The Pentagon has launched a review of its weapons inventories, the top US military official said, hinting that Washington is preparing to increase defense spending amid concerns about the Ukraine war’s impact on ammunition supplies.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said US planners were forced to reconsider their assumptions as 20th-century ground warfare tactics changed after two decades of doctrinal insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan was, reappeared.
“One of the lessons of this war is the very high rates of consumption of conventional ammunition, and we are re-examining our own stockpiles and our own plans to make sure we got it right,” Milley said in an interview with the Financial Times.
“We try to do the analysis in such a way that we can then estimate what we think the true requirement would be. And then we have to include that in the budget,” he added. “Ammunition is very expensive.”
The review could result in an $817 billion increase in the military’s annual budget. Milley’s comments follow a high-profile tour of allied capitals last week by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who repeatedly urged the West to increase its arms supplies. Ukraine has received more than $29 billion in arms and defense spending from Washington since the conflict began.
The head of the joint chiefs was in Brussels this week, meeting with other Kiev-allied countries to coordinate massive amounts of deadly aid ahead of a planned Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring.
Milley’s comments, a week before the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reflect a broader debate among Western allies about the possibility of the war dragging on indefinitely.
The amount of ammunition needed by the conflict has exposed vulnerabilities in the US defense industry, which is trying to move away from peacetime production levels while being plagued by pandemic-related shortages of parts and labor.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned this week that Ukraine is consuming ammunition at a rate “several times” what the alliance countries can produce, straining its defense industry.
Ukrainian forces are estimated to fire more than 5,000 artillery shells a day, while Russia uses an estimated four times that amount when attempting to seize areas to the east.
Kiev is planning a counter-offensive that will rely on multi-billion dollar Western weaponry, including main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and heavy artillery.
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A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, found that the US defense industry’s grassroots was “not adequately prepared for the security environment.” It also said that the munitions requirements of another conflict, such as a cross-strait war with China, would likely exceed Pentagon supplies.
But Mark Cancian, a senior adviser to CSIS’s international security program, said he’s confident the Pentagon is taking steps to address any preparedness deficiencies. He added that stock levels are sufficient for now.
“I’m moderately concerned but optimistic that we’re making the fixes we need,” he said. Milley was one of Washington’s most prominent supporters of a negotiated settlement between Kiev and Moscow. Although he did not link the depletion of supplies to his support for peace talks, he said he still believed the war would end at the negotiating table and neither side was likely to achieve their military goals.
“It will be almost impossible for the Russians to achieve their political goals by military means. It is unlikely that Russia will overrun Ukraine. It’s just not going to happen,” Milley said.
“It’s also very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to expel the Russians from every inch of Russian-held Ukraine,” he added. “That’s not to say it can’t happen. . . But it is extraordinarily difficult. And it would essentially require the collapse of the Russian military.”
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When asked if the moment of diplomacy between Moscow and Kyiv was over, Milley said: “We’re still weeks away from the start of spring, but it’s a rolling window. There are always opportunities.”
However, he said both sides were “pretty hard on their goals” and unwilling to negotiate.
Milley said the conflict reflected a lesson from World War II that aggression must be stopped “with firmness, deterrence and military might,” although he noted the stakes were higher with Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
“This particular case is about a large country that is nuclear armed,” he said. “So you have to be very, very aware of the escalation. At the same time, you must uphold the principles for which the United Nations was founded and on which the international order is founded.”