The Army is building three new production lines for 155mm artillery ammunition in Texas, the Pentagon has confirmed, which are each expected to be in operation and producing 30,000 projectile shell bodies per month by the end of 2025.
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD OTS) and subcontractors, to include Turkish industry partners, are managing construction, installation and follow-on production of the new 155mm projectile metal parts lines in Texas as part of a previously awarded Army contract, the department noted.
“The Department of Defense has made significant investments, in partnership with defense industry, to expand our overall industrial base capacity, to include making targeted investments to increase production of critical munitions,” Jeff Jurgensen, a DoD spokesperson, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Working closely with our many allies and partners to leverage their strengths and unique capabilities is key to building a global defense industrial base that supports our shared national security objectives.”
The confirmation and additional details on the new 155mm ammo manufacturing capacity in Texas follows recent comments from U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Jeff Flake that DoD would be working with Turkish defense firms to help establish the production lines.
“We are partnering with the Turkish defense industry to boost our critical munition stockpiles, which must be replenished following our unprecedented assistance to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion,” Flake wrote in a Deseret News op-ed published on Feb. 13.
Flake said that, by 2025, “an estimated 30 percent” of all 155mm artillery rounds produced in the U.S. would come from these new Texas factories.
The Biden administration in late January approved the potential $23 billion deal with Turkey for F-16 fighter jets which had been held up due to human rights concerns from some lawmakers and Ankara’s delay in ratifying Sweden’s bid to join NATO, which it officially approved last month (Defense Daily, Jan. 29).
The Army is currently working toward a goal of building 100,000 155mm rounds per month by late 2025, a nearly fourfold increase from current capacity, as the service works to replenish its own stockpiles and continue supporting requirements for international partners such as Ukraine and Israel (Defense Daily, Sept. 15 2023).
Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, has said the service won’t be able to reach that goal without funding in the national security supplemental currently before Congress, which he previously noted includes $3.1 billion to boost 155mm artillery ammunition production (Defense Daily, Nov. 8 2023).
“Congress, to their credit, has already been very generous and they’ve really given us a path to 75,000-80,000 [155mm rounds] per month. We need this additional funding to get over 100,000 [rounds] a month,” Bush said at the time.
Jurgensen on Wednesday reiterated Bush’s view and said DoD is “unable to make further, critical investments” in the defense industrial base “without additional supplemental funding or appropriations.”
The Senate passed its $95.3 billion national security supplemental last week, which includes further foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, while the legislation’s prospects remain uncertain in the House and as both chambers are out on a two-week recess (Defense Daily, Feb. 13).
Bush has said the $3.1 billion spread across the bill for 155mm artillery ammunition, which the U.S. has been providing to Ukraine and Israel, is split between $1.48 billion in projects to increase production capacity and $1.63 billion for buying artillery shells and charges.
Last year, GD OTS was selected to compete for orders under a $974.4 million Army deal to load, assemble and pack (LAP) 155mm M1128 artillery rounds and a separate $993.8 million production contract for 155mm M795 artillery rounds (Defense Daily, Oct. 2 2023).
“Combined, the two awards support 50,000 rounds per month of new LAP capacity by 2025,” GD OTS said in a statement last October.