Heavy and unexpected use of artillery is depleting global stockpiles.
Since World War II, modern combat doctrine worldwide has emphasized wars of speed, maneuvers and mobility. Since the pioneering German blitzkriegs of 1939 and 1940, the notion of static battle lines, seen in the First World War, has been widely regarded as obsolete. Surprisingly, the current war in Ukraine has developed in a manner that looks very similar to the trench warfare of World War I.
A century ago, that war saw very high volumes of artillery fire—so much so that artillery shortages were a clinical problem in 1916. And today, as then, Ukrainian and Russian forces are looking for sources worldwide to maintain the very high rates of artillery fire common in this war phase.
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Episode Transcript:
We’ve all seen those grainy, black and white films from World War I. Miles of trenches, with German and Allied lines separated by a shell-scarred and treeless no man’s land.
World War I was dominated by then-new technologies—technologies which the then-current combat doctrine had not evolved to accommodate. The airplane, poison gas and the machine gun are noteworthy, but just as important was the advent of rapid firing, breech loading artillery pieces that allowed both attacking and defending forces to inflict huge casualties on troops caught in the open. The result was relatively static trench warfare with troops well dug in avoid that artillery fire.
And that fire was massive. 1.5 billion shells were fired in World War I on the Western front alone. From a mass production standpoint, the combatant nations were not prepared for artillery ammunition expenditures at this rate, and in 1915 a political crisis erupted in Britain that was called the “shell scandal.” This crisis caused the government of the day to fall. In response, the British created a new Ministry of Munitions, which suspended trade unions and corporate profits in the arms industry, and critically, mandated the employment of women on a large scale to increase production.
Artillery shells then and now were primarily steel turnings, and the then-numerous railway locomotive shops provided the necessary machine tools and expertise to ramp up production. By the end of 1915, British railway companies were making between 1,000 and 5,000 6-inc- high explosive shells per week.
Fast-forward to 2023, and the war situation in Ukraine looks surprisingly similar to that of 1916. Extensive trenches and two armies dug in, with limited mobility. And also like 1916, massive artillery fire from both sides, rapidly depleting existing stockpiles of artillery ammunition.
Why? Most modern war doctrine supposes that the current state-of-the-art in military technology would make warfare mobile, volatile and fast-paced, like the German blitzkriegs of World War II. What was not expected was trench warfare and set-piece artillery duels—and artillery ammunition quantities were designed to reflect this doctrine of high-mobility warfare.
The result is rapidly depleting stockpiles among European nations and the United States, as well as Russian stocks dwindling to the point where that nation is allegedly purchasing shells from North Korea, among other sources.
In the U.S., production is ramping beyond the current 14,000 shells per month rate for the popular 155 mm Howitzer round, up to 20,000 per month by the spring and potentially 90,000 by 2025. TIME magazine reports that this will require $1.9 billion in spending this year alone for the production ramp.
The 155 mm round will likely be critical. Existing Ukrainian Soviet-era equipment, as well as captured guns, are rapidly running out of ammunition and there are no readily available quantities of shells. Multiple nations have sent small numbers of various artillery systems, both old and self-propelled, to Ukraine. But according to Center for Strategic and International Studies senior advisor Mark Cancian, and military researcher James Anderson, the most readily available artillery system in numbers is the 1990s era towed M198 Howitzer.
Estimates of the number of these systems that could be sent to Ukraine without degrading U.S. military capability varies from a minimum of 332 as many as 600. A large donation of these units to Ukraine would standardize Ukrainian training and logistics, but would require a rapid ramp-up of 155 mm ammunition production.
The Pentagon’s predicted increase in 155mm production from 14,000 units per month to 20,000 may be possible with process optimization and by adding personnel to existing operations, but the fourfold increase desired by 2025 will require new lines and new facilities.
Will the Ukrainian War continue to 2025? Even if it doesn’t, one outcome of this conflict is a fundamental change in the way armies think about artillery going forward. What’s old is new, and just like in World War I, a dramatic increase in ammunition manufacturing capability is likely for years to come.
