currently has a monthly output of around 40,000 rounds.
Although it is nearly triple the 14,500 monthly rate before Russia’s “military operation” in Ukraine in 2022, production remains below the pace needed to meet the goal of over a million 155-millimeter howitzer shells next year.
Reim compared the historic nature of this initiative to the scale of industrial mobilization during the Second World War, but noted that challenges involve reopening dilapidated production lines and finding new suppliers for critical materials, such as TNT, which has not been manufactured on US soil since the 1980s.
I would think a TNT plant would be a strategic need.
“We’ve learned a lot of lessons from our Ukraine experience
Yeah like how the US industrial capacity for conventional war is lax.
It took until the end of 2024 for the US to award a contract funding a US based TNT plant.
Its sad that the government has failed to keep it munitions manufacture facilities up to date. But its a boring subject. Very basic. But not jazzy enough to get much attention.
If they IRS and FAA runs with 50 year old computers why should the defense industry surprise us. Much effort goes into the newest weapon system. The basics mostly get what is left over after those are funded.
I was surprised by that too. I worked for a couple summers as a technician in an explosives R&D company. Turns out the military explosives today are pretty much the same as in WWII.
Explosives manufacturing is kind of nasty, so I see why people don’t want to do it. But TNT is still a pretty good explosive. Goes bang pretty well. Pretty stable. Easy to work with. Works fine on its own but it is often blended with other explosives like HMX or RDX when you want a bigger bang.
Technically, of course, it is “the government”, but it’s really the Pentagon which is always more entranced with shiny new things and promoting lots of people to Colonel and stuff than working on the hard but boring stuff of, you know, keeping munitions plants running and the troops supplied.
The good news is that the US has plenty of firework plants. So the fourth of July celebration will go without a hitch. Whew. Glad we have our priorities straight. https://www.manta.com/mb_35_E83830B6_000/fireworks Manta has 267 businesses under Fireworks Manufacturers in the United States
Wikipedia reports Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingston, TN still makes RDX and HMX. Originally built by Eastman Kodak during WWII. Also PETN used in booster cans for ammonium nitrate and in plastic explosives is still being made.
I worked for International Mineral & Chemical Corp when they owned Trojan US Powder Co. The company was founded to make nitrostarch used as the explosive in World War I hand grenades. (Nitrogycerine freezes in cold weather; nitrostarch does not.) They have a letter on files from FDR asking them to make pentaerythritol and PETN in World War II. The chemical plant in Allentown PA continues to operate. It is now owned by GeoChemicals. They stopped making explosives there. And discontinued pentaerythritol. Explosives business was sold to Ensign-Bickford. They had operations at Wolf Lake, IL. Not sure if they still operate.
Hercules made pentaerythritol and PETN at Louisiana, MO. That plant is apparently shut down.
Oh sure. There’s been a strain of thought over the past 20-30 years of ‘It doesn’t matter. The market is right, don’t interfere with the market.” If it’s cheaper to buy something elsewhere, then do it. Heck, we were relying on Russia’s rockets for years , ironically to launch US national security payloads.
So now we can’t produce steel, can’t produce aluminum, have a dysfunctional Pentagon procurement system, are scrounging for explosives, are bombing another country, and are about to pass a big beautiful deficit busting bill.
