Is the West Running out of Weapons for Ukraine?

Questions over whether the West could run out of weapons to send Ukraine have been asked since the war began, but how real a risk is it? Will Ukraine's demand eventually exceed the West's supply? And if it does happen, what can actually be done about it?

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[GrzegorzMikos]

West, especially USA “Running out of weapons”
Yeah, right.

[sirsurnamethefirstofhisnam]

Russia is already relying on importing Belarusian tanks and Iranian drones because they’re sorely lacking right now and have few supportive allies worldwide. Russia will run out of weapons long before the entirety of nato and other Ukrainian allies do.

[jailbreak]

Manufacturing has increased in the US. They have production capability built into their contracts, this is a dream for US defense contractors. I'm sure we're nowhere near the point of resource shortages.

[danielf.]

Do you actually think that russia can outmanufacture the entire west lmao?

[liamvarin]

Well there's a huge military industrial complex here in the US.. I highly doubt we would be running out or EVER run out for that matter. It'll all be fine we will keep supporting Ukraine no matter what. 🇺🇸🇺🇦

[tobiasglendenning]

Another part of this is that NATO is focusing on clearing its stockpiles rather than the equipment its armies are using. They still have sufficient equipment, just not much spare equipment.
I think that it is actually worthwhile to start cutting into our own militaries' equipment since a) a Ukrainian victory will likely make Russia less likely to try its hand at futher expansion thus making it less likely for NATO to need to this whole song and dance again. b) NATO is at peace right now, we can afford to take up long term contracts with arms companies while Ukraine needs short term demand. c) It gives NATO an opportunity to re-evaluate its armies both individually and collectively, what equipment they need, the structures of those armies, the purposes of these armies and the economic structures for funding them. d) the more equipment Ukraine gets, the quicker the peace and thus the more likely to prevent futher humanitarian disaster.

[henriquemachado]

War is about lasting the longest with what you have. Russia has like, five friends, and they're the most powerful one. Ukraine has almost the whole world on their side. Who do you think has the most stockpile to last this War?

[MavwolfPrime]

In all fairness we produced these dump trunk loads of weapons and munitions to combat the soviet threat during the cold War, so they are actually serving their purpose.

[cosmedelustrac]

The US running out of weapons with such a huge budget alocated just to the military. I have a hard time believing that.

[thiagoleobons]

Tô quote my favorite YouTuber covering the war:
"Saying the US is running out of weapons because it has a 30% lower stock of Stingers and Javelins is saying that you're going to have to close the bar because you're low on Bud Light"
-Perun

[cgt]

Well as Alternate History Hub said : "Wars are expensive"

[XMysticHerox]

The Mars IIs send by Germany are not "older" than the HIMARS. They are newer actually. The HIMARS is just a variant mounted on a truck instead of a tracked chassis. Mars IIs are a very recently modernized version of the M270.

[autarchprinceps]

Obviously, an actual conflict will require more production than the peace time replacement rate for training. This has never not been the case.
Premade stockpiles might be used, though I doubt it, and even that at best to the extend that western militaries want to empty theirs, never completely, but the west can always turn on production. Shells in particular don't take all that long to make. They also have loads of weapon categories they haven't even delivered any of. There are thousands of Leopard 2 on storage for example. And there are also loads of western countries who haven't done nearly as much as the US, Germany or the eastern European nations with first hand experience, let alone the likes of South Korea or Japan. Heck if the West wanted, they could simply finance them or Turkey or the likes to make weapons for them, even if their own production capacity were maxed out, which it definitively isn't yet.
Compare it to wars that countries were actively involved in, and we have also seen very little full scale industrial reorganisation. When it was required many nations fully converted factories, completely removed certain supplying nations or regions from their list due to blockades, etc. The west has yet to do any of that, let alone issuing war bonds or actively mobilising work forces. There is a lot of levels of escalation left on just a production front.
Assuming a worldwide recession and some layoffs are possible, spending money on wholy domestic industries just to keep people employed is hardly a new strategy. If they spend it on shell production for Ukraine rather than paying people to replace their cars or the likes, it will still have the same effect. And the thing about those cheap and good old fashioned weapons is, that unlike composite stealth planes or the likes, you don't exactly need specialised know how to make unguided shells. In WW1 & 2 they put untrained, previously never employed housewifes on newly build factories.

On a different note though, Poland also ordered 220 HIMARS platforms compared to the 16 currently delivered to Ukraine. The first should be delivered in 2023 already. They will all need some stockpile of rockets. In general all the western powers have announced significant upgrade programms and in general upping their own defence spending, and they will mostly want to fill up on or replace with more modern systems any stockpile that has been given to Ukraine. I doubt any western nation will actively try to build up significant production of soviet era equipment or even ammunition, but for the rest even non-Ukraine contracts probably justify increasing production. Also, as one of the primary international arms seller, Russia has seen a huge hit, both in capability to produce and confidence in the quality of their equipment, with neutral countries. The lost sales there will also be replaced, some of which with western, or slightly western aligned nations production.

[kopkaljdsao]

Artillery shells aren't that hard to manufacture and production is easy to ramp up. If there wasn't the threat of peace companies would have ramped up production to meet demand.

[thomasthereal]

Well stockpile's might run short, but the US has bases literally EVERYwhere in the world and it can divert some of the ammunition towards ukraine, it just takes time.

On the other hand we have russians, which have to buy artillery shells from north korea and drones from iran

[Capeau]

i seriously doubt it... certain specific weapons maybe, but not weapons in general

[davethebaron]

If we're running out, just make more.

[CacklingAntagonist]

By sending all our cold war surplus we're probably gonna save a small fortune on storage and maintenance costs

[Wienerblutable]

It’s not so much running out on weapons. It’s on weapon systems they can or should use. For example u don’t give them long distance weapons to hit inside Russia. Some r just to modern, and even from the not so much used like tanks….in Europe, u have to keep a certain part for yourself. Some or just extremely expensive. And not as effective in a defense war.

[Kmbri]

I feel this is a direct result in how NATO has been supplying/funding Ukraine. While investing a lot of money, they have only given them enough to hold back the Russians rather than end the conflict quickly. I wonder if this was an initial policy arrangement as Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons was taken seriously.

I also wonder if the US is also looking at a potential conflict in Asia and doesn’t want to commit everything to one front.