The war in Ukraine has forced NATO to rethink its approach to defense, with the alliance's biggest challenge now being the restoration of its capacity for large-scale weapons production.

Axar.az reports that speaking on the Boots on the Ground podcast, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli said he was surprised by how quickly NATO countries' weapons stockpiles were depleted as military aid flowed to Ukraine and by the inability of the West's defense industrial base to replenish them rapidly.

According to Cavoli, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine exposed that U.S. and European defense production had been designed for peacetime rather than large-scale warfare. He noted that shortages of artillery ammunition emerged particularly quickly.

Cavoli said one of NATO's key strategic priorities in the coming years should be restoring the ability to mass-produce weapons and rapidly integrate new technologies, as demonstrated by the demands of the war in Ukraine.

"Russia has lost more than 4,000 main battle tanks during this war. Four thousand. So to give a sense of scale, the UK has about 200 main battle tanks and is building down to about 150. France has an operational fleet of about 220, while Canada has 74. Russia has lost many times the entire tank fleet of a major ally and has still managed to replace those losses," Cavoli said.