The U.S. military needs an industrial backbone to function–rocket motors, ball bearings, munitions–to shoot missiles and counter drones

That backbone just got a major boost from the national security supplemental

Here are 4 big bottlenecks the $20B injection will tackle (🧵) 1️⃣ SOLID ROCKET MOTORS

One is the production of solid rocket motors used for everything from Javelin anti-tank weapons that can hit a tank from a little over a mile away to intercontinental ballistic missiles that can propel warheads across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans if a U.S. war with Russia or China ever went nuclear.

(U.S. Navy Photo/Released)

Ukraine is still likely to be outgunned by Russia for much of the rest of 2024–that's even with $60B in U.S. military aid.

U.S. and Europe are only just starting to ramp up artillery production.

Here are 3 questions that will define the industrial war in 2024.

(🧵) 1⃣ Can the US and Europe restock fast enough?

The expectation is that Biden admin will spend much of 2024 rebuilding US stockpiles.

US Army aims to produce 100,000 artillery rounds / month by end 2025.

Most of the EU's target to get 1.4m shells into 🇺🇦 hands won’t get there until the end of 2024.

If you're looking for one symbol of Sweden's 200-year path through neutrality to NATO membership, there's no better place to look than Musko Naval Base, the underground naval facility carved out of a mountainside.

Let's take a look. (THREAD 🧵)

(DoD photo / Chad J. McNeeley) Sweden stayed out of both world wars. And after the dust settled in World War II and the Iron Curtain came down, neighbors Norway, Iceland, and Denmark joined NATO. Sweden didn’t.

In secret, though, the Swedes were building up their defenses.

If Russia's war in Ukraine has taught the U.S. Army anything about the future of warfare, it’s this:

Just look up.

@ForeignPolicy got a chance to travel to Ft. Irwin, one of the Army's biggest training bases, where soldiers face off against 105 drone swarms that can attack all at once.

Here are 3 things the Army is doing learn to fight and defend in a world of drone swarms.

PHOTO: SPC. JAARON TOLLEY/U.S. ARMY 1️⃣ TURN OFF YOUR PHONE: The cell phone is the new cigarette in the foxhole.

To survive on the modern battlefield, soldiers are having to make themselves smaller and smaller—almost invisible.

Loitering munitions can wait over the battlefield for hours, ready to dive if an operator senses the faintest twitch.

NEW: The US Army will be forced to cut its artillery production target by over 25% if Congress can't pass the $106B national security supplemental.

The Army would top out at 72,000 rounds/month by end of 2025 with no bill, far short of their 100K target.
foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/13/uni… Here's how US artillery production is faring:

Now: 28,000 rounds/month
Sept 2024: 57,000 rounds/month
Sept 2025: 72,000 rounds/month
* Dec 2025: 100,000 rounds/month

* without supplemental, US artillery production would plateau at 72,000 rounds/month

Image: US Army budget

Sweden is the world's largest archipelago. It has more than 267,000 islands.

How do the Swedes define an “island” in their straits and seas? Any piece of land you can stand on with two dry feet. 

Here's how adding 🇸🇪's 2,000-mi coastline and 1,000s of islands will change NATO Here's the context: The Nordic and Baltic countries can’t survive financially without keeping their archipelagoes and the inlets to the Baltic Sea open to maintain commerce through the region.

About 30 percent of 🇸🇪 foreign trade flows through Gothenburg port, in the west.

Finland joined NATO this week already spending 2% of GDP on defense, the alliance's target.

🇫🇮 will get F-35s in 2 yrs, and already fires 🇺🇸 standoff missiles.

🇫🇮 can surge from a standing army smaller than NYC's police force to ~280K troops in war.
foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/06/fin… While NATO went through 8 rounds of enlargement, expanding the alliance to include 30 countries and adding nations, such as Spain & Slovenia, that punched below their weight on military $, Finland—with the energy to match the world's most caffeinated people—was getting stronger

NEW: DoD’s top military command charged with countering China wants more $$$ – a lot more.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command wants over $15B to build up missile defenses on Guam and bases in Australia, Oceania, and Marianas, and long-range anti-ship missiles.
foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/09/us-… But don't expect the wish list to be granted all at once.

Biden’s final budget request is not expected to include money for planning and design of new basing areas in places like Tinian and Yap, or new munitions

Hat tip to @laraseligman and @LeeHudson_ for getting this first.

New details on Biden's trip to Kyiv on a White House call that just wrapped.

U.S. notified the Russian government that President Biden would travel to Kyiv, Ukraine hours before POTUS made the trip for "deconfliction purposes," National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said. Biden admin only involved a small circle of interagency officials to plan POTUS visit to Ukraine today, White House officials said.

Biden made final decision to travel to Kyiv on Fri after meeting w/ national security staff in the Oval, Deputy National Security Adviser Finer

Biden travels to meet Zelensky in Kyiv amid blaring air raid sirens, nine years to the day after Russia first launched its lightning campaign to illegally annex Crimea.

It’s a major signal of American and Western resolve, with Russia waging a renewed and bloody offensive. Biden’s unannounced trip to Ukraine comes 361 days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.

It will likely boost the confidence of Ukrainian officials who already believe they have the wind at their backs in a push to get F-16s from the West.

NEW: Ukraine is bracing for a grisly Russian offensive in the Donbas, with hundreds of thousands of troops already concentrated in the country’s east.

“We expect in the next 10 days a new, huge invasion,” said a Ukrainian military official. (w/ @ak_mack)
foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/08/ukr… Ukrainian officials estimate that Russian forces inside the country have surpassed the 300,000 mark following a recent mobilization effort that began in September 2022. Even more conservative estimates of 🇷🇺 presence in 🇺🇦 are significantly higher than Putin's invading force.

NEW: Pentagon officials are raising concerns about a proposal to send Ukraine ground-launched small diameter bombs that would allow Kyiv to strike Russian targets nearly 100 miles away, fearing that deploying the weapons could take far too long.
foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/12/rus… The ground-launched small diameter bomb, co-developed by Boeing & Saab, has not been subjected to the admin debate over US weapons to Ukraine provoking Russian escalation.

Officials are worried the weapons could arrive too late: GBU-39 SDBs need to be paired w/ rocket motors

NEW: Turkey sent Ukraine artillery-fired cluster bombs in late 2022 after months of Kyiv's pleas with US for the weapons, @RobbieGramer & I have learned.

The DPICM will give Kyiv a powerful—but controversial—weapon to destroy Russian tanks & kill troops.
foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/10/tur… The NATO ally began sending the first batches of so-called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs) in November 2022

The weapons are designed to destroy tanks by bursting into dozens of smaller submunitions, which can linger on the battlefield for years

NEW: Zelensky’s visit to DC comes as the Biden admin and Congress are wrestling over one of Ukraine’s biggest asks: for Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that would trigger some of US government's most far-reaching sanctions
foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/21/zel… Administration officials – who have instead proposed labelling Russia an "aggressor state" – are concerned that a terrorist state designation could have adverse impacts on a U.N.-brokered deal to allow grain to be exported from Ukraine’s ports.

NEW: Pentagon officials are telling Capitol Hill that munition requirements for DoD war plans—such as for a possible US and NATO fight with Russia—are preventing the US from sending more arms to Ukraine.

Congress is pushing for DoD to revise those plans
foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/09/mil… DoD officials first used this rationale to explain why the U.S. was not sending ATACMs. But it has expanded

“They’re applying it across the board to Stinger, Javelin, 155[mm], and GMLRS,” one congressional aide said. “It’s one of the driving rationales" for smaller aid packages.

NEW: NATO officials are beginning to worry that supplying Ukraine with weapons is now dangerously cutting into Western ammo stockpiles

“I think everyone is now sufficiently worried,’” a NATO official told @ak_mack. “The relevance of stockpiling is back”
foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/16/ukr… But Western push to get industry moving, especially in the U.S., has been slow to take root.

"What industry wants is signed contracts," said a congressional aide familiar with the talks. “We’ve been doing a lot of talking without a lot of signing."

NEW: Ukraine is asking the U.S. for controversial Cold War-era cluster munitions that have been on the shelf for years.

🇺🇦 officials say they need artillery-launched cluster bombs – banned for export – to reduce the wear and tear on NATO-grade artillery.
foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/26/ukr… Some worry that adding US and European ordinance to the battlefield could complicate the already extensive mine cleanup underway in Ukraine.

U.S. "should be thoughtful about providing systems that are controversial & have chance to negatively impact civilians” said @rachelstohl

Scoop: An independent US government agency is calling on Biden admin to take steps to remove Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council

Russia "has no right to this seat," two US lawmakers wrote Blinken in a letter seen by @RobbieGramer & me
foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/13/hel… Under the long-shot plan, Ukraine would issue credentials to a representative to claim the seat, allowing the U.S. or another nation to protest 🇷🇺 standing as a UNSC member, which derives from a 1991 deal for Moscow to retain the USSR’s permanent seat after Soviet collapse

NEW: Ukraine’s military has captured over 200 Russian vehicles in a more than weeklong offensive that has reconquered most of Kharkiv Oblast, Ukrainian military officials told me.

"They will be used against Russia," one official said.
foreignpolicy.com/2022/09/13/rus… “They just left their tanks, artillery, special equipment, a lot of armor, and were just trying to save their lives,” a Ukrainian military official told Foreign Policy, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide an update on ongoing military operations.

NEW: Ukrainian military officials are increasingly worried that U.S.-provided Gray Eagle strike drones would get shot down by reinforced Russian air defenses in the Donbas region.

"It’s not Afghanistan here," said one Ukrainian pilot.
foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/21/ukr… Ukrainian pilots said that their Air Force has mostly pulled back strikes using Turkish Bayraktar drones that proved effective at stopping Russian tank advances during the battle of Kyiv.

'Now that they’ve built up good air defenses, they’re almost useless,” said one 🇺🇦 pilot.

NEW: Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is being increasingly boxed in by reluctance to formally declare war, US officials believe.

The move would allow Russia to declare a general mobilization but would shatter Putin's lie that the war is limited campaign.
foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/14/put… “Right now, the Russian leadership is lying to its people about what’s going on,” a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity based on ground rules set by the U.S. Defense Department, told reporters on the way to Brussels for the Ukraine Contact Group.