Sources:
[1] https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill...
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery...
The Soviet plan - which both Russia and Ukraine are well trained in - was to use lots of artillery. In backing Ukraine NATO suddenly sees a need for some shells that they wouldn't use if it was them. But the Ukrainian generals know them and so that is what they want. (Note too the nobody has provided Ukraine anywhere near the number of airplanes needed to fight a NATO style war - even if all promised F16s arrive today with full training it isn't enough for a NATO war)
The Soviet/Russian land doctrine is totally based on artillery. It makes sense that that is their priority.
Now, that doesn't mean that American doctrine would work well in a hypothetical war with China. I personally don't think the current doctrine would work well. But those that watch the military sphere know that brass have taken note of that and are implementing changes. That all you can really ask for.
While asking we should also question how fast we can scale up F35 production along with all the various arms the F35 carries.
Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.
In short, artillery remains important, which is why US artillery shell production is up an order of magnitude over the last 3 years, and will continue to rise.
It's not disingenuous at all. It's pretty apparent if you even take a cursory look at modern American military doctrine/spending. The plan is always to park a carrier close by (maybe two), conduct an air campaign, then send in the troops. Artillery wars just chew up people which the the American public has not had an appetite for since Vietnam.
>The fact that thr US hasn’t had such a conflict since at least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.
It think that is a caveat as big as the Pacific. Vietnam was literally 60 years ago. You don't think top brass have rethought how wars are fought since then? For context, that's 10 Presidencies since LBJ (36th).
> Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years.
Again, modern American doctrine has focused on the layering of power projection and troop mobility specifically to NOT fight in static positions.
> Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.
Again caveats. Also a war with China will be fought exactly opposite to Ukraine (with missiles not artillery, and with dynamic naval fronts, not trench warfare).
It's an open secret in military circles that aircraft carriers are useless against a peer adversary like Russia or China, which both have the ability to sink carriers and shoot down planes easily. Carriers are only good against unsophisticated terrorists.
But it is pointless to talk about a war with Russia, which would very quickly turn into nuclear Armageddon.
[1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-navys-aircraft-car...
> It's an open secret in military circles that aircraft carriers are useless against a peer adversary like Russia or China, which both have the ability to sink carriers and shoot down planes easily.
This is not true. How else do you expect to fight an adversary in their home turf without a platform for air superiority? If anything, aircraft carriers would have more survivability (they move) than our supporting airbases in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines (which will almost immediately be hit with ballistic missiles at the start of a conflict). Carriers have layered missile defense. Our arguably biggest weakness in our navy is our lack of ability to underway replenish vertical launch missile cells (used for both offense and defense at sea), but there is a huge push to solve this at the moment.
I'd also challenge you to show examples of China actually shooting down a fighter jet. There's also the fact that China just doesn't have the military experience. Half of war fighting is experience (rehearsing isn't the same as active conflict), and logistics.
> Carriers are only good against unsophisticated terrorists.
This is laughably untrue.
> But it is pointless to talk about a war with Russia, which would very quickly turn into nuclear Armageddon.
This is Russia's single schtick.
When you switch from land to water tooling your military doctrine to things like air superiority, missiles, island hoping make much more sense to me at least.
I do appreciate your point of view, but I maintain that in a lengthy land war with a near peer, missile stockpiles would run low and 4th gen fighters would be unable to contest enemy airspace. Of course, the caveat is that the US would very much like to avoid any such conflict via either diplomacy or a decisive first few weeks of combat. And the hope is that 5th gen fighters would evade air defenses. Even so, US doctrine calls for being capable of fighting prolonged land wars on multiple fronts.
God bless. Let's outperform all the adversaries combined in shell, ammunition, carrier, and fighter production. American military dominance must never be called into question even by the possibility of multi-theater war.
But maybe I'm not a military genius like those in charge of for profit defense contractors.
You didn't "go to war". A portion of your sovereign territory was invaded, and you did/are attempting to defend it. The fact that the US/NATO are willing to contribute to your defense is just a plus. Ukraine is not a NATO member and has no defense treaties with anyone in Europe.
Technically true, but if you get some amount of promised military support, you're going to try to be more ambitious in your defense/counter-attack, and you're going to reject unfavourable peace terms.
I'm not a war analyst also, but nato doctrine is kinda different from Russia'S. During both Bosnia and Serbia bombing campaigns nato inflicted most damage through bombs, not shells. In Ukraine both Ukrainians and Russians had to resort to artillery shells because none of them could fly uncontested
The OP article is about creating the manufacturing capability, which is different from having the capability and not needing it.
Russian has been in a war for the past 2-years.
The US & EU have not.
If NATO could supply the materiel for Ukraine to "singlehandedly" defeat Russia, they would do it in a heartbeat. But they don't have it!
It seems more like politics than anything else.
Countries want to help.
But they don’t want to help too much, where they then get pulled into the war (or have Russia target them).
The economics and politics actually matter! The public do not want a war, and they do not like forseeing one, they want their own pricing issues dealt with, and they have power at elections. Whereas Russian and Chinese leaders can simply impose whatever level of hardship they need that doesn't provoke full scale open revolt and mass slaughter in their own streets.