Not Only Is Ukraine Out of Ammunition, So Is the United States!

The Ukrainian armed forces are literally running out of ammunition. Of course, ammunition comes in many forms but the critical form for this war is the 155mm artillery shell.

Drones, cruise missiles, and some anti-missile systems are in use, but Ukraine has no anti-aircraft capacity and Russia has been able to shoot down most Ukrainian drones and to destroy the U.S.-supplied Patriot missile batteries (which cost $1 billion each and are getting blown-up by the Russians).

On the front lines, this is an artillery war and 155mm shells are the coin of the realm. Ukraine wasn’t initially worried about running low because they counted on the U.S. to keep them re-supplied. Now we learn that the U.S. is out of 155mm shells. We didn’t learn this from leaked intelligence.

Joe Biden himself blurted it out in a press conference (although with Biden you never know if it was a planned statement or just more evidence of his cognitive decline).

Some armchair generals say, “No problem, just manufacture more!” What they don’t realize is that U.S. defense contractors shut down many assembly lines for these and other weapons years ago. Making more ammunition is not like throwing a switch.

It can take a year or more to re-tool the factories and start new production. Maybe if the Joint Chiefs of Staff had focused more on arsenals and less on pronouns and other woke programs, we would not be in this situation. But here we are.

The depleted U.S. arsenals not only hurt Ukraine’s war efforts, but it also weakens U.S. national security because we’re in no position to exert military force elsewhere, including the defense of Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.

This article describes the sad, dangerous situation in detail. The depletion of U.S. arsenals has consequences beyond Ukraine and Taiwan. The U.S. is out of regular 155mm shells, but it does have a supply of old 155mm cluster munitions that it is supplying to Ukraine.

Some of these cluster bombs have been in storage for 20 years and have high “dud” rates where the bomblets inside the cluster shell don’t explode when used. Years later, the bomblets are still scattered around and are picked up by children who are killed and maimed when the bombs detonate.

Cluster bombs are outlawed by an international treaty signed by over 120 countries, but the U.S. is not a signatory and Biden is handing them over to Ukraine where they are now being used.

The depleted arsenal situation was foreseeable and is pathetic and inexcusable. That’s what we’ve come to expect from the Biden regime.

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