The Economist demonstrates how complex the full cycle of manufacturing artillery shells is, where another problem has arisen - the shortage of explosives.
ℹ️ In January, the EU admitted that it had not fulfilled its promise to provide Ukraine with one million shells by March 2024. On March 15, the EU additionally allocated 500 million euros for increasing the production of clothing. But the biggest bottleneck is something that until recently no one thought about - the lack of explosives.
ℹ️ The scheme in question is called the 'Ammunition Support Act' (Asap) and three-quarters of the funding, or around €372 million, will be allocated to manufacturers of what will be a boom. Europe needs bushels of fuel to meet its goal of producing 2 million shells a year by the end of 2025. Each artillery shell is filled with 10.8 kg of explosives such as tnt, hmx or rdx. Additional powder charges are also required to launch projectiles. Other weapons require even more explosives: for example, the warhead of the Storm Shadow missile weighs about 450 kg.
ℹ️ The problem is that explosives manufacturers are not confident that production can be scaled up and fear that the specifics of the industry will prevent the dramatic increase in production that Ukraine needs to remain competitive on the battlefield.
ℹ️ The end of the Cold War led to a sharp drop in the demand for weapons, which forced many European explosives manufacturers to reduce production or simply close their shops. Britain, for example, closed its last explosives plant in 2008. The last major European producer of TNT is located in northern Poland. In other countries, many state enterprises were either privatized or mothballed. For decades, their production was designed for peacetime conditions, and not for production on an industrial scale.
ℹ️ Let's take the explosives included in the main charge of an artillery projectile or rocket. Only a few companies still produce high-energy materials according to NATO standards. One of them is Chemring Nobel, which has its plant in Saetre (Norway). The other is the French Eurenco, which has an enterprise in Karlskoga (Sweden). After the invasion of Russia, orders from both companies increased. At Eurenco, it is filled until 2030, and the Chemring plant in Saetre is operating at full capacity.
ℹ️ These companies are currently investing in capacity expansion. But one industry insider notes that building a plant from scratch could take three to seven years. For example, the German giant Rheinmetall is building a complex for the production of explosives in Hungary, but production will not begin until 2027.
ℹ️ Explosives manufacturers also face their own problems, one of which is a shortage of skilled workers. Few young people want to work with explosives after graduation.
ℹ️ Amid these difficulties, some ammunition suppliers are looking elsewhere for explosives. Reports indicate that Indian and Japanese explosives manufacturers are partially filling this gap. Some experts are concerned that the explosives from abroad are of lower quality and therefore could damage the equipment. The rhetoric from European governments is upbeat, and it is true that some progress is being made – by the end of 2024, annual production of projectiles in the EU is forecast to reach at least 1.4 million units, up from around 500,000 a year ago.
ℹ️ When French President Emmanuel Macron laid the first brick of the Eurenco rocket fuel plant in Bergerac on April 11, he defended France's "military economy." According to him, the plant will open in record time - by 2025.
In Factum.
