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Notes -
"going to"? That's already happening:
I think it is correct to be skeptical of press releases. The primes have a history of delays, Congress might flinch at the cost at some point, no matter what the DoW wants, and the new kids on the block will undoubtably have teething problems. However, even if you are only looking at what's already been done:
So based on both orders and production, the DoW currently is scaling munitions procurement.
Of note, the DoW is pursuing a two-tier track, where they are fielding qualitative leaps (two-stage AAMs, torpedoes you can fire from countermeasures tubes to intercept enemy torpedoes) while at the same time reaching for "affordable mass" of cheap cruise and hypersonic missiles to overwhelm enemy defenses.
Ranger has already corrected your overall rosy outlook on our munitions production - we're very behind right now and totally unprepared for a major conflict. But clause here is pretty damning. Even in a drone-driven future, it's laughable to think that standard artillery won't be relevant.
Ranger shifted goalposts. Munitions production and munitions expenditures are two different things.
"Drones" as most people commonly think of them will barely be relevant in a war with China, and that's for the same reason that 155mm shells will barely be relevant in a war with China: they don't have any range to speak of. As the Japanese learned, the Pacific is very big.
The exception for both 155mm and drones in a war with China is for Taiwan because they will plausibly be fighting at the very short ranges that 155mm and FPV drones are relevant for if they get invaded.
Otherwise I invite you to take a look at a map and tell me exactly where the US Army will be shelling China from. The only plausible way to do that would be if the US conducts a REFORGER-style surge of troops to Taiwan. It's not impossible but for reasons I am happy to elaborate on I think it is fairly unlikely.
500 tomahawks a year is terrible too. That’s five months of Russian-level Ukraine war expenditure or about four hours of a war with China.
If they all hit, then the war will be over in four hours. (But note that Raytheon says they intend to scale up to 1,000/year.)
It's hard to tell how much is enough because a lot of it is about the timeframe (1/year is fine if you started building around the Jurassic period, for instance), effectiveness, intended target, delivery vehicle...much of which isn't know.
My thinking is that China's window is closing, but they have a respite with the Iran war. Right now it looks to me like that window is about five years, but that's a guesstimate and could change due to further actions by the United States or China or third parties.
China wants to LARP as Burgerland in WWII, and enter the war after everyone is already exhausted from fighting each other for years. Iran isn’t even going to really get started until after midterms in November.
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I'm not a military historian, but looking at the blue parts of the globe and saying "Oop! Well, artillery won't be involved!" doesn't make sense.
If we're talking a month-long, high-tech fight that ends decisively? Sure. How many wars, not games, work that way? We're discussing in this thread only one of the more recent quagmires we've gotten into, and one that stretched for 2 decades.
I think the general implicit argument for this is that a Taiwan conflict either (1) doesn't result in land battle (invasion), in which case large tube artillery is not tremendously useful, or (2) does have land combat, indicating a degradation of naval/air forces to the point where supply lines for artillery aren't necessarily available.
By the pound, anti-ship and anti-air weapons are probably more useful up front. There could be some role for tube artillery as anti-ship, but I'm not familiar with options there. Or that some weird middle ground appears where supply lines are still functional and there is a land war.
It'd be incredibly useful for Taiwan during the defense, but as you said, if it drags on long enough for production and resupply, it'd be because the war has taken on a different shape wherein tube artillery is useless.
One way of looking at it: I believe the Marines are no longer interested in tanks, but are very interested in being able to get missile batteries set up on islands/launch them from the amphib assault decks. Should tell you the sort of ranges/capabilities they expect to deal with.
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I really do see the point, and of course logistically a tomahawk missile is nicer to have than an artillery shell for a given weight and volume.
I just think the chance of the war degrading into a sloshy grind where we're attempting to subjugate China and the difference in cost and un-jam-ability of traditional shells becomes more valuable than most people expect. Even America would have to start making choices based on effectiveness per dollar in that scenario.
A great historical analogue here is that the Gatling Gun, much like the drone, was going to end protracted conflict and supplant the infantryman's rifle. That didn't happen.
To be clear here - you're suggesting that a Taiwan conflict could end in a land invasion of Mainland China?
I believe a conflict with China - Taiwan or no - would eventually involve terrestrial warfare, yes.
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There’s a good chance you would see significant ground combat in Vietnam, Korea, or any of the island nations of Southeast Asia, plus your regular island-hopping to secure supply lines and airfields. Probably would be a lot of ground fighting with India too, but I imagine the Indians could mostly handle that themselves.
The indian military has not acquitted itself well recently.
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I suppose it is true that a war with China could in theory last until continental drift made 155mm relevant again, yes, but if that happens I think we will have plenty of time to spin up production lines. Otherwise, the amount of time the war drags on doesn't really change the basic dynamics involved with the tyranny of distance, does it?
If that's not the scenario you are envisioning, please explain to me the scenario you envision US forces using 155mm against China in. If you're trying to get me to concede that my I was overstating the degree of unimportance of 155mm (which I agree can plausibly be used by forces on Taiwan in an invasion scenario – and indeed the US and Taiwan are working on joint 155mm production, I assume with this in mind – or obviously if the Korean peninsula heats up – which is not a foregone conclusion in the case of a war with China) then I will happily concede that may have very slightly overstated the irrelevance of 155mm. But if you think that it is an important production item for the US military in a China contingency specifically, I would very much like to know how you think it will be used.
It's not particularly unusual for the course of a naval war to be essentially decided in a single battle – this happened during both World Wars. This does not mean that the war is over after the battle, but the destruction of the Japanese carriers at Midway and the inability of the Germans to break out into the Atlantic at Jutland set the stage for the conclusion of the war. It's quite possible that any war over Taiwan would be decided in the course of 48 hours or so (if it is not, it's probably good for the US, as it means that the US qualitative advantage in submarines will likely become increasingly relevant.)
What is particularly weird is that the surface navy theatre of WW1 (the U-boat war was separate) was decided by a single battle that was a tactical draw.
More common than you might expect.
The Japanese learned this the hard way over WW2. Coral Sea, maybe Leyte Gulf—tactical draws and even victories are disastrous if the initial conditions are stacked against you.
Since the RN had such a numeric advantage over the Hochseeflotte, a status quo with everyone held up for repairs favored them.
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If we want to be pedantic- the destruction of the German overseas-deployed squadron earlier in the war decided the outcome of the battle of Jutland, which changed the conclusion of the war from 'draw' to 'decisive central powers defeat'.
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Well, for example, going to war against Japan (an island!) involved heavy ground battle all through Burma.
Imagine, if you will, America objects to a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, or some other inciting incident. First, there is the problem of preventing the larger, closer power simply out producing you. Yes, you can bomb and so forth to some degree, but that requires resupply and avoiding AA defences and at some point I think it's likely that you're going to want to take and hold ground within China. If you can't, there is really only so much you can do. You don't necessarily get to say if you want to have a land war or not. Russia didn't want to need artillery in Ukraine.
Furthermore, not even credibly being able to do it then constrains all your options if you were ever to escalate, and both parties know it, so even capabilities that you never intend to deploy can be relevant.
I do not think that the United States would ever attempt to take and hold ground within China, both because China has effectively unlimited warm bodies to throw at the problem along interior lines and the United States does not have either of those things, and because if the war was going so badly that China was in serious danger of being occupied it would resort to nuclear weapons to prevent regime change.
The US cannot credibly threaten to seize and hold territory inside of China (raids might be another thing, but realistically if attempted I expect that would look like DEVGRU derping around in the bushes with a laser designator or something, not anything kinetic) and procuring more 155mm shells does not change that. Furthermore, because the United States is in this dynamic attempting to preserve the status quo, it has no real need to take and hold territory. The US can credibly threaten to use nuclear weapons, and that's about it.
[Edit to add: I think that some of the militarized reefs and such are potentially open to ground assault. But that's very different from mainland China.]
This is the original meaning of "Never get involved in a land war in Asia".
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Awkward counter-argument. The allied strategic interest in the Burma campaign wasn't to try and out-produce and then out-shoot Japan shell for shell, but to maximize the Japanese logistic costs as Japan's over-expansion made it vulnerable. If, say, the Americans had reallocated naval production to artillery shell production in order to bask in artillery overmatch, it would have been a really dunderheaded move.
Russia did, however, want to have a war against a contiguous neighbor in artillery range, which in turn gave artillery a ready application and logistical tail.
If you wanted to escalate a war against China, artillery would be pretty marginal. Before you could mass artillery in range, you'd have to overcome the Chinese investments in anti-access into the theater in the first place. If you could do that, then you could just shut down China's import routes, which artillery wouldn't be particularly relevant in doing.
This seems overly optimistic about the power of sea- and air-based warfare. I'm far from the first person to note that America is fundamentally a sea power and struggles to prevent sanction-busting on land. China is a land power. I'm not saying that America couldn't make life very annoying with a sea-based blockade, but as a guy on the far left of those bell curve memes, it seems to me that war often doesn't end up going the way you think it's going to go, and confidently saying you aren't going to need something is rarely a wise move.
Were China to reorient all of its maritime imports and exports to overland traffic through the Siberian Steppe, over the Hindu Kush, or across the jungles of South Asia to bypass an American naval blockade, that would be one of the most fortuitous self-destructions of a national economic model in modern history.
It would also be really, really vulnerable to the sort of low-cost/highly-transportable small precision munitions that would be getting a lot, lot more attack vectors to target Chinese commerce than are available within China itself.
In the defense-industrial sense? Heavens no.
China is a maritime-dependent mercantilist. It economic capital is built upon the cost-efficiencies of maritime traffic for both imports to feed its factories and exports to generate the commercial surpluses to pay for the imports to feed said factories, including things like artillery shell factories. For all that China makes its rail investments a matter of national pride, it has not come close to making it competitive at scale with maritime shipping.
If you want to have any sort of economies of scale competition with China, the first and most important thing is to cut off its most efficient economic import and processing capabilities, not to shell its factories with artillery.
Does it also seem to you a wise idea to confidently insistent you need more of a weapon system without looking at a map of where it might be employed?
If not, would you consider reconsidering about whether some things about wars are actually consistently predictable, not least of which is the impacts of geography and range?
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Ultimately we're at the point of a differing opinion. I apologize for using "laughable" in my original response to you, and see valid points here.
I think that, classically, even professional strategists tend to repeatedly underestimate certain components of warfare. Snipers are a good example, and artillery is another.
I'm fine with a differing opinion, and I 100% agree that artillery is under-appreciated. It's not glamorous and (ironically) is not expensive, but it remains extremely deadly.
However that doesn't get me to thinking it will be particularly important in a naval war.
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If you cram a 100000 geran jet class drones in a carrier with proper starlink overlords you can totally turn off Shanghai. Or Taipei. Or LA.
Most people think of FPV drones (or maybe, like, Predator drones) in the military context nowadays, I think. I agree that "drones" (low-cost cruise missiles) like LUCAS/Geran are likely to be relevant.
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The sorts of surveillance and missile drones (though likely not the particular model) we're using in Iran will definitely be relevant. So will a lot of "one-way attack drones". If the sort of anti-personnel drones used in Ukraine become relevant, we're already in deep trouble.
Yes, I agree. LUCAS seems relevant, for instance.
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I get it, but standard artillery is essentially only relevant to a land war in Europe. We're already ~fighting a land war in Europe, and as much as I'd love to liberate Sweden, that's the only one happening in the theatre for the foreseeable future. Latam/Middle East/Africa, the opposing forces will not be competent/coherent enough for you to need conventional artillery (with the exception of Iran, which is geographically un-invadable anyway), and any China conflict is a purely air/naval one, unless you're expecting trench warfare in Taipei. The shell shortage is damning not because shells are universally critical munitions, but because of what it says about the rest of our military supply chain.
Aren’t 90% of casualties now from drones. Artillery is only relevant for exceptional expensive rounds and systems because they are otherwise stationary targets to drones that are way cheaper, more accurate, and longer range?
Not necessarily. Artillery is relevant when there are bigger things you want to explode, like proper infantry columns, tanks, and whatnot. That said, the cutting-edge of anti-tank artillery rounds is itself a drone. If you're dug in, shelling the area is a lot less effective.
In this context, drones are very sophisticated anti-personnel cruise missiles that operate in the same effective range as a mortar (that have some anti-tank usage as well; it's not hard to imagine sticking a Bonus "warhead" onto a drone, but it would be quite inefficient to do that because AI targeting and spotting is good enough and you have much better effective range with that).
That's fantastic for dug in positions and trench warfare, because you can just crash the explosive right into/on top of the enemy (and perhaps the only scenario in which a shotgun could be effective against such a weapon)- it just takes time and effort to do that right now because you have to have your guy sitting there driving the thing, and you have to spend money and drones to train him too.
I think that drone response is itself mostly going to be automated, but building those kinds of things takes time. Micro-caliber CIWS systems, EW systems listening for a drone lifting off prompting immediate and automated counterbattery fire, etc. They'll get there, they just aren't there now.
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https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/05/13/part-3-the-u-s-munitions-problem/
These guys say the US used 1000-1400 PAC-3s and 200-400 SM-6s in just 39 days of war against Iran. Annualized, that would be about 12,000 Patriots and 2400 SM-6s.
Let's say all missiles meet their production targets, that's still inadequate for great power war against China. With China we'd assume a higher intensity and duration of combat than with Iran. There would need to be many more factories set up quickly. But these missiles have a 2-4 year production timeline because of how complicated they are. And setting up factories quickly seems to be a problem.
For example, there's just one factory in Huntsville that manufactures about 650 radar seekers/year for the Patriots, they've got a serious bottleneck there. Radar seekers are actually hard to make, it wouldn't be surprising if there were issues tripling production there. Or if there's some pre-positioned strike team or drone force ready to go hit that single factory.
The US isn't doing nothing but it isn't doing enough. Regarding AAMs, the Chinese also are apparently developing a Mach 9, very long range AAM. Who knows how they actually compare technologically, the missiles are probably intended for different roles. China has plenty of smart engineers, as does America - only China is going to have more engineers and a bigger industrial base. Nobody knows how much production capacity China actually has for missiles but it's probably not low, judging by Chinese production trends.
This is goalpost shifting. You said:
I presented you evidence that the US in fact is scaling up munitions production to counter Russia or China, and in fact already had scaled up munitions production. Now you are claiming that the scaled up munitions production is insufficient, an entirely different argument that would be an interesting one to make, but as you point out a difficult one to engage in, because
However, my position is that missile production by itself is a poor measure of how a war will go. Iran's missile production is very good, but this did not give them the power projection capability necessary for them to achieve a decisive and quick victory. Russia's missile production is very good, but this did not give them the power projection capability necessary for them to achieve a decisive and quick victory. The relevant question is actually about munitions production relative to the expected red target set and blue kill chain apparatus.
That's true, I meant 'scale up production enough to counter' but if you interpret it literally, then sure.
I would be very interested to read your topline on that.
I don't understand what you mean by topline, so maybe this comment is not a good response.
Anyway, China is going to be making a lot more missiles and drones than Iran, surely. Iran seems to have burned through much of the remaining US stockpile in a short conflict. US munitions production doesn't seem adequate for great power wars - see all these issues with shells.
(Also I conceptualize Korea getting dragged into a US-China war one way or another, so there would be a major ground element where shell production is significant)
I don't see what cause there is for optimism there is in waging a war of attrition against China. The US needs a cost-efficiency/qualitative advantage that existing weapons don't seem to provide. Otherwise it's folly to take on a power with 4x US population and many more engineers. A Chinese engineer is no worse than an American engineer, as time passes they'll have more breakthroughs in military or economic spheres. I don't think their political system limits Chinese competitiveness like the Soviets (see Lada vs BYD).
The US needs some offsetting advantage that can sustainably counter a fundamentally stronger opponent. I think AI/Space is the strongest option here. Turn the tables on engineer count/quality. Or lock down space, dominate the highest ground. Exploit a temporary lead to secure a permanent advantage.
You raised some qualitative edges in weapons systems but the Chinese already have similar systems in development. If America can make a missile, so can China but China will have more engineers to juice them up and more production capacity to produce them at scale, just by virtue of this huge industrial base and economies of scale. Unless the missile-edge enables the US to win in a pre-empting war then what good is it, it's only moving the goalposts. China can then jog closer and score, they're faster at running than the US is at moving goalposts (with the exception of space and AI).
It seems fairly plausible that South Korea will get dragged in to some degree or another (possibly below the level of kinetic action), but it's unclear to me what advantage it would be to North Korea to get involved kinetically. South Korean doctrine at the moment is built around "KILL KIM JONG UN" if the balloon goes up and I think the rational move from Kim is to try to extract concessions from both sides and basically nothing else. I am certainly open to alternative takes, but it seems common in Western thinking to assume that if China suggests North Korea jump, the North Koreans will ask "how high?" because they wear the designated villain hat, and I don't think actual North Korean decision-makers have any emotional attachment to being committed to being part of the Axis of Evil. I do think they have emotional attachment to not ending up as paste at the pointy end of a South Korean ballistic missile.
Again, you're sort of missing the main point here. The USA does not need to match China to win; it already has the "offsetting advantage" which is the status quo (and geography). China needs to overmatch the US of A because it is starting from a geographically disadvantaged position. I think that there is a good chance that China does nothing while the US painfully rectifies its munitions production and stockpiles issues over the next 5 - 10 years precisely because the risks of acting even when China is at the apex of its power relative to its potential enemies are still extremely high, and Xi does not want to gamble with his empire.
North Korea did send troops to help Russia, if anyone's part of an axis of evil it's them. They might not be eager to join such a risky war but the regime seems quite serious about warfare, especially shell production.
Also, North Korea can wreck Seoul with artillery or just nuke it. A South Korean decapitation strike on the absolute monarch of an insecure nuclear power seems like a very risky ploy. Apparently a first-use doctrine has been signed off per NK's 2022 law, attacks on North Korean leadership will be met with nuclear counterattack. But who can say what will happen?
I'm more concerned about the PLA rolling in and slowly but surely crushing South Korea.
Well they do have more manufacturing capacity than the next three countries combined. Facing a country with 80% of the world's drone production in the Drone Age should be an intimidating prospect. If swarms of relatively cheap Shaheds and FPV drones are the way of the future, then it plays into China's biggest strengths in industrial scale.
Certainly, there are issues with offensive warfare. I doubt China will perform very well at the start of a war if they're launching a big amphibious operation, the signs of war will be clear, not much chance of strategic surprise. But if there are reverses, if they lose a battle or ten, they still have the option to double down. China's leaders have 20 million men reaching military age every single year. They have vast quantities of industry, construction capacity, engineering talent.
The Chinese economy grows faster than the US, they're breaking into more and more markets globally, everyone started bitching about overproduction. Who heard of Deepseek or BYD a few years ago?
Even their geography has its advantages, they're right next to the places they'd be fighting, whereas America is on the other side of the world.
Well, tell it to the South Koreans. I don't think that North Korea and China are joined at the hip the way you seem to think they are (ditto for South Korea and the United States), nor do I think sending some guys to Ukraine, at roughly zero risk to the North Korean regime, is any indicator of how they will behave in a potentially existential situation.
Now you're just taunting me. You know that FPVs are not the future of naval warfare.
I wouldn't be so confident about the Chinese economy if I was you – but this is a positive reason why China may decide to sit around and do nothing. And yet if they do that, I think there is a good chance that the US is actually able to procure enough missiles, mines and torpedoes to make shutting down the strait a ~foregone conclusion. China can try to build more ships than LRASMs, more interceptors than the cheap hypersonic and LUCAS cruise missiles the US is producing, but they will be on the wrong side of the cost curve in doing so.
Sort of - in some ways, the US has the best of both worlds here. Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines host US bases, and if a war kicks off, the entire Chinese navy will be ranged by missiles based there, while portions of the US Navy will be safely out of range of conventional Chinese missiles. China does have strategic depth, but it is mostly for their land and air forces.
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Russia missile production is pathetic. Probably it is more capable that some other developed countries - but that is because they are even more pathetic. 100 iskanders per month? Khrushchev shat more ICBM after taking laxatives.
Iran missile production could be called good if you squint, then put a lot of asterisks to it. But mostly they had accumulated stock. Still - I have to grudgingly admit that convincing the gulf states that you could overload their defenses and surviving the onslaught is good result for them.
But with China - a nation that has shown that they can scale everything to absurd levels - they couldn't threaten conus. Or want to - but they can totally make Taiwan flat.
1200 Iskanders per year compares favorably to US production of 400 PrSMs per year.
I don't think anyone is denying that, but I don't think they want to do that.
And having syphilis compares favorably to having aids. Still means you are not healthy. I honestly expected both Russia and Ukraine to become smarter and be able to produce more stuff to throw on the battlefield.
I think they have, it's just been... gestures largely low-end stuff (with the occasional Russian Command & Conquer super weapon thrown in).
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