F16 in absence of artillery and shells.
Europe’s military industrial capabilities fall short of Ukraine’s needs
Last year, the Ukrainian army was blasting through 180,000 artillery shell rounds per month. Before the war, U.S. production stood at 14,500 shells per month, and E.U. production was around the same. The United States has been faster to respond to depleting stockpiles, boosting domestic production to 20,000 rounds a month and investing in new capacity to eventually increase that to 90,000 rounds per month.
But Ukraine is still expending 90,000 to 140,000 rounds a month, according to Watling, while the newly announced E.U. investments in production could take one to two years to come online, despite a call by Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, to move into “war economy mode.”
..Signs are emerging of a parallel effort in Russia to increase production, despite Western sanctions. Data recently published on Russia’s federal treasury website showed Moscow spent 2 trillion rubles ($26 billion) on defense in January and February alone, a 282 percent increase over the same period in 2021, Reuters reported on Monday. Russia is on course to produce 2.5 million artillery shell rounds this year, up from 1.7 million rounds before the war, Watling said.
In response to an E.U. pledge to supply Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells over the next twelve months, Russian President Vladimir Putin retorted in March that Moscow would produce three times as many shells over the same period.
“Russia has the capacity to mobilize its own economy in support of the armed forces and control its own destiny in a way that Ukraine can’t,” said Barrons. “The critical weakness” for Ukraine “is its reliance on Western inventory and industry.”