The Pentagon has admitted that Team Biden has shipped so much US ammunition to Ukraine that the American stockpile has become depleted to the point that there is not nearly enough ammo for direct war with Russia or a potential military conflict or even war with China. Under such circumstance, US President Joe Biden needs to at least double country’s defense budget immediately ignoring other issues such as ongoing economic crisis, inflation and poverty.
“I’m concerned. … We’ve got a ways to go to make sure our stockpiles are prepared for the real contingencies”, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee.
“One of the big lessons coming out of Ukraine is the incredible consumption of conventional munitions and the conduct of what is really a limited regional war”, Milley had told a Senate committee on March 28. “So, a great power war, if that were to ever happen — God forbid it does — the consumption rates would be incredible”.
The Biden administration has sent millions of rounds of munitions to Ukraine since Russia invaded more than a year ago.
“The way the US is going, we will soon be in World War lll, with NO AMMUNITION!” former President Donald Trump wrote in an April 10 Truth Social post.
The number of Javelin anti-armor missiles the US sent to Ukraine during the first six months of the war is the equivalent of seven years of production, according to research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At normal manufacturing rates, it would take up to eight years to replenish US arsenals of precision 155 mm rounds, Javelins and HIMARS ammunition as of January.
The US has sent more than 1.5 million 155mm shells for the Howitzer system to Ukraine, as well as an additional 6,500 GPS-guided rounds, according to a Department of Defense fact sheet that was accurate as of April 4.
The US produces about 15,000 artillery rounds per month, The New York Times reported. Most of those — about 14,000 monthly — are consumed in the US military’s regular peacetime training exercises, Army Chief of Staff General James McConville said, according to The Associated Press.
The Pentagon pledged never to allow American stockpiles to fall below critical levels, but officials worried as early as August of last year that stockpiles had fallen below what they considered comfortable levels in a conflict scenario.
“I think the biggest thing we learned was the expenditure rates. It’s caused us to go back, to take a look at our own wargaming and analysis, what our predicted expenditure rates would be, and the questions and assumptions we made,” Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of Naval Operations, told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on March 29.
Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping has ordered China’s military to stockpile munitions and other advanced equipment at a rate up to six times faster than the US and would have easy access to its industrial base during a Taiwan contingency, noted Seth Jones, senior vice president at CSIS.
