This winter, NATO ordered a survey of the current ammunition stockpiles held by all of its member nations. That was completed last week and the news is far from encouraging. One European diplomat who reviewed the study was quoted as saying, “If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days.” Not months. Not weeks. Days. With all of the saber-rattling that’s currently taking place amid escalating tensions between Moscow and the west, this might be an important detail for the United States and our western allies to keep in mind. It’s true that Russia’s army has severely underperformed and they’re pretty beaten up at the moment. But I don’t think anyone expects the NATO allies to beat them in a ground battle in a matter of “days.” (Newsweek)

NATO recently completed a large survey of its ammunition stockpiles and found supplies have been considerably depleted by the war in Ukraine, according to a new report.

Many NATO countries were said to have already had weapons stockpiles that did not meet the bloc’s targets prior to Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, according to the report from Reuters.

The news agency cited a NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity and said the alliance found in a survey that those stockpile numbers have since dwindled even further as NATO continues to arm Ukraine at a rate that doesn’t match weapons production.

There are two obvious reasons for the paltry condition of the NATO ammunition stockpiles. The first and most obvious is that they have been funneling weapons and ammunition into Ukraine for more than a year now, just as the United States has been. And the rate that Ukraine is burning through everything from bullets to rockets is vastly faster than western arms manufacturers can replace.

But the NATO stockpile situation wasn’t in good shape even before the Russian invasion began. Nearly every European NATO country had fallen short of the alliance’s stated targets, some by wide margins. That’s only one symptom of a sad reality we discussed here recently. Europe has, for a very long time been perfectly happy to rely on the nuclear umbrella of the United States to keep them safe and now they really aren’t able to stand on their own if they had to. Nearly all of the EU has failed to increase its defense spending despite continued pleas from America to do so.

Relying on the United States this heavily may soon no longer be an option. We’re still shouldering the lion’s share of the burden, but we’ve known for some time now that our own supplies of munitions are running low. We recently began tapping into our ammunition stockpiles in both Israel and South Korea just to keep up with the demand of feeding the Ukrainian forces. And our own analysts have already determined that we probably don’t have anywhere near enough munitions to keep the pace for very long if we get dragged into either a hot war or a proxy war with China over Taiwan. (Something that is seeming less improbable by the day.)

Even if western arms manufacturers manage to quickly ramp back up to wartime production levels (which hasn’t happened yet), it’s currently estimated that it will take years to replenish those stockpiles and truly be prepared for a prolonged wartime footing. Is anyone working on this problem? Is there a plan in place to shorten that timeline? I certainly haven’t heard of one. But something needs to change soon or we’re going to wind up driving this bus off of a cliff and Ukraine will have effectively disarmed the west.