Production is ramped up: Ukraine needs "warworthy quantities" of ammunition

Ukraine has a supply problem.

Production is ramped up: Ukraine needs "warworthy quantities" of ammunition

Ukraine has a supply problem. In the defensive struggle against Russia, Kiev's troops are using more ammunition than the West is currently producing. Military experts and politicians are calling for arms companies to be given long-term contracts. Despite highly complex production processes, the West could even outperform Russia.

Ukraine is running out of ammunition defending its own country. Kiev itself warns of this, but Western politicians and military experts are also aware of the issue. In November, a US official spoke of 4,000 to 7,000 artillery shells per day being fired by Ukraine.

That's significantly less than Russia, although Moscow's troops have also seen a sharp decline. "At the height of the Russian offensive operations in Donbass in May, June and July, we assumed that Russian artillery ammunition would be consumed at up to 60,000 rounds a day," Brigadier General Christian Freuding said in an ntv interview earlier this month. "In the current operations, the Russians still use about 20,000 rounds of artillery ammunition per day." Still about four times as many as the Ukrainian troops.

Ukraine uses far more ammunition than the allies produce. For example, the waiting time for large caliber ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently at the NATO defense ministers' meeting. "We have to ramp up production significantly and invest in our production capacities," Stoltenberg demanded.

The USA has already placed several armaments orders for the production of artillery shells. The armaments company General Dynamics Ordnance

At the same time, two other American armaments companies, Northrop Grumman Systems and Global Military Products, produce artillery ammunition for the Ukrainian army. The total volume of this contract is just over half a billion US dollars.

Ammunition deliveries are also being discussed in Germany. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius criticized the topic for a long time before the NATO defense ministers' meeting in the middle of the month. "The big challenge in the coming months is not to lose the airspace to the Russian air force and not to have to accept the attacks on the critical infrastructure." It is right and necessary that this topic is now gaining momentum, said Pistorius.

The federal government is currently talking to the armaments industry about how production can also be significantly increased in Germany. That applies to all types of ammunition, said the defense minister.

After all, a contract has already been signed with Rheinmetall. The Düsseldorf armaments group is to produce ammunition for the anti-aircraft tank Gepard. "Production will start immediately. I am very happy that this has been successful, because it ensures independence and faster delivery even better. The cheetah is doing outstanding service, especially in drone defense, and is very popular with Ukrainian soldiers appreciated," said Pistorius.

Making artillery ammunition is complicated. The projectiles must all be "completely identical," says Italian military expert Thomas C. Theiner on Twitter. "If the grenade is too thick, it will get stuck in the barrel. If it is too thin, the gases will blow past it and the grenade will not reach its target". According to military expert Theiner, charges and explosives are even the easier part of ammunition production. The hardest part is the detonators. Especially when it comes to detonators with built-in radar. "It's much more complex," explains Theiner. In addition, all grenades should have the same amount of explosives so that the gunners can target and destroy the target in the best possible way.

"The ammunition has to have the right dimensions, otherwise it can't be fired. It would clog the gun barrels and that could lead to the barrels bursting," warns Rafael Loss, an expert on security and defense policy at the European Council for Foreign Relations, im ntv podcast "Learned something again".

To make matters worse, there is the problem that even ammunition that is actually suitable cannot be used in all cases. "If, for example, a French 155 millimeter artillery shell is put into a Panzerhaubitze 2000, that does not mean that it can shoot it without further ado if it is not certified for it. Otherwise there is a risk of faster wear and tear," warns Loss in the podcast.

Before the armaments manufacturers start producing ammunition, they first need the corresponding orders from the state. Theiner warns that no western armaments company will invest without government guarantees. He demands that governments place large orders for several years. "Wartime production quantities" are finally needed.

There is actually enough potential. If the production capacities in the West are optimally utilized, Russia could be "outpaced by a factor of 20 to 1," writes the military expert.

"The NATO countries have dismantled the armaments industry over the past 20 to 30 years. They were not confronted with the threat of major wars, especially not in Europe," explains military expert Loss in "Again what has been learned". The industry has the problem that production capacities have been reduced because of the supposedly low risk of war. "In the immediate response to the war in Ukraine and the turn of the century, it was found that certain preliminary products were not available at all."

Carlo Masala, military expert from the Bundeswehr University in Munich, also takes a look at the ammunition problem in the ntv interview. But it's not just about quantity, it's also about quality. "The Russian Federation relies very heavily on quantity, works with human waves and throws masses of tanks at the front, even if they are old. The West must counter this with quality."

For Masala, ammunition is one of the key war issues. The weapons deliveries would not bring anything if the ammunition depots were to be emptied at some point.

Stocks are still being used up in many places around the world and are being made available to Ukraine. But that's not a permanent solution, security expert Nico Lange confirms on ntv. "It's good that there are partners who still have stocks that can be used for Ukraine. But when that's used up, then it's about production capacities. Does Putin then calculate that in the long term he will have more ammunition for the Produces more artillery than Ukraine's supporters do, then he has an incentive to continue the war."

Dramatically expand ammunition production? That would send the signal that Putin cannot win this war, says Nico Lange. And it would solve the "most pressing problem" facing the Ukrainian armed forces. "Unfortunately, these decisions are always made too slowly and too late. Crisis and war cannot be overcome with the lengthy bureaucratic methods of peacekeeping."

The American ammunition contracts and the Rheinmetall agreement in Germany for the production of Gepard bullets are the first step. The first freshly produced ammunition is to be delivered from the United States to Ukraine as early as March. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that 300,000 shots are to be sent from Germany to the Ukraine from July. So far, Ukraine had to make do with 60,000 shots at the cheetah, half of which it had already used up by January.