A Million Shells and More: Pentagon Revs Up Ukraine Weapons Aid and Bolsters Stockpiles
- From Patriot systems to NASAMS, a need to bolster stockpiles
- Effort to repeat Covid pandemic’s ‘Warp Speed’ approach
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President Joe Biden says the US will keep supplying Ukraine the weapons it needs to fight Russia for “as long as it takes.” Honoring that pledge is forcing the Pentagon and its NATO counterparts to change the way they do business.
Desperate to meet Ukraine’s demands for everything from artillery shells to the Patriot missile defense system that the US is poised to provide, the Defense Department is tackling a decades-long bugbear that has plagued arms production: finding ways to speed up assembly lines and entice weapons-makers with longer-term contracts to show the US military won’t abandon a system once its immediate needs are met.