American arms manufacturers compared the pace of production and Kyiv’s rate of spending on US-supplied weapons on February 1, writes the Wall Street Journal.
For example, the Americans were impressed by the speed with which the Ukrainian Armed Forces disposed of tens of thousands of Stinger and Javelin MANPADS sent to them.
“As early as August 2022, the Pentagon placed new orders for Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, but this was the first such order in 18 years for Raytheon. By December, Ukraine burned the output of 13 years of production of these missiles and another 5-year stock of Javelin missiles.” said Greg Hayes, CEO of Raytheon.
“Now you have to recreate this entire production chain, which actually stopped and scattered to the wind”, — said Pentagon arms purchase chief Bill LaPlante, noting that the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon should jointly rethink how arms purchases work.
In peacetime, some of the money budgeted for expendable munitions was usually cut in favor of more exotic purchases, such as hypersonic missiles or airborne lasers.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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