NATO Chiefs Try to Jump-Start the Aid Ukraine Really Needs

BRUSSELS—For months, Western politicians and pundits have fixated on whether NATO allies would send Ukraine tanks and fighter jets to gain an edge over Russia’s invading forces. But for NATO defense planners in Brussels, the real battle is over military aid that is much less flashy, namely artillery shells and air defense ammunition.

As the war in Ukraine approaches its first anniversary, NATO allies are trying to ramp up their military aid to Kyiv and reverse years of laggard defense spending to rebuild their own supplies of munitions. It’s turned into a massive logistical headache for alliance militaries, but one that could turn the tide of the war in Ukraine and bolster NATO’s own defense.

Discussions over aid have been dominated by the question of whether and when Ukraine would receive Western-made tanks and, potentially, fighter jets. NATO officials say such complex systems (tanks, at least, are on the way now) could help Ukraine in coming offensives, but the most pressing and immediate need is artillery shells and air defense supplies. Such munitions could blunt any coming Russian offensive and keep Ukrainian skies clear of Russian missiles and suicide drones that wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and civilian targets over the winter.

“Everyone likes to talk about fighter jets and tanks. They’re certainly the trendiest things to discuss,” said one Western defense official involved in discussions on supplying Ukraine, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But in the short term, Ukraine’s success on the battlefield boils down to one question: Does it have enough artillery rounds to keep the Russians at bay?”

The question strikes at the heart of a tectonic shift taking place in NATO now, as leaders try to rapidly adapt an alliance to a new era of great-power competition after focusing for decades on fighting irregular wars against terrorists and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now, faced with a major land war in Europe, marked by trench warfare and mass artillery barrages, they are scrambling to fill 20th-century-style wartime demands for massive supplies of munitions.

NATO defense ministers met in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss how to revamp defense investments and munitions productions at the scale needed to both supply Ukraine for the long haul and also rearm allies’ own militaries, which are forking over munitions to Kyiv.

“Allies have dug into their existing stocks to be able to provide support to Ukraine, and that has been the right thing to do, but now stocks are in many countries running low and, therefore, we need to produce more,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in an interview before the meeting.

“I think the war has demonstrated some vulnerabilities when it comes to both the size of the stocks across the lines but also the need to be able to quickly ramp up production,” he added.

Resupplying those stocks isn’t a problem that can be fixed overnight. NATO countries need to pass new budgets, allocate new funding, and sign new contracts with defense industry firms that produce munitions, all while signaling to industry leaders that they are ready to fund such contracts over the course of years.

Those firms in turn need to build new factories and supply chains to begin producing munitions such as artillery shells and air defense supplies at a scale to resupply Ukraine and fellow allies. Adding another layer of complication is the convoluted and often protectionist structures of national defense industries across the alliance that make rapidly building out new supply chains even more difficult.

“We have seen industry say that they’re ready to ramp up production, but what they need is for the governments to sign contracts to give the long-term predictability so they can invest more,” Stoltenberg said.

Even then, NATO officials aren’t quite sure how much ammunition they need, and for how long, because it’s unclear how the war in Ukraine will pan out in the critical coming months that determine whether any Russian—or Ukrainian—offensives are successful.

“There are two challenges at the same time,” said a NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “One is supplying Ukraine in the immediate short term, and we don’t know how much Ukraine will need for how long. And the other is deepening NATO’s stocks for itself.”

“If you didn’t have Ukraine, you might be able to do the calculations and say we need 15, 20, 30 percent more munitions and that will take us, say, six months more to get to,” the official said. “But that’s really hard to do that calculation when there’s a gaping hole at the bottom of the boat anyway, which is everything that’s quite rightly flowing out for Ukraine now.”

Still, there’s agreement across nearly every government in the alliance that no matter what the final numbers are, they need more, and they need it quickly.

During NATO’s war in Afghanistan, which came to dominate the alliance’s military planning for the better part of two decades, a NATO military might fire one or two artillery shells per day, said one NATO official. Ukraine, by comparison, can fire an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 155 mm artillery rounds per day during periods of intense fighting, the official said. If NATO were to go to war with Russia—a prospect still considered unlikely in allied capitals—some NATO countries would only have enough ammunition in their own stocks to fight at that scale for several days, let alone keep supplying Ukraine.

Stoltenberg at the defense ministers’ meeting on Tuesday said that the wait time for allies to receive large-caliber ammunition, such as 155 mm shells, has shot up from 12 months to 28 months. “Orders placed today would only be delivered two and a half years later,” he said.

NATO just finished an assessment of the alliance’s remaining munitions stocks to help inform new targets it will set for military capabilities and production. The precise figures are a closely guarded secret, lest Russia make its own military plans around those numbers, but multiple NATO officials said that in broad terms, alliance members just don’t have enough munitions on hand now.

That problem has placed more pressure on some European countries that have let their defense spending lag for decades. Only nine of NATO’s 30 members meet the current alliance benchmark of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense, even as some countries push to raise that benchmark to 2.5 percent or 3 percent to respond to the threat from Russia.

“There’s a growing realization that longer-term defense commitments are absolutely necessary, both for Ukraine but also for Europe’s own defense,” said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund think tank.

“Whether Europe is actually capable of getting its act together about spending more on defense, having more capacity—this is a very large, open question,” he said. “This is not something that is going to be changed in weeks or months. It could take a decade or more, the full commitment for Europe to start to display the kind of capabilities that are needed.”

NATO leaders sought to use the latest meeting in Brussels to show they were changing course. Defense ministers signed eight new defense industry cooperation agreements that are aimed at tackling the logistical headaches, from cooperating on warehousing and stockpiling ammunition to pooling resources across countries to acquire ground-based air defense capabilities.

“The battle over logistics is certainly less sexy. But this is the thing that, since time immemorial, has won wars,” said a second NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced at the meeting in Brussels that Berlin signed contracts with Rheinmetall, a major German defense supplier, to boost the production of ammunition for Gepard anti-aircraft guns that Ukraine has used to counter suicide drone and missile attacks from Russia on civilian targets. Germany has faced withering criticism from some allies for letting its defense spending shrink in recent years and being too slow to send military aid to Ukraine.

Rheinmetall separately announced last month that it was ready to dramatically scale up the production of 120 mm tank shells and 155 mm artillery shells. Already in 2022, Rheinmetall increased production of the 155 mm shells from 60,000 rounds to 70,000 and has said it can produce up to 450,000 to 500,000 rounds should the government request it, according to Reuters.

Despite all the hurdles, Gen. Mark Milley, the top U.S. military commander who visited Brussels this week alongside U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, said that there was no expiration date for Western aid to Ukraine.

“Until [Russian President Vladimir] Putin ends his war of choice, the international community will continue to support Ukraine with the equipment and capabilities it needs to defend itself,” he said.