Signs of US military weakness

In addition to 8 to 10,000 Javelin and Stinger missiles, the United States Army has supplied 880,000 shells of 155 caliber and a large batch of Himars to Kiev, three-quarters of which are standard NATO munitions delivered to Ukraine by all Western countries, according to Pentagon figures.

The US army will soon be unable to provide Ukraine with the state-of-the-art equipment it has provided so far, with its ammunition reserves reaching their limits, according to US officials and experts. The United States is by far the largest arms donor to Ukraine since Russia’s special operation on February 24, with more than $16.8 billion in military assistance in Kiev. But the US stocks of certain equipment 'reach the minimum levels necessary for planning and training', and the replenishment of stocks at pre-requisite levelsMark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Older equipment is available and «they will represent in the future an increasingly important part of the transfers», added recently this former colonel of the Marine Corps who was responsible for the purchases of weapons of the Pentagon from 2008 to 2015. We are learning about the U.S. military’s ammunition requirements in a conflict between the great powers, who are “way above” predictions, an American military recognized under cover of anonymity.

The American defence industry, which was forced to drastically reduce its production in the 1990s, when the United States wanted to reap the benefits of peace after the collapse of the USSR, became ultra-concentrated to cushion the shock.

The number of advocacy and aerospace groups has increased from 51 to 5 in a few years. Today, the US government must convince the industry to reopen the assembly lines and restart abandoned productions, such as the Stinger anti-aircraft missile, which ceased production in 2020. Some of this equipment has become emblematic of the war in Ukraine, such as the Javelin, the anti-tank weapon widely used by Ukrainian forces at the beginning of the conflict to repel a column of Russian tanks trying to enter Kiev, or the Himars, a launcher-Light armoured rockets, which play an important role in the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the east and south of the country.

However, the U.S. stockpile of ammunition needed by the Himars, the GPS-guided rockets known as GMLERS, with a range of more than 80 km, are limited, according to Cancia. "While the United States has delivered a third of its GMLERS inventory to Ukraine, as with the Javelins and Stingers, Ukraine has received between 8,000 and 10,000," enough for "a few months," says the CSIS expert. However, Lockheed Martin currently produces only 5,000 of these high-precision rockets per year, and while the U.S. government has committed funds to accelerate this production, it will take several years for the U.S. to replenish its inventories, he adds.

.Washington delivered some 8,500 missiles to Kiev for Javelin, but the annual production of this weapon, symbol of Ukrainian resistance, is only 1,000 missiles 

The United States has ordered in May for 350 million dollars of the common society between Raytheo