U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals

Either this narrative about weapon stockpiles, being depleted, is part of the information war or Russia is demilitarizing NATO!?!

U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals

In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.

So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells

There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.

The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the [ironically-named] European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.

Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.

Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.

Pink Flamingo: The U.S. Military Will Pay for Its Munition Shortage

The military must set realistic requirements for munitions stockpiles based on the certainty of the high rates of expenditures that will be experienced in any future conflict with Russia or China.

Pink Flamingo: The U.S. Military Will Pay for Its Munition Shortage

Imagine that!? With all of the handouts to the military industrial complex, they didn’t have enough 💰 to make munitions for the National Defense Stockpile?! I call 💩!

Ukraine SitRep – Recent Incidents Of Concern For All Sides

SATURDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2022 — MOON OF ALABAMA

Yesterday saw two significant developments or incidents with regard to the conflict in Ukraine.

Ukraine SitRep – Recent Incidents Of Concern For All Sides (18+)
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Related:

Ukrainian forces report Starlink outages during push against Russia (archived, as original is behind paywall)

18+: Daily pictures : the final moments of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine:

Several distinct characters appear in the pictures. Some were displaying foreign badges, US, British, German or Polish ones. Bezsonov reports that foreign mercenaries [or also special operations forces (SOF) from the West, possibly decommissioned in the context ?] were involved in this Ukrainian recce formation. During fighting, they were bearing the blue armband of the Ukrainian national guard, not the yellow one of the regular army

U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Gilbert Doctorow, 9/9/22

The UK and Commonwealth may be mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday. I am in mourning as well, but for a very different reason: the gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in the Ramstein air base in Germany yesterday reshuffled the deck on Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine, raising contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from still more nations and adding new, still more advanced precision strike weapons to the mix of deliveries to Kiev. It was an open summons to the Kremlin to escalate in turn, as were the test firing the same day of a new intercontinental rocket, the Minuteman III, from Vandenberg air base in California and the unannounced visit to Kiev yesterday of not only Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was featured in Western media accounts, but also other top officials of the Biden administration. The most notorious member of this delegation was surely Blinken’s deputy, Victoria Nuland, who had stage managed the February 2014 coup that put in power in Kiev the Russia-hating regime that Zelensky now heads.

Gilbert Doctorow: U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Related:

A Former US Marine Corps Officer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War (archived, in case the original is removed)

H/T: Natylie’s Place: Understanding Russia

Most-accurate US artillery shell Excalibur quietly added to Ukraine aid

Most-accurate US artillery shell Excalibur quietly added to Ukraine aid

Source

The Defense Department will spend $92 million in congressionally approved supplemental funds “for procurement of replacement M982 Excalibur munitions transferred to Ukraine in support of the international effort to counter Russian aggression,” according to a budget document last month that wasn’t previously disclosed.

“The $92 million addition to Excalibur more than doubles the program’s budget, adding about 900 projectiles in fiscal 2022, up from $56.7 million that Congress approved this fiscal year,” according to Mark Cancian, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who’s monitoring Ukraine-related spending.

“This also confirms what had long been suspected, that the United States is providing this advanced weapon to Ukraine,” Cancian said. Each round currently cost from $98,700 to $106,400 in fiscal 2021 and 2022 dollars depending on the quantities purchased, according to Army budget documents.

In addition to the previously undisclosed Excalibur, the budget documents also spell out supplies of well-known items such as conventional 155mm artillery rounds, Javelin anti-armor and Stinger anti-air missiles, the HIMARS mobile rocket system and its Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, or GMLRS, missiles. There are also smaller purchases of MK-19 grenade launchers, “precision sniper rifles” and “spotting scopes” and “replacement battery coolant units” for Stingers.