Ukraine to U.S. Defense Industry: We Need Long-Range, Precision Weapons
Our readers are about 1,800 corporate members of the defense industrial base in the United States. What message do you have for them? And what do you need from them urgently?
Sharapov: The [Ministry of Defense] is concentrating currently on fulfilling all the needs of the armed forces. You asked a question about needs. First, you have to understand that the frontline is 2,500 kilometers long. The frontline where there is active combat in more than 1,000 kilometers long. That’s like from Kyiv to Berlin. … As of today, all the people in all of our armed forces and within the defense and security sector is up to one million people. And we have to support them all. We have to supply them with small arms, with personal protection gear and with the means of communication.
And of course, to carry out a war in this day and age, we need heavy weapons — that’s primarily artillery systems. As of today, our need for heavy artillery systems is measured by hundreds. That’s why we also need a huge number of rounds for these artillery systems.
I am not going to name the exact number we need. That is information for internal use. I’m just going to tell you I think to fulfill those needs we have to engage the entire military industrial complex of the entire world.
We have received a large number of weapon systems, but unfortunately with such a massively expendable resource, it only covers 10 to 15 percent of our needs. We need artillery, we need artillery rounds, infantry fighting vehicles, combat vehicles, tanks. We really need air-defense systems and the multiple launch rocket system.
Also, high-precision weapon systems, because we believe that high-precision weapon systems will give us an edge over the enemy, the upper hand in this war.
There is a debate in the United States about whether to send Ukraine armed Predator drones. How important are they to your fight?
Sharapov: The party that will win in this war will be the party that will first start using contemporary high precision equipment and weapon systems. And those drones that you mentioned, they are a part of the modernized, highly accurate, highly precise, modern equipment. It gives us an advantage that allows us to accurately strike the enemy.
Gen. Karpenko: Regarding the first question, I want to add something to what the deputy minister has said in terms of the need for equipment and armaments. I just want you to understand the intensity of the conflict. While the deputy minister was talking, I drafted some numbers to just show you the intensity of combat along those … kilometers where the combat is most active.
Think about this: one brigade occupies around 40 kilometers of the fence line. That means that to cover the active combat conflict we need 40 brigades. Every brigade is 100 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 tanks, 54 artillery systems — just for one brigade, and we have 40 of them.
I'm not going to talk about the anti-tank guided missiles or anti-tank guided weapons for now. I’m just talking about heavy weapons. As of today, we have approximately 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent of losses of equipment as a result of active combat. So, we have lost approximately 50 percent. … Approximately 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles have been lost, 400 tanks, 700 artillery systems.
That is a mathematical estimation we can make based on the length of the frontline and the intensity of the conflict. So, I'm giving you this estimate just for you to understand how significant the requirement is based on the intensity of the conflict.
So, think about it. If the current need for artillery systems is 700 vehicles, that needs to be replenished because they were destroyed. And we have only received 100 vehicles for example from [foreign] aid. … Then there [are] medical needs, the air force troops, the special forces and all the other branches and services that are also fighting in this war.
Regarding the heavy armaments and in regard to the drones as you asked about: this is what the war has come down to — using heavy artillery systems. It's close-contact warfare. So that leads to a lot of casualties.
The war that we are seeing in Ukraine right now happened the last time in 1945 when the world won over evil.
Unfortunately, today, we don't have the technologies that would allow us to limit human casualties. We have close human contact within the warfare. And that's why the deputy minister said correctly that the victorious side will be the party that has those [long-range, precision] technologies.
You have to understand that all of the [unmanned aerial vehicles], the armed UAVs that are needed, the kamikaze drones, they are the weapons that will allow us to extend the line of contact. So, the [increased] space between us and the enemy will limit human casualties while still increasing the efficiency of the destruction of enemy vehicles.
We need both the multiple launch rocket systems and the kamikaze drones [loitering munitions].
If we can use long-range items like the drones — like the MLRS — that will allow us to extend the effective range up to 60 kilometers, that will give us the upper hand and that will give us significant success.
And if we can increase the number of multiple launch rocket systems and kamikaze drones that will decrease the rate of consumption of artillery systems.
In a single article, Ukrainian officials admitted Oryx is completely wrong in all of his figures for Ukrainian losses and that Western Aid is completely insufficient to make up for the fact Russia has a massively larger economy than Ukraine.
@LordsFire I really do think you should this article as an additional piece of why I am convinced Ukraine will inevitably lose the war, since we've been discussing this idea elsewhere.