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[Devastator]

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warns that the rate at which ammunition is used up in Ukraine is 'many times higher' than the production rates of countries supporting the Ukraine. He says that Western countries are burning through their stock fast.

He said that the delivery time for heavy grenades, when ordered now, has doubled to two and a half years.
"This shows it is a war of attrition", he said.
Military production facilities have already been asked to increase their production rates, by working more shifts, and through the weekend.
For the medium to long term, NATO allies will put effort in increasing production capacity by building more factories.

According to Stoltenberg, the war in Ukraine is becoming a 'logistics contest'. However, he adds, Ukraine is not the only one having logistical difficulties.
Russia also has much trouble with supply, and the NATO chief suspects that Russia will have a much harder time adapting to the new challenges. Western sanctions limit Russian industry.

EDIT: Tomorrow, the NATO defense ministers will meet to talk about delivering jet fighters to Ukraine

This is true, but it's not quite as much as an issue as its presented here.  In addition to increased production rates, entire new factories have been built or converted over to ammunition production, and not just in the United States.  Some of them have started producing already.  The production rate of Himars has quadrupled since the war began, and with the recent massive order from Poland, I can't see them not building more factories for the missiles already.

It's a worry, but building more ammunition or missiles is very much possible, and there's a lot of people working to make that a reality right now.

As for Russia's ammo supply, those factories seem to be the only ones actually producing like they're supposed to.  Vehicles, tanks, optics, even missiles aren't getting made as fast as they could be, due to various issues.  The big ammo factories in Penza and Tula and Nizhny Novgorod are operating at full speed..  producing much less than what Russia is using.  Oddly, they don't seem to be able to produce new SPGs in quantity.

[jipehog]

155mm shells are used from steel and filled with RDX, is the later dependent on ammonium nitrate ?

EDIT: Tomorrow, the NATO defense ministers will meet to talk about delivering jet fighters to Ukraine

That plus training seem like far far away.

I assume this means that NATO countries are mostly running out of second hand stuff to give to Ukraine that they don't produce much more of, right?  I know the US isn't going to give away enough stuff to put itself in jeopardy and I know that many NATO countries have very little military industrial capacity, but it's kind of hard to believe that the US alone, much less all of NATO, wouldn't be better prepared for a protracted conflict.

USA isn't going to be in jeopardy, relatively to its size its commit is rather modest at least in terms of hardware.
And while a lot of the stuff sent isn't new, it is still within its service life period so it works just the same.

[Devastator]

I assume this means that NATO countries are mostly running out of second hand stuff to give to Ukraine that they don't produce much more of, right?  I know the US isn't going to give away enough stuff to put itself in jeopardy and I know that many NATO countries have very little military industrial capacity, but it's kind of hard to believe that the US alone, much less all of NATO, wouldn't be better prepared for a protracted conflict.

Ammo-wise it's mostly because they weren't expecting another highly intensive artillery-run ground war with no air superiority, so didn't retain enormous stockpiles.

[Dostoevsky]

The production rate of Himars has quadrupled since the war began

The target production rate of HIMARs has gone from 14,400 to 90,000 per month, but the military doesn't expect to achieve that rate for roughly two years.

For something like a basic artillery shell they could hypothetically rapidly increase production with a massive infusion on money and labor - which DOD usually finds easy but the current House of Representatives may resist - but higher tech munitions have more potential bottlenecks and other challenges for quickly scaling up.

[Madman198237]

In a protracted war you have time to go to war footing, unless your country has very little strategic depth (like, perhaps, having your capital and major industries all within shooting distance of Russian territory/countries that claim to not be Russian territory but really obviously are) and/or no industries to spin up. Also nobody would last this long in a high-intensity war versus the US, let alone US + NATO. Low-intensity, sure, simply because there's no fast way to end such a conflict other than giving up.

The US' industrial capacity is the backbone of NATO. Given a few months to a couple of years to work onto a war footing the US can feed MULTIPLE high-intensity conflicts with a frankly ludicrous amount of industrial capacity left over. See WWII, naturally. Same reason the US spends so much more than any other NATO country on its military---ultimately, should NATO go to war, it'd be the US that held up the entire alliance until everybody got onto a war footing...and then it'd STILL be the US holding up the entire alliance with its production capacity and relative impregnability.

[Devastator]

My numbers are about 2000-2200 destroyed/captured compared to ~3000 operational, + 2000 repairable, (of about 6500 parked tanks) and about fifty to a hundred new ones.  A very severe loss.  But that's mostly just napkin math.

That's probably low for losses, and high for stored vehicles. Oryx has visual confirmation on 1718 tank losses, and they're very meticulous about making sure they're not counting the same vehicle twice. This means that a lot of the footage you see online isn't reflected in their count, and nothing at all is shown from areas that are maintaining operational security until the front moves on. Meanwhile, there's pretty solid photographic evidence that a fair number of their stored tanks are rusted hulks.

You're also likely overestimating the ability to restore damaged tanks to service. Just getting damaged units into service locations is far from easy, and the actual servicing requires equipment and parts that are pretty convincingly proven to be in ever shortening supply.

Yeah, you're probably right I'm being a bit cautious and I'm lowballing that first number, particularly since a few unknown captures (including by type!) have shown up.

[Devastator]

The production rate of Himars has quadrupled since the war began

The target production rate of HIMARs has gone from 14,400 to 90,000 per month, but the military doesn't expect to achieve that rate for roughly two years.

For something like a basic artillery shell they could hypothetically rapidly increase production with a massive infusion on money and labor - which DOD usually finds easy but the current House of Representatives may resist - but higher tech munitions have more potential bottlenecks and other challenges for quickly scaling up.

..That doesn't seem quite right.  If there were 14,400 HIMARS a year there would be more than enough of them.  Ukraine only has something like thirty operational launchers in country, after all.  Do you mean something else?

[Ganondworf]

The target production rate of HIMARs has gone from 14,400 to 90,000 per month, but the military doesn't expect to achieve that rate for roughly two years.

..That doesn't seem quite right.  If there were 14,400 HIMARS a year there would be more than enough of them.  Ukraine only has something like thirty operational launchers in country, after all.  Do you mean something else?

I would have assumed that was ammunition, not launchers?

Edit: Because 14,400 per day per launcher is only 16. So I assume that is really low. A target of 90,000 would be 100 per day per launcher, which I assume is more reasonable for a protracted war. That is, if all of the ammunition stock goes to Ukraine.

[jipehog]

The production rate of Himars has quadrupled since the war began

The target production rate of HIMARs has gone from 14,400 to 90,000 per month, but the military doesn't expect to achieve that rate for roughly two years.

For something like a basic artillery shell they could hypothetically rapidly increase production with a massive infusion on money and labor - which DOD usually finds easy but the current House of Representatives may resist - but higher tech munitions have more potential bottlenecks and other challenges for quickly scaling up.

..That doesn't seem quite right.  If there were 14,400 HIMARS a year there would be more than enough of them.  Ukraine only has something like thirty operational launchers in country, after all.  Do you mean something else?

No idea on the numbers but HIMARS is hot commodity right now, including in Poland and the Baltic states.

Also HIMARS are nice but with price tag of ~110,000$ per shoot it isn't the main stay of army offensive, cheaper ~4000$ 155m artillery ( and 120mm tanks rounds etc) are and that what we should be looking at.


Also I suspect that fertilizer crisis that affect food markets, also affect weapons markets cost

[martinuzz]

And building new factories, at least in the EU, is going to take a while. It first has to pass the hurdles of nitrogen emission restrictions, natura2000 restrictions, CO2 restrictions, EU building codes, national building codes, EU contracting and tendering rules, NIMBY court cases, just to name a few.

Building new military industry complex over here in the Netherlands will for starters take an average of at least 5 years of bureaucratic and legal processes before the first shovel will start preparing a building location, add another 5 years in between for lawsuits by environmental organisations during which construction will be halted. Add to that the time it takes to actually build the thing.

[Lord Shonus]

The production rate of Himars has quadrupled since the war began

The target production rate of HIMARs has gone from 14,400 to 90,000 per month, but the military doesn't expect to achieve that rate for roughly two years.

For something like a basic artillery shell they could hypothetically rapidly increase production with a massive infusion on money and labor - which DOD usually finds easy but the current House of Representatives may resist - but higher tech munitions have more potential bottlenecks and other challenges for quickly scaling up.

..That doesn't seem quite right.  If there were 14,400 HIMARS a year there would be more than enough of them.  Ukraine only has something like thirty operational launchers in country, after all.  Do you mean something else?

That's the production rate of GMLRS rockets, not HIMARS launchers. HIMARS fires them in salvos of six, the other types do salvos of 12. Even if you're openly firing one salvo per truck per day (lol at that), consumption adds up quickly. Ukraine has 20 HIMARS trucks (120 rockets) at least 10 M270 tracks (120). One salvo per day every day is 7200 per month.

[Starver]

And while a lot of the stuff sent isn't new, it is still within its service life period so it works just the same.

From a report I saw at the weekend, where a BBC reporter (and her cameraman[1]) was in a front-line area, they at one point had a stint with a mortar team tasked with a couple of shots (probably wasn't going to be much more than that, originally) at some target. Whoomp, the first shot, then Wh...Fizzle on the second. A clear "misfire" was called, then it seems that the projectile was up at the top end of the mortar-tube, half-breached and rattling around like some sort of (decidedly unsafe!) safety-valve, seemingly enough rate of propellant burning to lift it up to the point where it could exhaust its gases, but not enough to actually get it out of the barrel at all. (Which, given the possibilities if it had actually managed to creep out the barrel and barely flop onto the ground, presumably the warhead charge still at full capacity... seems like a better thing to happen.)

Or so my interpretation of the brief clip was, as everyone being filmed rapidly moved away from the 'bubbling' weapon[3]. The reporter, as voice-over, explained that they're getting a lot of duds/failures... Though I don't know how much of that might be because "a lot of failures" divided by "a honkingly huge number of firings" is still within the expected range for use, rather than there being an increased failure rate due to 'weapon senility', or mishandling, in all its various possible forms. It's a chance anecdote/complaint, given alongside an instance that just happened to be recorded (and broadcast) for posterity.

This is just what was conveyed to the UK news environment, and flashed by in such a short instant, but the moment of drama stuck in my head and I thought I'd quickly relate it as relevent. (I'm sure it's rewatchable, somehow, for better context than my own recollection alone. Not sure where you'd find it. And not gonna try to narrow it down myself, right now.)




[1] I've noticed that they namecheck their camerapersons, the BBC, even when it's a radio report. I don't know when it has started, but it's good that as well as the 'face', that is their war-reporter, they give credit to the almost never seen[2] partner who nonetheless takes as much risk as a noncombatant in the combat arena.

[2] Occasionally a handheld device sequence shot by the reporter, spliced in.

[3] Still being filmed, by the steady-handed cameraman! At least until the shot itself was cut away from, in editing, to (I think it was) a bit of a follow-up with one or two of the front-line liasons/escorts (gathered, with reporters, under a handy bit of farmyard/backyard roofing) now worrying about a Russian drone, and the report and sound of a jet in the vicinity. I imagine[4] the mortar crew themselves were by then busy going through the FIA to make 'safe' their equipment, as quickly and as soon as they could given the risk of both their own little problem and counter-battery/etc.

[4] Obviously I don't know anything that wasn't explicitly reported, how much time had passed, perhaps even if there were anachronistic splices involved in the editing of the piece. But such things as were seen happened, and presumably other things happened off-camera (or were censored out of the report for one good reason or other).

[Dostoevsky]

I would have assumed that was ammunition, not launchers?

Yeah, I meant ammunition and not launchers. Apologies for the vagueness.

[Cathar]

According to Strelkov, the big banzai charge hasn't even started and is only scheduled for two weeks for now, and mobik casualties already rocketted past 3.5k per day. At this rate, the pile of dead russian bodies will reach Mars before Elon Musk does.
This is pure insanity.

And despite all this, Bakhmutt is still in Ukrainian hands. Good job fighting satanism, you're doing great, rasha stronk.

[Strongpoint]

Banzai charge it will be. A lot will be decided in the upcoming Russian attack. I am especially worried about the Russian airforce, Russia still has hundreds of aircraft and I suspect that this time Putin will order to use all of them no matter the losses.