US Would Run Out of Missiles in a Week in Two-Front Conflict: ‘War Game’ Analysis

Institutional think-tanks such as the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) routinely scrutinize data in “war game” analyses that alert Pentagon planners of projected stresses and shortfalls across varying conflict scenarios.

Right now, with Ukraine receiving weapons, munitions, and financial support from more than 50 nations in fighting off Russia’s February 2022 invasion, a strata of supply chain strains are vexing Western European and American efforts to meet Kyiv’s demand for such basics as bullets and bombs.

Decades after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States, its NATO partners, and its allies across the globe, are racing to revitalize a defense industrial base that had contracted and retooled as part of the “peace dividend” that followed the conclusion of the Cold War.

The United States, NATO, and the European Union (EU) are using lessons learned in Ukraine to beef up defense production with an array of strategies such as joint-procurement, multi-year funding, “inter-operability” standardization, and coordinated specialization to “incentivize” private industry to groove into a “war economy.”

These initiatives will take years to fully synchronize to sustain Ukraine in what most analysts now project will be a sustained high-intensity war of logistics, supplies, and attrition not seen in Europe since World War II.

While Russia is the pressing, immediate threat to NATO and the EU, it is not the top “pacing challenge” for the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies such as Australia, Japan, and the Philippines.

That top priority is the People’s Republic of China, which has aggressively modernized its expanding military the last two decades, amassing a 400-ship navy, building bases on disputed South China Sea islands, and threatening to invade Taiwan.

If a shooting war between the PRC and United States erupts while Ukraine remains intensely engaged with Russia, “war game” analyses, such as those conducted by CSIS, question whether America’s defense industrial base can independently produce enough firepower fast enough to keep its forces in the fight.

US Industry Not Ready for Two-Front War

During a four-hour series of Transatlantic Defense forums on April 5, CSIS Transnational Threats Project Director Seth Jones said in “war game” scenarios where the United States is confronted with supplying Ukraine in a high-intensity war against Russia—never mind direct NATO engagement—while simultaneously fighting an Indo-Pacific war against the PRC, the demand “for munitions, particularly long-range missiles” could quickly outpace supply.

In fact, Jones said, “We run out … in a week or so.”

“I don’t think the results [of ‘war game’ projections] are wrong. If we are in that kind of fight, it is going to go fast,” said U.S. Navy Admiral Christopher Grady, the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledging that ramping up defense production “is a very real challenge.”

Grady said the Pentagon, NATO, EU, and Indo-Pacific allies are re-examining and adjusting defense production using the Ukrainian “shell rate” of 7,000 expended 155mm artillery rounds a day as the standard projected need.

That rate of expenditure far exceeds projections, he said, before noting planners typically miss the mark in forecasting munitions expenditures in combat.

“The bigger issue is we always underestimate how much we are going to shoot,” Grady said, especially with the liberal use of “guided munitions” in relatively low-tech conflicts against non-nation terrorist groups in the Middle East and North Africa where “we’re shooting Hellfires [missiles] at guys on motorcycles; pretty expensive weapon for that.”

The Pentagon is revamping its procurement schedules for weapons systems and munitions based on Ukraine, which provides a “sanguine, realistic analysis of what our needs will be,” he said.

A key component for the United States in preparing for a war with the PRC is NATO and EU member nations—most but not all the same countries—increasingly assuming more munitions production capacity in a “whole of Europe” approach to confronting Russia.

That will allow American industry to restock U.S. arsenals and stockpiles for a storm brewing on an ever-nearing horizon.

“If Russia is the hurricane,” said French Navy Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, director general of EU’s military staff and Ukraine assistance mission, “China is climate change.”

Paying’ for the ‘Peace Dividend’

When asked if America has the defense industrial base right now to sustain forces in a two-front war, former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment in the Trump administration Ellen Lord replied with an emphatic, “We have not.”

It’s a serious problem, she said, but by recognizing it as an issue, there’s an opportunity for “constructive collaboration” to simplify and speed weapons and munitions production.

That process has begun with the “fragility of the industrial base” exposed by “the Ukrainian challenge,” Grady said.

There are three “contributing factors” constraining U.S. defense production that must be addressed, he said.

“The first is the contraction of the industrial base,” Grady said, noting a quarter century ago there were 25 U.S. shipyards qualified to build and refurbish warships and “we’re now down to six.”

When it comes to weapons development and munitions productions, he said, the post-Cold War “peace dividend” contraction often means the military is reliant on “a single source in the supply chain.”

The second factor, Grady said, “is the complexity of what we build. In World War II, [U.S. shipyards] were pumping out a Liberty ship every three days. You are not going to do that” with, say, a contemporary submarine.

“Third is ‘just-in-time’” deliveries of materials by contractors still operating in a “phase zero peacetime mode,” he said. While that guarantees a “good profit margin” it cannot continue “in the fight that we see now.”

Grady said the “21st century foundry” must “be one that can surge” to meet sudden demand. To have that capacity, the U.S. must “incentivize” private capital to flow into “a larger, hardened industrial base with allies and partners.”

Lord cited regulatory issues and “supply chains that typically go six, seven deep” with different suppliers contributing different weapons systems components.

“We need to focus on a few things and work on them,” said Lord, a former Textron Systems CEO and National Defense Industrial Association chair who is now a consultant with Washington-based Chertoff Group.

“We need to collaborate with allies to understand where we are sole-sourced, where we have non-partners and non-allies supplying us, and where we could pool [production] and start divvying it up,” she said.

There are also cultural issues to contend with, she said. “The trades here in the United States” are undermanned because of an attitude that “it is not as honorable to be an electrician, a carpenter, a pipe-fitter” as it is to be a white-collar professional, she said.

Indeed, Grady agreed. “To maintain an industrial base that has the right numbers of artisans to create these systems at speed,” he said, “is going to be a challenge.”

What Can Be Done ASAP

“We’re too slow. How do we go faster?” Grady asked before answering his own question about the Pentagon’s procurement process. “We have to be a good customer. We have to have communication with the industry” to “leverage adaptive acquisition” with steady stockpile-building.

That would require “a clear strategy” that current procurement practices don’t always demonstrate, Lord said, noting that the Pentagon must communicate with industry that it is open to multi-year contracts necessary for manufacturers to invest in retooling production lines.

There is an “urban myth” among manufacturers that “the Hill will not allow us to do multi-year” orders, she said.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Deborah Rosenblum said the Department of Defense emphasizes long-range production contracts in its $863 billion Fiscal Year 2024 budget request to induce more bids.

“You need a clear demand signal over a span of years to drive that capacity and capability,” Rosenblum said. “We in the U.S. have gotten away from funding any type of surge capacity. We need to pick a couple of things and have a clear demand cycle and get the contracts going. Putting contracts on the streets; that builds capacity.”

“Industry will respond quick when contracts are let,” Lord said. “But we got to pick winners and we got to get going.”

Rosenblum said one dynamic, or “cultural shift,” that is improving proficiency is a unified DOD-wide approach rather than “each service dealing with a set of supply challenges or workforce challenges” independently that lead to “inadvertently cannibalizing ourselves.”

Bill Lynn, a former DOD comptroller who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration and Under Secretary of Defense during the Clinton administration, said the Pentagon needs to clarify four o