Ukraine vs Israel: can the west arm both?

While Ukraine faces a severe manpower shortage, western powers find themselves faced with a dearth of available weaponry to send to Kiev. Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO's highest-ranking military official, candidly admitted on 3 October, "The bottom of the barrel is now visible" concerning the west's ammunition stockpile. In a sign of the mounting strain, the US began transferring to Ukraine 300,000 155-millimeter shells it had stored in Israel as part of the War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel (WRSAI) program. According to one Israeli officer, “Officially, all of this equipment belongs to the US military …. If, however, there is a conflict, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] can ask for permission to use some of the equipment.”

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder claimed the US would replenish these stocks of artillery shells stored in Israel. But the US does not have the ability to do so, as Ukraine has been using between 3,000 and 6,000 rounds per day, a quarter of what Russia has used on the battlefield. CNN reported at the time that “The strain on weapons stockpiles – and the ability of the US industrial base to keep up with demand – is one of the key challenges facing the Biden administration.”

The US military-industrial complex is heavily geared to produce high-cost weapons systems and hardware, like the $412 billion F-35 warplane. While these programs undoubtedly benefit weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, they fall short in delivering the essential artillery required in vast quantities for a war of attrition against a formidable military. Now that war has broken out between Israel and the Palestinian resistance, Kiev faces a competitor not only in Moscow, but in Tel Aviv.

That Israel is begging for US weapons just days into a conflict with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is alarming for the occupation state’s supporters, considering that none of the remaining Axis of Resistance members, including Hezbollah, Syria, Ansarallah, Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and Iran, have yet formally entered the conflict.

Should Hezbollah fully join the fight, Israeli planners expect the Lebanese resistance movement to fire 4,000 missiles a day from northern Lebanon and send thousands of elite troops into Israel to take over towns or military bases.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a major battle in 2006, which forced the Israeli military to wage war against a more “conventional” military opponent, in contrast to the Palestinians it confronts daily in the West Bank and Gaza. According to Matt Mathews of the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute, Israel was woefully unprepared to fight a “real war” in that conflict. ... The 2006 war also exposed Israel’s reliance on US weapons, which nevertheless proved insufficient to defeat Hezbollah. During the war, Israel requested to access the WRSAI stockpile and that the US expedite the delivery of precision-guided munitions to Israel. Within just 10 days of fighting, Israel used most of its ammunition stock.

Years later, in July 2014, during Israeli military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel was again forced to rely on the WRSAI stockpile to replenish 120-mm tank rounds and 40-mm illumination rounds fired from grenade launchers. The problems Israel faced in 2006 and 2014 will be compounded if the Axis of Resistance now takes the step of initiating its “unification of the fronts” campaign.

David Wurmer, Middle East adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney, told the Wall Street Journal on 10 October that “The nightmare scenario for the Israelis is that they go a week or two shooting down 6,000 to 10,000 Hamas missiles, and then they have nothing left to stop the Hezbollah missiles.”

The situation for Israel becomes even more challenging if Iran joins the conflict, as the Islamic Republic possesses substantial stocks of short-range and medium-range missiles capable of reaching both Israel and US bases in the region. The US and Israel often warn of the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, despite its civilian orientation, but seldom mention the threat posed by Iran’s burgeoning conventional missile program.

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But now, more than 40 years later, the Palestinians are not alone. They are part of a region-wide Resistance Axis that has defeated US and Israeli agendas in a number of West Asian states, gaining invaluable fighting, organizational, and planning experience alongside reliable allies.

Meanwhile, the pile of recent US-side failures keeps mounting: Russia's global clout spiked during the US proxy war in Ukraine; US adversaries China and Russia forged a multipolar world when Washington came at them; economic sanctions designed to cripple Russia and Iran only strengthened both states and sparked military collaborations. Crucially, Russia and Iran today possess the industrial capabilities to produce the military firepower the US and NATO cannot provide to allies in either Tel Aviv or Kiev.

Israel has already started the fight it may not be able to finish by declaring total war on Gaza’s civilian population, killing over 1,000, including hundreds of women and children, and flattening large swathes of the Gaza Strip in airstrikes. For Tel Aviv, Gaza has always been low-hanging fruit - the punching bag it seeks when it needs to look tough. But today, one misstep, one badly aimed missile, or one step too far, and Israel will face a regional war it cannot withstand for any significant period of time.