Ukraine Situation Report:Crunching Numbers: Ukraine Munitions "Ramp-up" Buzz, Real or Hype?
There have been some new production updates, so I wanted to do a little breakdown to see how plausible the West’s claims of significant production ramp-ups really are.
by Simplicius
There have been some new production updates, so I wanted to do a little breakdown to see how plausible the West’s claims of significant production ramp-ups really are.
We’ll start with the mainstay of the 155mm artillery rounds. The latest big announcement is that the U.S. has finally broken through their previous ceiling of ~28k rounds per month via the infamously worn-down Scranton factory. The new claimed amount: 36k shells per month, as per the latest.
This has set off joyous celebrations amid the pro-UA crowd with claims of numbers like 80-100k “by end of year”.
Older video for reference:
Unfortunately, to burst their bubble, the U.S. Army’s official projections for production ramp-up were revealed:
What can we see in the chart? The army is supposedly doing slightly better than their oldest projections from 2022, but is not anywhere even close to tracking for the most recent hopeful 2023 projections, which appear to be wishful thinking. Those projections show somewhere around ~60k per month by end of year, however the actual track appears to be headed towards a disappointing ~45k or so at most.
Two problems with that:
This is a pitiful number and at that rate would not even hit 100k a month for several years.
Even that puny ~45k would not all be earmarked for Ukraine.
As to the second point above, with Israel now reportedly beginning its Rafah operation, and many other flashpoints looming, like a potential Lebanese incursion, there is no telling how much of that ammo Ukraine could receive. Thus far the U.S. has averaged around 10k rounds a month sent to Israel, which accounts for roughly 33% of all produced.
Now, things have gotten so bad there’s rumor the U.S. is tightfisting its own supply due to shortages:
One report:
Last week, the Joe Biden administration seized a shipment of ammunition made in the United States of America for Israel.
According to some, this may be due to a domestic shortage of ammunition and the shipment of available ammunition to Ukraine.
Worst of all, a shocking image made the rounds showing that United States Army artillerymen themselves were now firing Korean rounds in training:
That means the U.S. and combined West’s 155mm situation is so bad that the U.S. doesn’t even have enough of its own rounds to conduct basic routine training for its own crews, which eats up a certain percentage of rounds per month throughout the year.
But now the latest claim being trotted out is that Germany’s Rheinmetall plans to send Ukraine “millions” of rounds:
This is all cruel nonsense. It’s hard to understand why they torture Ukrainians with such lies.
But for the sake of transparency let’s list their official claims from the article above:
Before Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Rheinmetall’s annual capacity stood at nearly 70,000 rounds. This year, the group expects to reach 700,000, and in the medium term aims at 1.1 million. To this end, Rheinmetall is building a plant in Unterluss. A new production line is being set up in Lithuania. In Ukraine, the company also plans to build a munitions factory.
As one can see, these numbers are contingent on a bunch of far-off wishful-thinking-floated improbabilities. Firstly, if you dig into the “new factory” they’re allegedly building in Unterluss, you find the following official spec:
In future, Werk Niedersachsen will produce artillery ammunition, explosives and rocket artillery components. The factory will eventually manufacture some 200,000 artillery shells a year, along with up to 1,900 tonnes of RDX explosive and, optionally, other components for producing ammunition charges. In addition, production of rocket engines and possibly warheads could take place here, which will be necessary for the planned German rocket artillery project, for example.
Not only is it more of a general purpose plant for various things—which could mean it will be very large and take long to build—but here it says it will max out at 200k artillery shells a year, eventually. The inclusion of that qualifier means even after its completion, it will have to slowly ramp up to a very unlikely “ideal” of 200k. We could be talking a 5-10 year projection, if not more. The previous promise of 700k and 1.1M shells a year looks ludicrous upon closer inspection.
This is a fine point one learns only through experience of many years studying the artful words of politicians; they are very clever in disguising gross exaggerations and other lies by omission.
For instance, the same article freely admits:
According to the assessment by the Rheinmetall CEO, it will take nearly a decade for the defense industry to replenish the Bundeswehr's stocks to the proper level after they have been depleted, including as a result of equipment donations to Ukraine.
Then they give the exact timeline:
The top priority for the new factory is the earliest possible start of production. Following a construction period of around twelve months – proceeding from the date of the contract – annual capacity will be 50,000 shells a year. Germany’s initial share of value added will come to 50 percent, gradually increasing in the second year of production to 80 percent and to 100 percent in the third. By this point, Germany will have a fully autarkic supply of artillery ammunition, with value added generated entirely at home.
In terms of volume, annual capacity will reach 100,000 shells in the second year of production, later rising to 200,000 a year.
Is that a joke? 100k shells by the second year? Those should be monthly numbers. Russia is said to be doing 250-350k shells a month at the minimum.
And it’s nearly insulting to even comment on Rheinmetall’s claim of building an ammo factory in Ukraine—this is nothing but childish posturing. They know full well such a factory would get a sunny visit from Iskander and his pal Kinzhal and be promptly reduced to constituent silica.
Not to mention NATO’s defense firms continue to go up in flames, with reports claiming Germany’s Diehl plant burned for days:
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It’s the same lies over and over: just as Czechia claimed to have found 1 million rounds, only to repeal to ~100k with the promise they will find the rest ‘somewhere’ unspecified.
You see these politicoes use the same strategy of ambiguous promises to instill hope in obvious exaggerations.
Another one: hoopla ensued over Macron’s latest comments about sending a whopping “75 Caesar” SPGs to Ukraine. This sounds incredible on paper, as Caesars have proven quite formidable, arguably the single most powerful artillery gun in the entire war thus far—but very limited in number.
But when you take a look at the Caesar production capability you learn that France itself has only 40-60 of them total, depending on source. And each unit takes a whopping 30 months to build—it took them something like 8 years just to build the few dozen that they have.
Now of course that doesn’t mean they build one at a time, and the production time has allegedly been “halved” since then—they can build a few simultaneously in those months it takes, but it still means the total “75” is years away.
A trickle of a few Caesars per year is not going to do much when Ukraine is facing collapse.
The UK is in a similar quandary:
ATACMS Shoptalk
Now the latest unjustified excitement surrounds announcements that the U.S. has also “ramped up” ATACMS production to a whopping “dozens per month”.
The site above gives an eye-opening breakdown of current potential ATACMS stockpiles:
But according to third-party estimates, Lockheed Martin had produced a total of 4,000 missiles, some 600 of which were spent during hostilities and exercises. However, saying there are 3,400 left would be too hasty.
Estimating the real number based on public data is actually quite possible. Here, for example, the information on the current stock of missiles as of April 2007 is not a secret. According to the fact sheet, about 2100 missiles in various versions were stored in the arsenals of the U.S. Army at the time.
They go on to calculate that the U.S. was only producing give or take 100 missiles per year or less; for instance:
Yet, we must pay extra careful attention to the 2020 deadline because that year, Lockheed Martin announced that it had received an order worth $426 million for the production of 400+ missiles by March 31, 2023. Most likely, the figure encompassed both the brand-new and processed old missiles, let's tentatively assume 50/50.
So in 2020, Lockheed signed a deal to produce ~400 missiles by 2023, yet this likely only 50% new missiles with 50% refurbs. Taking both into account that puts their fastest pace at something like 130 missiles a year, give or take, which is about 11 missiles a month.
Given that they claim to have “ramped up”, and that we know from their 155mm production “ramping” is likely a very gradual and not altogether dramatic process, the “dozens” now produced per month can probably refer to at most 2 or 3 dozen. That’s because without building a totally new facility, all you can count on is adding another shift to your factory, or two extra shifts max for 3 x 8 hour shifts. Then calculate some efficiency loss into that from multiple concurrent production lines: you can get 11 x 2 or 11 x 3 = 22 / 33, subtracted from efficiency loss, and we get 20-25 missiles max per month—and most likely not even that.
The article above reaches a similar conclusion, though they do so more subtly.
Can that number of missiles make a major difference in the war? Let’s say it gives Ukraine the ability to fire ~20-25 ATACMs per month, then factor into that an interception/failure/jamming rate of anywhere between 25-75% for argument’s sake. That means Ukraine can expect to maybe land half a dozen hits per month somewhere, not exactly game changing.
By the way, Ukraine’s own “latest figures” for Russia’s missile numbers—though they should be taken with a huge grain of salt, but at least it’s worth looking at:
One thing it does semi-accurately convey, which is seen in the ATACMS production as well, is that most leading nations can really only produce 10-20 of these high end missiles maximum per month. Russia’s advantage is that it has many different types of missile systems which are produced independently by various corporations like Novator Design, Raduga, NPO Mash, Zvezda Strela, JSC Tactical Missiles Corp, etc.
Even if the above list is semi-accurate, it’s missing many other missile types being actively produced, like Iskander-M and K, Kh-101, Kh-59, Kh-35 fired from Bal launchers, etc. And that doesn’t even begin to address the glide-bombs which perform a similar, albeit more frontline-tactical, role:
By the way, the above clearly contradicts the earlier list which amounted to only ~50 Russian missiles produced per month. If Russia is hitting Ukraine with 300+ missiles per month then that’s likely a bigger indicator of their monthly production, though that may include the dozen or more tactical frontline missiles like LMURS, Kh-36/38, etc., which only have ranges around 15-50km or so.
That being said, I believe Ukraine received an initial lump sum of ~100 ATACMs which will allow a higher tempo of launches for the immediate future and then will likely taper off to their much lower monthly allowance represented in the production figures above.
In a new article, Ukrainian officer Ivan Stupak told Newsweek that Ukraine only has a short window to use these missiles as the Russians adapt very quickly and will neutralize them in a matter of months, as they now famously did the GLSDBs, JDAM-ERs, Excaliburs, and to a large extent HIMARS—though the latter missiles are still occasionally used to success to snipe lone targets, but are never able to hit well-protected C2 nodes or industrial centers of any kind.
“Russians are able to adapt in a very short period of time, so we have up to two months before the Russian Armed Forces adapt to ATACMS, says Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine & now an adviser to the Ukrainian parliament's national security, defense and intelligence committee.
Russia will adapt to counter ATACMS operational-tactical missiles in a couple of months, said Ivan Stupak, adviser to the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security.
“As we know, the Russians can adapt in a very short period of time,” Stupak told Newsweek, suggesting that Ukraine “has up to two months” before the Russian military adapts to ATACMS.
Just a month or two ago, Russian missile forces had stated they were already on the job of figuring things out:
According to one of the commanders of the air defense of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, they are learning to shoot down "ATACMS".
I.e. Creation of countermeasures, operational algorithms, study of trajectories, maneuvering and flight speed, monitoring of practical launches.
The crews of the air defense systems of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have already received the first information about the missiles.
That being said, I’m not yet as positive as some of my colleagues about Russia’s abilities to defend against the ATACMS so far. They have not yet proven the ability to consistently shoot down the missiles. There have been multiple recent reports of strikes which the Russian side has claimed to have totally repelled, yet satellite BDAs afterwards showed that Russian airfields were in fact hit, like the recent case of Dzhankoi field in Crimea:
However, in the above case, neither side was fully truthful. It appeared the ATACMs did strike the airfield but did not actually destroy any S-300/400s like Ukraine claimed. Yes, the satellite photos days prior showed an AD battery present there, but the post-strike BDA clearly shows impacts in the ground, i.e. dirt gouges rather than destroyed missile TELs or radars—though there may be some equipment there, it’s hard to tell for certain. Also, it’s possible Russia did shoot down the missile(s) very late which caused them to still unleash the cluster munitions haphazardly over the field—but this is still problematic for a reason I’ll delve into after…
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