Top generals warn that allies — Canada included — are running dangerously low on artillery shells
CBC
A leading NATO official and Canada's top military commander have both warned allies within the past week that their ammunition shortages have reached a crisis state, and are calling for urgent action to boost production of critical artillery rounds.
Gen. Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, recently told a House of Commons committee that if Canadian troops were called upon to fire their big guns at the same rate as Ukrainian troops fighting to repel the Russian invasion, their supply of shells would last for only a few days.
At the Warsaw Security Forum this week, Admiral Rob Bauer, the head of NATO's military council, warned that "the bottom of the barrel is now visible" in terms of how much ammunition the alliance has available to transfer to Ukraine.
Most of Canada's major allies have in recent months signed agreements with munitions suppliers to increase the monthly output of artillery rounds — mostly 155 millimetre ammunition, the kind used by Canada's M-777 howitzers.
The federal government has yet to reach its own deal to boost the supply of shells, the Commons defence committee was told Thursday.
"I am very concerned about our ammunition stocks," said Eyre. "NATO high-readiness forces ask us to have what's called 30 days of supply.
"If we were to consume munitions [at] the same rate that we're seeing them [fired] in Ukraine, we would be out in some cases in days and it would take years to restock."
This week in Warsaw, Bauer said production needs to ramp up among allies because decades of under-investment left some ammunition warehouses half-full — or emptier — following donations to Ukraine.
Although estimates are hard to obtain, Ukrainian forces are reportedly firing as many as 5,000 rounds of artillery per day to beat back the Russian invasion.
Canada produces 3,000 of the 155 millimetre artillery shells per month under a framework called the Munitions Supply Program. It's a standing arrangement with five private sector companies — the most prominent being General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Canada (GDOT-C) — to maintain stocks and provide surge capacity in times of crisis.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Eyre said, production has not increased.
"We have not produced one additional round of ammunition in this country since February of 22," he told the committee. Eyre called for a heightened sense of urgency and said more production lines should be opened as soon as possible.
"This is something that greatly concerns me," he said.
The defence chief also said Canada needs to be producing the more lethal and accurate 155 millimetre round known as the M-795 variant. It has a longer range and a greater blast radius than the M-107 rounds currently produced under the federal government's framework.
