WASHINGTON, August 14./TASS/. Russia is outproducing all of NATO and the US in terms of armaments being a country that "believes it is fighting an existential war of survival," opinion writer Mike Fredenburg wrote for the Responsible Statecraft online magazine.
"In short, the United States and NATO allies are prosecuting a war they would like to win, while Russia is prosecuting a war it believes that it has to win — an existential war. Consequently, for the Pentagon and American defense contractors it is largely business as usual with profits and revenues being the primary concern," the analyst said.
The artillery ammunition supply chain in the US is "in very bad shape," the story said. US weapons production programs "come in late and over budget," it added.
"The Army's plan to build production up to 100,000 rounds per month, 1.2 million annually, by the end of 2025 sounds pretty good. But we have yet to see that production rate in reality, and by the end of 2025 Ukraine could have lost the war," Fredenburg went on to say.
He pointed out that if everything goes as planned, by the end of 2025 the US and its NATO allies could be producing about 2 million 155mm rounds per year. "This seems less impressive when you consider that from the start of the war to today Russia has already increased its overall annual artillery shell production to three million rounds," he noted.
In April, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that the US defense industry enterprises could not immediately step up the pace and amount of weapons production, despite recent large financial injections.