Fighter Jet Takes Off From Nellis Air Force Base - Photo by Military.com
WASHINGTON DC (WSAU) – According to Breaking Defense, the commander of US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) stated on Wednesday that ammunition inventories held by the United States and its allies have reached “dangerously low” levels with no indication that they will soon rise to acceptable levels.
At the Chief of the Air Staff’s Global Air & Space Chiefs’ Conference in London, Air Force Gen. James Hecker advised NATO partners to carefully consider their ammunition inventories to maintain a strong force in Europe. According to him, the military sector has not been able to meet both the high demand for ammunition from Ukrainian forces as well as that of American and partner forces.
Hecker also told Breaking Defense that the UK’s air force has experienced a similar decline and said, “If you look at the US itself and let’s not just talk about the munitions we recently gave away to Ukraine but we’re at roughly half the number of fighter squadrons that we were when we did Desert Storm.”
According to a Department of Defense (DOD) fact sheet, the US has given Ukraine more than $41 billion in weapons and other warfighting supplies since Russia invaded.
“Now you add that we’re giving a lot of munitions away to the Ukrainians which I think is exactly what we need to do but now we’re getting dangerously low and sometimes, in some cases even too low, that we don’t have enough. We need to get the industry on board to help us out so we can get this going,” Hecker added.
Over the weekend, President Biden acknowledged to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that the U.S. has run out of 155mm artillery shells, which is why he is providing cluster munitions to Ukraine.
WATCH: Joe Biden broadcasts to the world that the U.S. is low on 155mm shells.
Does President Biden not care that our adversaries in communist China are listening?
pic.twitter.com/SxaI6jHo49— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 9, 2023
Biden’s comments prompted a critical response from his Democratic presidential opponent Robert Kennedy Jr who tweeted, “Biden seems to be saying we’re sending cluster bombs to Ukraine because we’re running out of other munitions. Looks like a pretext for even more military spending to me. The time has come to offer diplomatic alternatives to war + bring both sides to negotiating table.”
This report comes as Ukrainian forces’ counter-offensive against Russian forces is reportedly going more slowly than some expected but is still advancing in all directions against the occupying Russian forces, a senior defense official said in June.
Ukraine has regained control of more than 100 square kilometers, or just 38 square miles, of land since the counter-offensive began a month ago, a top Ukrainian military officer recently claimed in an interview with Reuters.
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