Because EU states have a big ammunition problem

22 March 20231 year ago babelfish

The EU has approved two €1 billion proposals to speed up immediate shipments to Ukraine and incentivize countries to enter into joint contracts for the purchase of artillery. But production problems, including the shortage of materials, risk frustrating the European intent. Facts, numbers, rumors and insights

In terms of the EU's plan to supply 2 billion euros of ammunition to Ukraine, it may not be easy to pass from words to deeds.

Eighteen EU member countries on Monday initialed the European Defense Agency's (EDA) project agreement for the procurement of ammunition to be sent to Ukraine and replenish member states' national stockpiles.

At the moment, Italy is not among the signed countries. Our country will do so with separate signatures because the defense minister, Guido Crosetto, was unable to take part in the Council.

According to rumors collected by Start Magazine in qualified circles following the dossier, Italy will sign but will send the ammunition it already possesses. In fact, our country, like others, has conventional resources at a flicker. On the contrary, other countries have an even greater deficit in being able to make ammunition available to the EU (even if it is neither talked about nor written about). And not just ammunition. In words they are all good but the effectiveness – for example of tanks – is well below capacity.

In addition, scarce supplies of gunpowder and TNT will delay the shift to "large-scale war production," according to defense industry representatives cited by the Financial Times .

All the details.

THE EU PLAN FOR THE JOINT SUPPLY OF AMMUNITION TO UKRAINE

The plan involves the use of 2 billion euros from a joint fund, the European Peace Facility (EPF), and comes in response to requests from Kiev for 155mm shells and other artillery supplies required by Ukraine to defend against Russian offensive.

Therefore, according to the plan agreed in Brussels, 1 billion euros will be used for the immediate delivery of ammunition from existing stocks or already approved orders. Another one billion euros will be used to underwrite joint purchases of new ammunition for Ukraine until the end of September.

WAITING FOR CROSETTO'S SIGNATURE

"Italy does not appear among the signatories for now simply because Minister Crosetto was not present at the Council, who will sign the project with separate signatures" the agencies wrote on Monday.

An analyst in the sector comments to Startmag : “Based on the assumption that we are in a bad way with 155 ammunition and we agree, why shouldn't we join collective purchases that would allow us to save on a single contract? Among other things, this program on the one hand serves to speed up the procedures for the purchase of 155 ammunition for Ukraine but on the other it serves to replenish the heavily affected stocks of the EU countries as well as lay the foundations for purchases of other types of ammunition , along the lines of what is already happening at NATO level (NASPA)".

Furthermore, continues the analyst who requested anonymity, "given that we have not produced that ammunition for some time or if we do it is the precision guided one that is not part of this agreement, I cannot see any reason to slow down our participation: lack of money? I repeat, the expenditure must be divided into 19 countries for which the disbursement would not be dramatic; lack of industrial participation? It could be there but it would be compensated by collective purchases of other ammunition produced by us; political reasons? It may be okay but it seems to me that the Government has managed to bring the Commission to its positions, on the subject of immigration, the Mes and above all the Funds for strategic works ".

“UNREALISTIC PLAN” FOR EU AMMUNITION FOR UKRAINE?

So Italy will soon formally join the 18 countries that have joined the EDA plan for the joint purchase of ammunition to help Ukraine and replenish national stocks. But beyond the intentions of EU countries, there are practical obstacles along the way.

According to Gianandrea Gaiani, director of Analysis of Defense , "the knot of artillery ammunition that Europe would like to supply to Kiev seems to clash with the limits of the armed forces and of the western and in particular European defense industry".

“In Brussels it is believed that the first point can be achieved quickly even if probably only the statements of politicians are taken into account, not those of military leaders. The quantity of artillery ammunition (or of other types) available to the individual armies is obviously secret but in various European nations journalistic revelations as well as reports and parliamentary questions have highlighted large shortages and fire autonomy in a conflict of similar intensity to that in place in Ukraine limited to a few days” , underlined Gaiani.

Germano Dottori ( Limes ' scientific adviser) had also recently highlighted in last October's issue of Limes that "In view of a major impact, however, ammunition stocks would need to be re-evaluated: in March, Credendino had announced that since June the embarked anti-aircraft missiles would no longer be operational. It will take time to replace them."

ASSESSMENT OF THE INCREASE OF AMMUNITION PRODUCTION IN ITALY

On the other hand, for some time now, our country has been considering increasing the production of ammunition to meet the demands of Kiev. As the agencies reported at the end of February, Italy is preparing to prepare the new three-year technical-industrial defense plan. The conflict in Eastern Europe will inevitably affect the document.

In Italy, the increase in production is already underway due to the streamlining of the lines and the expansion of some departments due to the investments made. And a further increase envisaged by the new three-year plan from 2024, which will be prepared in the coming months, would certainly invest various entities connected to the Defense Industries Agency. Like the military land munitions plant in Baiano di Spoleto, which deals with medium or large caliber munitions and also missile assembly.

LIMITED STOCKS

Going back to the Brussels plan, the director of GaranziaDifesa remarks that "it seems illusory to believe that the defense leaders of European countries are ready today to get rid of the limited stocks of 155 mm ammunition to supply them to Ukraine with the remote hope of being able to fill the arsenals in an unspecified future. Indeed, the EU believes that joint orders for such ammunition could optimistically begin to be contractualized to industry starting from the end of May”.

Kiev said it needed 350,000 shells a month to meet the onslaught from Moscow and enable its troops to launch new counter-offensives later this year. "It appears evident that the million shells that European industry could perhaps produce in several years for the Ukrainians would only be enough for 4 months if the war were to maintain its current pace" comments Gianandrea Gaiani.

LACK OF EXPLOSIVES

Moreover, as the Financial Times notes, Europe's drive to produce weapons for Ukraine has so far been hampered by a shortage of explosives, which insiders fear will delay efforts to ramp up production of shells by up to three years. Low supplies of gunpowder, plastic explosives and TNT have left the industry unable to quickly fulfill expected EU orders for Ukraine, no matter how much money is invested, according to officials and manufacturers.

Supply chain constraints underscore how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has cast a bad light on Europe's inadequate arms stockpiles and weak domestic production capacity, battered by decades of underinvestment, the London paper remarked. The fundamental problem is that the European defense industry is not in good shape for large-scale war production,” a German official told the FT .

THE RAW MATERIALS ISSUE

“It is very difficult to increase the production of artillery ammunition, especially heavy and large-caliber ammunition, in a short time,” Jiří Hynek, president of the Defense and Security Industry Association of the Czech Republic told the Financial Times . “A new artillery factory is very simple, but how to make more artillery shells without raw materials? Defense industry officials say Europe has a limited supply of explosives such as gunpowder, TNT and nitrocellulose, needed to make shells. “The bottlenecks to our capacity are mainly [explosive] powders, which are in short supply across Europe,” said one.

FIND NEW SUPPLY SOURCES

Finally, even in our country, Gianclaudio Torlizzi, adviser to the Italian Ministry of Defence, highlighted during the conference “Looking beyond. Challenges and experiences to imagine the future of the Defense ecosystem” organized by the Luiss School of Government, Mbda and ABProject that “the main critical issues today for the defense industry are the supply chains and the lack of raw materials”.

“Already with the pandemic we had understood the criticality inherent in having relocated too much in recent times. The country must try to open autonomous supply channels, even without waiting for a common European response,” Torlizzi exhorted. Remaining within the European framework, each country should manage somewhat independently to guarantee supply chains, reasoning from the point of view of national sovereignty, concluded the adviser and analyst.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/ue-munizioni-ucraina/ on Wed, 22 Mar 2023 07:31:54 +0000.