Published on March 1, 2024 06:00
Reading time: 5 mins
A worker during the painting and final inspection phase of a grenade at the Rheinmetall factory in Unterlüss, Germany, June 6, 2023. (ACTION PRESS/SHUTTERSTOCK/SIPA)
Despite an increase in production at European defense factories by 20-30% in less than a year, deliveries of Western ammunition to Kiev will not be able to keep up with the speed of deliveries from Moscow to the Russian army in 2024, according to the Estonian Ministry of Defense.
“Of a million shells that the European Union promised us, not 50%, but unfortunately 30% were delivered,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday, February 26. As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, Kiev is once again alerting its European allies to repeated delays in promised ammunition shipments. The Twenty-Seven had committed in spring 2023 to deliver one million ammunition (mainly 152 and 155 millimeter grenades) by the end of March. This promise, which aroused great hopes at the time of its announcement, today appears to be unfulfillable, according to the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell. At the end of January, the diplomat admitted that only 52% of ammunition was delivered to Kiev.
This situation is forcing Ukrainian artillery to ration its fire, the White House reported in mid-February, while on the other side of the front Moscow is exposing its opponents to a deluge of fire. According to Estonian Defense Ministry estimates, the Russians fired up to 60,000 shells per day in the first phase of the war, in spring 2022. This rate of consumption declined, reaching between 10,000 and 15,000 shells per day in the second half of 2023, a figure well above the 5,000 to 8,000 shells used on the Ukrainian side. In this high-intensity war, the Russian army can count on its industry, which has multiplied its means of production. According to Ukrainian intelligence sources cited by the Kyiv Post, Russia fired nearly two million shells from its factories in 2023, while European industry is struggling to keep up.
European industry is not prepared for war
In this industrial competition between the Twenty-Seven and Russia, Moscow is at the forefront. There are a limited number of defense companies in the European Union that are not designed to supply an army engaged in high-intensity conflict. “For thirty years, European countries bought fewer than 20,000 shells per year,” says Léo Péria-Peigné, a specialist in weapons issues at the French Institute for International Relations (Ifri). “Before the conflict began, France was producing 20,000 155 mm grenades per year,” explains Cédric Perrin, LR Senator for the Territoire de Belfort and chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces Committee in the Senate. This annual production would meet the needs of the Ukrainian army for a period of just four days of combat.
European industrial capacities “were reduced at the end of the 1990s to the actual needs of the armies (…), which were often involved in asymmetrical conflicts abroad”, characterized by low ammunition consumption, emphasized Gesine Weber, researcher at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) think tank in Paris. “The industry adapted to a scenario where requirements were far removed from what is required in high-intensity warfare,” she continues. As a result, European industries “have been likened to artisanal factories producing a small number of products,” according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IIES).
Supply chains under pressure
According to Gesine Weber, it takes time to awaken and transform a shrunken production system. “European industry is not prepared to deliver such a mass of ammunition or heavy weapons in such a short time,” she states. Some companies are managing to increase the pace, such as the German group Rheinmetall, the largest European manufacturer of artillery and tank ammunition, which announced at the beginning of February that it would build a new factory on its Unterlüss site in Lower Saxony. The company wants to increase its production tenfold to reach the threshold of 700,000 shells manufactured. In France, in Bourges (Cher), the Nexter factory, a subsidiary of the German-French concern KNDS, which produces Caesar cannons for the Ukrainian front, has stopped and accelerated its production rate, so that the processing of a tube from nine to six months was shortened.
This transition represents a gigantic project in terms of “machines, qualified personnel” but also the amount of raw materials. Certain vital materials that were in abundance before the conflict are becoming rarer. The multiplication of manufacturers' requirements quickly led to a “bottleneck,” explains Léo Péria-Peigné. Supply chains are not designed to handle such demand. “This applies in particular to powders, acids, explosives or potash,” explains the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces Committee. Explosia, Europe's largest supplier of explosives, has been operating at full capacity since the start of the Russian invasion. However, the Czech company does not plan to increase its production before 2026, specifies the American daily The Financial Times. These bottlenecks are restricting European weapons manufacturers and extending production times. “Factories are not exploiting their full potential,” explains the Ifri specialist. Some groups “might work 100% of the time, but [sans matières premières] they wouldn’t be able to deliver the production.”
Manufacturers are waiting for firm orders
Despite these obstacles, Europe has managed to increase its production rate by 20 to 30% in less than a year, according to Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market. An encouraging achievement, but inadequate. “The deliveries of Western ammunition” to Kiev in 2024 will not be enough “to keep up with the pace of deliveries (…) for the Russian armed forces,” emphasize analysts from the Estonian Ministry of Defense. European manufacturers would also be reluctant to open new production lines without long-term guarantees or transparent contracts. “Before you produce and deliver, you need orders,” explains Senator Cédric Perrin.
Asked about this issue in the Senate on November 8, 2023, the General Delegate for Armaments, Emmanuel Chiva, regretted the lack of initiatives of some French industrialists who “have made a habit of not moving until there is a contract for them is not assigned” “When Nexter or MBDA tell me that they are not sure whether they will sell their rockets, I tell them that in reality, unfortunately, there are possibilities. (…) It is possible to make investments,” says the senior French officials. The increase in credits for ammunition under the Military Programming Law (LPM) would be a guarantee of visibility for manufacturers. “With the 16 billion ammunition announced in LPM, I think that manufacturers can stock up,” estimates the DGA- Boss.