Tag: The West

“The RUSI team argues that Western sanctions should target the artillery supply chain rather than primarily focusing on blocking advanced tech like microelectronics from reaching Russia.
“It is more difficult to secretly transfer thousands of tons of chromium ore into a country than to smuggle in a few thousand microchips,” the report said; chromium is used in artillery barrel manufacturing.

Endowed with vast natural resources and a huge Soviet-era defense industrial base, Russia is self-sufficient for many of its military needs. But the RUSI team zeroed in on two requirements where Russia depends on imports: Machine tools and raw materials that are essential for casting or refurbishing artillery barrels, and for producing artillery shells.

Until 2022, Russia depended on Western-supplied machine tools, especially advanced computer numerical control, or CNC, automated systems. Sanctions imposed in 2023 slashed imports of Western equipment, but China has been able to fill much of the gap, though “Russian companies have historically preferred Western machine tools over Chinese equivalents, as they are more precise and higher quality,” the report noted. However, China and other nations re-export Western tools to Russia. RUSI identified at least 2,113 companies that supplied Western tools to Russia in 2023 and early 2024, including equipment from Germany, South Korea, Italy, Japan and Taiwan.

Manufacturing artillery barrels is a rigorous task that requires highly specialized manufacturing facilities. Just as US defense manufacturing has consolidated into a few prime contractors who can build jets and ships, only four Russian companies can forge artillery barrels: Zavod No. 9 in Yekaterinburg; Titan-Barrikady in Volgograd; MZ/ SKB in Perm; and the Burevestnik Research Institute in Nizhny Novgorod, according to the report. Each company has its own supply chain of subcontractors, such as factories that make special steel.

As for raw materials, Russia imports about 55% of the high-quality chromium needed to harden gun barrels. It also depends on Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to supply much of the cotton cellulose that is a crucial ingredient in the nitrocellulose used to make explosives. There are three primary manufacturers of artillery ammunition in Russia — NIMI Bakhirev, the Plastmass Plant and KBP Shipunov — which also rely on a web of contractors and suppliers.

Evidence suggests that sanctions on these links in the supply chain can work. For example, Khlopkoprom-Tsellyuloza, a Kazakh company that was a major supplier of cotton cellulose to two Russian propellant factories, slashed its exports when those factories were sanctioned, RUSI pointed out. Indeed, Kazakhstan is now supplying cotton cellulose for NATO ammunition.

Current Western sanctions tend to be too broad and sporadic to cripple Russian defense production. A better approach would be a mixture of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure focused on Russia’s artillery supply chain, concluded the report. “A concerted approach, with additional resources dedicated to enforcement and disruption, will have a greater chance of success.””

https://www.yahoo.com/news/west-trying-starve-wrong-part-112301587.html