this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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askchapo
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That doesn't add up. I think you're confusing JDAMs and hellfires for patriots and THAADs here.
No it does, in one of the articles tervell posted on the Ukraine war, they said the botleneck was explosives production. Then someone argued that the lack of artillery production didn't matter because the us uses some acronym bombs that are better(they are not, canon artillery delivers orders of magnitude more volume), without addressing that the botleneck was chemical precursors to explosives, and that acronym bombs are presumably also made of explosives.
Chemical shortages explains why the US hasn't scaled up artillery production. That shortage can be explained by the US's shift to expensive "smart bombs" which are allegedly more efficient with their explosives. You can't conclude from that the US has been under producing smart bombs for 25 years.
It's an issue of volume. The explosives, can be made into bombs, artillery, missiles, etc, but the volume of whatever is made is limited. They can't produce enough volume of whatever is the end product. The claim that bombs are better than a trusty cannon, is a way to justify the lack of production. But there is a still a lack of production, due to problems in the chemical industry.
It really sounds like the shift to smart bombs caused a scale down in explosive chemical production, which prevents a re-scaling up of dumb bombs.
For what your arguing to be true, the chemical problems have to be beyond the market forces, something like a raw input shortage. If you've got the article from tervell you cited handy, please share. Or at least tell me how far back in his timeline I should dig and any keywords, etc.
In Iraq they used 800, a few hundred in Syria/against the houthies etc. A bunch elsewhere.