Europe pledging Ukraine weapons it can’t make Opinion by Bloomberg

Bloomberg has published an opinion piece, saying that all the good intentions of this week’s NATO summit don’t mean much given the West’s dwindling arsenals and depleted industrial base. Caliber.Az reprints this article.

Vilnius, Lithuania, this week rang with good intentions. They came from every member at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, even if differences persist about Ukraine’s possible membership of the alliance. Yet a harsher judgment about what is taking place — the yawning gulf between words and deeds — is emphasized by the dire state of weapons procurement on both sides of the Atlantic.

The US is in a better place than Europe, but even NATO’s mightiest nation faces serious difficulties in sustaining its aid to Ukraine. Forget for a moment cluster munitions, the focus of heated words in Vilnius. Consider the astounding reality that the US is obliged to borrow or purchase conventional artillery ammunition from South Korea to sustain shipments to the Ukrainians.

We shall return later to the empty shelves in US arsenals. First, Europe’s condition is much worse. The International Institute of Strategic Studies, in its latest journal, delivers this withering verdict in an authoritative study: “The armed forces in European NATO and European Union member states are hollowed out, plagued by unserviceable equipment and severely depleted ammunition stocks.”

The weakness of Europe’s stockpiles, together with the continent’s limited capacity to renew them, “raises urgent questions about European industry’s ability to continue supporting Ukraine militarily at scale and at speed, and its ability to recapitalize forces in NATO and the EU.”

More than a year ago, the German government ­— to name the most grievous offender — committed itself to a €100 billion rebuild of its threadbare armed forces. Today, however, an estimated 1 per cent of the promised defence boost has been spent. Last month’s inaugural German National Security Strategy, instead of emphasizing the determination of Europe’s greatest economic power, instead underlined its weakness.

The political will is absent in Germany, as it is in other European states (with the notable exceptions of Poland and the Baltic and Nordic nations), to take effective action either to strengthen their armed forces or to sustain Ukraine’s munitions.

Even in Britain, which has done more to aid Ukraine than any other European country, there is a visceral aversion to increasing defence spending. A distinguished Conservative Party elder statesman recently took issue with my pleas for rearmament: “If the Russians cannot defeat such a second-class power as Ukraine on the battlefield, how can we believe that NATO has anything to fear from Putin?”

I responded that we are appallingly vulnerable to Russian harassment — for instance, of our undersea infrastructure — not to mention our incapacity to support US forces in a serious way against China, if that ever becomes necessary. Above all, I stressed our inability to contribute effectively to sustaining the arms flow to Ukraine. Yet my friend remains unconvinced, as do hundreds of millions of Europeans, preoccupied with their own domestic problems, which are many and various, as the French riots bear witness.

Few people understand the remarkably protracted lead times necessary to increase arms production. Two or three years between commitment and delivery of even some basic munitions and materials is standard. Those NATO nations still accustomed to fight at all — meaning mostly the US, UK and France — have focused upon relatively small outputs. The factories do not exist to provide long runs of — for instance — conventional artillery ammunition any time soon.

Britain’s BAE Systems recently told the Pentagon it would require at least 30 months to restart production of M777 howitzers, among the most vital weapons in Ukraine’s defence; a new £190 million deal with the British government for 155mm shells will have a similarly lengthy timeline. Germany’s Rheinmetall quotes at least a year for renovation and modernization of battle tanks, given production times of specialized steel and electronic components.

Prices for raw materials used in arms production but not mined in EU countries have risen astronomically. The French government recently asked MBDA Missile Systems to increase its production of Mistral air-defense systems from 20 units per month, and has been offered only an increase to perhaps 40 monthly by 2025.

The German armed forces face an ammunition shortfall demanding €20 billion worth of new orders. At the current speed of contract placement, it will be 20 years before this is achieved. Susanne Wiegand, CEO of RENK Group, which makes drivetrains for tanks, said in February that only a trickle of new orders had come in.

Meanwhile, some manufacturers are obliged to struggle against the wider commercial difficulties of their owners. Britain’s Rolls-Royce has cut investment internationally following severe corporate difficulties. It owns the German-based mtu, which provides engines for tanks and armoured vehicles. Yet mtu’s efforts to hire more staff and expand production are at odds with Rolls-Royce’s cutbacks elsewhere.

Moreover, all the big manufacturers are wary of funding expansion, only to find the Ukraine war suddenly ending or governments continuing to resist rearmament. It would be unjust to denounce corporate Europe for short-termism when it is at the mercy of governments reluctant to plan beyond next Tuesday.

European nations are attempting to strengthen cooperation to diminish wasteful duplication — today, some 15 companies in 11 EU member states have a capability to produce 155mm ammunition. The new European Defense Fund, committed to sharing R&D resources, should represent a step in the right direction, but it will be years before it yields a payoff.

The IISS study concludes that belief in the permanence of America’s protective shield still causes Europe’s governments to shortchange defence. Despite all the fine words since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “no major recapitalization of armed forces or large-scale procurement to address capability has yet materialized” — even in Britain, which beats its chest loudest in defiance of Moscow.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the US too struggles to produce munitions in credible quantities for sustained combat. In World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill trumpeted the role of America as “the arsenal of democracy.” Today, Washington is struggling to make good on such a claim. Michael Brenes, a lecturer in history at Yale, has authored a new study that mirrors those of European critics of their own continent’s performance.

Brenes writes that President Joe Biden’s lofty rhetoric about America’s role in providing weapons for Ukraine “does not match the reality on the ground.” He continues: “Shortages in production, inadequate labour pools and interruptions in supply chains have hamstrung the United States’ ability to deliver weapons to Ukraine and to enhance [US] defence capabilities more broadly.”

During World War II, the US government owned almost 90% of the nation’s productive capacity of aircraft, ships, guns and ammunitions. Today, private industry accounts for nearly all new procurement. Such dependence on contractors dates as far back as the Korean War, but intensified during the Vietnam years.

Moreover, many parts of key weapons systems are now produced abroad; the supply chain for the F-35 fighter, the most expensive military contract in history, included a magnet sourced from China. Even such big spenders as former President Ronald Reagan emphasized mega-projects such as the MX Missile, B-2 stealth bomber and F-22 stealth fighter, along with the doomed Strategic Defense Initiative, at the expense of boring old conventional weapons.

When the defence budget was cut deeply at the end of the Cold War, tens of thousands of defence jobs were lost, and the numbers of manufacturers shrank dramatically. There are today three contractors for tactical missiles, against more than a dozen three decades ago, and just two makers of fighter aircraft.

Private equity has played as doleful a role in defence as in many other industries, drastically reducing numbers of small contractors that manufacture minor components that Ukrainians desperately need, but which are only marginally profitable. China is building major items of defence equipment five times faster than the US. Maintenance delays, especially in the Navy, are crippling combat readiness. Earlier this year, William LaPlante, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, told the New York Times that the US “really allowed production lines to go cold and watched as parts became obsolete.”

Despite the war in Europe, big US contractors are fighting most fiercely for the big-ticket programs — ICBMs, stealth bombers and the like — rather than the relatively low-tech stuff the Ukrainians need urgently. US armed forces, even when fighting in such limited conflicts as Iraq and Afghanistan, struggled against shortages of ammunition and equipment. Today’s shortfalls are far more severe, because in Ukraine millions of men and women are fighting for survival.

In the early months of the war, Ukraine sometimes expended up to 500 Javelin anti-armour weapons in a single day — burning through a third of the US stockpile in the first weeks of the conflict. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which now jointly produce 2,100 Javelins a year, say they will double that figure — but not until 2025 at the earliest. Such shortages of relatively low-tech weapons help to explain Washington’s new commitment to dispatch cluster munitions, which are banned by most US allies for their threat to civilians. Critics of that decision refuse to recognize how little else is immediately available if cluster bombs are not sent.

Ukraine, to a considerable extent, depends on munitions shipped through third parties by South Korea, 56 per cent of whose voters oppose direct military aid. Seoul is selling $13.7 billion worth of tanks, jet and other munitions to Poland. In 2023, it is shipping hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, some of them to the US, enabling transfers to Ukraine.

Michael Brenes concludes: “The United States cannot be an arsenal of democracy to Ukraine, or to any country, if it does not better align its foreign and domestic policies [and] invest more in Americans’ futures” — through a long-term commitment to a new generation of skilled workers.

Meanwhile, how are the Russians faring? Their materiel as well as human losses since February 2022 have been immense. Perhaps the most credible open-source study of Putin’s procurement predicament was recently conducted by the Swedish Defense Research Agency. It concludes that Russia faces not so much a shortage of tanks, weapons and military equipment generally, but is obliged to rely increasingly on older materiel as its most modern kit is destroyed. Most significantly, the report states: “Russia’s intensive use of ammunition is not tenable.”

Half of an estimated prewar stockpile of 16 million shells was used in the war’s first year, and some of the munitions being fired today show rust damage. To sustain Russia’s 2022 expenditure of shells would require factory production of almost six million a year, an impossible number.

How the war unfolds in the coming months depends in part on how effectively NATO arms Ukraine, but also on North Korean, Iranian and Chinese supplies to Russia. Whatever the outcome of the war, say the authors, President Vladimir Putin’s nation will require years to rebuild its prewar capabilities.

Unfortunately, this view confirms the scepticism of many Western politicians, including the British elder statesman I cited above, about diverting billions to our own rearmament. Yet Russia retains some advantages over the West: Because its economy and industries are subject to direct control from the Kremlin, Putin can focus his nation’s arms production on the munitions he needs most in Ukraine.

Although many of the right things were said in Vilnius this week, it is essential to acknowledge the seriousness of NATO’s procurement crisis. A study of its European forces published last month, written by former British Army Brigadier Ben Barry and a cluster of other strategy gurus, asserted that “an important question is whether European allies are more serious now” about rearmament “than they were after Ukraine was first invaded in 2014.” The chief of the German Army, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, has repeatedly asserted that his country has “fallen behind its own ambitions” to rearm.

We inhabit an era when few Western governments can muster the political support to address meaningfully big, difficult issues, of which climate change is foremost, but defence and the rebuilding of crumbling infrastructure come close behind. In a world full of threats, among which China presents a far graver menace than Russia, we shall be profoundly foolish if we fail to retool our industries and rearm our militaries. Ukraine is a historic test of Western will and staying power. Not for the first time in history, the outcome of the struggle will be determined not only on battlefields, but also in the factories of the West.