The US Army has experienced a setback in increasing its artillery munition production by October.
In early 2024, the army set monthly targets of 60,000 rounds by October of that year, 75,000 by April 2025, and 100,000 by October 2025, but it 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.
Maj. Gen. John Reim, head of the US Army’s Joint Armaments and Ammunition Office, attributed this delay to the scale and speed of the investments, noting that some production is only now taking effect.
Currently, the military has allotted almost $5 billion to cover supplemental funding and infrastructure work.
“Several of the investments that we made are just coming online now, a little later than we had hoped, but these were big bets, and we were given the mission to go fast,” Reim explained in an interview with Defense One.
“We put multiple bets down, and realized some risk … but we will continue to work through that.
Parallels to WWII Industrial Shift
The US Army’s significant ramping up of artillery production will involve the construction of new plants alongside renovating and reopening defunct facilities.
The force currently has operational factories in Texas, Canada, and Arkansas. With another to be built in Kansas this summer, the network will collectively exceed the 100,000-round monthly goal in early 2026.
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.
“You know, I tell folks all the time that we’re literally making history, and that we’ve not seen this level of investment in our industrial base since World War II,” Reim said.
“We’ve learned a lot of lessons from our Ukraine experience, and we’re just so fortunate that we’re learning that now, and not with our blood and treasure on the line.”
