Skimpiness.

This is coolbert:

“It’s like the first world war’s great shell crisis,' . . .  a 1915 scandal when massive artillery use in trench warfare depleted British stocks, a shortage that led to high troop casualties and the resignation of Prime Minister HH Asquith."

David Lloyd George where are you?? See the 1915 Shell Crisis the Great War.

The shell crisis 1915, the Stinger crisis 2022??

From the Internet web site of Commander Salamander and thanks to same.

"Check Your Magazine Inventory Recently? missile>bomb>shell>bullet>blade>club>fist>teeth"

Salamander his comments on the depletion of NATO war munitions stocks. Depletion worrisome. NOT easily or cheaply replaced. Ukrainian yes needs help but in the process you must not endanger your own security in the process.

July 11, 2022

From the Salamander article an extract:

Most specifically as from John Paul Rathbone and Steff Chavaz - Financial Times.

"In May, when Washington ordered 1,300 Stinger anti-air missiles to replace those sent to Ukraine, the chief executive of Raytheon, the defense company that makes them, replied: 'It’s going to take us a little bit of time.'”

MORE THAN "A LITTLE BIT OF TIME" I MIGHT SURMISE. AND NOT CHEAPLY EITHER.

"Paris, meanwhile, has sent 18 Caesar howitzers to Kyiv — a quarter of its total stock of the high-tech artillery — but it will take French company Nexter around 18 months to make new ones."

"The Ukraine war has exposed the skimpiness of western defense stockpiles — especially of unglamorous but crucial supplies such as artillery shells that have been the mainstay of fighting. Lack of production capacity, labor shortages and supply chain snafus — especially computer chips — mean long lead times to replenish them."

Semi-conductor micro-electronic integrated circuits either hard to obtain or a long waiting time and increased cost major headaches. Stinger electronic systems might even have to be redesigned.

"The shortages, defense officials and analysts say, reveal the west’s complacency about potential threats since the end of the cold war, now shown up by the desire to shore up Ukraine with military support. Fetishes for high-tech weaponry and lean manufacturing have obscured the importance of maintaining stockpiles of basic kit, they add."

Lean as meaning only a bare minimum of raw material and a bare minimum of finished product in stock at any given moment. Modern industrial methodology as pioneered by the auto industry and now an accepted common way of doing business in a wide range of manufacturing.

AND TO BE FRANK TOO, CHEAPSKATE EUROPEAN PARTNERS OF THE NATO ALLIANCE NOT WILLING TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE AS AGREED UPON FOR DEFENSE SPENDING. FOR SHAME! THE CHICKENS NOW COME HOME TO ROOST!

coolbert.