Oh,
The39thStep - with regards to ammunition manufacture rates and stockpiles, something I forgot to mention that's a big structural thing...
Probably the biggest reason that NATO doesn't carry the kind of
vast artillery ammunition stockpiles and maintain the kind of production lines that are necessary to keep up with Ukrainian expenditure rates is that for a lot of what Ukraine uses artillery for, we'd use airpower for.
In NATO doctrine almost all of what's called the
Deep Battle (breaking your enemy's logistics, command and control, fuel, ammunition, transport hubs and their own longer range weapons) would be done by air, while Ukraine (and Russia to a large extent) use land based platforms for that - hence they use far more of those land based munitions.
There's a similar difference in
Close Support, which is about supporting fires for troops in contact with the enemy - in Soviet/Russian doctrine the coordination of air and ground forces was considered much more difficult that in the west, so they took the view that you'd seek (broadly) to keep them apart and use artillery, mostly pre-planned artillery fire, rather that reactive fires, to support ground troops. NATO took the view that close support by aircraft was a better answer because aircraft are inherently more flexible - in that an F-16 based near Trier in Germany could do a combat air patrol over the Straights of Denmark in the morning, drop bombs on a 3rd Soviet shock Army tank column near Hanover in the afternoon, and escort an F-111 deep pentration raid on the Soviet HQ at Wunsdorf near Berlin.
Cash still plays a role obvs....
www.urban75.net
