Analysis reveals urgent need for realistic view of munitions requirements

It is the confrontation that both the world and nations across the Indo-Pacific, in particular, hope never happens – a direct and open conflict between the United States and its allies and China over the small island nation of Taiwan in the far-flung western Pacific.

These concerns have only become more prominent amid growing antagonism and sabre-rattling from Beijing seeking to solve its “Taiwan problem”, reinforced by growing speculation from leading US defence leaders like former commander, US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson testifying to the Senate armed services committee, “Taiwan is clearly one of their [Beijing’s] ambitions before then. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years."

Compounding these concerns are the comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 22 December 2022, in which he highlighted concerns about the capacity of the United States to directly deter and engage a competing great power: “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made much more complicated the support that we’ve been able to give and that others have been able to give Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”

Secretary Blinken’s concerning statements were equally reinforced by US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, who in a testimony before the US House armed services committee, said, “If there was a war on the Korean peninsula or great power war between the United States and Russia or the United States and China, the consumption rates would be off the charts … So I’m concerned. I know the secretary is ... we’ve got a ways to go to make sure our stockpiles are prepared for the real contingencies.”

At the epicentre of these major concerns is the declining levels of munitions stocks across the Western alliance network and concerns about the capacity of the existing industrial base to meet peak demand should the unthinkable happen and a major conflict erupt over Taiwan or in Europe given the rapid depletion of critical munitions stocks in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This only becomes more concerning when you get a true understanding of the amount of money and materiel the United States alone has donated, or invested (depending on who you ask) in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, with the US donating US$42 billion (AU$61.58 billion) since January 2021.

In addition to this astounding amount of financial capital, the US alone has contributed vast quantities of munitions, vehicles, and other defence materiel, including:

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• Over 2,000 Stinger anti-aircraft systems;
• Over 10,000 Javelin anti-armour systems;
• Over 70,000 other anti-armour systems and munitions;
• 198 155mm Howitzers and over 2,000,000 155mm artillery rounds;
• 40,000 122mm artillery rounds;
• 60,000 122mm GRAD rockets; and
• Over 4,000 tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided (TOW) missiles.

Despite the long-held belief in the United States as the “arsenal of democracy”, established during the tumult of the Second World War, the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with a trend across the Western world towards deindustrialisation, concerns now run rampant about the enduring capacity of the US to support the Western alliance network in the face of great power competition.

This, coupled with the Western approach to contemporary warfare – embodied by the precision-guided munitions-heavy “shock and awe” as typified by the US-led invasion of Iraq and the first Gulf War which introduced the world to the true force multiplying effects of precision guided munitions and Ukraine’s rapid depletion of munitions – has raised serious concerns about the resilience and depth of allied munitions supply chains in the event of contemporary great power competition.

Best at explaining these concerns and the criticality of precision-guided munitions in contemporary great power competition is Tyler Hacker of the US-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), who has consolidated a detailed report titled, Beyond Precision: Maintaining America’s Strike Advantage in Great Power Conflict, which identifies “three key planning assumptions” surrounding the long-held assumptions about the US and the broader Western alliance network’s precision-guided munitions inventories.

Our long-held assumptions don’t play out

Concerningly, the long-held belief of unrivalled US military primacy and dominance is coming to an end as peer and near-peer competitors rapidly narrow the qualitative and quantitative gap between themselves and the Western world, this only further complicates the global and regional tactical and strategic calculus as these technologies become increasingly common even among minor powers.

Highlighting this peer or near-peer competitor, Tyler Hacker’s analysis identifies three key points worthy of re-examination and consideration:

1. A conflict between the United States and a great power adversary would be rapid and short in duration, allowing the US military to rely on small inventories of advanced stand-off munitions;
2. PGM production and procurement are less important than platforms because munitions production can rapidly surge to meet the demands of a conflict; and
3. The precision-strike advantage by itself will continue to enable the United States to dominate its adversaries in a contemporary great power conflict.

Each of these key points present significant challenges for the US and for allies like Australia in the event of direct, kinetic conflict between great powers and their respective alliance networks and are further reinforced by Hacker who highlights, “History and an examination of prospective Indo-Pacific conflict scenarios indicate that great power conflict is more likely to be protracted and could last months or years. Current fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war reinforces this view.”

Expanding on this, Hacker highlights the long-held belief that industry can always “surge” to meet growing demand, which has been typically held during the comparatively low-intensity conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia, where he highlights that the opposite is actually the case, particularly in the context of great power competition and conflict, saying, “The complexity of today’s PGMs and the state of the munitions industrial base mean that the production of many PGMs essential to great power conflict cannot be quickly surged. On-hand quantities may be the only weapons available in the first months of a conflict, depending on the munition and the complexity of its supply chain and manufacturing process.”

Equally important is the long-held belief of the sole dominance of the United States in the precision-guided munitions domain, particularly in the realm of qualitative and quantitative domains, which again finds its basis in the analysis of the conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia in the last three decades is now proving fundamentally false as both Beijing and Moscow, along with New Delhi, continue to develop and field increasingly advanced, precise, and devastating subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic weapons designed with a key focus: countering and undermining the key tactical and strategic advantages of the United States and the Western alliance networks.

Hacker details this, stating, “Although precision was sufficient in the regional and limited strike campaigns of the previous 30 years, today’s adversaries have spent decades preparing to counter US precision-strike operations. As a result, the munitions requirements for great power conflict are likely to exceed the quantities and capabilities of the current US PGM inventory.”

Unpacking the implications of these three key points, Hacker identifies:

1. An examination of munitions requirements for great power conflict reveals the United States has significant capacity and capability gaps in its current PGM portfolio.
2. Even with increased spending on and production of PGMs, the United States will likely struggle to maintain adequate quantities of PGMs to execute a comprehensive precision-strike campaign against a great power adversary.
3. Precision alone is necessary but insufficient for munitions in a modern great power conflict.
4. Several variables have outsized effects on munitions requirements for great power conflict, including the operational objectives, the proportion of targets that must be attacked to achieve these objectives, and the effectiveness of enemy defences.
5. Conflict duration is a major determinant of munitions requirements and, as a result, could influence campaign objectives.
6. Maintaining the United States’ strike advantage requires more than munitions, it requires improvements along the entire kill chain.

Overcoming these critical supply chain challenges

It isn’t all doom and gloom though, with Hacker providing some important solutions to overcome these mounting tactical, strategic, and industrial challenges facing the United States and allies including Australia, with Australia’s existing Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise (GWEO) program an avenue for expanding the allied supply chain to ease the burden on the United States industrial base as well as providing long-term economic and industrial opportunities for Australia.

To this end, Hacker identifies the following short, or near-term recommendations for implementation between 2023–27, namely:

1. Immediately increase munitions funding and procurement to maximise the production of critical precision munitions.
2. Align PGM procurement spending with long-term strategy and analysis requirements rather than simply replacing weapons expended in recent operations.
3. Incentivise expansion of the weapons industrial base by committing to consistent munitions purchases through multi-year procurements, direct investments, and other policies that foster a steady demand signal for precision weapons.
4. Bolster the current PGM arsenal with rapidly producible modular kits and modifications to operational weapons.
5. Consider campaigns, operational concepts, and target sets that enable the current portfolio of precision weapons to be most effective, particularly in a protracted conflict.

Expanding on these short-term recommendations, Hacker identifies a number of mid-term solutions for implementation between 2028–32, including:

1. Continue expanding the active and surge capacity of the munitions industrial base with a focus on resilient and redundant rather than lean supply chains.
2. Implement open architectures and digital engineering into new munitions designs to take advantage of modularity and advanced manufacturing methods.
3. Continue experimenting with and fielding advanced munitions technologies to fill current capability gaps.
4. Pursue an affordable mix of exquisite and cheap PGMs to enable “affordable precision in mass”.
5. Develop new employment techniques and operational concepts that leverage the advanced features of next-generation PGMs.

Finally, for the longer-term horizon, namely beyond the 2033 timeframe and in preparation for a far more sustained, long-term great power competition, akin to the first Cold War to ensure a long-term qualitative and quantitative advantages over existing and emerging peer competitors, with Hacker presenting:

1. Procure a mix of PGMs that complement next-generation platforms as they are fielded in the 2030s.
2. Develop and field munitions that utilise advanced technologies to fill long-running capability gaps, reduce planning trade-offs, and outpace adversary countermeasures.
3. Refine employment techniques and operational concepts to utilise advanced munitions and future force packages to create the greatest advantage.

Final thoughts

Recognising these challenges doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom, these challenges aren’t insurmountable, particularly when the solutions are shared across an aggregation of allied partners, with Australia uniquely positioned to maximise the opportunities presented both directly in terms of precision-guided munitions, but more broadly across a range of dual-use technologies and consumer goods as a result of the advanced manufacturing technologies developed in concert with responding to these challenges.

Yet despite the opportunities to learn from comparable nations, it appears as though Australia is falling back into its default position of “she’ll be right”, while nations across the globe, and in particular in the Indo-Pacific, double down on the disruption wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and have actively begun to marshal their own national power and cohesively coordinate in preparation for the post-COVID-19, multipolar world order.

With this in mind, it is critical to understand that perhaps, unlike almost any other nation, Australia is at a precipice and both the Australian public and the nation’s political and strategic leaders need to decide what they want the nation to be: do they want the nation to become an economic, political, and strategic backwater caught between two competing great empires and a growing cluster of periphery great powers? Or do we “have a crack” and actively establish itself as a regional great power with all the benefits it entails?

While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the sociopolitical and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.

Equally, we have to begin to confront the question of “What sort of region and world do we want to live in and hand down to our children?”, for if Australia does not embrace the opportunities presented by the Indo-Pacific and more broadly the era of competition that is coming to characterise the 21st century, we will have the world created for us by nations that hold their national interests as sacrosanct and put them before all other considerations.

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