The U.S. and Europe are running out of weapons to send to Ukraine

Ukrainian servicemen fire an M777 howitzer, Kharkiv Region, northeastern Ukraine. This photo cannot be distributed in the Russian Federation.

The production level for 155 millimeter howitzers in the U.S. is 30,000 rounds per year in peacetime.

Two weeks is how long the Ukrainian soldiers fighting invading Russian forces last.

Dave DesRoches is an associate professor at the U.S. National Defense University. He is concerned.

I'm worried. If we don't have new production soon, we won't be able to supply the Ukrainians.

Europe is lagging behind. The EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security said that the military stocks of most European NATO member states have been exhausted.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held a special meeting of the alliance's arms directors on Tuesday.

Western nations have been producing arms at much smaller volumes during peacetime, with governments opting to slim down very expensive manufacturing and only produce weapons as needed. Some of the weapons that are running low are no longer being produced, and highly skilled labor and experience are required for their production, something that has been in short supply across the US manufacturing sector for years.

A US M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) firing salvoes during a military exercise on June 30, 2022. The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that the U.S. will be sending Ukraine another $270 million in security assistance, a package which will include high mobility artillery rocket systems and a significant number of tactical drones.

NATO members need to invest in their industrial bases in the arms sector, according to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

In an interview with the New York Times, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that his organization was working with industry to increase production of weapons.

It's not easy to ramp up defense production.

The reply was no.

Since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. has supplied $15.2 billion in weapons to the country. The 155mm howitzers and long-range heavy weaponry made by the US have been game-changers for the Ukrainian army. As long as it takes to defeat Russia, the Biden administration will supportUkraine.

There will be a lot more weapons.

To send any more 155mm howitzers, the U.S. would have to dip into its own stock of howitzers that are used for training. The supplies reserved for U.S. operations are not likely to be affected by that.

We need to put our defense industrial base on a wartime footing. And I don’t see any indication that we have.

Mark Cancian is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International and a former U.S. Marine Corps Colonel.

Cancian said that the United States needs to keep its stockpiles up to date. The driving war plan for some weapons would be a conflict with China over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, for others it would be North Korea or Europe.

The Ukrainian forces are going to have to replace some of their most important battlefield equipment, like the 155mm howitzer, with less optimal weaponry like the 105mm howitzer.

It is a problem for the Ukrainians because range is important in this war. There is a war going on.

A boy walks past a graffiti on a wall depicting a Ukrainian serviceman making a shot with a US-made Javelin portable anti-tank missile system, in Kyiv, on July 29, 2022.

The U.S. has a limited inventory of weapons that Ukrainians rely on.

The shoulder-fired, precision-guided anti-tank missile has been indispensable in the fight against Russian tanks. According to the CSIS, the U.S. has low production at a rate of around 800 per year.

Ukrainian soldiers take pictures of a mural titled ‘Saint Javelin’ dedicated to the British portable surface-to-air missile has been unveiled on the side of a Kyiv apartment block on May 25, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The artwork by illustrator and artist Chris Shaw is in reference to the Javelin missile donated to Ukrainian troops to battle against the Russian invasion.

President Joe Biden visited a Javelin plant in Alabama in May and said he would make sure the United States and our allies could replenish their own stock of weapons. He said that the fight is not going to be cheap.

The Pentagon has ordered hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of new Javelins, but ramping up takes time, as many suppliers that provide the chemicals and computer chips for each missile can't all be sped up It takes time to hire and train people to build technology. Cancian said it could take between one and four years for the US to increase weapons production.

The defense industrial base needs to be on a wartime footing. I don't think we have.

During an interview with CNBC in April, Jim Taiclet, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, said that the company needed to have some capacity in order to ramp up their supply chain. Six to 12 months down the road, the deliveries occur.

CNBC asked the U.S. Department of Defense if they had any comment.

South Korea, which has a formidable weapons sector, signed a sale to Poland for over $5 billion of tanks and howitzers in August. Replacement weapons are often less optimal.

A Ukrainian serviceman mans a position in a trench on the front line near Avdiivka, Donetsk region on June 18, 2022 amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Jack Watling is an expert on land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

There is enough time for a solution to be found before it becomes critical in terms of stepping up manufacture.

There is a point where the Ukrainians will need to be cautious about their rate of expenditure and where they prioritize those munitions, because there isn't an infinite supply.