quinting at his computer screen through wire-rimmed glasses, Greg Hartl monitors an unmarked 18-wheeler as it cuts through the American heartland. Data from the truck’s satellite tracking devices stream into his windowless command center at Scott Air Force Base, about 20 miles east of St. Louis, showing Hartl each stop the driver makes and the weather and road conditions ahead.
Drawn-out decisionmaking processes in Washington and European capitals have slowed supplies. U.S. intelligence assessments released among the hundreds of classified documents leaked in April describe alarming shortcomings in Ukraine’s weapon stockpiles. Interceptors for some air-defense systems are due to run out by May, while the Ukrainian army’s position in the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut was deemed “catastrophic” amid Russian artillery bombardment.
The U.S. spent the past two decades fighting wars with weapons enabled via information-age technology—satellites, sensors, and computer chips. The conflict in Ukraine more closely resembles the grinding trench warfare along the western front in World War I. It is fought largely in artillery duels, each side pounding the other with shells over long distances. Ukrainian artillery units face a deep disadvantage as the number of 152-mm shells for its aging Soviet-era artillery pieces has dwindled.
Inundated by demand, the Pentagon doubled its production rate for 155-mm howitzer shells over the past year, from around 14,000 per month to 24,000 by year-end. It plans to hit 85,000 by 2028. “Speed is key,” Hansen says. Transforming a steel rod into an artillery shell takes about three days.
The hulking, four-engine C-17 jets are the quickest way to get weapons to Ukraine, but they’re costly and take resources from other missions around the globe. So once the first set of deliveries was done, contractors took over. Since then, about two-thirds of TRANSCOM’s 1,177 flights for Ukraine have been handled by seven commercial cargo carriers that fly into nearby European countries, at a total cost of around $600 million.
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