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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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The US is already making tons of weapons. The US is the world's largest arms exporter, responsible for 37% of the world arms trade and delivering weapons to 96 different countries since 2016. The civilian sector makes almost 10 million firearms per year. Military production is also quite high, since equipment does wear out, and the military is constantly replacing old equipment with upgraded versions. Sending 20 MLRS systems to Ukraine was seen as a big deal, but the US makes 9,000 rockets for those launchers every year, and those rockets are soon to be obsoleted by the ER GMLRS.

Counterpoint.

In the U.S. weapons industry, the normal production level for artillery rounds for the 155 millimeter howitzer — a long-range heavy artillery weapon currently used on the battlefields of Ukraine — is about 30,000 rounds per year in peacetime.

The Ukrainian soldiers fighting invading Russian forces go through that amount in roughly two weeks.

That’s according to Dave Des Roches, an associate professor and senior military fellow at the U.S. National Defense University. And he’s worried.

Even Russia is probably getting low on ammunition and they were making far, far more per year and stockpiling in anticipation of a conflict.

US never planned for something like this:

Just to state it another way and make sure it sinks in - the US has already provided as many 155mm shells to Ukraine as it produces in SIX YEARS.

Russia - according to western defense officials - have fired as many shells over 1-2 day periods as the US produces all year.

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