(Continued from Part 3….)
Yes, this week’s Don’s Weekly is slightly longer than usual - simply because there is a lot to let you know about, and to discuss. Thus, here the conclusive-, Part 4.
Equipment
South Korean arms sales rose from US$7 billion in 2021 to US$17 billion in 2022, and was at US$14 billion in 2023, ranging from fighters to ground vehicles and air defense systems to countries like Poland, Egypt, Australia and Malaysia. The UK is considering buying and producing the K9 self-propelled gun on its own, replacing the AS-90 that is scheduled to leave service at the end of the decade. The range of the K9 is 40 km with conventional shells. Poland’s Krab is based on a K9 chassis, an AS-90 turret and a Rheinmetall gun. Poland bought 152 K9’s and will receive them all by 2027…
Sometimes hills, trees and buildings will block radio signals and prevent an operator from flying a drone in certain locations. If you transmit the operator’s signals to a high flying drone and that high flying drone then broadcasts those signals down to the attacking FPV drones then the terrain is no longer a problem…
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1750821226233094480
This was announced back in September but they are just now releasing the video…
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1745872771769340370
Greece receives F-35s. In turn, Ukraine receives air defense systems…
https://twitter.com/UKikaski/status/1751571842484019617
Artillery Production
Up to 70% of Ukraine’s casualties are a result of artillery fire. The percentage might be higher for Russia (though Ukrainian snipers, and operators of UAVs and anti-material rifles tend to disagree with such assessments).
At the height of its offensive, Ukraine was firing 7,000 rounds of artillery a day. If it fired that amount for an entire year it would consume 2.5 million rounds. Ukraine wanted to fire 10,000 rounds per day (a rate of 3.6 million rounds per year).
By this spring, the US is expected to be producing 57,000 shells per month, or 684,000 per year. By 2025 they plan to produce 1.2 million rounds a year. By the end of 2024, Germany will be producing 600,000 rounds a month. Nammo (Norway, Sweden, Finland) will produce 80,000 shells in 2025. France is producing 100,000 rounds a year with no announcements of increasing that rate (where, at the times of the Vattle of Verdun, back in 1916, this amount of shells would be good for a few days). All this, rounded up, comes to 2,000,000 rounds per year by 2025. That can sustain an expenditure rate of 5,500 rounds per day.
But: in 2025.
5,500 rounds a day would be adequate, but not optimal, for sustained defensive operations. Ukraine tried their best to conduct an offensive operation using 7,000 rounds a day when they preferred 10,000 rounds per day.
In a random video from seven months ago, you see very little Ukrainian artillery fire. But this is what 5,500 rounds a day looks like…
The NATO standard is to put multiple rounds on a target to completely destroy it. In the three vehicle column in the above example, there would be a six-gun battery firing in a linear pattern to cover the column, probably firing three salvos, or a total of 18 rounds. NATO practices Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact (MRSI) as a way to overwhelm a target in a very short time. The Swedish Archer artillery system was designed to conduct MRSI, too. This is what a single gun conducting MRSI looks like:
I’ve shown this before and I continue to bring it up to highlight how little ammo Ukraine has. The low rates of fire you see are not the NATO standard, they are a product of a diminished defense capacity, a ‘peace dividend’ since the fall of the Soviet Union.
For Ukraine to utilize the NATO standard of fire they might need 50,000 rounds a day, or 18 million rounds a year. But NATO can only sustain 5,000 rounds a day. By 2025. NATO can’t even sustain its own theoretical rate of fire in a prolonged war with a near-peer adversary. And still: two years into Putin’s all-out invasion, the Western law-makers and industry are still ‘not entirely sure’ should they or shouldn’t they, which is why production rates are increasing at an agonising pace…
South Korean law prevents it from sending equipment to war zones, so in 2023 they sent 330,000 shells to the US, who then sent 330,000 of its own shells to Ukraine. They supplied more shells (indirectly) to Ukraine than all of the European nations. This gambit can only be used until all the shells in US warehouses are South Korean, otherwise the law will have to be changed or South Korea will no longer be able to send shells - or: they will just ignore their own law. I could not find a rate of production for their shells but given its constant state of readiness for North Korean aggression and the rising sales of South Korean K9 155mm SPGs and other equipment, it is likely to be fairly high.
NATO is supposed to have standardized ammo and weapons for interoperability, but there are 14 different types of 155mm shells. A Dutch admiral says the cost of producing shells increased from 2,000 euros to 8,000 euros. An Estonian ministry defense official said it cost a ‘Western’ country $5-6,000 to make a shell. I’ve read US government documents in which it costs them only $800 per shell. Back in July, Bulgaria produced shells for $500 each, although that cost did not include packaging and shipping. Part of the cost is the price to build both the equipment and supply chains to increase production. Once the initial production costs are paid the price per shell should come down. Standardization would also lower costs.
Unless something changes, it will be very difficult for Ukraine to go on the offensive in 2025. 5,500 shells a day is not enough to conduct an attritional offensive operation. 10,000 shells a day might be. South Korea is one wild card in terms of its production capability and willingness to supply Ukraine, openly or otherwise.
Another unknown is if Ukraine will ever be able to conduct a large-scale coordinated offensive. It still requires a lot of ammunition, maybe a million rounds just for one sector in one month, but if a sector can be isolated and pulverized, and Ukraine can move through it, then they can achieve maneuver warfare, which consumes a LOT less ammo than attritional warfare. I haven’t seen any progress in Ukraine acquiring combined arms capabilities but a potential 2025 offensive is over a year away, and a lot can happen in a year.
During the spring and summer of 2022, Russia fired an unsustainable 20-60,000 rounds per day, burning through 10 million of its stockpile of 15 million shells in 2022. 20,000 rounds a day is an annual rate of 7.3 million shells. Russia has since reduced its rate of fire to 10,000 rounds per day.
In 2023, they produced and refurbished 3.5 million shells according to Estonia. The refurbished shells were already in the stockpile but needed to be repaired before they could be fired. Russia is firing at a rate of 3.6 million rounds a year and Estonia believes they will increase their output to 4.5 million rounds a year in 2024. At some point, there will be no more rounds to refurbish and that will lower the production rate.
In 2022, Russia received an unknown number of shells from Belarus, and there have been no reports of further shipments from Belarus. They also received one million shells from North Korea. These shells are of poor quality. Some are duds, some are responsible for blowing up a few gun barrels, but there are enough of them to still be quite effective at killing and wounding Ukrainians.
What is unknown is North Korea’s production rate, how many shells it has in its stockpile, and whether China will ever aid North Korea, who might pass that on to Russia. There has been one isolated report of China shipping gunpowder to Russia, a lot of banned electronics make their way from other countries through China to Russia, and China sells hobby-quality drones to both Russia and Ukraine. Other than that, there have been no reports of China directly aiding Russia with military equipment, nor have there been any reports of China using North Korea as a transshipment proxy.
It appears that Russia will be able to sustain firing 10,000 rounds a day and might be able to reach 12,000 rounds a day. Without any changes, it does not look like it could sustain anything higher.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/us/politics/russia-sanctions-missile-production.html
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/world/2024/01/501_364468.html
So you are really in deep trouble if “Putin” decide to attack you.
Thanks for this article, and for sharing your writings more generally.
This is what I am struggling to get my head around: If this is an artillery war, and 80% of casualties are inflicted by shellfire, and Ukraine is fast running out of ammunition, and its allies are unable to replenish inventory at anything like the rate at which it’s being expended, how can this end well?
Similarly, if Ukraine is expending its air defense missiles much more rapidly than its friends in the west are producing them, how can this end well?
And if Ukraine is running out of people willing voluntarily to serve in its armed forces, and will serve only if they’re compelled to do so, what does that tell us?
We all tend to emphasise with the ‘underdog’, as is human nature, but surely, at some point in the not-too-distant future, all the chickens are going to come home to roost, and where will be be then.
Thanks again for your work.