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Comment by balderdash | Hacker News Reader

In the commodities business there’s an old saw that long-term contracts solve supply problems, and spot prices solve inventory problems

And this seems like a perfect example of the first part of that.

The thing I didn’t see was how much it would cost to build a facility that produces x/k rounds a month.

I find it hard to imagine these facilities are that expensive (in the context of US defense spending) so it makes me feel there was a something else going on here…

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Artillery had become a niche branch in the Western doctrine, and people didn't see a point in investing in large-scale shell production. Air forces and guided missiles had replaced artillery in many of its traditional roles.

In the Soviet doctrine, artillery had a much larger role. Both Russia and Ukraine inherited that doctrine, and they went on to fight the war they were prepared for.

Oh, right lets replace cheap simple and dumb artillery we can't produce with super complex guided missiles with 1/10000th the production capability.

The rationale is that the ordnance on target ratio is way higher with missiles. 10,000 shells can be displaced by 100 missiles.

A conflict like Russia/Ukraine isn’t happening with the US. A US / Russia conflict would have resulted in US air supremacy or a nuclear exchange.

The Russians apparently have 600 tanks queued up right now for an advance. And while apparently they don't use the tanks as mobile guns for their infantry there is probably a good number in support of those tanks, and it seems unlikely one would fire missiles at infantry. Which is why we were dumping 50 year old stockpiles of dumb bombs in Afganistan. Which leads to the question of how one maintains air superiority for flying bombers in the face of more advanced MANPADS...

Manpads: flying at high altitudes. AA: flying low.

But anyway, the golden bullet solutions is drones. /s

> 10,000 shells can be displaced by 100 missiles.

That might still be a bad tradeoff given that these 155mm shells are apparently $8,000 each, whereas a Storm Shadow is apparently $3,200,000 a pop.

You’re not hitting the same targets with a storm shadow

Plus, leveling the target area with dumb shells is not necessarily working, exhibit A the Western Front in WW1. And if said target area is a city, the leveling is kind of frowned upon nowadays (depending of course on who is levelling and who is being levelled).

The alternative is guided artillery shells. And those are damn expensive.

I read that the UK Storm Shadows are configured as bunker-busters, with two warheads - one for breaking into the bunker, one to explode inside it. The French Storm Shadows (can't remember what they call them) carry cluster warheads, which I suspect are more use to Ukraine during the current positional warfare.

I am skeptical the US would really need it in a war, but our allies certainly will. The US has air superiority and integrated combat arms. Ukraine shows how essential artillery is without at least air superiority, and they have just a few years of integrating tanks and other vehicles into actions with their infantry.

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