Hello everyone, I'm Staff Officer Liu.
Recently, the United States has greatly reduced its military capabilities because of its strong support for the Ukrainian army in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, so some American officials have begun to worry that if the mainland People's Liberation Army liberates Taiwan by force, then the United States will not be able to intervene. What's going on? Let's talk about that today.
Since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for more than a year, Western countries, including the United States, have become less and less supportive of Ukraine, and even the most basic artillery ammunition has become a long-standing problem that has plagued the United States and other Western countries. This is mainly due to the deindustrialization of Western countries, so the production efficiency of ammunition has not been high.
Like our official Xinhua News Agency, this issue has been reported before. The report said that Ukraine's one-day shell consumption is too high, far exceeding the speed of artillery shell production in Western countries, so the NATO Secretary General said in front of the media that the stocks of NATO countries have bottomed out and are under huge pressure from the defense industry.
We will not mention high-precision weapons such as the American "Stinger" anti-aircraft missile, or the "Javelin" man-portable anti-tank missile. Take the most common 155mm shell on the battlefield, the limit of production in the United States is now 2,000 to 3,000 rounds a day, an average of several hundred rounds a day.
But in July and August last year, when the Russian-Ukrainian conflict was at its most intense, the Ukrainian army had to consume 6,000 to 8,000 rounds a day. If you count the shells of other calibers, then the Ukrainian army can consume up to about 10,000 rounds per day. In July last year alone, the Russian army was able to fire nearly 50,000 shells a day. At that time, whether it was the United States or European countries, hollowing out the family bottom could not fill the bottomless pit of the Ukrainian army.
So the Americans, through the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, realized the serious problem of the decline in the strength of their military industry and began to be anxious. A Pentagon official revealed to the media in August last year that the US stockpile of key artillery shells is alarmingly low.
Gabe Camarillo
In March, Gabe Camarillo, deputy commander-in-chief of the Pentagon's ground forces, revealed in his book that the United States plans to increase production of 155mm shells to about 24,000 per month by the end of the year, or about 800 per day. By 2025, it is necessary to increase to 70000 pieces per month and modernize the shells.
But even if the Pentagon increases the growth rate of artillery shell production to 500%, even by 2027, it will only be enough to supply the average American military. The key reason is that at the end of August last year alone, the United States sent more than 800,000 rounds of 155mm shells to Ukraine, and then the United States supported Ukraine, totaling more than 2 million rounds of 155mm shells.
But even if the United States "supports" the Ukrainian army so much, it is still not enough for the Ukrainian army to consume. After all, the Ukrainian army knocked out 200 million US dollars of Patriot missiles in a few minutes, and we were still impressed, and we just recently started the war, and we sent Leopard 2 again. So later, after the United States and NATO ran out of surplus food, the United States began to secretly look for South Korea and borrowed hundreds of thousands of 155mm shells. Because of this, after the Pentagon leak door broke, the United States almost dragged South Korea into the troubled waters of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
At this time, some extremely anti-China US officials began to be anxious after seeing this situation. Now just one Russian-Ukrainian conflict has almost exhausted the 155-mm shells in the US stockpile. Although 155mm shells are not a rare thing, but they represent a country's overall military production capacity, if this thing is not built, then other missiles are not a bigger problem? If the Chinese People's Liberation Army liberates Taiwan at this time, will the United States still have the ability to intervene by force?
Although we do not have a favorable impression of these anti-China officials, we have to say that they have discovered the key points of the problem. After all, area denial, seizure of air supremacy, those tall strategies and tactics are to establish a situation of sufficient ammunition, if there is not enough ammunition, then fart ah!
So, Mike Gallagher, an anti-China member of the US House of Representatives, ran to ask the Pentagon. As a result, Secretary of the Army Christina Worms said, I know you are in a hurry, but don't worry, because I am more urgent than you. According to her, the U.S. Army is now applying for $18 billion from Congress to expand ammunition production capacity and accelerate ammunition modernization over the next 15 years.
Mike Gallagher
Upon hearing the news, Mack's heart was half cold, because he once led a report called "Taiwan Decade", which emphasized that if it wants to avoid a catastrophic conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the United States has only two years to rebuild its arsenal and "arm" our Taiwan province. If you wait 15 years to do this, the yellow cauliflower will be cold.
To be honest, now the capabilities of the US military-industrial industry have indeed fallen sharply, and it is not urgent to remember it. Because in order to increase military production capacity, new production lines need to be opened, and the processing tools required for these production lines are very large and complex machines, which not only cost money, but also take time to manufacture and install. For example, after the F22 production line was dismantled, the inability of the United States to recover is this reason.
But the question is, does the United States have that power now? After all, now just to repair an aircraft carrier, you need to line up a long snake array, because the old aircraft carrier is still queuing up in large quantities for maintenance, and the United States recently in order to express its support for Ukraine and deter Russia, can only drive the Ford-class aircraft carrier with electromagnetic catapult problems to Norway to forcibly support the scene.
Not to mention aircraft carriers and fighter jets, in fact, the United States is very dependent on China for raw materials for various missile bombs. The U.S. Department of Defense has also conducted a special investigation that there are nearly 200 second- and third-tier suppliers in the U.S. explosives industry, and 98% of their raw materials are imported from China.
However, in sharp contrast to the United States, our explosives technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Like TNT explosives, everyone must be familiar with them, but it is only the king of second-generation explosives. It and the third generation of explosives king Hesokin are both from Western countries. However, since the birth of Hesokin in 1899, the explosive technology of Western countries has fallen into a scientific and technological bottleneck, and it was not until the middle of the last century that Yu Yongzhong, an expert in the first generation of explosives for mainland nuclear weapons, proposed to turn the plane annular molecular structure explosive into a cage-like structure, which pointed out the direction for the development of the fourth generation of explosives.
So, inspired by the old paper, the United States developed a fourth-generation explosive called CL-20. But the explosive still exists in American laboratories and cannot be used because the safety problem has not been solved. But in order to guard against us, the United States is reluctant to tell us even if the technology is not formed in the laboratory.
So our team of Professor Pang Siping of BIT opened up a different way according to the American research and development road, greatly improved the stability of the material, and used CL20 in weapons. Later, he won the special prize of the National Defense Science and Technology Progress Award for the practical application of the CL20. And Academician Ma Weiming's aircraft carrier electromagnetic ejection technology only won the first prize. Now a US research institute has published a speculative report, which believes that many of our weapons have been equipped with CL20 in large quantities, and the world's strongest explosive is comparable in power to nuclear bombs.
Our anti-ship missiles with this explosive can easily pass through the deck of the US aircraft carrier, and once our DF-21D and DF-26 are equipped with this bomb, it will be a huge disaster for the US fleet.
Maybe some non-military fans and viewers don't understand what this concept is, so to speak, Lao Mei always likes to use retired aircraft carriers for experiments, to see how high the protection of US aircraft carriers is, so they often bombard their own aircraft carriers. But it just can't be bombed no matter how it blows up. Now that we come out with such a bomb king, let's ask you if Lao Mei is in a panic. That's why Bob Kavitsky, an American explosives expert, said that once the US military fights our army, it is likely to lose our explosive technology miserably.
But just before the fourth-generation explosive technology in the United States left the laboratory, we had already begun to develop all-nitrogen explosives. There is a good saying, "see a leaf and know the autumn", the United States can not get a small 155mm rocket artillery production capacity, which shows what the strength of the US military industry has declined. If Lao Mei is smart now, she should manage her own affairs well, and giving priority to developing herself is king, otherwise she will always cause trouble, and be careful to set herself on fire.