Estonia’s top military commander said fresh intelligence on Russia’s ability to produce ammunition and recruit troops has prompted a re-evaluation among NATO allies and a spate of warnings to prepare for a long-term conflict.
Martin Herem, the commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, said predictions that Russian forces would reach the limits of their resources haven’t come true. President Vladimir Putin’s military has the capacity to produce several million artillery shells a year, far outstripping European efforts, and can recruit hundreds of thousands of new troops, he said.
The general from Estonia, which shares a nearly 300-kilometer (186-mile) border with Russia, joins a growing number of North Atlantic Treaty Organization military chiefs who have warned over the past month that the alliance should prepare for a war footing with the Kremlin. Herem referenced an earlier estimate that Russia could produce a million artillery shells a year.
“A lot of people thought they couldn’t go beyond that — today, the facts tell us otherwise,” Herem said in an interview in Tallinn. “They can produce even more — many times more — ammunition.”
One estimate has put Russian artillery shell production at 7x the combined production of all of NATO.
In practice this isn’t as bad as it seems for NATO, that production goes into other things like aircraft and naval armaments, but in terms of supplying Ukraine it’s a problem unless you want to loan them an entire air force.
And, of course, there’s the simple reality than 10 artillery shells at ~$800 a pop are still an order of magnitude cheaper than a single Hellfire at ~$150k.