By Rich
Lowry
Friday,
October 13, 2023
No matter
how much we’d like to believe in the inevitability of human progress and the
spread of enlightened norms, we’ve learned the past couple of years that we
still need artillery shells — lots of artillery shells.
The
Hamas terror attack, together with the ongoing Ukraine war and the looming
Chinese threat to Taiwan, is putting a spotlight on the pitiful state of our
capacity to manufacture the weapons necessary to the defense of our allies and
ourselves.
According
to a CNN report, an Israel ground invasion of Gaza would “create a new and
entirely unexpected demand for 155 mm artillery ammunition and other weapons at
a time when the U.S. and its allies and partners have been stretched thin from
more than 18 months of fighting in Ukraine.”
We are
learning to our regret that we are using an attenuated, post-Cold War, “end of
history” defense-industrial base to try to meet the security needs of a newly
threatening international environment with the real risk of great-power
conflict.
As it
turns out, the peace dividend was very expensive.
It now
should be a matter of the highest national priority to use every lever of
government and the private sector to bolster the defense-industrial base in all
its aspects.
The
Biden administration should care about this at least as much as it does about
incentivizing the production of electric vehicles most people don’t want to
buy.
We
aren’t being asked, by the way, to fight a three-front war in Europe, the
Middle East, and Asia ourselves. No, the call is simply to provide arms to
allies under attack or threat. If we can’t do that, what does it say about our
status as the world’s preeminent power?
In
Ukraine, the hopes of Moscow for a lightning victory and of the West for a
sweepingly successful Ukraine counteroffensive both appear to have come a
cropper. Now, it’s a grinding artillery war.
Ukraine
is estimated to need 1.5 million shells a year and has been firing as many as
6,000 a day. Russia was firing even more at the peak of its offensive.
The U.S.
had supplied 2 million artillery shells to Ukraine as of July and has been
scrounging around — along with other Western powers — to feed whatever supplies
it can find into the maw of the war.
It’s not
that we have been completely asleep. The U.S. was making 14,500 shells a month
at the beginning of 2023 and has roughly doubled that. We hope to get to
100,000 a month in 2025. Still, highly sanctioned Russia is more proficient at
producing shells.
If we
can’t supply Ukraine, what if we become embroiled in a major war with China?
War
games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies have the
U.S. firing 5,000 long-range missiles in the first weeks of war, instantly
depleting our stocks. According to CSIS, the U.S. would expend all its
Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles within the first week of a conflict — when it
requires almost two years to manufacture one of the missiles.
We are
also in the bizarre position of being dependent on our potential enemy for the
materials we’d need in a war with that enemy. China has a dominant position in
the market for rare-earth metals — so important to the production of high-end
weapons — and is the world leader in cast products.
There is
no easy way out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves. It will require more spending
on defense; more reliable, long-term contracts for the production of key
weapons; a focus on securing the supply chain necessary to the production of
high-tech munitions; and assistance to manufacturers in training workers, among
other things.
The
history of empires and nations that don’t mind the need for up-to-date weapons
at the scale necessary to defeat or deter adversaries isn’t a happy one. It’s
in our power to avoid this fate — if we have the will and don’t waste more
time.
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