Artillery shells / 155mm

What it is

The 155mm howitzer round is the standard heavy-artillery calibre across NATO and most Western-aligned militaries. A complete round comprises three components manufactured separately: a steel projectile body (forged and machined), an explosive fill (typically TNT or IMX-101), and a propellant charge. Different projectile variants serve different roles, from the basic M107 high-explosive shell to the GPS-guided M982 Excalibur at roughly US$100,000 apiece.

Key industrial players divide by geography. In the United States, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems operates the main projectile lines; Day & Zimmermann handles load-assemble-pack at facilities in Iowa and Arkansas; Nammo, a Norwegian-Finnish company, runs a secondary line in Mesa, Arizona. In Germany, Rheinmetall is the dominant producer. In the UK, BAE Systems operates the Royal Ordnance factory at Glascoed, Wales. South Korea's Poongsan produces shells and has approved a new long-range 155mm variant with a 60-kilometre range for mass production.

History

NATO standardised on 155mm in the Cold War era to ensure logistics interoperability across member armies. During the post-Cold War drawdown, Western governments shed surge capacity they never expected to need. By 2022, the entire US industrial base produced roughly 14,000 rounds per month, enough for peacetime rotations but far below any high-intensity conflict requirement. European capacity was similarly compressed.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 immediately exposed the gap. Ukraine consumed up to 8,000 rounds per day during peak defensive operations, a rate that would exhaust the entire monthly US output in under two days. The US, EU member states, and the UK had effectively treated artillery shell production as a managed-decline industry for three decades.

Current state

As of mid-2026, production lines on both sides of the Atlantic are mid-ramp. In the United States, monthly 155mm output reached approximately 36,000 rounds by September 2024, up from 14,000 pre-war, but the Army's target of 100,000 rounds per month by October 2025 was missed. The revised target is mid-2026. General Dynamics received a formal cure notice from the Army for underperformance at its new Mesquite, Texas facility, which uses flow-forming technology that had not previously been proved at scale. Domestic TNT production, halted since 1986, was restarted at a facility in Graham, Kentucky, under a US$435 million contract.

In Germany, Rheinmetall has driven the most dramatic change: 155mm output rose from approximately 70,000 rounds per year in 2022 to roughly 1.1 million per year by early 2026, with a new plant in Unterluess, Lower Saxony, funded in part by an EUR 8.5 billion German government order signed in June 2024. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger stated publicly in April 2026 that Germany now out-produces the United States in conventional ammunition.

The European Union legislated in July 2023 under Regulation (EU) 2023/1525, the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), mobilising EUR 500 million to scale manufacturing capacity and support joint procurement of 1 million rounds for Ukraine, though that delivery target was not fully met on its original timeline. In the UK, BAE Systems is expanding the Glascoed explosive-filling plant by a factor of sixteen, but the project is running roughly six months late after BAE doubled its target capacity in a mid-2025 rethink. See مصنع قذائف غلاسكود التابع لـ BAE يتأخر مع مضاعفة الطاقة المخططة.

Relationships

The Ukraine war is the direct demand driver. Russia's production, estimated at around 3 million rounds per year as of 2025, has outpaced Western output throughout the conflict, supplemented by North Korean shell transfers. NATO's stated 2026 target of 267,000 rounds per month across the alliance would only match Russia's estimated pace, a threshold analysts regard as a floor rather than a ceiling for deterrence.

Rheinmetall's emergence as Europe's largest shell producer has accelerated Germany's broader rearmament, making the company central to debates about European strategic autonomy from US defence supply chains. See راينميتال: ألمانيا تجاوزت الولايات المتحدة في إنتاج الذخيرة التقليدية.

What to watch

Whether the US Army reaches 100,000 rounds per month by mid-2026, and whether the General Dynamics Mesquite facility clears its cure notice. Whether a Ukraine ceasefire, if achieved, softens government purchase commitments enough to stall the ramp. Whether Rheinmetall and BAE can sustain capital investment without the demand floor that active conflict provides. And whether South Korea's new long-range 155mm round reaches export contracts before the European lines are fully operational.