The scene looks almost lunar. Drone videos covering more than a thousand miles of the Ukrainian front line show great craters of earth, scooped from the ground by unseen barrages.
Artillery has dominated the war in Ukraine. But nearly 18 months in, a significant gap still remains between the shells Ukraine wants and how fast European and American factories can supply them. And concerns are rising that Europe’s patchwork of arms manufacturers is ill-suited to meet these needs.
Away from the front, Ukraine’s war has become a numbers game: who can acquire, make and resupply more tanks, bullets, and, most of all, artillery shells.
Amid their counteroffensive, Ukrainian guns are firing up to 6,000 rounds daily, Ukrainian MP Oleksandra Ustinova told CNN, but the military wants to shoot more than 10,000. Even that is a fraction of the 60,000 shells that Russia was using at the peak of its barrages this year, per an Estonian and Ukrainian government analysis.
All in all, Kyiv needs some 1.5 million artillery shells annually, according to the CEO of one of Europe’s largest arms manufacturers, Rheinmetall.
By July, the US had supplied more than 2 million artillery rounds to Ukraine since the 2022 invasion, the Pentagon said. The European Union has supplied at least a quarter of million this year, in addition to bilateral donations directly between individual member states and Ukraine. The United Kingdom, too, has also donated ammunition.
But in February 2023, Europe-wide production of artillery ammunition had a maximum capacity of 300,000 shells annually, Estonian defense officials estimated. The best-case scenario of an increase to making 2.1 million shells annually is still years away from being realized.
With European stocks depleted and existing production lines overwhelmed, ammunition buyers are keen to get their hands on whatever’s available. In an interview with CNN, the CEO of shell casing manufacturer Europlasma described the buyers’ message as: “We’ll take all you can make.”
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