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Andri Chadrin is a sergeant and a medic in Ukraine's armed forces. He's on the front lines in the Denetsk region in eastern Ukraine, and in that part of the country the fight against Russia is grinding on. He spoke to us from outside his base, and Andri says, that.
Looks pretty much like World War One. Everything is covered with drenches. For sure. People are exhausted, it's not even tired. A lot of them are on their edge.
When it comes to equipment and supplies, what are you running short of? What are the things that you're not able to get in the quantity that you need.
You can never have enough equipment. You're like either shot on equipment or you're deadly shot on equipment.
Andre is talking about armed vehicles and fuel, but also weapons, including some basic ones like one hundred and fifty five millimeters artillery shells, which looked like giant bullets. Each one weighs about one hundred pounds. Also black powder gunpowder needed to fire those shells. Ukraine has been running short, deadly short on these and part of the reason is that
all of this was largely seen as obsolete. In an age of drones and high tech warfare, nobody thought there would be a need for such old school artillery and munitions.
The issues of such things as black powder would come up, but mostly as a sportsman's type angle, or the need for Civil War enactors to have blackpowder that sort of thing.
Bloomberg reporter Billy House says that for years, the Defense Department invested in new weapons systems, betting future conflicts would not play out the way this one has. The Pentagon wasn't predicting there'd be trench warfare in the twenty first century, but Russia has relied on tanks and artillery, and it's been able to defeat many newer battlefield technologies by hacking into those systems. So Ukraine has had to meet fire
with fire, or in this case, tanks with tanks. Now the US is committing billions of dollars to make more shells and black powder, to refurbish and refashion munitions factories in Pennsylvania and Louisiana and Texas. But according to Bloomberg's Roxanna Tyrone, this is not an easy undertaking.
A lot of these facilities, a lot of these plants are very very old Scranton, where I visited not long ago. It's basically a bunch of buildings from nineteen oh eight.
Today on the show, new demand for old school ammunition. The fate of Ukraine could hinge on how fast the US can ramp up some of its oldest munitions plans and if Congress signs onto that plan. This is the big take from Blue News. I'm David Garrett. To understand why the US was caught off guard by Ukraine's demand for munitions, it helps to see the plants where they're made. Roxanne.
You go to that factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania. What does it look like and what are they making their day in and day out.
So they make mostly one hundred and fifty five millimeters projectiles and it's a very old, very dim building. It's basically a forge. It's very hot steel. They have to mold and melt into the projectiles. They have to make sure that they were forged to the right measurements. Then then they have to basically cool down the steel. And you'd be surprised to find out that they go on these very rudimentary cooling racks that were used before for
different industries. I think it was they had steam locomotives.
It's a very.
Precise process that also it's kind of rudimentary because it's people in a basement that have to physically inspect tubes that come at eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit.
So Billy Roxanna was in Scranton, Pennsylvania. You went down to Minden, Louisiana, to another munitions factory there.
It was amazing. It was as if I had gone back decades to some barracks with rickety boards and corrugated aluminum roofs and even a tattered go X company flag flapping outside. It was remarkable that this is where we get our black powder, and also kind of makes you think back not much has probably changed in Civil War even before then when DuPont was the only producer of black powder. The go X plant in Minden is kind
of the descendant of that same company. The products that go into making black powder themselves are unstable, so you have potential accidents, fires, even explosions. Just in storing the material and the shipping itself is dangerous. It's a process that is highly complicated yet not really advanced much beyond the Civil War.
It's a throwback, but it's happening in response to what the situation on the ground calls for. And it's highlighted how much the US defense industry had moved on Roxanna. What was the state of the munitions industry in the US going into the war in Ukraine.
To be honest, it was fairly abysmal. The US didn't spend very much money on their munitions industrial base at all. They were counting on high profile weapons like the F thirty five and other more advanced weaponry to fight future wars. And they also come out of the counterinsurgency fights in Iraq and Afghanistan where you know, the wars weren't fought with bullets. But really the war of the future that
they envisioned was airpower. It's hypersonic flight, it's satellites, it's aircraft that can you know, fly fast and dog fight and drop bombs. So this is not it. None of this happens in Ukraine at the level that they thought a future war would be fought.
It's been a rush to catch up with the old stuff. And now the question is whether you keep spending billions and billions on material and weaponry that you thought you were phasing out and Marxanda.
When we talk about the equipment, the weapons, technology that's needed in Ukraine, what are we talking about exactly what cond ammunitions?
We're talking about projectiles. We're talking about one hundred and fifty five millimeters ammunition, sometimes even larger, but mostly it's an infantry war in Ukraine especially, and you've seen a lot of other technology, such as drones and counter drones, but a lot of it in fact is rudimentary. We're not talking about high technology here. We're talking about basically technology to get things done.
Sergeant Andre Chadrin explains why those one hundred and fifty five millimeters shells have been and continue to be so important in Ukraine.
One hundred and fifty five are more accurate, and we are able to reach the enemy and give a clear shot shot and destroy the target in not like fifteen artillery shells and in like three or five artillery shells.
He also says he and his fellow soldiers have faced some difficult choices when supplies of those munitions ran low, most recently when US lawmakers spent months debating a military aid package.
For a long time, we were unable to call for artillery support for our unit, because all the shells were for the infantry for us not to lose positions. You're unable to call for artillery support until you're an infantry guy whose positions is assaulted. The half of half a year of PAWS, when the Congress and then were not resupplied by the US military, that led to shortage of artillery supplies that we pretty painfully felt throughout this half a year.
In April, Congress approved sixty one billion dollars of additional aid to Ukraine, about a fourth of which is designated for replenishing weapons stock piles. Sergeant Chatern welcomes that, but he acknowledges continued support from US lawmakers is not a sure thing. Congress is still conflicted not just about supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but also about ramping
up production in old weapons factories. How that uncertainty could shape Ukraine's military strategy after the break This spring, lawmakers allocated billions of dollars to the Pentagon so that it can replenish its supply of munitions it's been sending to Ukraine's armed forces. President Biden touted this in a speech after he signed that aid package into law.
We're sending Ukraine equipment from our own stockpiles. Then we'll replace those stockpiles with new products made by American companies here in America. Patron missiles made in Arizona, javelins made in Alabama, artillery shows made in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
The President says he sees this effort as part of a bigger push to jumpstart American manufacturing, but there is no guarantee that funding will continue. Billy House and Roxana Tirne covered the fight over military aid to Ukraine closely. How much attention is this getting from Congress? How politically popular is this ramp up.
I'm not really seeing a wave of attention or urgency necessarily the predictions that Congress would need to provide another three point five billion a year to keep up the pace that's needed. Again, many of these lawmakers are living in a world where they thought or modern weapons would do the trick, and this has been kind of a back in time push to a more basic material, and
it's hard to convince some of these lawmakers. So that's really what you want to pour billions into nineteen seventies eighties mentality type weapons.
The camps are very split, right. You have very very strong supporters of Ukraine, and then you have, especially on the Republican side, those who did not want to give
more money for the war in Ukraine. And you've seen in their own party the argument that if you build up to send munitions to Ukraine, you're actually building up the industry for the United States, and that Congress would be preparing the United States for a future conflict because they're making all of these changes to you know, the factory floors that would then benefit the US, you know, going forward. So you've seen this argument from the Minority
leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate. You've seen it from you know, basically all the leaders of the defense congressional defense committees.
Billy, I'm going to guess that in your career covering Congress, you've been to a number of hearings about some of that high tech weaponry, the F thirty five and the like. Was there a moment at which you noticed that lawmakers were waking up to the idea that the weapons that were needed for these two wars weren't aligned with what they've been prioritizing.
Not really. Only recently and during the Ukraine War did you start to see people float proposed legislation to correct the inadequacies they've determined, and they.
Realized that they couldn't produce the amounts that Ukraine was even expanding in one month. I mean they started out at fourteen thousand, one hundred and fifty five millimeters projectiles a month, and their aim is to get to one hundred thousand a month by the end of twenty twenty five.
Roxande. As all of this work is underway, to replenish this stockpile takes time. As you've laid out what's happening on a more short term basis.
The US is obviously ramped up production in Scranton. They have three shifts, you know, seven days a week, so they hired more people. You now have about three hundred people working in Scranton, which by the way, also has a minimum wage of seven to twenty five and general dynamics that planned they pay a lot more, so it is definitely a coveted place to work. They also opened up a new facility in Texas in Mesquite, Texas, the rodeo capital of the US, and they have another factory
in Canada actually that would also make the steelcasings. In the meantime, they've also ramped up work in Iowa where they do the explosive fill, and they're also very soon will be opening more facilities, one in Arkansas and one
in Kansas. And they have gotten to a point where now they are producing about thirty five thousand, one hundred and fifty five millimeter projectiles a month, and they're ramping up quickly, and they're expecting to get about sixty eight thousand very early next year and then finally go up to one hundred thousand by the end of twenty twenty five. But what it takes, though, it takes a lot of
Congressional attention, and it takes a lot of money. We're talking about at least five billion dollars to make all of these improvements to buy some of this munition. But in the long term they will still need a lot of congressional dedication and attention to be able to keep producing these munitions at a rapid pace and to keep buying them.
If Congress doesn't keep approving the money for this, these weapons will dry up. Is it a challenge for USLS?
It is definitely in Europe in particular, they're dealing with the same kind of problems that the US is dealing with, perhaps even more. Or they're trying to ramp up their production of one hundred and fifty five millimeters in other type of projectiles as well, and they're finding that, you know, they did not invest in defense infrastructure, and they're finding that building up is really difficult and it takes time.
What does the Pentagon make of the way these wars are being waged and sort of what it might mean for warfare in the future.
I think they realized that it does take a lot of bullets and it also this is not to say that they're completely turning away from high tech weaponry. That's absolutely not the case. But they're using Ukraine as a case study to build up the munition's industrial base not only to build these projectiles, but also to move faster when it comes to precision guide, a munitions, bunker busters, you know, the kinds of things that the US might
use in a much larger conflict. So I think it's taught the United States a lesson that it kind of needs to be prepared for all instances, for all types of war, and not just react to the war in front of them.
In the meantime, as the US grapples with this reality on the front lines in Ukraine, Sergeant Andre Chattern says the stakes of getting much needed munitions are high, not just for him and other troops, but also for all of Europe and arguably for the whole Western world.
We are fighting the country that is three times larger than us by population. Their military budget is something like, I don't know, dozens of times larger than our was. If you're supporting the humanitarian ideas, if you want this war stopped, it's pretty easy to stop it. Give us the enough amount of instruments to stop, but to stop Russians to reclaim our territory. That is investment in a future piece on European content.
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. This episode was produced by Jessica Beck and Alex Segura. It was edited by Stacy Vanick Smith, Tim Annette, and Megan Scully. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez. It was fact checked by Thomas lou Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Kim Gittleson. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beamster bor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is
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