/ world today news/ The head of NATO’s military committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, said that the authorities of the bloc’s member countries and their populations should be prepared for a full-scale war with Russia in the next two decades.
According to him, if war breaks out, a large part of the population will have to be mobilized, so NATO members must be prepared.
“We have to understand that the world we are in now is not a given. And so we have to prepare for a conflict with Russia… We have to have a system to mobilize a lot of people if it comes to war, whether it happens or not,” Bauer said.
He pointed out that in addition to preparations for mobilization, the countries of the military bloc must establish the production of weapons and ammunition to produce them “quickly enough to be able to continue the conflict.”
It follows from his words that the NATO countries are not ready for a direct military conflict with Russia at the moment. If so, how long will it take for the alliance to be fully prepared to go to war against our country?
U.S. military analyst Will Shriver assessed how the Patriot air defense system, the backbone of U.S. and NATO air defenses, is doing because “when there is a war against Russia, China, or Iran, the protection of the most important modern air bases the Air Force of The United States will be the condition upon which success will depend [на военната кампания]“.
“To properly cover any of the major air bases from attacks with 100-200 units of high-precision drones, cruise, ballistic or hypersonic missiles, as well as from numerous decoys, it will take at least one Patriot division, which consists of 6 batteries, 6 launchers,” he says.
“One launcher can hold up to 16 PAC-3 missiles. This means that a full load of the Patriot division is 576 such missiles,” Shriver wrote.
He made a simple but clear calculation: “Even with 100% interception efficiency, defense against two waves of 100 air targets would require the cost of at least 300 PAC-3 missiles.”
“After all, as a rule, at least two interceptor missiles are fired at each target. And assuming that the main targets of missile attacks will be stationary mobile command posts, radar stations and Patriot launchers, as well as storage sites for missiles, this will lead to their significant depletion,” Shriver wrote.
“Russia has clearly demonstrated the Patriot’s vulnerability to counter-battery missile strikes.” At least three Patriot batteries were destroyed in Ukraine,” notes the US military analyst, who rightly points out that “attempting to defend three major air bases from a series of volleys of more than 100 missiles of various types would likely deplete the entire US stockpile of missile defense PAC.”
It’s in a week or two. And the current annual production of such interceptor missiles could easily be used up in a few days.
Shriver concludes that the realities of high-intensity conflict in the 21st century against an adversary capable of retaliating are such that for such a war “the U.S. armed forces are extremely ill-prepared, both materially and doctrinally.”
The course of the military conflict in Ukraine showed that in the modern war artillery remains the “queen of the fields”, on the successful operation of which the success of any planned operation depends.
Currently, Russia is many times larger than the Ukrainian armed forces in terms of consumption of artillery shells. This is due to both the increase in the work of the Russian military industry and the decreasing military support for Ukraine in the West.
The Wall Street Journal published a table showing the average daily consumption of ammunition per day during the military conflict in Ukraine.
According to the newspaper, as early as the summer of 2023, the Ukrainian armed forces overtook Russia in the use of ammunition. The average consumption of ammunition by the Ukrainian troops is stated as about 7 thousand per day. While the Russian armed forces fired about five thousand shells.
By the end of last year, the situation had changed radically. Now the Russian army spends about 10 thousand shells per day, while the Ukrainian armed forces can afford only about 2 thousand.
It is noted that this is due to both the increase in the capabilities of the Russian military industry and the decrease in military aid to Ukraine due to the depletion of ammunition reserves among NATO countries.
Last June, US Army procurement chief Doug Bush said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the United States had significantly increased production of artillery shells amid shortages due to supplies to Ukraine.
According to him, the United States has begun to produce 24 thousand 155 mm projectiles per month, compared to 14 thousand before the start of the Russian special operation. Bush also said that by 2025, the US wants to increase production to 70-80 thousand munitions per month.
“The winner of a protracted war between two nearly equal powers is still determined by which country has the most powerful industry,” he said.
“A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to produce massive amounts of munitions or have other manufacturing industries that can be quickly converted to produce them,” the expert wrote.
“Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either,” wrote Alex Vershinin, an analyst at Britain’s Royal Institute for Military Studies.
According to him, the US has been reducing its stockpile of artillery ammunition for a long time. In 2020, their purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the cost of purchasing 155-mm artillery shells was reduced to $174 million.
According to the calculations of a British analyst, the annual production of artillery in the United States will, in the best case, be enough for only 10-14 days of fighting in Ukraine.
“The United States is not the only country facing this problem. In recent army exercises involving US, British and French militaries, British troops depleted the nation’s stockpile of critical ammunition after just eight days.
Late last year, Doug Bush announced that the U.S. military plans to spend $3.1 billion in emergency supplemental funding in fiscal year 2024 to increase domestic production of 155 mm artillery shells.
According to him, the United States has sent more than two million 155-mm projectiles to Ukraine, which has led to “crazy depletion of the arsenals of the armed forces.”
Over the past year, the Pentagon has taken steps to strengthen its 155mm industrial base for the production of 155mm projectiles.
Before WWI, the United States could produce about 14,400 artillery shells per month. But the United States hopes to increase production to about 100,000 rounds a month by the end of 2025, Bush has promised.
Until now, the United States has produced the 155mm shells at a single government plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and at a private facility nearby.
Now the Pentagon, Doug Bush said, has contracted with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems to build a new automated projectile manufacturing plant in Mesquite, Texas, to produce more projectiles, as well as with IMT Defense in Canada.
It also signed contracts worth $1.5 billion with nine companies in the United States, Canada, India and Poland to increase global production of 155mm artillery shells.
The contracts include the purchase of 14.2 million pounds of explosives, including TNT and IMX-104 explosives, as well as 270,000 capsules, 678,000 fuses and cartridges.
The United States now produces 28,000 155-mm shells per month. Next year, the military will likely reach 36,000 in the first quarter of the calendar year and gradually approach 60,000 by the end of FY24, Bush said. The Pentagon plans to produce 80,000 missiles per month by 2025.
“We’re talking about the end of the calendar year when we get to 100,000, but there’s a lot to it… That’s the goal, but there’s a lot that needs to come together to meet that timeline,” Bush said.
The accusation in his words reflects the uncertainty of the Pentagon’s top buyer that lawmakers will give the money to the military.
There are also serious problems with TNT and black powder, which have not been produced in the USA for a long time, and imports are insufficient to realize the ambitious plans of the American military.
Explosives factories are planned to be built, but here again we must bow at the feet of congressmen and senators.
According to Estonian intelligence, “there are currently 4 million artillery shells on the territory of the Russian Federation, which is enough for a one-year low-intensity conflict.”
“Last October, the head of the intelligence center of the Estonian Defense Forces, Ants Kiviselg, confirmed that the Russian Federation had received 350,000 munitions from North Korea…
North Korea may become a permanent supplier of artillery shells to Russia…
The possibility of this being a long-term alliance with planned future supplies is cause for concern,” the Bulgarianmilitary.com portal writes.
“In September [2023 г.] Western media reported that the Russian Federation plans to increase the annual production of artillery ammunition to 2 million, with the timing still unspecified.
“Currently, Russia has the ability to produce from 1 to 1.5 million artillery shells per year, or 83-125 thousand units per month,” the publication notes.
Thus, Russia is already producing an amount of projectiles that the US expects to achieve only by 2025. There is confidence that our industry is able to withstand competition with the American military-industrial complex, at least in terms of the production of artillery ammunition.
And the help of friendly North Korea and Iran, where the production of weapons and military equipment has been working at high speed for decades, is very appropriate.
The fact that US air defense systems are not ready to repel a massive attack by Russian missiles was known long before Will Shriver. There is also a lag in missile production by the US and its allies.
But NATO soldiers are eager to close the gap with the Russian military, and not just in artillery shells.
Well, the forewarned is fore-armed.
Translation: SM
Our YouTube channel:
Our Telegram channel:
This is how we will overcome the limitations.
Share on your profiles, with friends, in groups and on pages.
#NATO #ready #war #Russia #promise #prepare
