Active Conflicts & News Megathread August 22, 2025

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[u/TestingHydra]

Because NATO missile stocks are already under strain providing to Ukraine. Doing what you suggest would put further strain on it and could lead to Ukraine receiving less missiles because NATO would need to preserve their stockpiles.

[u/BigFly42069 → u/TestingHydra]

This is the real answer. People aren't aware just how low the procurement rates are for anti-air missiles. For example, the US expended 100 THAAD interceptors against Iran's missile attacks on Israel, and only buys something like 16 a year. Meanwhile, SM-2 production is closer to 60 per year and Congress keeps trying to shut down that line in favor of the one that does... 24 a year.

PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles are more or less in the same boat, and AAMs productions across the entirety of the western military supply chain is also far lower than people imagine.

Budget isn't a magical thing that you can just change on the fly but has to be planned out years in advance, changes don't just magically come out of nowhere.

And for all the chest-thumping that we're doing about how we'll scale up production of 155mm shells and other munitions in the future, the current present stock and present procurement rates were set in stone years ago.

There's a real possibility that the western military industrial supply chain of the 21st century isn't as adaptive and scalable as the MIC supply chain of the early 20th century, but people continue to believe that it is. Maybe by 2027 to 2030, western MIC will have started to turn it around and scale up sufficiently to meet the needs that were demanded in 2022-2023, but this will come at the expense of reduced budgetary availability for non-military needs because once again: budget isn't a magical thing.

And that's before we even start considering the possibility that the security landscape might change enough by then to the point that the scaleup is either no longer needed or inadequately scaled up yet again.

[u/colin-catlin → u/BigFly42069]

This answer seems deliberately biased in having solid facts that are clearly cherry picked, even if the discussion is valid. The main counterpoint is the US does much better on ship based SAMs and air to air weapons, as those are the primary systems the US plans to use. And here are counterpoints for those directly mentioned, land based: 500 pac-3 missiles were produced in 2024 and growing https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2025/lockheed-martins-pac-3mse-achieves-record-production-year.html 155 mm shells are up three fold already, not in the future as specified there https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2025/06/army-expects-make-more-million-artillery-shells-next-year/406132/

[u/BigFly42069 → u/colin-catlin]

We can try and spin all of these as victories, and they are incremental progress (gotta make progress somehow), but the numbers themselves betray the reality between what the headlines say and what the situation demands.

From the source citing 155mm shells:

It’s going to miss its goal of making 100,000 per month by October, but likely by just a few months.

The service’s current monthly output stands at 40,000, up from 14,500 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than three years ago, according to data provided by the Army. The original plan called for making about twice as many by now.

In other words, it is at 40% of the intended goal of 100,000 shells per month at the time of writing, and although it's tripled production, the base rate from which it was producing shells was what Russia and Ukraine were firing at each other in a single day last year.

As for Lockheed, it's ramped up production of 500, which represents a 30% increase YOY from what the 350 it produced in 2023 (a 150 round increase), with an expected increase of 20% YOY for 2025 to 600 (a 100 round increase) and then 650 (a 50 round increase) by 2027.

In the meantime, there are 480+ MIM-104 launchers in the US inventory alone, with 250 launchers operated by foreign buyers.

Taken as a number in a vacuum, the PAC-3 numbers look great. But that's before you apply that number to the operational needs of Ukraine alone: 7 batteries and 9 additional launchers from last available open data source, which means they're operating anywhere between 51 to 65 launchers.

With 12 PAC-3 MSE to 16 PAC-3 CRI per launcher, Ukraine alone needs anywhere between 816 to 1040 PAC-3 rounds to achieve a full reload for their existing systems. Obviously, they're not firing off everything because they use Patriots to primarily defend against RU ballistic missiles, but the point still stands that production is lagging demand.