[Goose]

This is sort of a bad news/good news article about shell production in Europe: https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05...rm-ukraine (I gifted the article so it shouldn't be behind the paywall)

There is a supply crunch for materials that go into shells; the article cites that there is one remaining TNT producer in Europe, in Poland.  Other raw materials have to be imported (for example, cotton linters, an ingredient in nitrocellulose, has to be procured from China).

The good news, such as it is, is:

EU-wide annual shell production is projected to reach at least 1.4m by the end of 2024, up from around 500,000 a year ago.

BC

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/pe...93c37a624b

This is a (IMO) good recent article on the new Texas plant. It "will" produce 30,000 shells a month, although it isn't finished yet. It is producing some number now while parts of it are still under construction. That will result in a production of about 66,000 shells a month when the plant is operating at full capacity. Some interesting quotes from the article:

To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025.

The 100,000-per-month goal represents a nearly tenfold increase in production from a few years ago.

“The steady increase of artillery ammunition production is significant for long-term U.S. and Ukrainian needs,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “but even in the best case scenario, I would say those late-2025 output targets will arrive late in this war, and it is likely that Russian artillery output will still be higher than the U.S. and Europe combined at that point.”
“Let’s say a year and a half from now both the U.S. and Europe are making, or buying, over a million shells each,” he added. “That’s still probably less than Russia is going to produce this year.”

The 10 fold increase is a very red herring. The "baseline" was the "normal" yearly production well before the Ukraine war, approximately 10,000 shells a year. This was based on demand, not capacity. The existing US capacity was essentially three times that, and was very quickly increased to about 30,000 per year, near our maximum capacity.

The obvious question is whether this will be "enough", especially since it will not match projected Russian output. It would be nice to hear something from the DoD explaining why they think it will be or if not what will be done instead.

One last quote:

“When government and industry work together and Congress gives us sufficient latitude, we can still do great things in this country really fast,” Mr. Bush added.

ADDITION: https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-ammo-su...34441.html
Interesting (although self-serving) comment about him "warning" the EU two years ago.

[Goose]

This is sort of a bad news/good news article about shell production in Europe: https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05...rm-ukraine (I gifted the article so it shouldn't be behind the paywall)

There is a supply crunch for materials that go into shells; the article cites that there is one remaining TNT producer in Europe, in Poland.  Other raw materials have to be imported (for example, cotton linters, an ingredient in nitrocellulose, has to be procured from China).

The good news, such as it is, is:

EU-wide annual shell production is projected to reach at least 1.4m by the end of 2024, up from around 500,000 a year ago.

BC

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/pe...93c37a624b

This is a (IMO) good recent article on the new Texas plant. It "will" produce 30,000 shells a month, although it isn't finished yet. It is producing some number now while parts of it are still under construction. That will result in a production of about 66,000 shells a month when the plant is operating at full capacity. Some interesting quotes from the article:

To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025.

The 100,000-per-month goal represents a nearly tenfold increase in production from a few years ago.

“The steady increase of artillery ammunition production is significant for long-term U.S. and Ukrainian needs,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “but even in the best case scenario, I would say those late-2025 output targets will arrive late in this war, and it is likely that Russian artillery output will still be higher than the U.S. and Europe combined at that point.”
“Let’s say a year and a half from now both the U.S. and Europe are making, or buying, over a million shells each,” he added. “That’s still probably less than Russia is going to produce this year.”

The 10 fold increase is a very red herring. The "baseline" was the "normal" yearly production well before the Ukraine war, approximately 10,000 shells a year. This was based on demand, not capacity. The existing US capacity was essentially three times that, and was very quickly increased to about 30,000 per year, near our maximum capacity.

The obvious question is whether this will be "enough", especially since it will not match projected Russian output. It would be nice to hear something from the DoD explaining why they think it will be or if not what will be done instead.

One last quote:

“When government and industry work together and Congress gives us sufficient latitude, we can still do great things in this country really fast,” Mr. Bush added.

ADDITION: https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-ammo-su...34441.html
Interesting (although self-serving) comment about him "warning" the EU two years ago.