Russia and Ukraine are deploying artillery shells and other weapons and ammunition at a rate not seen since the Korean War, officials said, and will need to restock during the long winter ahead. Russia fires 20,000 artillery rounds a day, a senior US defense official estimated, while Ukraine fires between 4,000 and 7,000 rounds daily.
The Ukrainians are quickly burning through their stockpile of artillery shells and other munitions, including their air defense systems.
“Ukraine still needs a significant amount of artillery in the future,” the official said. “The consumption rates in this war are very high.” Ukraine has not lost a single HIMARS system, the official said. The US provided the Ukrainians with 18 high-mobility multiple missile launchers.
Russia is also running low on artillery and other equipment, according to a Western and US official. Russia has lost much of its equipment and weapons, including attack helicopters, and is using more of its long-range munitions to hit targets, which could indicate it is running through other stockpiles, a Western official said. Russian reservists and conscripts are even arriving on the front lines without weapons in some cases, the officials said.
Speaking at the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said Russia has burned through a lot of equipment, ammunition and men. Miley said Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than 100,000 dead or wounded since the war began.
Miley said the human misery brought about by the Russian invasion “must stop.” The two sides must recognize that victory is not possible through military means, he argued, and come to a negotiating table. He called the likely slower pace of business in Ukraine this winter a “window of opportunity” for negotiations. Fighting will continue in the cold, but the situation will be “relatively static,” he said.
For months, U.S. defense and military officials have said a key reason Ukraine has been successfully defending itself against Russia is that it has kept the airspace over Ukraine contested since the invasion began. Some officials believe that Russia’s inability to quickly take over the country is partly because contested airspace has kept many advanced Russian aircraft grounded or restricted in Russian skies. But Ukraine needs more air defense systems, officials said, so it has a comprehensive network that can defend from drones to missiles that fly at various altitudes and distances.
Without enough air defense munitions and integrated air defense systems, air superiority in Ukraine is at risk, officials said. Russia has not been able to make much use of its considerable air power since the invasion, but if it starts to use it, it could turn the tide of the war and change the nature of the fighting. Ukraine does not have a significant air force, so it needs to make sure it can make it dangerous for the Russians to fly.
The US and allies have stepped up efforts to get Ukraine more systems and munitions, including resupplying Ukraine’s Soviet-era air defenses. “Work is ongoing to understand how much it can be produced and how quickly, not only for US systems, but for other systems as well,” a defense official said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other U.S. officials have been pressing allies and scouring warehouses around the world to keep Ukraine supplied, and some have increased.
At a meeting of more than 50 allies in Brussels last month, defense leaders from around the world agreed that air defense was an urgent priority for Ukraine and met for hours to find ways for Ukraine to acquire both new systems and munitions for the old soviet era systems. The US on Tuesday delivered the first shipment of short-to-medium-range air defense systems called NASAMs, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who tweeted that the Aspide air defense systems had also arrived and thanked partners in Spain, Norway and the USA.
