The planned 2024 effort to spice up U.S. Army munitions’ production can be vital to realize a restocking of service inventory and to assist Ukraine, a top Army official said on Feb. 5.
“This 12 months is critical by way of the actual ramp up happening,” Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told a Center for Strategic and International Studies’ forum in Washington, D.C. “We’ve doubled production because the [Ukraine] conflict began, but now we have a protracted approach to go.”
Bush emphasized that 155mm round production is just not simply the metal shell, but involves “load, assemble and pack” (LAP)–filling the shell with explosives–on the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown, Iowa.
American Ordnance LLC, owned by Philadelphia’s Day & Zimmerman, Inc., operates the plant. In Pennsylvania, the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, operated by General Dynamics [GD], and a sister General Dynamics-owned plant in nearby Wilkes-Barre make the shell bodies to be full of explosive in Iowa.
“Immediately, we do it [LAP] in a single place in a single constructing,” Bush said on Feb. 5. “We’re gonna bring on two latest facilities to complement that constructing. We make artillery shells in two buildings about 10 miles apart. We’re gonna bring on two major latest sources for artillery shells.”
Considered one of those latest sources is Ohio’s IMT Defense Corp., owned by Canada’s IMT Defence, for the 155mm high-fragmentation M1128 round, which has a variety of about 25 miles,, Aug. 7, 2023). The corporate won a virtually $163 million Army contract for the round last summer–what the service said was the primary multi-year contract for 155mm ammunition.
Last October, the service said it had awarded five 155mm-related multi-year deals. Winning firms included Tennessee’s Security Signals Inc. and BAE Systems‘ BAE Ordnance Systems Inc., Pennsylvania’s Motion Manufacturing Co., California’s Armtec, Iowa’s American Ordnance LLC, and Arkansas’ General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Inc. and Day & Zimmerman.
As well as, foreign suppliers are a part of the combination, as Poland’s NitroChem S.A., India’s Solar Industries Ltd., and IMT Defence received awards, the Army said.
On Feb. 5, Bush said that the Army is on course to achieve a monthly production of 80,000 155mm artillery shells by the top of the 12 months or early next 12 months, but “we do need Congress in a supplemental to supply additional funding to get us to that 100,000 a month goal at the highest end of the range” by the top of next 12 months.