United States is Big-Time Loser in Ukraine Arms Race
The Obama Administration radically reoriented America’s military preparedness in 2012 by eliminating the US Army Industrial College that focused on domestic weapons procurement. By adopting the corporatist strategy of “Just-in-Time” and global procurement, the United States is suffering a humiliating loss in the Ukraine Arms Race.
United States expeditionary forces in World War 1 experienced a horrifically high 117,465 deaths and 205,690 wounded. After-action reviews blamed procurement preparedness failures on a lack of strategic leadership focus. The military launched the U.S. Army Industrial College in 1924 to maintain domestic resource competitiveness.
With 1,000 graduates by December 7, 1941, AIC strategists launched an industrial juggernaut in World War 2 that allowed America to spectacularly dominate military production, logistics, and supply to battle zones on four continents.
After almost a century of excellence, the Obama Administration eliminated the Army Industrial College independence by adopting multinational corporate Just-in-Time (JIT) and global sourcing for manufacturing workflow. The initiative claimed implementation would eliminate production waste, reduce inventory costs, and maximize use of space.
Vice President Joe Biden as the Administration’s Defense expert trumpeted the concept of globally sourced high-tech wonder weapons (“Wunderwaffe”) combined with Maneuver Warfare strategies that “shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a series of rapid, violent, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which he cannot cope.”
President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and the World Economic Forum went all-in for what Janusz Bugajski’s 2022 book: Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture described as the inevitable “decolonization, de-occupation, decentralization, de-Putinization, denazification, and de-militarization of Russia” that would atomize the Russian Federation into “41 independent, free, developed and successful state instead of one crazy Empire by 2024.”
The movements’ quarterback in 2014 was Victoria Nuland, who got her rookie start in Democrat President Clinton’s Administration working for the Chief of Staff for Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott (Bill’s roommate in college). Nuland leaped up the State Department bureaucracy to Deputy Director for Former Soviet Union Affairs.
During Republican President George W. Bush’s Administration, she served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor to during the Iraq War where she played a driving force for U.S. foreign policy implementation. Promoted in President Bush’s second term to U.S. Ambassador to NATO, she rallied for European force contribution for the multiple-decade occupation of Afghanistan.
Nuland became President Obama’s Spokes-person for the U.S. State Department, then European and Eurasian Affairs Assistant Secretary of State. Nuland took full credit for her pivotal role expanding NATO member-ship into former Soviet Union republics, and for birthing what was marketed as the 2014 Ukrainian “Revolution of Dignity,” that the rest of the world called the “Maidan” coup against a democratically elected government. Nuland infamously handed out cookies to revolutionaries in the burnt rubble of Kiev.
Nuland refused to serve in the Trump Administration, taking leadership positions in the National Endowment for Democracy, Brookings Institute, Center for a New American Security and Yale University so she could publicly disparage the Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for “gutting” the State Department.
Nuland was back in the Biden Administration Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Acting Deputy Secretary of State, where she was the chief architect for baiting the Russians into a military confrontation over Crimea and the Donbass.
US planners went all-in for Ukraine against Russia by supplying state-of-the-arts missiles, drones, tanks, and artillery systems for a maneuver warfare blitz along a 600 mile front. American, NATO, South Korean and Israeli ammo depots were drained for what was heralded to be a counteroffensive blitz that would split the land bridge between Donbass and Crimea in weeks. Bipartisan Congressional leaders promised liberation of the breakaway territories would humiliate Russian President Putin and lead to another expansion of NATO nations.
But Western planners paid little attention to the fact that Russia started the war in 2022 producing 3 times the cannons and artillery shells as the West. Russia tripled its heavy shell production by 2024 to about 250,000 heavy artillery shells per month, or about 3 million a year. That compares to the US and NATO combined capacity in 2024 of only 100,000 shells per month, or about 1.2 million shells annually.
With Russian forces currently firing about 10,000 shells a day, Ukraine can only answer with less than 2,000 shells a day. The US military hopes to double domestic artillery shell production by the end of 2025 to 100,000 artillery rounds per month. But that is only 40% of the Russia’s current monthly output that is set to again triple by 2025.
NATO officials recently told CNN. “The outcome in Ukraine depends on how each side is equipped to conduct this war.” Russia is running artillery factories “24/7” on rotating 12-hour shifts. Russia also imported at least 300,000 artillery shells from Iran last year and 6,700 ocean containers from North Korea carrying millions of artillery shells.
Observers say Russia is consistently firing 10,000 shells a day along the 600-mile front, which is five times the Ukrainian goal of being able to fire just 2,000 shells a day. NATO intelligence officials admit the Russian shell ratio dominance is worse in some places.
Russia had been mostly on defense, using artillery and small drones to kill and maim thousands of Ukrainians each day. But Russia recently switched to maneuver warfare to take the fortress city of Adiivka in less than a week. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov blamed the rapid loss on “shell hunger” causing manpower losses.
The Rand Corporation military think tank reported that US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley briefed President Joe Biden in October 2021 on the run-up to the war. General Milley emphasized that the top US interests were avoiding a “kinetic conflict” with Russia and to “contain war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine.”
President Biden promised at the start of fighting to supply Ukrainian heroes with right weapons to bleed Russia on the battlefield, while inflicting “a crushing blow” from US-led financial sanctions and export bans to quickly collapse the Russian economy.
With the conflict stretching into its third year, it is the Russians that are winning the Ukrainian Arms Race. Rather than collapse, Russia is expected to grow one-third faster than the US and its NATO allies Germany, France and the United Kingdom this year.