CNN gets uncommon net admission to internal a plant making ammo for Ukraine

If Russia's latest offensive in Ukraine is, in fact, underway, senior U.S. officials are not impressed. Have a listen. Russia continue to introduce large numbers of troops into into the theater. Those troops are.

Ill equipped and ill trained And because of that, they're incurring a lot of casualties. And we expect that that will continue Russia has declared that it is launching a new offensive. Well, if this is it, it is very pathetic. I would say the latter. I spoke with CNN military analyst.

Cedric Leighton for his take on the modern Russian military. Here he is It's very interesting, John. So, you know, for those of us who've been watching the Russians for some time,.

A lot of the things that we learned or thought we knew about them involved large numbers, a new doctrine, new weapons systems thing that really could change the course of warfare itself. Not just the tactical action, but the whole strategy of warfare. And, you know, barring any unforeseen.

Developments, it looks as if the Russians are not able to mount the kind of offensive that their doctrine promised we would see that their weapons systems promised we would see, and that the rhetoric promise that we would see.

That none of that is coming to pass. And it seems as if we are dealing with a paper tiger, in essence. There is also this reporting we have from The New York Times. As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on the Ukrainian stronghold.

Have left two Russian brigades in tatters. Raised questions about Russia's military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained large scale ground assault, as you were saying. Now, the town is Volodya is not far from bombed.

Which is a city of no real strategic value. It is a symbolic importance, but no strategic value to two. So in tatters in terms of losses, how big is that? And it would seem to be like high costs. A little reward here. Yes.

So that is a really significant thing. These two brigades in question, the one 55th and the 40th Marine Infantry Brigade or Naval Infantry Brigade of the Russian naval forces of the Pacific Fleet. Those are fairly large elements. So we're talking somewhere around 2000 to 3500 or so personnel.

That are just gone. And what you're dealing with here is a systematic neglect of the entire system. And it seems that this neglect has been going on for quite some time. But it has been papered over by every level of command in the Russian military until, of course,.

These brigades are put into action. And they can't perform the military missions that they've been assigned. So this is a significant issue because every time these brigades move into combat, they move with less and less.

People, less and less armament, and they're far less capable than they originally were supposed to be. U.S. U.S. appears to be shifting to a long term approach of fighting Ukraine with military supplies and weapons.

Officials say it's time to look beyond what Ukraine needs now, such as Abrams tanks, which the US has promised to deliver, and to look into what Ukraine will need in the long run to deter any possible future aggressive moves by Moscow. Meanwhile, the ongoing war is.

Exhausting NATO's ammunition stockpiles. CNN's Art Levine reports. U.S. defense factories are preparing to ramp up production in the steel furnaces of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The weapons of war are in high demand. One tonne metal rods heated and forged.

In to about 11,000 high explosive artillery shells a month. CNN got a rare look inside the Scranton Army ammunition plant, one of only a few in the country that make this crucial round here especially made steels heated to 2000 degrees, slowly shaped.

Step by scorching step into its final product. To this point, it's only taken a few hours to heat the steel and then to turn it into what looks like an artillery shell compressed into that familiar shape.

But it's still days of testing and inspections to make sure that this can be turned into a 155 millimeter artillery shell that can be fired from the field. The process doesn't end here. The empty shells are shipped to another plant for explosives.

Fuzes. 5000 miles from the front lines and mother Russia. The enemy here is Father Time, forced to Ukraine can burn through the plant's monthly production in half a week, locked in a grinding war of attrition with Putin's army and Russian mercenaries.

The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. One year in the war has turned into a vicious math problem how to make enough ammo for Ukraine, the United States and allies.

The Pentagon is already planning on new ammo plans in Texas. And Canada, part of a race to increase the capacity of the defense industrial base. Doug Bush is the Army's head of acquisitions. Right now we are meeting demand.

I of course, I would want it to be faster. Everyone does. But there's a time factor. A year to 18 months is often what you're looking at. Bush says this is the greatest ramp up in military production, possibly going back to the Korean War.

Early on, we realized we had to really put our foot all the way to the floor. The goal within two years is to produce five times more artillery rounds each month, up to 70,000. Twice as many Javelin anti-tank missiles. Up to 4000 a month.

30% more rounds for the high Mars rocket launchers. About eight 50 a month. Precision weapon. Ukraine is used to target Russian command posts and ammo depots. And 60 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles each month.

The US isn't at war with Russia, but that matters little to weapons manufacturers whose products are part of the fight. Our defense industrial base is still largely geared towards a peacetime environment and not towards a wartime or at least a quasi wartime environment.

That we're now in. To get a sense of just how much the Army is investing in this. Within the last couple of weeks, the Army has announced one and a half billion dollars in procurement of new 155 millimeter artillery rounds.

They're trying to produce this crucial ammunition faster and then trying to produce more of it. Oren Liebermann, CNN, at the Pentagon.

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