“It’s a mix of supply chain issues, sudden increased demand and, unfortunately, protectionism from companies in other countries, including allies,” the source said.Ĭomplicating things further, governments are also concerned about the interests of the companies that could hypothetically help with a sudden surge in munitions production. “No private company that is answerable to shareholders will have kept staff and maintained large capacity to produce equipment that people are not buying, so it will be difficult to meet a sudden surge in demand in the short to medium term,” Waldwyn added.Ī senior European defense source echoed Stoltenberg’s assessment, telling CNN that they knew of at least one major ammunition company that had gone from giving customers lead times in months to quoting years. More significant boosts to output will be expensive and take time to implement,” said Tom Waldwyn, research associate for defense procurement at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There are limits to production increases that can be done quickly. This “dressing the shop window” approach helps us understand why European countries had low ammunition stocks going into the Ukraine conflict, but doesn’t explain why things haven’t dramatically improved in the year that has followed.Įxperts point to a range of factors. “The combination of no immediate threat and the financial pressures on European governments over the past couple of decades led to a conspiracy of dressing the shop window while letting the stockroom empty out,” said Nick Witney, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. After 1990, the apparent need for large stocks obviously diminished.”Īs the Cold War became a distant memory, so too did the threat of a land war in Western Europe and, in turn, the priorities of European governments shifted. “This was acceptable to Europeans because the envisaged Warsaw Pact effort was to overrun the whole of Western Europe. “The costs of maintaining that capability for any longer period were unacceptable, and so NATO stressed that it would also have to be ready eventually to initiate the use of nuclear weapons.” “NATO’s ‘Flexible Response’ stance during the Cold War was that its members should have the forces in being and stocks to hold all its territory for a period of about three weeks in the event of a ‘Warsaw Pact’ attack,” he said, referring to the military alliance between the Soviet Union and several satellite Soviet states in eastern Europe that ended shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trevor Taylor, professorial research fellow in defense management at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, points as far back as decisions that were made during the Cold War. Germany also announced Tuesday that it had agreed new deals with ammunition manufacturers for air defense systems it has delivered to Ukraine.īut the issue might prove more difficult than simply instructing private companies to produce more ammo or placing large orders.ĭecades of budget cuts across Europe have led to policy makers keeping a deliberately low stock on the assumption that there would not be a land war that could swallow up ammunition at similar levels to World War I or II, experts said. He noted that some progress had been made among NATO allies, citing the example of the US and France signing new contracts with defense firms. Stoltenberg said NATO had completed a survey of the alliance’s munitions and planned to increase targets for stockpiles. So we need to ramp up production, and invest in our production capacity.” Orders placed today would only be delivered two-and-a-half years later. “For example, the waiting time for large-caliber ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months. On Monday night, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of a meeting of alliance officials that “the current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production - this puts our defense industries under strain.” And I can’t do that without the ordnance,” Caudle said at a symposium in Washington last month, adding that the US is “going against a competitor here, and a potential adversary, that is like nothing we’ve ever seen.”
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