When we asked each of the single service heads what shortfalls their Forces were carrying, all mentioned stockpiles as an area of significant (current) concern.135 The high rate of consumption of munitions in the war in Ukraine has exceeded the assumptions (and therefore the quantities held) by most Western forces. Estimates for the use of artillery rounds in Ukraine were 5,000 a day in February 2023 (equivalent to a smaller European country’s annual order in peacetime)136. In June 2021, the rate at which Ukraine was using Javelin missiles would have exhausted the entire US stockpile in 42 days.137 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman told us that “a very high priority is to crank up the industrial base so that we have got the stocks even just to sustain Ukraine in the current war, never mind to fill in the backlog that we have”.138