Industrial Capacity Expansion (Operational Priorities)

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022 starkly exposed a critical strategic problem: the defence industries of NATO Allies and EU member states lacked the capacity to sustain high-intensity warfare over time .

For decades after the Cold War, many Western countries had downscaled munitions production lines and kept only modest war reserve stocks, assuming that protracted large-scale conflicts were unlikely. These assumptions proved flawed as Ukrainian and Russian forces began expending artillery shells and missiles at rates not seen in Europe since World War II, rapidly depleting NATO stockpiles .

This analysis answers: What defence-industrial capacity shortfall did Russia's 2022 war expose in NATO/EU munitions production? How do mission sets, readiness models and command architectures frame the need to sustain high-intensity warfare? Which capability families, technology clusters and industrial-base actors are needed to rebuild munitions and war-reserve stocks? What structural bottlenecks and dependencies constrain expanding artillery and missile production?