The stockpiles of artillery ammunition are running low, according to the assessment by the Pentagon, russia only has as many capable rounds as to spend them by the end of this year. This is the information shared by a US senior defense official at a closed media briefing.
"We assess that at the rate of fire that Russia has been using its artillery and rocket ammunition, in terms of what we would call fully serviceable and rocket ammunition, they could probably do that until early 2023," the official said.
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However, it doesn’t mean russian forces are about to end up without ammunition at all, because they are starting to use degraded ammunition far beyond its expiration date.
The use of such old expired shells leads to "increased failure rates, unpredictable performance", they could not detonate on impact or, conversely, explode too early, sometimes the moment they are fired from the gun.
In this situation, the Kremlin will try to increase the rates of production of new artillery rounds and refurbish the old ones, while simultaneously trying to reach out to iran and North Korea as potential donors of ammunition, the Pentagon assumes.
That said, what the USA regards as "ammunition in degraded conditions" is ammunition made more than 40 years ago. Thus the Pentagon’s assessment is based on its own US standards of keeping shells in storage. Meanwhile in russia, application of 40-year-old artillery rounds is not a problem even if it backfires with failures during shooting and injuries or deaths of their personnel.
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