Thread by @cameron19460429

Thread🧵 :The United States + just 6 of the many European artillery ammo makers will ramp up to over 2.5 million 155mm arty rounds per year. For reference this is a single country and 6 companies. (There are dozens of other company’s making artillery ammo that can go to Ukraine)1

This ramp up will represent at least a 2.5x combined ramp up from current levels for these companies.Who are already producing substantially more than they where producing pre Russian invasion.With ramp up’s I will break down how and when they will get there staring with the U.S2

In the United States 155mm production is slated to hit a rate of 90k per month or 1,080,000 155mm shells per year by 2025. This is well over the original plan to ramp to 40k per month by 2025 and 85k by 2028. 3

For the United States this represents the fastest artillery production increase since the Korean War. There’s 3 main ways the U.S is planning to ramp up production. 4

The first is by adding shifts to all of its government owned 155mm facility’s. Many of these facility’s only ran for 8 hours a day before the war and are now beginning to run 24 hours a day everyday. Often Moving from 1 shift to 3 shifts. 5

The second is by building new plants and upgrading its existing facilities. This takes different forms like creating new production lines and increasing automation. So far the U.S has issued billions of dollars in contracts to modernize facility’s and fund increased production. 6

As noted in the incomplete production investment list above,this even includes expanding a metal parts production line in Canada. As well as opening a new plant in Texas with up to 2-4 more completely new plants also coming online in the future. (Existing government plants below7

And last to meet the 2025 ramp up timeline the untied states has tapped private industry to build their own shells at their own facilities.This is something that’s not normally done as the government plants run by private industry have been easily meeting U.S demand prior to now8

Here is a transcript on the army’s website talking about how the army will use both private production and the government owned contractor operated plants to scale up 155mm production. The speaker is Douglas R.Bush (United States Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition)9

& here are some of the large contracts from the U.S issued so far for production.A 994 million dollar contract that American ordinance LLC ended up winning after 522.3 million worth of orders went out prior. And then another smaller but large contract went to GD OTS after that 10

Now we get to some of European ammo production. There’s a lot of other ammo producers besides these but so far I have been unable to find figures and timelines. 11

1. Rhienmetall: currently producing 450,000 155mm rounds per year since they acquired the Spanish, ammo maker Expal. This will then hit 600,000 155mm shells next year with its ramp up. Here’s a CNN article citing the Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger. 12

Note: some capacity comes from existing slack but the vast majority of this increase comes from their purchase of ammo giant expal and the beginning of production at their new plant in Australia just this year that’s capable of making up to 100,000 155mm shells per year. 13

CSG/ Czechoslovak group: 100,000+ now and will ramp to over 150,000 per year according to the CEO. (This interview was in 2022) 14

SAAB: ramping up to 400k+ 155mm shells annually by early 2025. 15

BAE systems : listed at “tens of thousands” currently ( likely around 30-40k.) Will ramp up to 250-300k annually with a contract to increase productions by 8x. 16

The Polish concern PGZ/Dezamet revealed it’s current production at defense24 day was up to 30,000-40,000 annually (likely around 50k now) and will ramp up to 200,000. A rate it will run at until at least 2029 under current funding. 17

& the last one of the manufacturers I will be talking about on this thread is NAMMO. They started out producing 10-20k per year pre war and will ramp up to 200,000 155mm shells per year. But will take much longer to do so than the rest of the other companies. Doing so by 2028. 18

Note almost all of this production will be online by 2025. NAMMO appears to be the only manufacturer which will take significantly longer than that to ramp up. 19

It’s also important to remember Ukraine is getting ammo from tons of other countries and company’s besides these as well. and this is a fraction of the overall pie. I will be doing more threads on this later taking a more comprehensive view as I am able to get more data. 20

Also note not 100% of ammo produced by every company will go to Ukraine. This is one of many more threads I will do on artillery production. 21

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