Ukraine has complained recently about a lack of supplies and there are problems giving it what it needs:
Now, pressure is growing to ramp up the pace further, as Ukraine says it is running out of weapons and ammunition as it fights to blunt Russian advances and counterattack. Antitank and antiaircraft missiles are in especially short supply, Ukrainian defense officials say. During this week’s NATO summit and meeting of the European Union, President Biden is expected to press allies to give Ukraine more, particularly air defense systems, U.S. officials said.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, Vadym Prystaiko, on Wednesday said stocks of some key weapons could soon run out and that Ukrainian forces urgently needed long-range weaponry. “We didn’t have enough in the first place. Running out of weaponry will be seen in the week to come,” Mr. Prystaiko said in a television interview. “Tomorrow, President Zelensky will talk to NATO to see how we can replenish our stocks,” he said.
Western security officials say their strategy initially envisaged equipping a nascent Ukrainian insurgency—recalling the transfer of weapons to mujahedeen fighters who defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan—that would employ guerrilla tactics against Russian occupiers.
Instead, because Ukraine’s military has managed to keep Moscow’s forces at bay in much of the country, the task has become equipping a regular army engaged in a large-scale conventional war.
“The Ukrainians are expending a lot of ordnance, and this is more than we anticipated,” said a Western security official. “We are trying to step up the flow of weapons to meet that new requirement and there are constant shortages.”
Ukraine says keeping the flow moving is central to its war effort. NATO allies have debated which systems would provoke an escalation from Russia, ruling out fighter jets, for example.
While U.S. and European officials said they are moving as quickly as possible, some also fear that some of the weapons systems could end up in Russian hands or circulate for years on the black market. Some European nations are reluctant to provide more arms they fear could fuel a war on the continent. And U.S. officials, in the run-up to the Feb. 24 invasion, said they didn’t plan to support Ukraine with arms for a protracted period.
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Before the invasion, weapons manufacturers weren’t geared up to make antitank and antiaircraft arms at a wartime pace. While the U.S. had 13,000 Stingers in its stockpile before the invasion, there were no plans to produce more en masse, U.S. officials said. Militaries in Europe that have given their Stingers and antitank missiles to Ukraine now want to refill depleted stocks, creating competition for new units rolling off the assembly line.
“Ready-made stocks are not inexhaustible,” said a defense contractor in Poland. “It isn’t the arsenal of democracy where refrigerator plants are also making airplanes. No. There is a very limited number of production facilities. You can maybe speed up some stuff, but it’s not like you can suddenly open up two or three new production lines.”
Now, as the warfare appears to emulate World War II, defense contractors are racing to ramp up the supplies of antiaircraft and antitank weaponry and ammunition. Central European defense ministers say they have set up a hotline into Ukraine, so that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s military chiefs can order former Soviet equipment from their stocks.
The Czech Republic has given Kyiv’s Defense Ministry a list of $500 million of gear in Czech warehouses, and says the U.S. has signaled its willingness to buy much of it, for onward donation to Ukraine. The items on the list range from ordinary machine gun ammunition to antiaircraft missiles capable of intercepting war planes at high altitudes, all of it ready to be delivered within four days of an order.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/weapons-fo ... 1648066417
It’s been relatively easy to donate arms from existing stocks. But new production takes time and is a much more expensive gift.
Defence ministries in donor countries need to plan on their arms being used by their own forces in a war against Russia or another enemy. They aren’t going to give away arms that they anticipate needing in the future. The US is only going to donate a fraction of its stocks.
