While new shell production plants are being opened in the United States, America still faces a shortage of energetics and propellants.
  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    16·
    6 months ago

    Been that way for a while, over the course of the war – as things ramped up, we had more shell-manufacturing capacity than filler capacity. We’d been shipping some of the shells we manufactured to be filled in Poland, as I recall, because they had some excess filler capacity.

    EDIT: Yeah, went to some other countries as well, schlorped up some of their filler output too:

    https://www.defensenews.com/land/2024/02/06/us-army-hunts-for-explosives-to-meet-increased-munitions-output-goals/

    The Army awarded $1.5 billion in contracts to nine companies in the fall of 2023 to companies in the U.S., Canada, India and Poland to boost global production of 155mm artillery rounds. The contracts included procuring 14.2 million pounds of bulk energetics, consisting of TNT and IMX-104 explosive.

    • CluelessLemmyng@lemmy.sdf.org
      51·
      6 months ago

      The cynic in me says these articles are all about fear mongering to permanently increase spend baselines in the MIC. Another part of me is saying that the industrial shortcomings are great to highlight and beef up now to ensure a deterrence and capacity for any conflict where the US is obligated to participate in (such as Taiwan).

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        6·
        6 months ago

        I mean, the article is from the Ukrainian military. I don’t think that Ukraine cares much about whether-or-not the US has capacity to defend Taiwan. I think that the Ukrainian military cares a lot about whether there might be some additional, unknown delay in supply to Ukraine due to slowdowns in the production pipeline. Like, they had the EU promise artillery shells by a date, and they got delays and got half that much at the expected date. I’m pretty sure that they had plans predicated on getting that ammunition, had set burn rates, etc. Then there was the fight in Congress in the US over aid supply that caused a delay. I bet that they don’t want more of those. If I were gonna guess, they’re aiming to look ahead and say “what might become a delay” and then highlight that as soon as possible to people who might iron it out. The guy from the US says “there might be a month or two delay due to obtaining filler”, they want that to be minimized and have a cap put on it.