WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is rushing to increase its production of artillery shells by
500%
within two years, boosting conventional ammunition production to levels not seen since the Korean War, while investing billions of dollars to offset the deficits caused by the war in Ukraine and accumulate reserves for future conflicts.
The effort, which will involve expanding factories and bringing in new producers, is part of the " most aggressive
modernization
effort in nearly 40 years" for the US defense industrial base, according to an Army report.
Ukrainian service members load ammunition into an infantry fighting vehicle during offensive and assault drills, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine January 23, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer
The new investment in artillery production is, in part, a concession to reality:
while the Pentagon has focused on waging wars with small numbers of more expensive precision weapons, Ukraine relies heavily on howitzers that fire
unguided projectiles.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the US military's output of
14,400
unguided projectiles a month had been sufficient for the US military's mode of warfare.
But the need to supply Kiev's armed forces led Pentagon leaders to triple production targets in September, and double them again in January, so they could eventually make
90,000 or more rounds a month.
Unguided artillery shells have become the cornerstone of this 11-month conflict, in which both Ukrainian and Russian troops fire
thousands of shells at each other every day
, along a front line of more than 965 kilometers long.
These weapons are probably responsible for the largest percentage of war casualties, which US officials have estimated at more than
100,000 on each side.
The Army's decision to expand its artillery production is the clearest sign yet that the United States
plans to back Ukraine
no matter how long the war lasts.
Ukrainian service members load ammunition. REUTERS/Stringer
The ammunition that the United States has sent to Ukraine includes not only 155mm shells for howitzers, but also
guided rockets for
HIMARS
launchers ,
thousands of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, and more than 100 million rounds for small arms.
The shells that are made today - essentially large steel bullets filled with explosives - cannot be made as quickly as many consumer goods.
Although the way they are built is slowly changing with increasing automation and new technology, the heart of the process - cutting, heating, forging and bending the steel into shape - remains largely unchanged.
The
Department of Defense
will fund new facilities to manufacture artillery ammunition and is spending about $1 billion a year for the next 15 years to modernize government-owned ordnance production facilities in an effort to increase automation, improve security of workers and, ultimately, make ammunition more quickly.
Since August alone, Congress has appropriated
$1.9 billion
to the Army for this effort.
“We are working closely with industry to increase both their capacity and the rate at which they can produce,” Christine Wormuth, Secretary of the Army, said last month, adding that this includes identifying “specific components that are sort of choke points " and "stock up on them to try to move things faster."
Douglas R. Bush, Assistant Secretary of the Army and the service's chief procurement officer, said the United States is one of the few countries that maintains significant stockpiles of these types of weapons in both wartime and peacetime.
"In previous conflicts, we had enough reserves for the conflict," Bush said in an interview.
"In this case, we are looking to increase production both to maintain our arsenal for some other contingency and to supply an ally."
"So it's
a bit of a new
situation ," he added.
The unguided projectiles currently being manufactured are just under 36 inches long, weigh approximately 100 pounds, and are loaded with 25 pounds of explosives, enough to kill people within 165 feet of impact and injure soldiers exposed at more than 400 feet. away.
The United States has so far sent more than a million explosive shells to Ukraine, while other NATO countries and America's major non-NATO allies have also contributed shells, mostly
without disclosing how many
.
The Pentagon has declined to comment on the size of its 155mm shell stockpiles, but Bush said the planned production increases would support Ukraine's needs in
real time
and replenish the amount drawn from existing stockpiles.
"We're going to start to see this summer our first significant increase in terms of cartridges per month," he said of the shell production targets.
"The ramp will really reach its peak in fiscal year 2024."
Although the new investment in the country's munitions factories will provide a significant boost in production, it is still
only a fraction
of the manufacturing capacity the military mustered in the 1940s.
At the end of World War II, the United States had about 85 munitions factories, according to a congressional report late last year.
Currently, the Pentagon entrusts most of this work to six government-owned and contractor-operated Army munitions plants.
The military's munitions infrastructure "consists of facilities with an average age of more than 80 years," much of it still operating in "World War II-era buildings and, in some cases, with WWII-era equipment." time", according to the Army report on the
modernization of these facilities
, prepared in 2021.
Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the invasion of Ukraine was a
"Sputnik
" moment - referring to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite into space - that made clear the need for this rapid expansion of ammunition manufacturing capacity in the United States.
"The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has really brought to the fore how
fragile and brittle
our supply chain is, especially as it relates to ammunition, which is now clearly something of an
emergency
in terms of trying to replenish," Wittman said. this month, during remarks before a group of senior Pentagon officials.
Stock
Artillery ammunition production in the United States is a complicated process that takes place primarily at four government-owned facilities run by private defense contractors.
The empty steel bodies are forged in Pennsylvania factories run by General Dynamics, the explosives for those shells are mixed by BAE Systems workers in Tennessee, and then poured into the shells at a plant run by American Ordnance in rural Iowa. while the propellant charges to fire them from the howitzer barrels are manufactured by BAE in southwest Virginia.
The fuzes screwed into the muzzle of these howitzers, necessary to explode the shells, are manufactured by
contractors elsewhere.
In November, the Army announced a $391 million contract with Ontario-based company IMT Defense to manufacture shell bodies, and ordered General Dynamics to build a new 155mm shell production line at a factory in Garland, Texas.
According to Bush, a fourth domestic manufacturer
of 155mm shell bodies
is likely to be announced soon .
All of this increased production is likely to be used as soon as it can be shipped to the Ukrainian border by the US Transportation Command.
The Ukrainians have been firing so many artillery volleys that about
a third
of the 155mm howitzers provided by the United States and other Western nations are out of service for repairs.
The Pentagon has also purchased ammunition for the Soviet-era weapons that Ukraine had before the invasion and which still make up a large part of its arsenal:
100,000 rounds of Russian-made tank ammunition, 65,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and 50,000 Grad artillery rockets.
Such munitions continue to be produced in limited quantities in some of the Soviet Union's former satellite nations in Central and Eastern Europe.
"We are not talking about numbers that can radically change the situation," Bush said.
"Those types of options have been and are being evaluated."
"The priority has been to provide standard NATO ammunition," he said.
"A lot of it, however, depends on what Ukraine wants."
Evolution
As the war dragged on, the Russian forces realized that they could not sustain the high levels of artillery fire that they used to outrun the Ukrainian aircrews during the summer.
In September, according to US intelligence, Russia was trying to buy artillery shells from North Korea, which still uses Soviet-caliber weapons.
The following month, Ukrainian troops near the city of Kherson claimed that the Russian rate of fire had dropped to about the same as their own.
In December, a US defense intelligence analyst who was not authorized to speak publicly said reports from Russia indicated that the Moscow government had ordered employees at munitions factories to work longer hours in an effort to for producing more artillery for Russian forces to use in Ukraine, including artillery ammunition.
The experience in Ukraine has broadly reminded the Pentagon and military contractors that the United States needs to focus more on basic artillery and missiles,
not just the expensive equipment
needed to fire these weapons.
Most militaries are focused on buying the right weapons for short-term conflicts, Gregory Hayes, CEO of Raytheon Technologies, said last month at a conference in California with Pentagon officials, referring to the F-35 stealth fighters that his company helps build that have been sold to the United States and many of its allies.
"I think, if anything, what the Ukraine situation has taught us is that we need
depth
in our supply chain, depth in our war reserves, much more than we ever expected."
c.2023 The New York Times Company
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