The United States faces the same strategic challenge whether or not the 2024 emergency defense supplemental passes: the war in Ukraine consumes far more military matériel than the west can produce, and it costs the lives of far more Ukrainians than Ukraine can mobilize.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator JD Vance (R-OH) provided a memo to his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate which outlines the poor state of the United States defense industrial base and the challenge facing the United States and other Western powers to meet the defense production needs of Ukraine. For example, while the 2024 emergency defense supplemental dedicates nearly $7 billion to the production of 155mm artillery shells and PAC-3 interceptors, this investment “fails by orders of magnitude to facilitate meeting Ukraine’s assessed munitions requirements now or in future.”
Read the full memo here. Read excerpts of the memo below:
National security risks associated with continued use of drawdown authority: “While the U.S. Department of Defense has made regular use of drawdown authorities to address the gap between U.S. production and Ukrainian requirements with existing U.S. munitions stockpiles, this is a waning asset as the conflict enters its third year … As recently as February 20, a DOD spokesperson stated categorically it was an ‘absolute risk to use this authority, citing national security concerns … DOD statements suggest [U.S.] stocks have already been drawn down to a level many national security officials consider seriously concerning.”
The impoverished state of the U.S. defense industrial base: “The war in Ukraine has exposed significant problems in the U.S. defense industrial base that will require five to ten years to rectify on current trends … Taken together, complex value chains and workforce constraints create significant barriers to scaling the U.S. defense industrial base quickly in order to supply the war in Ukraine … Key stockpiles are depleted and would require three to five years to replenish if we stopped sending weapons to Ukraine tomorrow.”
The math for PAC-3 anti-air interceptors: “The annual baseline requirement of Ukrainian Patriot batteries is at least 1,920 PAC-3 interceptors. The United States produced about 2,000 PAC-3 interceptors between 2017 and 2022 … A substantial proportion of existing stocks have likely already been transferred to Ukraine … increasing the rate of production from 550 to 650 PAC-3 interceptors per year [as targeted by the 2024 supplemental] is almost certainly marginal at best to Ukraine’s assessed annual requirement of thousands of interceptors.”
The math for 155mm artillery shells: “According to press reports, the United States had supplied Ukraine with over 2 million 155mm shells by the end of 2023, reflecting significant drawdowns of U.S. and partner 155mm stockpiles. Ukraine’s own assessed requirement is a maximum of over 7 million 155mm shells per year, with 4.2 million per year considered an operational minimum by Ukraine’s former Minister of Defense … increasing the rate of production of 155mm shells from roughly one million to 1.2 million per year will be at best marginal to Ukraine’s assessed annual requirement of over 4 million 155mm shells.”
The bottom line: “The United States faces the same strategic challenge whether or not the 2024 emergency defense supplemental passes: the war in Ukraine consumes far more military matériel than the west can produce, and it costs the lives of far more Ukrainians than Ukraine can mobilize. Proponents of Ukraine aid have made a subtle rhetorical shift over the past year. They once argued that our support of Ukraine constituted only a fraction of our GDP, hardly a strain on our resources. Now, they acknowledge our limited munitions manufacturing capacity, but claim that this limitation bolsters the argument for additional aid. A common refrain is that the war has spurred the United States to rebuild our defense industrial base. This argument confuses weapons production with weapons provision. There is no principle of law, economics, or warfare that to manufacture weapons we must commit them to foreign wars. The war in Ukraine consumes more than we produce. Under even the rosiest projection well into the next presidential administration, every day we supply Ukraine is another day we dig ourselves deeper into the hole.”
###