, American society is surprised to learn what every Soviet schoolchild knew: victory at the front is forged in the rear. Overseas experts suddenly discovered that if it comes to a major armed conflict, then the capitalization of an economy built on government contracts and the service sector does not matter at all. What matters is how many thousands of tons of steel a country casts, how much explosives it synthesizes, and how much fuel, engines, rockets, airplanes and bombs it produces. In this regard, the United States lost to us [Russia], but this does not mean that the Russians won. History knows many examples of wars that ended in nothing, exhausting both sides and opening the way for the triumph of a third force. Read more in the report from Tsargrad.
An American TV channel published an article with a telling headline: “Exclusive: Russia produces three times more shells for Ukraine than the United States and Europe.” Sources of the TV channel reported that, according to NATO intelligence structures, our [Russia’s] defense industry has reached the production level of 250 thousand artillery shells per month. In annual terms, this is 3 million shells. At the same time, the United States and Europe together are capable of producing no more than 1.2 million shells per year. [And let’s recall that N Korea is contributing a significant number of shells to Russia]
The US military has set a goal of producing 100,000 artillery shells a month by the end of 2025 - less than half of Russia's monthly production, and even that figure is now unattainable as $60 billion in funding for Ukraine is stalled in Congress, the US channel laments.
What we are currently waging is a production war. The outcome of the fight in Ukraine depends on how prepared each side is to fight this war, one of CNN's sources said.
A very accurate and true remark. If it were said in 2022... But now it is a statement of the fact that the train has left, and the collective West has remained on the platform.
American journalists note that the Russian army fires about 10 thousand artillery shells per day at the enemy. The Ukrainian Armed Forces respond with approximately two thousand. At the same time, the supply of shells is uneven; in some areas, Ukrainian artillery is more limited than on average along the front.
Meanwhile, Russia recently captured the Ukrainian city of Avdeevka and is widely believed to have the initiative on the battlefield. Ukraine is struggling not only with an ammunition shortage, but also with a growing shortage of manpower on the front lines, CNN states. [Not to forget that Russia has air superiority and has hypersonic missiles that can strike anywhere in Ukraine and cannot be shot down. Ukraine also suffers from a populace that for the most part, hates the Kiev regime. The people are therefore willing to spy for Russia, providing its military with the coordinates of places that harbor troops, officers and mercenaries.]
Arise, vast country
According to the authors of the report, Russia has 12 artillery factories, where work is carried out around the clock, without weekends or holidays. Workers work 12-hour shifts.
Russia has put everything it has into the game. Their war machine is running at full capacity, an intelligence community spokesman told the channel.
According to Western experts, before the start of the SMO [special military operation], about 2.2 million people worked in our defense sector; now their number has grown to 3.5 million.
In addition, our country actively imports shells from Iran and North Korea. NATO believes that over the past year Tehran supplied us with at least (and possibly more) 300 thousand shells; North Korea, in turn, sent at least 6,700 containers “containing millions of shells.”
The authors of the publication are trying to sweeten the pill, but they are not very convincing.
Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term. Russia's production capacity also has a limit, officials say, with Russian factories likely to peak sometime next year, CNN reports.
In other words, will our production, which is already three times greater than the total capabilities of the West, continue to grow for another year? Or even one and a half? And at what volumes will our military-industrial complex hit the production ceiling? On four, five or six million shells annually? American journalists did not ask this question. Apparently, the answer is very sad.
But we can answer it.
Let's synchronize watches
For obvious reasons, there is no exact data on the domestic production of shells in open sources. Nevertheless, it is estimated that before the start of the special operation, our defense industry made about 1.7 million shells of all calibers per year. [I believe that long before the Russian incursion into Ukraine, Russia was stockpiling shells, so the number available at that time was more than the West may imagine]
In March 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin set the task of increasing ammunition production threefold. From this order it followed that the Kremlin planned to have production at a level of just over five million units per year. At the same time, it was planned to produce about 2.5 million shells in 2023. The figure cited by CNN of three million shells produced lies precisely inside this fork.
In terms of timing, everything is also more or less the same: if the previous growth rates are maintained in 2024 and part of 2025, our defense industry will just reach the five-million production level.
At the same time, we must understand that we do not know what priorities have been set for supplying the army, what factories are currently being built and will be put into operation during this and next years.
It is possible that, having achieved a turning point on the fronts, our leadership will decide to shift the main emphasis to the production of other types of weapons that will be more useful in the next conflict.
On the other hand, it also cannot be ruled out that the production machine, which has gained momentum, will continue to operate at full speed in order to replenish the spent ammunition reserves. In this case, volumes may continue to grow even after the Russian flag flies over Kiev and Odessa.
What is the West doing?
Before the start of our special operation, the United States produced 14 thousand 155-mm shells per month. By April 2023, they managed to increase production volumes to 20 thousand, this year production should be raised to 75 thousand, and in the future - to 100 thousand monthly.
However, US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth reported at congressional hearings that this would require $18 billion and the reconstruction of 23 factories. In fact, the United States needs to carry out new industrialization so that the country can at least reduce the gap with Russia in the production of artillery ammunition.
What about the Europeans? If we talk about the continental inhabitants of the Old World, they were faced with the depletion of their reserves in mid-2023.
Germany has 20 thousand 155-mm shells left in its warehouses. The government intends to increase stockpiles to 230 thousand shells within 8 years, which will meet NATO standards of having a supply of ammunition to conduct intensive combat operations for a month, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported.
Great Britain now has one and only enterprise that can produce artillery shells. And even if it is reconstructed and exploited to the hilt, then the British will be able to produce no more than 66 thousand shells per month, which in annual terms will give a little less than 800 thousand.
-The Europe that couldn't
It is noteworthy that the whole year passed with Europe gradually accepting the inevitable. In March 2023, the EU, in true Soviet style, made a solemn commitment to supply Ukraine with a million shells. Already in the summer, there were reports in the media that European warehouses were empty. The head of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, was one of the first to announce the failure of the plan.
We are transferring weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, but our warehouses are not full. We started deliveries from half-empty warehouses in Europe. Now the “bottom of the barrel” is already visible, he stated at the Warsaw Security Forum.
The situation escalated sharply in October after Israel launched a large-scale campaign to destroy the Gaza Strip. Against the backdrop of the Middle East carnage, political heavyweights have already begun to cautiously say that Europe has taken on an unbearable burden.
In November, the head of the EU diplomatic service, Josep Borrell, said that 300 thousand shells had been transferred to Kyiv, but Europe would not be able to send the promised million on time. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has made similar statements several times.
A million could not have been produced so easily by the military industry, which arose in peacetime. I warned about this figure very early because I saw that this figure would probably not be achieved, Pistorius noted in December last year.
In January 2024, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, tried to argue with his colleagues, declaring that this year Europe would be able to produce 1.4 million shells through joint efforts.
And already on February 1, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, drew a line under the disputes. According to her, united Europe was able to transfer 520 thousand shells to Ukraine, that is, a little more than half of what was promised. But in the current 2024, von der Leyen assured, the Europeans will definitely be able to fulfill their promise.
Correct conclusions
The problems of the United States and Europe in the production of shells is a derivative of the general situation in their economies, the result of the fact that for decades they got rid of real, manufacturing sectors and invested in services and finance, simultaneously inflating paper capitalization. [But let’s not forget: Europe sat idly by and watched the Biden regime destroy its supply of cheap gas via Russian pipeline. So they deliberately sabotaged their own industrial production in favor of finance, and then allowed the US to sabotage what was left of their – notably Germany’s – industry. You know, if you really want to wage war on the country with the most resources and the best military in the world, wouldn’t it have made sense to take good care of industrial military production? Guess not.]
But it suddenly became clear that thousands of tons of cast steel can be converted into shells and tanks without any problems, but it is fundamentally impossible to convert trillions of financial derivatives into something suitable for changing the state of affairs at the front.
The famous economist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Glazyev drew attention to this point in his article for Tsargrad.
On the Ukrainian battlefield against Russia, the Washington-led NATO army is defeated. But just as few people in 1945 understood that the European colonial empires had come to an end, and Holland and France even tried to regain control of Indonesia and Vietnam, respectively, today the short-sighted politicians of many countries of the Old and New World continue to follow in the wake of the sinking American flagship with the prospect of drowning with it, writes the academician.
But the fact that the Americans lost in this regard does not mean that Russia won. Stories are known of wars that ended in nothing, exhausting both sides and opening the way for the triumph of a third force. Therefore, it is too early to rejoice: the country will have to make enormous efforts to convert the strategic defeat of the enemy into real geopolitical and economic trophies for Russia. This victory was given to the Russian people with considerable blood, and it should not become fruitless.
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Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
Use this map to locate the oblasts mentioned in the following air strike reports
The Russian Armed Forces launched a series of massive attacks on Ukrainian Armed Forces targets in Ukraine
03/17/2024
On the night of March 17, Russian Geran drones launched a massive attack on targets of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the Odessa, Chernigov, and Dnepropetrovsk oblasts.
The Russian Armed Forces launched a series of massive attacks on Ukrainian Armed Forces targets in Ukraine
According to Ukrainian Telegram channels, one of the most massive attacks by Russian UAVs was carried out on the night from Saturday to Sunday, and an air raid alert was declared throughout almost the entire territory of Ukraine.
A series of explosions sounded in various areas of Odessa: “Gerans” attacked Arkadia, Koblevo, Moldavanka, Nerubayskoe, Tairova and other areas of the city, in the Odessa oblast, drones hit Palievka and Usatovo. Odessa authorities announced the strikes without providing details about the consequences of the Russian attack.
At night, Russian drones also struck Priluki in the Chernigov oblast, the Dnepropetrovsk oblast and the southeastern outskirts of Dnepropetrovsk [now renamed as Dnipro in Ukrainian] itself. An attack by Geran drones was also recorded in the Pokrovsk area on the territory of the DPR temporarily controlled by the Kiev regime.
Let us recall that earlier journalist Christoph Wanner, in a report to the German TV channel Welt, stated that Russian new generation Lancet drones pose a serious threat to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Current information on the situation on the front line: March 16 (updated)
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Mar 17, 2024
The Russian Armed Forces hit drone and boat assembly shops in the Odessa and Chernigov oblasts
SIMFEROPOL, March 17 - RIA Novosti Crimea. The Russian army carried out group strikes on assembly sites for drones and unmanned boats in the Odessa and Chernigov oblasts of Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense reports this.
The strikes were carried out with operational-tactical aviation, missile forces and artillery from groupings of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
“The sites for assembling and testing unmanned boats [Unmanned boats were used to attack Russian Black Sea fleet ships], the temporary deployment point for a battery of the IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile system in the Odessa oblast, and the assembly and preparation workshop for unmanned aerial vehicles in the area of the settlement of Priluki, Chernihiv oblast, were affected,” the Russian military department said in a report.
Air defense, electronic warfare and small arms fire shot down 168 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, 23 Czech-made Vampire MLRS rockets, as well as an S-200 anti-aircraft guided missile converted for attacks on ground targets.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 577 aircraft, 269 helicopters, 15,849 unmanned aerial vehicles, 486 anti-aircraft missile systems, 15,509 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,241 combat vehicles of multiple launch rocket systems, 8,434 field artillery and mortars, and also 19,875 units of special military vehicles.
This morning, Ukrainian authorities reported explosions in Odessa. Kharkov and Sumy oblasts, as well as in the part of the Kherson oblast controlled by Kyiv.
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https://www.rbc.ua/ukr/news/dva-vidi-raket-ta-bezpilotniki-povitryanih-1710654056.html
The Russian Armed Forces launched two Iskander strikes on the Nikolaev Armored Plant
March 17, 2024
15:50
Launch of the 9M723−1 Iskander-M operational-tactical ballistic missile. Illustration: Russian Ministry of Defense / TASS
The Russian Armed Forces launched two ballistic missile attacks on the city of Nikolaev. This was reported by the head of the local OVA Vitaly Kim.
“There was a strike in Nikolaev. From the same place from where it arrived in Odessa. And the restart is the same. There are 2 strikes,” he wrote in his telegram channel.
Iskander-M ballistic missiles hit the Nikolaev Armored Plant, eyewitnesses and local resources report, the telegram channel “Military Correspondents of the Russian Spring” writes, in turn.
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No shells for Israel, all went to Ukraine
https://dzen.ru/a/ZSWaJZvGe2SJBA8N
Jewish grief: Artillery shell famine begins in Ukraine
October 10, 2023
3.6K read
Europe has great sympathy for Israel and wants to support it in its fight against the Palestinian Arabs. France and the EU have recognized the Hamas group as a terrorist organization, and will now do their best to interfere with its financing. A very touching gesture. [I suspect this author is being ironic. Hamas is NOT a terrorist group, it is a resistance group and most Russians know this]
Along with this, the American magazine Foreign Policy reported that the EU cannot help Israel with shells, since all NATO-caliber ammunition... has already been transferred to Ukraine.
“We are facing a huge shortage of ammunition because of Ukraine,” one member of the German delegation complained to the publication.
That is, Israel has not yet launched an offensive, and Ukraine has already been put in the position of being to blame for the shell famine. It is obvious that if the Jewish state really needs serious help, Kyiv will be cut off from its allowance one day and thrown out into the cold.
I remember that back in January of this year, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon took about 300 thousand 155-mm shells from its warehouses on Israeli territory and also sent them to Ukraine. To shoot at Russian soldiers. Perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu should have stood firm and insisted that these shells remain with Israel. But it turned out how it turned out.
In general, this situation shows that in our turbulent times, helping Ukraine by giving away the last gun and selling the last tank is a bad idea. Very harmful to the health. The guns must now be kept with you. And if Israel, in the most extreme case, can get a nuclear baton, and Uncle Sam won’t give up, then the non-brothers [Ukrainans] will soon have to remember the immortal classic: Well, son, did your Poles help you?
Vlad Shlepchenko, military observer at Tsargrad
[Footnote: You've probably heard this phrase in conversation or in a movie and wondered about its meaning. “Well, son, did your Poles help you?” - a friendly saying, derived from the outdated expression “the Poles will help,” meaning that you cannot count on anyone’s support or help. In a modern context, the phrase is used colloquially and has a negative connotation, describing a person who has left someone without support in a difficult situation.
Source: https://obzorposudy.ru/polezno/nu-cto-synku-pomogli-tebe-tvoi-lyaxi-cto-znacit
And let me add that today, this applies in particular to those who thought they could depend on the Americans]
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…
Scott Ritter on his trip to Donbass
Lies debunked. US msn is POISON
Scott’s new film Waging Peace to appear on line
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https://english.news.cn/20240316/646047b5bfee4483b7488197cfd2fe13/c.html
Dai Bing, China’s permanent representative to UN says…
China advocates strengthening dialogue and exchanges among different civilizations and religions, rejecting discrimination and prejudice against specific civilizations and religions, opposing the erroneous and one-sided arguments about the so-called clash of civilizations and the superiority of certain civilizations, and championing equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness between civilizations," he told a high-level event to commemorate the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.
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ما هي التأثيرات الاقتصادية للتورّط الأميركي في حال اندلاع الحرب الموسّعة؟ (alkhanadeq.org.lb)
Tuesday 12 December 2023 01:34
What are the economic effects of American involvement in the event of an expanded war?
Figure: US dollar depreciation index
Before the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, the American orientation was towards internal priorities and Chinese competition, which constituted a basis for getting rid of the region’s burdens and devoting itself to its internal and global challenges. However, before the gradual withdrawal, it sought to stabilize the occupying entity in the West Asia region by imposing its influence through the paths of normalization and defense agreements. In this context, support for the Israeli ally showed that the United States lost a lot of resources and funding without effectiveness or efficiency, and the negative economic impacts on the United States would increase if it became involved in an expanded war.
What are the economic effects of American involvement in the event of an expanded war?
- Added Israeli burdens: The United States provides Israel about $3.8 billion in military aid annually, under a 10-year plan that began in 2016, the largest amount provided by any country in the world since World War II. The value of US aid to the entity amounted to more than $124 billion. These burdens will increase in the event of extended war.
- Statements by economic policymakers: Economic policymakers are uneasy about the economic impact of the broader conflict, and have many concerns about the speed of geopolitical developments. This advice contributed to the White House recommending that the entity postpone the ground invasion to address what National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called “unintended consequences” of broader military operations.
- The American economic situation: White House Budget Director, Shalanda Young, wrote in a letter to Congress that by mid-November, the US Department of Defense had used 97% of the additional $62.3 billion in funding it had received, and the State Department had used all of the $4.7 billion. A dollar from the military assistance fund that was allocated to it. Which indicates the burden of the Israeli war on the American treasury. The US economy is also suffering from significant financial pressures, persistently high inflation, and near-historic high interest rates, and such involvement in the war could reduce GDP growth.
- The American military cost: “Israel” uses American aid programs in the investments necessary to develop the weapons industry. However, even with the entity's significant weapons capabilities, data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) indicates that the Israel Defense Forces still rely heavily on weapons and technology provided by the United States.
- Implications for the competitive race with China: The expansion of the war and the comprehensive American military intervention serves the interests of both China and Russia and may set the course of the competitive American-Chinese-Russian race backwards in favor of both Beijing and Moscow. Opening a new front in the region while trying to achieve Washington's declared interests in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region threatens to plunge America into an economic crisis in light of internal economic problems.
The situation of the American economy today is different from what it was before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington faces many economic problems, such as high inflation and the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates. It has recently witnessed a banking and financial crisis (the bankruptcy of 3 banks that damaged the financial markets and almost dragged the US economy into greater repercussions) with the decline in the value of the dollar, and other problems that pushed it towards losing control over spending, and decreased flexibility to respond to crises quickly and secure the necessary support. While Washington currently bears the burden of securing resources for the war on Palestine, its involvement in a major war will impose a direct cost that will double the current cost.
Writer: Editorial room