The shortage of ammunition in the United States and allies arose due to the weakness of the military-industrial base - expert

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The current shortage of missiles and ammunition in the United States is a consequence not of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but of the structural weakness of the military-industrial base of the United States and its allies. — Ukrinform.

The shortage of ammunition in the United States and allies arose due to the weakness of the military-industrial base - expert

Defense expert, freelance senior researcher at the Hudson Institute Gian Kasapoglu writes in an article for The National Interest, Ukrinform reports.

The expert emphasizes that modern wars are able to absorb high-precision ammunition faster than democratic countries have time to produce them.

"Today, one can often hear the opinion that the empty arsenals of the American armed forces are a consequence of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. However, it would be more accurate to say that these conflicts exposed the structural weakness of the US armed forces and their allies. Therefore, putting the blame on modern US or European military operations is like confusing smoke with fire, turning the argument in favor of increased deterrence into an argument in favor of a strategic retreat, ”he is convinced Kasapoglu.

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He refers to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), according to which the transfer of weapons to Ukraine was only a partial factor in the reduction of American stocks important for potential conflicts in The Middle East and the Western Pacific. Of the 102 categories of equipment transferred to Ukraine, only four had a significant match with the corresponding needs: Patriot, ATACMS, HARM and Stinger.

"The wars in the post-Soviet space and the Middle East caused real costs, but they did not create a system that was unable to withstand them," the author of the article emphasizes.

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“The West did not face a shortage of missiles and interceptors because it fought too many wars. He faced it because for three decades he had planned as if a big war had become impossible,” Kasapoglu notes.

The expert linksthe reasons for the current situation with the strategic approaches formed after the end of the Cold War. He recalls that in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, the parties stated that they no longer considered each other adversaries, and the 2003 European Security Strategy assessed large-scale aggression against a member state as unlikely.