If Russia's latest
offensive in Ukraine
is, in fact, underway, senior U.S.
officials are not impressed.
Have a listen.
Russia continue to introduce
large numbers of troops into
into the theater.
Those troops are
ill equipped and ill trained
And because of that,
they're incurring a lot of casualties.
And we expect that that will continue
Russia has declared that it is
launching a new offensive.
Well, if this is it, it is very pathetic.
I would say the latter.
I spoke with CNN military analyst
Cedric Leighton
for his take on the modern
Russian military.
Here he is
It's very interesting, John.
So, you know,
for those of us
who've been watching the Russians
for some time,
a lot of the things that we learned
or thought we knew about them
involved large numbers, a new doctrine,
new weapons systems thing
that really could change
the course of warfare itself.
Not just the tactical action,
but the whole strategy of warfare.
And, you know, barring any unforeseen
developments, it looks as if the Russians
are not able to mount
the kind of offensive
that their doctrine promised
we would see that
their weapons systems promised
we would see,
and that the rhetoric promise
that we would see
that none of that is coming to pass.
And it seems as if we are dealing
with a paper tiger, in essence.
There is also this reporting
we have from The New York Times.
As Moscow steps up
its offensive in eastern Ukraine,
weeks of failed attacks
on the Ukrainian stronghold
have left two
Russian brigades in tatters.
Raised questions
about Russia's military tactics
and renewed doubts about its ability
to maintain sustained large scale
ground assault, as you were saying.
Now, the town is
Volodya is not far from bombed
which is a city
of no real strategic value.
It is a symbolic importance,
but no strategic value to two.
So in tatters
in terms of losses, how big is that?
And it would seem to be like high costs.
A little reward here.
Yes.
So that is a really significant thing.
These two brigades in question,
the one 55th and the 40th Marine
Infantry Brigade or Naval
Infantry Brigade of the Russian
naval forces of the Pacific Fleet.
Those are fairly large elements.
So we're talking somewhere around 2000
to 3500 or so personnel
that are just gone.
And what you're dealing with here is a
systematic neglect of the entire system.
And it seems that this neglect
has been going on for quite some time.
But it has been papered
over by every level of command
in the Russian military until,
of course,
these brigades are put into action.
And they can't perform
the military missions
that they've been assigned.
So this is a significant issue
because
every time these brigades
move into combat,
they move with less and less
people, less and less armament,
and they're far less capable
than they originally were supposed to be.
U.S.
appears to be
shifting to a long term approach
of fighting Ukraine
with military supplies and weapons.
Officials say it's time to look beyond
what Ukraine needs now,
such as Abrams tanks,
which the US has promised to deliver,
and to look into what
Ukraine will need in the long run
to deter any possible future
aggressive moves by Moscow.
Meanwhile, the ongoing war is
exhausting NATO's ammunition stockpiles.
CNN's Art Levine reports.
U.S.
defense factories
are preparing to ramp up production
in the steel
furnaces of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The weapons of war are in high demand.
One tonne metal rods heated and forged
in to about 11,000 high
explosive artillery shells a month.
CNN got a rare
look inside the Scranton
Army ammunition plant,
one of only a few in the country
that make this crucial round here
especially made steels
heated to 2000 degrees, slowly shaped.
Step by scorching step
into its final product.
To this point,
it's only
taken a few hours to heat the steel
and then to turn it into what
looks like
an artillery shell
compressed into that familiar shape.
But it's still days of testing
and inspections
to make sure
that this can be turned
into a 155 millimeter artillery shell
that can be fired from the field.
The process doesn't end here.
The empty shells are shipped
to another plant for explosives.
Fuzes.
5000 miles
from the front lines and mother Russia.
The enemy here is Father Time, forced to
Ukraine can burn through the plant's
monthly production in half a week,
locked in a grinding war of attrition
with Putin's army
and Russian mercenaries.
The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition
expenditure is many times higher than our
current rate of production.
One year
in the war has
turned into a vicious math problem
how to make enough ammo
for Ukraine,
the United States and allies.
The Pentagon is already
planning on new ammo plans in Texas.
And Canada,
part of a race
to increase the capacity of the defense
industrial base.
Doug Bush
is the Army's head of acquisitions.
Right now we are meeting demand
I of course,
I would want it to be faster.
Everyone does.
But there's a time factor.
A year to 18 months
is often what you're looking at.
Bush says this is the greatest ramp
up in military production,
possibly going back to the Korean War.
Early on, we realized
we had to really put our foot
all the way to the floor.
The goal within two years is to produce
five times
more artillery rounds each month, up
to 70,000.
Twice as many Javelin anti-tank missiles.
Up to 4000 a month.
30% more rounds
for the high Mars rocket launchers.
About eight 50 a month.
Precision weapon.
Ukraine is
used to target
Russian command posts and ammo depots.
And 60 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles
each month.
The US isn't at war with Russia,
but that matters little
to weapons manufacturers
whose products are part of the fight.
Our defense industrial base
is still largely
geared towards a peacetime environment
and not towards a wartime
or at least a quasi wartime environment
that we're now in.
To get a sense of just how much the Army
is investing in this.
Within the last couple of weeks,
the Army has announced
one and a
half billion dollars
in procurement
of new 155 millimeter artillery rounds.
They're trying to produce
this crucial ammunition faster
and then trying to produce more of it.
Oren Liebermann, CNN, at the Pentagon.