[Goose]

This is a well-sourced article with lots of good quotes. A lot of what I’ve seen in western media is simply derived from ISW, but this article is not.

Would the AGM 154 be a viable stand off weapon for the Ukrainian air force? The anti armor variant might be good against artillery emplacements.

No, because their Migs/Sukhois do not use "NATO Standard"  hardpoints and even more importantly do not have the wiring to use such weapons. Furthermore, the weapon/airframe combination would need to be evaluated by test flying to make sure nothing "real bad" happened to the airplane or the weapon and that the weapon still "worked". AFAIK, no NATO nation even attempted to make their Soviet airframes carry NATO weapons. While it may be theoretically possible, it is costly and very time consuming (year or so) best case.

Ammunition issue should have been foreseen and planned for I would think.

I would think so too, but then not everybody believed this war would evolve the way it did towards an artillery duel. The US performance in this situation has been our typically uneven process. This time, our intelligence folks got it right and predicted Russia would invade. This was good. However, we pretty much expected that Ukraine would be overrun. They weren't. We didn't really have a ready response for that event, so it took us a little while to respond with lots of ATGMs and the like. We didn't do too bad here, but what didn't happen (as with the US it often doesn't) was the "How does this end?" conversations and contingency planning.

By the middle of March it was absolutely clear that for Ukraine to win they were going to need lots and lots of heavy firepower from the West. We knew Ukraine was badly out-gunned by Russian artillery in the first place. We also knew Ukraine has limited Soviet era ammunition and we knew we couldn't easily replace it. We could always hope Russia would keep doing dumb things and not figure it out, but relying on that was a bad idea. At that point, we either needed to do everything we could to make Ukraine able to "stand up" to the Russians in the "inevitable" artillery war or tell them to negotiate for what they could.

We did neither. We eventually got them about 100 M777s and enough ammunition for maybe a month of "normal" usage. It was already clear that Ukraine needed MLRS/HIMARS to have a way to "whittle down" the Russian artillery superiority. Ukraine knew this and repeatedly ask us to supply it. We did not supply it. I can fully understand having reservations about our involvement in Ukraine, but if we were not willing in March to do the things that appeared probably required for Ukraine to have a chance at winning, we should have just told them that. Instead, we gave them enough to lose slowly at great cost in infantry lives. They still do not have operational HIMARS and are running low on NATO munitions. It appears they are virtually out of Soviet era ammunition. Yes, fighting a WW I style battle can consume ammunition at a prodigious rate. Did the US and NATO appreciate this when they sent the weapons? Appears they didn't. Is there enough ammunition available in NATO/US stocks? For a few months, yes, if we are willing to run it down to zero. Have we let contracts to build lots more? Not that I am aware of. We actually had lots of 155 mm DPICM (3 million rounds I believe) but they reached EOL and were not replaced. So yes, it was foreseeable as at least a potential problem. Are we ready and willing to actually solve it? Based on our speed of action, I would say it is highly probable the answer is effectively no.

One of the things the US touts as our specialty against countries that outnumber us is the ability to get inside the enemy's decision cycle and force him to react to strategies we have already transcended. He will be behind us in the decision cycle and we will run rings around him. The Ukraine war has descended into a "slow motion" battle and yet we are still way behind in our decide/act rate. Doesn't make one very confident in the outcome. In this case, the "speed of war" is slow and yet we can't even match that.

https://www.fieldartillery.org/news/army...t-pressure give some insight to what we intended to do in the last year. https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/15...0931527681 gives some data that is interesting but somewhat contradictory and with no sources cited. It is clear from the first Ukraine was using more ammo that the US expected and there was concern.

What Ukraine is up against: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44...on-ukraine

[Goose]

This is a well-sourced article with lots of good quotes. A lot of what I’ve seen in western media is simply derived from ISW, but this article is not.

Would the AGM 154 be a viable stand off weapon for the Ukrainian air force? The anti armor variant might be good against artillery emplacements.

No, because their Migs/Sukhois do not use "NATO Standard"  hardpoints and even more importantly do not have the wiring to use such weapons. Furthermore, the weapon/airframe combination would need to be evaluated by test flying to make sure nothing "real bad" happened to the airplane or the weapon and that the weapon still "worked". AFAIK, no NATO nation even attempted to make their Soviet airframes carry NATO weapons. While it may be theoretically possible, it is costly and very time consuming (year or so) best case.

Ammunition issue should have been foreseen and planned for I would think.

I would think so too, but then not everybody believed this war would evolve the way it did towards an artillery duel. The US performance in this situation has been our typically uneven process. This time, our intelligence folks got it right and predicted Russia would invade. This was good. However, we pretty much expected that Ukraine would be overrun. They weren't. We didn't really have a ready response for that event, so it took us a little while to respond with lots of ATGMs and the like. We didn't do too bad here, but what didn't happen (as with the US it often doesn't) was the "How does this end?" conversations and contingency planning.

By the middle of March it was absolutely clear that for Ukraine to win they were going to need lots and lots of heavy firepower from the West. We knew Ukraine was badly out-gunned by Russian artillery in the first place. We also knew Ukraine has limited Soviet era ammunition and we knew we couldn't easily replace it. We could always hope Russia would keep doing dumb things and not figure it out, but relying on that was a bad idea. At that point, we either needed to do everything we could to make Ukraine able to "stand up" to the Russians in the "inevitable" artillery war or tell them to negotiate for what they could.

We did neither. We eventually got them about 100 M777s and enough ammunition for maybe a month of "normal" usage. It was already clear that Ukraine needed MLRS/HIMARS to have a way to "whittle down" the Russian artillery superiority. Ukraine knew this and repeatedly ask us to supply it. We did not supply it. I can fully understand having reservations about our involvement in Ukraine, but if we were not willing in March to do the things that appeared probably required for Ukraine to have a chance at winning, we should have just told them that. Instead, we gave them enough to lose slowly at great cost in infantry lives. They still do not have operational HIMARS and are running low on NATO munitions. It appears they are virtually out of Soviet era ammunition. Yes, fighting a WW I style battle can consume ammunition at a prodigious rate. Did the US and NATO appreciate this when they sent the weapons? Appears they didn't. Is there enough ammunition available in NATO/US stocks? For a few months, yes, if we are willing to run it down to zero. Have we let contracts to build lots more? Not that I am aware of. We actually had lots of 155 mm DPICM (3 million rounds I believe) but they reached EOL and were not replaced. So yes, it was foreseeable as at least a potential problem. Are we ready and willing to actually solve it? Based on our speed of action, I would say it is highly probable the answer is effectively no.

One of the things the US touts as our specialty against countries that outnumber us is the ability to get inside the enemy's decision cycle and force him to react to strategies we have already transcended. He will be behind us in the decision cycle and we will run rings around him. The Ukraine war has descended into a "slow motion" battle and yet we are still way behind in our decide/act rate. Doesn't make one very confident in the outcome. In this case, the "speed of war" is slow and yet we can't even match that.

https://www.fieldartillery.org/news/army...t-pressure give some insight to what we intended to do in the last year. https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/15...0931527681 gives some data that is interesting but somewhat contradictory and with no sources cited. It is clear from the first Ukraine was using more ammo that the US expected and there was concern.

What Ukraine is up against: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44...on-ukraine