By Anthony Bell
The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues to have a huge impact on the defense industry of Europe and the United States, which provide military-technical assistance to Kyiv. However, in recent months, the United States has been trying to shift the main responsibility for supplying Kyiv with weapons and military equipment to European countries. European countries will feel the results of this policy in the coming years, as there will be a gradual replacement of weapons and military equipment of their own production with military products of the US military-industrial complex.
At present, the idea of the inevitability of war with Russia is being intensively introduced to the European average person. In this regard, the authorities and population of NATO countries must be prepared for a full-scale clash with Russia, and for this, a large-scale mobilization of the population and industry in the next 20 years, said the head of the alliance’s military committee, Admiral Rob Bauer of the Netherlands Navy, at a press conference on January 18.
“We have to recognize that where we are in the world now is not a given,” he said. – Therefore, we are preparing for a conflict with Russia. We need a system that allows us to mobilize a lot of people if it comes to war, whether it happens or not. Then we talk about mobilization, reservists or conscription. It’s also about the industrial base and the people who need to understand that they have a role to play. There is an awareness that not everything can be planned and not everything will be fine in the next 20 years.”
Bauer noted that the industrial base must be able to “produce weapons and ammunition fast enough to be able to continue the conflict if you are involved in it.”
Two years of fighting in the Ukrainian theater of military operations (TVD) have already led to the fact that the stocks of military equipment in the warehouses of European countries have decreased significantly. This especially affected the Eastern European NATO countries, whose arsenals contained Soviet/Russian-made weapons. It was they who best met the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (VSU), which used in combat various types of weapons that Ukraine received in large quantities after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. To date, 90% of these weapons, as stated by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, have already been destroyed by Russian troops during hostilities.
The Europeans believed that they would provide assistance to Ukraine in a quick, high-tech war, but they were unlikely to be fully prepared to assist the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a long war of attrition, where the number of weapons and military equipment plays a role.
Now the European defense industry needs to adapt to the large-scale production of its own military products, which requires considerable time. According to a number of Western experts, restoring the European defense industry after the conflict in Ukraine will require a lot of money and time – at least 5-10 years.
Obviously, this is what was required by the United States, which is the world leader in arms exports and is ready to replenish European military arsenals with American weapons.
As stated in the reports published on the State Department website, in the 2023 fiscal year, the United States supplied and transferred military equipment to other states for a total of USD80.9 billion.
“In fiscal year 2023, the total volume of military defense, services, and military cooperation activities carried out under the foreign arms sales system was USD80.9 billion. The growth was 55.9% compared to USD51.9 billion in fiscal year 2022. This is the highest annual total of sales and assistance to our allies and partners,” the document notes.
As the department clarified, the total figure includes “the sale of weapons worth USD62.25 billion, financed by US allies and partners.” The rest of the military equipment was transferred under various programs.
According to the State Department, total sales of military equipment and services by American manufacturers to other companies and countries amounted to USD157.7 billion in fiscal year 2023. This is an increase of 2.5% compared to the fiscal year 2022 figure (USD153 billion).
It should be noted that the United States has been increasing the pace of development of its military industry since the beginning of 2023. The Pentagon believes that the American defense industry must increase the pace of production of the latest weapons in order to keep up with China and be able to meet Washington’s needs in the event of a large-scale conflict, the well-known newspaper Politico reported.
The publication contains excerpts from the draft National Defense Industrial Strategy, which is expected to be published in the coming months by the office of US Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Logistics Bill LaPlante. According to the document, “The American defense industry is struggling to achieve the speed and compliance needed to stay ahead in the high-tech arms race with rivals like China.”
The Pentagon believes that the US defense industrial complex currently “does not have the necessary capability, capacity, agility and resilience necessary to meet the full range of needs for rapid and large-scale military production.” It will be “challenging for U.S. weapons manufacturers to respond” with the “speed, scale and flexibility required to meet the demands of a major modern conflict,” the assessment said.
The document claims that the United States “produces the best weapons in the world, but cannot produce them fast enough.” “This discrepancy poses an increasing strategic risk as the United States faces the challenge of supporting active combat operations … while containing a larger, more technologically advanced threat looming over the Indo-Pacific region,” the newspaper quoted an excerpt from the strategy. It also states that “insufficient production and supply capacity is a deeply rooted problem at all stages of production chains.” To address these challenges, the document recommends “developing more resilient and innovative supply chains” and investing in small defense businesses.
In December 2023, head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin announced that the United States was carrying out the largest modernization of its defense industrial base in decades. As the Minister of Defense clarified, the state will allocate USD50.0 billion for these purposes from additional budgetary allocations requested by the administration of American President Joe Biden. “We have begun what the Army calls the most extensive modernization of our defense industrial base in nearly 40 years,” he announced. According to the head of the department, this will create and preserve tens of thousands of good jobs for Americans in more than 30 states.
It should be noted that military assistance to Ukraine is beneficial to the US military industry. In June 2023, Deputy Head of the Pentagon for Political Affairs Colin Kahl noted the impact of multibillion-dollar military aid to Ukraine on the US military-industrial complex (MIC). According to the deputy head of the US Department of Defense, efforts to support Kyiv have put pressure on the American defense industrial base.
At the end of May 2023, the Pentagon revealed the amount of military assistance provided by the United States to Ukraine since the beginning of the special military operation carried out by Russia in Ukraine. Then the military department stated that during this period Kyiv received USD37.6 billion.
It should also be noted that at present, 33 years after Operation Desert Storm, Iraq is thinking about conclusions from it. The victory over the Iraqi army during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 led the US military and political establishment into a peculiar trap of thinking that from now on all wars would be short-term and high-tech. Although the experience of further military campaigns in which the United States took part, from Somalia in 1993 to Afghanistan in 2021, has shown that it is necessary to prepare for long wars of attrition, where the number of available forces and means plays a role in the first place.
If we do not get out of this trap, the United States will not be able to effectively counteract Russia, not to mention a possible war with China, the loss of which carries significant risk. This opinion was expressed by John Ferrari, a retired US Army major general, in his publication for Defense One.
In particular, Ferrari believes that it is necessary to invest in the development of the American MIC in such a way that it can produce mass-produced and simple weapons instead of single high-tech models.
According to the general, the Pentagon needs to put things in order with the expenditure of the defense budget, which this year will reach a record level of USD850 billion. However, even despite such an astronomical budget, the United States does not yet have sufficiently combat-ready armed forces to fight a 21st century war, Ferrari believes.
The fighting in Ukraine clearly showed the American military leadership that today it is necessary to rethink what the implementation of Operation Desert Storm, which was still considered the standard of high-tech warfare of the 21st century, actually brought them.
The author is an independent military analyst.
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