The recently passed supplemental funding bill included around $6 billion to boost 155mm artillery ammunition production, double what the Army had requested as the service pushes to build 100,000 such rounds per month by late 2025.
Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told reporters on Thursday that Congress fully funded the service’s requested projects for its munitions ramp up efforts and that the additional funding lawmakers added in the supplemental will allow production lines to sustain a rate of 100,000 artillery shells per month for longer.
“That I think is a vote of confidence as we make our way to [producing] 100,000 [155mm artillery] shells a month and that will let us do that for longer,” Bush said. “Included in that [$6 billion] number, of course, is a substantial amount of investment in facilities…They really did our request plus added a lot of funding, which is great.”
Bush first told reporters back in November that the Biden administration’s supplemental request to Congress included $3.1 billion for increasing 155mm artillery shell production, which he said would be required to meet the service’s goal for building 100,000 per month by 2025 (Defense Daily, Nov. 8, 2023).
Producing 100,000 155mm rounds per month would represent a nearly fourfold increase from current capacity, with the service working to replenish its own stockpiles and continue supporting requirements for international partners such as Ukraine and Israel.
Bush said on Thursday the “big add” from Congress included covering additional production of 155mm ammunition subcomponents, to “the charges that shoot the artillery shells.”
“Congress had already funded a lot of the ramp up for the metal parts, the shells. A lot of what was in the [new] supplemental does the rest, which is producing enough explosives and materials to actually build the charges to shoot the shells. So it kind of completes the upgrade in the scale up of the entire fuse to the charge. It funds the rest of that [ramp-up] plan,” Bush said. “That’s why we needed this to get to 100,000 [artillery shells] per month. We would have gotten to 100,000 per month of just shells without the [supplemental] funding. But just the shells are no good, you need the rest.”
President Biden signed the new $95 billion supplemental last week, which includes $60.8 billion in assistance for Ukraine, $26.4 billion in aid to Israel, and $8.1 billion for U.S. security in the Indo-Pacific region, to include aid to Taiwan, and $3.3 billion to invest in the U.S. submarine industrial base (Defense Daily, April 24).
Bush said projects supported in the supplemental to help boost munitions production include funding for a new TNT factory and several hundred million dollar projects to “dramatically” increase IMX-104 explosive production at Holston Army Ammunition Plant.
“There isn’t [a TNT factory] in the United States. We’re going to have one now. That will take some time. We have to still decide where to put it. There are multiple candidates,” Bush said.
The Army has also been building three new production lines for 155mm artillery ammunition in Texas, funded in a previous supplemental, with Bush confirming on Thursday that the factory with additional capacity is set to be ready this summer (Defense Daily, Feb. 22).
“Importantly, the [new] supplemental provides sufficient funding to use [the new production lines] for a long time, because after you build a factory you have to have money to actually buy the shells. So now we have that in place as well,” Bush said.
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems [GD] 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.