Amid Kiev’s faltering counteroffensive, Russian forces have been successfully destroying NATO-supplied weaponry, leaving many of Ukraine’s Western patrons facing a situation where their own stockpiles are being hollowed out. Accordingly, ramping up production of munitions is becoming a challenging issue – something that Elon Musk has weighed in on.
US military vulnerability primarily “stems from the slow pace of production,” American entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk has pointed out.
The tech guru took to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), to comment on last year’s post by the company Anduril Industries. On its five-year anniversary, the military technology company had argued the need for a joint effort if it was expected to “transform US and allied military capabilities with advanced technology.” We need “a new group of defense technology companies to Reboot the Arsenal of Democracy,” the firm had stated.
In response, Musk voiced the opinion that “slow production rates, as we’re seeing in Ukraine,” was the chief US military’s weak spot.
The entrepreneur also emphasized that making new prototypes is easy, but putting them into production is hard.
This comes as the third month of Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive has wrapped up, with the Kiev regime unable to boast any significant military gains, while US stockpiles of munitions are getting “dangerously low”.
Meanwhile, the US unveiled the latest military package for the Kiev regime, worth $250 million, late in August, including AIM-9M missiles for air defense, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, mine-clearing equipment, Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets, three million rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as other items. However, by continuing to funnel military aid to Kiev the US is reportedly fast-depleting its own military caches of various weapons. Thus, depletion of US stockpiles of 155mm artillery shells (for howitzer use) was recently cited in a US report, with the additional revelation that Washington was sending Kiev 155mm and 105mm shells for the simple reason that it no longer had adequate stockpiles of 155mm shells.
As for Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO recently clarified in a statement that he had declined to activate the company’s Starlink satellite internet service network over Crimea in order to enable a Ukrainian strike on the Russian naval fleet back in 2022.
“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” Musk said on Thursday, via X, adding that, “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
The owner of the socia media platform’s comments were in response to excerpts cited in US media from the upcoming Musk biography authored by writer Walter Isaacson. The book reportedly outlines how Musk sought to avoid a “mini-Pearl Harbor” breaking out after conversing with senior Russian and American officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” Musk is said to have told Isaacson.

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