6.11.24
Ukraine's defense industry is urging the West to abandon its longtime fixation on high-end, expensive weaponry in favor of cheaper, mass-produced arms, the kind needed to survive and win a grinding war of attrition against an adversary like Russia. Serhiy Goncharov, the CEO of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries — which represents about 100 Ukrainian companies — told Business Insider the West's long-standing focus on fielding limited numbers of cutting-edge systems could be a serious disadvantage in a protracted conflict. Those systems are good to have, but mass is key. The war in Ukraine shows that instead of a handful of ultraprecise, expensive weapons, countries need a massive supply of good enough firepower, Goncharov said. He said the expensive weapons such as the US military's M982 Excalibur guided munition (each shell costs $100,000) "don't work" when the other side has electronic warfare systems and the kind of traditional artillery rounds that are 30 times cheaper in tremendous supply. Goncharov pointed to the M107, a self-propelled gun that was first fielded by the US in the 1960s, as an example of inexpensive firepower that can be effective in large numbers. "You don't need 10 Archers from the Swedish that are probably one of the best artillery systems in the world," he said, referring to the artillery system made by BAE Systems that was given to Ukraine by Sweden. Instead, you need 200 cheap howitzers, such as the Bohdana one that Ukraine makes.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been marked by extensive use of artillery and tremendous ammunition expenditure. The war in some ways resembles the huge, destructive battles of World War I and World War II, with high numbers of injuries and deaths and substantial equipment losses. Russia's invasion has chewed through equipment. The UK Ministry of Defense said in December that Russia had lost more than 3,600 main battle tanks and almost 8,000 armored vehicles since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The Russians have the mass to absorb those losses. Ukraine has struggled with weapon and ammo shortages, as well as deficiencies in manpower. Ukraine turned to small, cheap drones as an asymmetric warfare alternative; Russia has employed uncrewed systems in battle as well. China, another concern in the West, has built a similar kind of force, one with the mass to take losses. The West, on the other hand, has spent the past two decades and change fighting lower-level adversaries where its forces can win the day with superior capabilities. Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, previously told BI that "one of the lessons" from Ukraine was that the West needed far greater quantities of inexpensive weaponry to meet the threats posed by Russia and China. Kuldar Väärsi, the CEO of Milrem Robotics, an autonomous uncrewed ground vehicle company in the NATO ally Estonia, told BI in May that "we need to learn from Ukraine, and we need to get more pragmatic about what kind of equipment we buy." He said Europe needed to learn that "having a hundred more simple pieces of equipment is better than having 10 very sophisticated pieces of equipment."
www.businessinsider.com