Army ‘hitting stride’ with 155mm production, but general worries over what’s needed next

AUSA 2025 — After decades of stagnation, America’s ammunition industry is beginning to boom again, according to a senior Army official.

New production sites are popping up around the country as $5.5 billion in funding — appropriated over the last three years in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine — finally percolates through the contracting process, said the two-star general in charge of inter-service ammunition production.

“I’ve had the privilege of doing nine ribbon-cutting ceremonies here in the last year,” Maj. Gen. John Reim, the Joint Program Executive Officer for Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO-A&A), told the Association of the US Army conference here on Wednesday. “We’re bringing new capabilities online. We’re replacing legacy production methods. … Most of our facilities, they date back to World War II.”

The bad news? The new, more flexible facilities are just starting to ramp up — and the ones that exist are overwhelmingly focused on one type of ammunition: the 155 mm howitzer rounds that proved crucial in the early phases of the Ukrainian war. Production of these artillery shells has surged from 14,000 rounds per month in early 2022, which was just enough to cover what the Army and Marine Corps typically expended in training, to 40,000 a month by late 2024. That’s still well short of the Army’s objective of 100,000 a month.

“Those facilities are just now coming online. We’re just hitting stride with first article tests and transitioning to full rate production,” Reim said during the panel discussion at AUSA. “[And] probably 95 percent of the money that’s come into us has been targeted for 155. … We’re laser focused on artillery.”

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Meanwhile, other types of ammunition, from mortar shells to tank rounds, aren’t getting anywhere near the same investment. One partial exception is a pair of new facilities to make 6.8 mm rifle rounds for the Army’s new M-7 Next Generation Squad Weapon and M250 light machinegun: “We’re going to be in a good spot with 6.8 ammunition going forward with both Lake City and Sig Sauer doing production,” Reim said.

Beyond 155: Flexible Production

But while the US is ramping up 155 mm ammo production, Reim warned that the nature of war is continuously changing, pointing to the new ubiquity of small attack drones on the frontlines in Ukraine.

When it comes to predicting the needs of future conflicts, Reim said, “the Army’s gotten it wrong 100 percent of the time.”

That’s why the nation needs not just more ammunition production capacity, but more flexible facilities, Reim emphasized to Breaking Defense in a sidebar conversation after the panel.

The majority of the infrastructure still dates to World War II, when efficiency meant building factories that specialized in cranking out one specific product in staggering quantities. Modern conflict changes too fast for that approach, Reim argued. Fortunately, modern manufacturing technology can adapt fast enough to keep up with it.

“Right, now we’ve got one-trick ponies in existing facilities that are optimized to produce at scale, and so when we’re not producing at scale, they’re very inefficient,” Reim told Breaking Defense. “We need this modular, flexible production capability that can support a surge.”

At a cutting-edge ammunition plant, Reim continued, “I’ve got the flexibility to pivot between a 60 mm mortar and 81 [mm mortar], 120 [mm tank rounds], 105 [mm], 155 [mm]. I’ve got that with a simple software change and minor tooling changes.”

The showpiece for this new approach is the Universal Artillery Project Lines (UAPL) facility formally opened in Mesquite, Texas last year, which is initially focused on making the metal parts for 155 mm shells, but in theory can switch to 60 mm mortars or any caliber in between.

Unfortunately, UAPL’s technology has proved as ambitious as its name, and contractor General Dynamics has struggled to get all three lines running properly. The problem became so acute that in June, the Army sent an official “show cause” letter warning the company the service would “consider terminating” GD’s contract to run UAPL unless it shaped up ASAP. (At the time, a spokesperson for General Dynamic declined to comment on the letter, deferring to the Army.)

“In Mesquite … we’re working through some challenges [and a] stop-work,” Reim acknowledged when he spoke to Breaking Defense this week. “But we’ve got a tiger team [working to] baseline where we’re at today [and] what do you need to do to get this operational.”

One recurring difficulty at the new facilities, Reim said, is the need to import crucial equipment from specialized manufacturers with limited capacity and large backlogs.

“At Mesquite, there’s a lot of Turkish equipment, [specifically] free flow forming technology — say that three times fast,” Reim said. “We just don’t make a lot of stuff in the US anymore. When we look at the equipment that goes in these facilities that’s not sitting in a shelf at Costco, right? They’re long-lead items.”

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Some of the new facilities are themselves located abroad, albeit close by in Canada. Reim told Breaking Defense that, recently, “we went through first article testing at IMT up in Ingersoll, Canada.” The ribbon-cutting for Ingersoll happened a year ago, but the complexity of the industrial process, especially the need for rigorous safety and performance testing, means it’s still working up to mass production.

Ingersoll is focused on 155 mm shells, currently the older M795 model, but with the capacity to shift to the longer-ranged M1128 that the Army wants to make its new standard.

Even as it tries to modernize its artillery, the Army has also revived production of at least one older type of ammunition, because it faced delays in ramping up production of the newer version, Reim said. Again, the problem was the need to import key supplies, in this case high-grade nitrocellulose to contain the gunpowder “propellant charge” that launches the 155 mm artillery shell out of the howitzer.

“As we try to ramp to 100,000 all-up rounds [per month], the LIMFAC [limiting factor] quickly became propelling charges,” Reim told Breaking Defense. “Today, we don’t have the capability to produce the grade of nitrocellulose that we need, and so we’re importing that from the French, from the Czech Republic, from the Koreans, [and] GD Valleyfield, up in Canada. … So we brought back the old M119 red bag that uses a different grade of nitrocellulose, so it doesn’t compete with for the same supply chain, [and] we opened two new production facilities, one in Marion, Illinois, one in Perry, Florida.”

“We’ve got a lot going on,” Reim said. “It’s historic, and we haven’t seen this level of investment since World War Two.”