Commentary
No matter the outcome on the battlefield, the Ukraine War already has a clear winner: that small band of long-range planners, logisticians, and military analysts who have insisted “cutting corners in maintaining war reserve stocks was a false economy …”
Definition of war reserve stocks: warfighting material, produced in peacetime or left from a prior conflict, that is stored for use in a future war.
Full disclosure: I’m an associate editor at StrategyPage.com. I pulled the “cutting corners” quote from an April 2016 StrategyPage “Procurement” update that discussed the major shortage of “smart” air-delivered munitions created by the 2011 NATO war in Libya. The lingering shortage impeded U.S. and allied operations in Iraq and Syria in 2015. Why? Replenishing depleted war material stockpiles, especially munitions, takes time and money….