24 Feb 23
“What you don’t have is always important!”
Botha
NATO’s current Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, is frantically urging all members to immediately ramp-up production of weapons and ammunition, military ordnance of all kinds!
Artillery shells and small-arms ammunition are in particularly short supply, due to the rate at which they’re currently being consumed in the Ukraine War.
Depending on caliber, each artillery shell requires as much as several pounds of propellant powder (essentially the same as what is used to manufacture small-arms ammunition), and the Ukrainian Army is expending several thousand artillery rounds per day!
In this country, we’ve already sent-over to Ukraine a sizable portion of our Army’s inventory of artillery shells, not to mention missiles, rockets, etc. We are significantly drawn-down, and making all that back-up will take years, depending upon rates of production, and current rates of consumption both in Ukraine and for our normal domestic peace-time training.
Other NATO members are no better-off!
The upshot for American gun-owners, particularly reloaders, is that propellant powder (among other ammunition components) is in decreasing supply, and the supply available to civilians may dry-up completely.
Reloaders are well-advised to stock-up now, while they still can. All gun-owners should have adequate stores of ammunition.
The Ukraine War will not be ending any time soon.
In fact, it may be expanding!
/John
