PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. — The U.S. Army’s Joint Program Executive Office for Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO A&A) and U.S. Army Contracting Command - New Jersey (ACC-NJ) awarded several contracts worth more than $961 million to enhance the production of critical 155mm artillery components. These awards are set to increase production capacity significantly and provide the joint warfighter with a new “go-to” war round, ensuring that the Army’s artillery capabilities remain safe, reliable, plentiful and lethal.

The contracts cover the procurement of 500,000 M119A2 Propellant Charges, supports load, assemble, and pack (LAP) of 260,000 M231 Modular Artillery Charge System (MACS) and 2.2 million M232A2 MACS. MACS are the primary propelling charge system in all currently fielded 155mm howitzer systems. The contracts also cover the LAP of 16,900 of the Army’s newest “go-to” war round–the M1128 High Explosive (HE) projectile. This new projectile will provide U.S. artillery with extended-range capabilities and will give brigade combat teams the ability to deliver near-precision fires at distances of up to 30 kilometers without relying on exquisite munitions.

In addition to contracts supporting the LAP of munitions, another contract was awarded to expand the production capacity of High Fragmentation Steel (HF-1). This specially engineered alloy, used in large-caliber munitions such as the 155mm M795 and the M1128, is critical to meeting increased production demand and will enable the Army to achieve its goal of producing 100,000 artillery shots per month by fiscal year 2026.

“In alignment with the Department of Defense’s National Defense Industrial Strategy, we have invested more than $4.2 billion to expand and modernize the organic industrial base,” said Douglas R. Bush, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. “This collaborative effort between the Army and industry establishes a credible deterrent against potential adversaries, underscoring the Army’s commitment to fight and win the Nation’s wars.”

A REUTERS INVESTIGATION

Years of miscalculations by U.S., NATO led to dire shell shortage in Ukraine

A Ukrainian serviceman prepares 155mm shells at a position late last year near the town of Marinka in the Donetsk region. The 155mm shell has becomes a pivotal weapon in the ongoing war with Russia. REUTERS/Viacheslav RatynskyiSince Russia seized Crimea in 2014, policymakers in America and Europe repeatedly failed to address warnings about the sorry condition of the West’s munitions industry. The result: an inability to adequately supply Ukraine with a key weapon, and a shift of the war in Russia’s favor.

The causes of the shell crisis began years ago. They are rooted in decisions and miscalculations made by the U.S. military and its NATO allies that occurred well before Russia’s 2022 invasion, a Reuters investigation found.

A decade of strategic, funding and production mistakes played a far greater role in the shell shortage than did the recent U.S. congressional delays of aid, Reuters found.

In the years between Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and its 2022 invasion, for example, repeated warnings from top NATO commanders and from officials who operated or supervised U.S. munitions plants went largely unheeded. They advised their governments, both publicly and privately, that the alliance’s munitions industry was ill-equipped to surge production should war demand it. Because of the failure to respond to those warnings, many artillery production lines at already-ancient factories in the United States and Europe slowed to a crawl or closed altogether.

“This is a problem that’s been long in the making,” said Bruce Jette, who served as the assistant secretary of the U.S. Army for acquisition, logistics and technology from 2018 to January 2021.

Reuters interviewed dozens of current and former U.S., Ukrainian and North Atlantic Treaty Organization military officials, and reviewed thousands of pages of confidential U.S. Army briefings, public documents and other internal records. The reporting found that:

Production of the 155mm shell dropped so dramatically that, from summer 2014 to fall 2015, the U.S. added no new shells to its stockpile.

Manufacturing defects and safety violations triggered repeated production-line shutdowns. The 2021 discovery of cracks in shells cut production capacity in half for months.

A U.S. decision to change the type of explosive used in those shells hasn’t helped the war effort and, to date, has been an expensive flop: The Army spent $147 million on a facility it doesn’t use.

And a plan to replace an antiquated plant in Virginia that produced propellant to launch the shells has fallen a decade behind its scheduled completion and has almost doubled in price. That delay has created a greater U.S. reliance on raw materials from overseas than is publicly known. One internal U.S. Army document from 2021 details “foreign dependencies” on at least a dozen chemicals made in China and India, countries with close trade ties to Russia.

Particularly ironic: The U.S. pre-war plan for sourcing the explosive TNT from overseas included contracts with a factory in eastern Ukraine. The plant was seized by Russia early in the war.