Ukraine’s Western allies are trying to find as many artillery shells as possible to give the country in its war against Russia. The hard truth, however, is the West can’t produce or buy enough to meet Ukraine’s needs.
The Czech Republic is leading a European initiative to buy artillery shells for Ukraine. Eight hundred thousand rounds were already bought on the world market, meaning the Czechs checked with countries outside of Europe and NATO for the ammunition.
The first delivery from the Czech-led initiative is supposed to be in Ukraine by June at the latest. The Czech Republic said it also secured rights to purchase another 700,000 rounds if funding can be secured. A prospect that sounds likely given the way European leaders have been speaking about Russia recently.
The EU is also investing more than half a billion dollars in the ammunition production industry to try to increase output. The money will be matched by private sector funding as well, with the ultimate goal of producing more than 2 million shells a year by 2025.
And after months of saying aid funding was dried up, the White House found enough to approve another $300 million aid package for Ukraine that included 155mm ammunition and additional ATACMS missiles.
The Ukrainians are grateful for the added munitions, but the promise of more ammo tomorrow doesn’t do much for the soldiers fighting today.
The Ukrainians are still mostly in defensive positions along the front lines, and without enough artillery to push back, the Russians drones are once again fulfilling a critical need. Only now, they’re equipped with a new explosive feature: airburst shrapnel mines. Basically, claymores mounted to FPV drones.
Claymores were made infamous during the Vietnam War. About a pound-and-a-half of explosive is packed between a steel plate and around 700 steel ball bearings. The blast is directed away from the steel plate in the back and forwards in a 60-degree arc, shooting the ball bearings out to an effective range of about 100 meters. That is why claymores are so clearly labeled “front toward enemy.”
Ukrainians are attaching claymores and similar domestically produced directional shrapnel mines to their drones and using them essentially like guided cluster bombs against enemy personnel. This latest iteration of drone warfare offers Ukraine a cheap and effective way to target enemy personnel. It’s also more accurate than “traditional” FPV drone attacks, where detonation depends on actually making contact with the enemy.
In those scenarios, the drones usually lose line of sight connection with the operator during the final phase of the attack. So, they can be ineffective against soldiers on the ground who might be able to simply dodge the drone. But by strapping a claymore to it, the operators can keep connection and basically fire a shot. This ensures greater accuracy over a wider area.
Russia also produces attack drones capable of carrying the Russian version of the claymore mine, but they’re not used as widely on the battlefield. At least not yet. Russian drone production and innovation usually follows that of Ukraine’s, but Ukraine blew up so many oil refineries lately, the Russians might be more worried about keeping the lights on at this point.
Seeing drones as a means of survival, Ukraine is on track to domestically produce a million by the end of the year and could acquire another million or so from allies by the end of the year as well. As David Hambling pointed out in a recent article for Forbes, that means for less than a billion dollars, Ukraine can individually target every Russian soldier fighting in the war today with a precision-guided airburst shrapnel munition.
Reuters contributed to this report.
