Many observers have been shocked at the furious rate of ordinance expenditure seen in Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine. Much attention has been focused on smart munitions like Stingers and HIMARS, but plain old dumb artillery shells are also being used up at a furious rate.
Part of the solution to that problem is coming from Mesquite, Texas. (For those outside Texas, Mesquite is part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, and is east of Dallas and south of Garland.)
Earlier this year, the Mesquite City Council approved the construction of a manufacturing facility for military manufacturer General Dynamics and Tactical Systems.
The 240,011-square-foot building is expected to employ 50 salaried and 75 to 100 hourly employees after the city approved the new $60 million industrial campus in 2021.
“This unique opportunity is a direct result of our strong partnership with the U.S. Army and a very responsive and collaborative Mesquite, Texas, community,” said Steven Black, vice president and general manager at General Dynamics. “We are very excited to grow our company in this region.”
Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley echoed similar sentiments, saying he is “excited” to have Mesquite become a “robust commercial center” so that residents “no longer have to leave” the city to work.
“Once the installation is complete, the manufacturing facility will effectively produce 20,000 units per month for the Department of Defense, which will contribute to the inherently necessary defense capabilities of the United States and our allies abroad,” General Dynamics said in a letter to the city.
According to The New York Times, those “20,000 units” refer to 155-millimeter artillery shells for howitzers. The U.S. government is planning to increase its production of 155-millimeter shells from 15,000 to 90,000 per month to keep up with the need in Ukraine.
“We don’t want to say we’re profiting off of a conflict like that — we’re not feeling any of the effects of war,” Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley told the Times regarding the war in Ukraine. “But at the same time, it’s a global scale of the economy, and that generates a need.”
My guess is that the shells manufactured in Mesquite will be used to backfill U.S. shell stock sent to Ukraine.
It’s not complete solution to Ukraine’s shell problem, but it’s a start. But Ukraine is going to need a lot more help than that to supercharge its current grinding counteroffensive.
Tags: 155mm, artillery, EU, logistics, Mesquite, Metroplex, Military, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine, video
Assuming this goes the way most military wartime production ramp-ups goes, the plant will be reaching full production about the time the conflict ends…
My take on it is that we’ve allowed our industrial base to decay, and this is but a drop in the bucket towards correcting that fact. Might do us some good, but likely, not.
I think the next sixty-odd years are going to look awfully strange to anyone with experience of the world as it was. The demographics are going to be shifting, massively… Trends keep on keeping on, and China is going to be down to 400 million people by 2100. The rest of the world? Not far off of that… The “birth dearth” means that any idiot doing like Putin has been doing is only accelerating the pace of their own self-destruction; I do not look for Xi to be dumb enough to go after Taiwan, but I could be wrong.
On the whole, I think that a bunch of people are going to have a lot of trouble adapting to the new world, where people are in short supply. The wannabe tyrants like Klaus Schwab are going to wake up one morning, and discover that their servants are too damn expensive to hire, and that there’s nobody out there to keep the streets swept or keep the lights turned on. This is going to have an enormous effect on the world, comparable to the post-Black Death era in Western Europe. Labor is going to be tight, and people simply aren’t going to work for peanuts.
I don’t think any of these varied and sundry idiots have really thought any of this through… They’re doing their level best to crash the population, but with all the factors involved, the resultant mess is going to wind up going far past the point they were aiming for. That means that their plans are shiite, and the impending population crash is going to blow up in their faces. I’m not sure what the world looks like, without enough people to maintain everything. Societal norms are going to have to change; people aren’t going to be allowed to slack off, and I would not be a bit surprised to see things like “Have your 2.1 kids… Or, else…” come in. Women’s liberation? Women’s rights? Oh, fine, have ’em… After you’ve contributed your 2.1+ kiddoes, lady. Until then, womb to the grindstone, dearie…
Y’all think the leftoid control freaks of the world won’t do things like that? LOL… Just watch what happens when they figure out that you have to have people to lord it over, if you’re gonna be the lord of the manor…
It’s a mess, folks. Just watch how all this plays out… Christ, where they’re doing “strongly suggested euthanasia” today, they’ll be doing “Yeah, you ain’t done yet… Get to work, old man…” tomorrow. Imagine the world where there are no young people to do the manual labor; who does all the maintenance work? Who is going to keep the lights on, the plants running?
BAE is bragging about a new HE fill using “Resonant Acoustic Mixing” instead of carefully melting down the HE and pouring it. No idea how long it would take to come to market, but that might offer a way to get past the bottleneck of needing highly-skilled specialists to mix and pour the HE into each shell. They also claim to have figured out how to make commercial-grade steel fragment decently, which should remove a second production bottleneck. Of course, it’s still questionable as to whether any of this can see service before the war ends.
https://www.baesystems.com/en/land/about-us/next-generation-adaptable-ammunition
https://www.edrmagazine.eu/bae-systems-ngaa-future-artillery-munitions-better-performances-maximum-flexibility-easy-to-produce-at-lower-costs
“Ordnance”.
One of the things I enjoy when I see that Mr. Person has generated a post about Ukraine is that Kirk is going to comment.
This one — not sure where that came from, Kirk, but entertaining and interesting to contemplate.
I find this quite concerning. Thanks to the recent comments by Trump on “Meet the Press” regarding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; I looked at the EIA data, and the SPR is down nearly half what it was when Biden took office and lower than it has been since it was being filled in the early 80’s. With the SPR and other production reserves, the US now has 31 days of crude oil in stock before it completely runs out. We are supposed to have 90 days. At the current consumption rate, we are losing a day of reserve crude each month. The only national issue that could even account for the SPR drawdown (except for the certainly most likely scenario of robbing the SPR to prop-up the economy) is the Ukraine War. Otherwise the US isn’t in a war and there has been no significant natural disasters to warrant the drawdown.
Now, we are rolling through our supply of artillery stock at the rate of a year’s supply every month?
Just how much of our national strategic resources are going to fight a war in Ukraine with questionable results (particularly on whether those particular resources are making a difference)? Even if you are in favor of supporting the Ukraine this way, we are spending far more than the advertised tens of billions in cash to support this war. If I was China, I’d be sitting back waiting to see if anyone will notice what we have done to our strategic supplies for weapons, fuel, and cash; and just when it seems we noticed, that’s when I would move on Taiwan, if ever.
“America isn’t into grinding artillery duels, we’re into speed, precision munitions and air superiority.”
That works until it doesn’t. Either magic laser triple-A, or a gazillion cheap explody drones with range to reach your airfields, swamp your air defenses and blow up your fighters on the ground, or something else we haven’t thought of yet, and we are suddenly back to “grinding artillery duels” without the ordnance or the logistics to make that work.
Meanwhile I found out US SOCOM is buying purpose build based on crop dusters for close air support and loitering intelligence. It can be launch from essentially dirt road and much easier to support than any other planes in US inventory. Not sure if these thing can actually be useful in Ukraine. But UAE have bought a bunch of these and transfer them to Yemen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Tractor-L3Harris_AT-802U_Sky_Warden
I covered the Sky Warden here.
How many barrels are they going through and how many factories are making new ones?
“Just how much of our national strategic resources are going to fight a war in Ukraine with questionable results (particularly on whether those particular resources are making a difference)?”
Prior to Putin’s Little (Mis)adventure, Biden shut down the XL pipeline. Domestic production was negatively impacted. To cover the rising cost of oil, we imported cheap Russian crude. The resultant FX bonanza enabled Pootie to finance “Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine.”
The absurdity of financing Russia while simultaneously underwriting Ukraine’s defense was evident even to the Jackass Party. So Slow Joe made overtures to woo the Saudis. They laughed at his clumsy courtship.
So the decision was made to draw down the SPR in an effort to keep domestic gasoline prices from escalating. It worked until it didn’t.
Ukraine benefited to the extent that Russia’s current account balance is turning negative, making the importation of war materials problematic.
In a crisis, the SPR can be augmented by gasoline rationing, as happened during WWII so that the troops may be adequately provisioned. In any case, the SPR drawdown will have little effect on the war in Europe. British North Sea crude can fill any shortfalls brought about Biden’s policy errors.
.
British North Sea crude can fill any shortfalls brought about Biden’s policy errors.
No. It’s only about 6% US daily production, which means it is less than what the US has to import to cover its supply shortfall to demand. It’s not even enough crude to keep the UK from importing oil daily. That’s before considering the vulnerability of that supply in the event of war and trying to get it across the North Atlantic. But short of war, rationing, and a national draft; why are we creating this situation just to artificially get a lower gasoline price to hide the economic effects of the war in Ukraine. If fighting Russia in Ukraine is important, then better to show that it is by showing the pain now. This should be a national discussion and instead it is not a discussion at all.
The Ukrainians will burn out the bores of their howitzers if they are actually supplied 350,000 shells per month. It only took the Ukrainians 15 days each to burn out the PzH 2000 barrels. Non chromium plated 155mm barrels only deliver 1,500 EFC shots before serious danger occurs. Chromium plated 155 mm barrels might deliver 2,500 EFC shots.
Remember all those photos of ruptured Russian 152mm howitzer barrels from early in the war? The Russians can make 10,000 152mm barrels a month in their Perm industrial complex, so their artillery limitation is truly shell production. All of NATO, maybe 800 barrels a month. So Ukraine’s artillery limitation has more complex dimensions, notably including depot barrel replacement out-of-service time.
“[W]hy are we creating this situation just to artificially get a lower gasoline price to hide the economic effects of the war in Ukraine.”
Because in the long run we are all dead. When has a contemporary politician ever concerned himself with posterity? The entirety of their existence is centered on the next election.
BTW, I did not realize the North Sea oil fields were relatively insignificant. That said, Ukraine’s war effort has de emphasized armored maneuver warfare in favor of infantry engagements. Consequently, fuel supplies are not as critical to their success.
“So Ukraine’s artillery limitation has more complex dimensions, notably including depot barrel replacement out-of-service time.”
This suggests that JDAMs launched from F-16s and ATACMs would better suit the immediate needs of Ukraine. Russia’s goal in artillery barrages is to level Ukraine’s infrastructure; Ukraine’s goal is to kill or cripple Russian combatants. Targeting Command and Control centers will better enable Russian conscripts to be defeated in detail.
@Steve White;
The reason I segued into that from the point of the original post stems from the thought that came to me while reading it that everybody is still operating under the old paradigms, which just aren’t relevant given the change in demographics we see coming down the pike. Everyone’s expectations are based on the past, with continuously growing populations and no real need for the elite to concern themselves about the well-being of their fellow citizens…
Well, guess what? All of that is almost certainly “no longer operative”, and the sooner idiots like Putin recognize that, the better. He’s still operating as though he led the old Russian Empire or Soviet Union, with endless peasant manpower to call up. He isn’t; that fact is going to become increasingly clear as time goes on. The total number of Russian casualties is probably getting well on towards a million; when that number is reached, traditionally, things have tended to break in Russia, if the public hasn’t seen adequate benefit from their sacrifices.
We’re living at the dawn of a different era, akin to the culture shock that the aristocrats found themselves amidst after the Black Death depopulated Europe. Only, this is going to be world-wide and all those assholes like Schwab that imagine themselves as the lords of creation are going to find it damned expensive to take out their own trash and wash their own dishes…
Malthus, I think you are missing my major point due to the questions. I suspect your point to me is the politicians, particularly Biden at the moment, cares more about himself today than his future. But Biden is nearing his end before most of us that have to live with his decisions. While I can generally get behind helping Ukraine, I think another story today touches on my current concern.
Poland has no withdrawn its support of providing military aid to the Ukraine. This began with Poland attempting to block EU import of Ukrainian grain, as it competed with Poland selling its grain in the EU market which it is already a member. Zelensky then said a few words at the UN that some nations are only “pretending” to support Ukraine if they don’t allow grain sales. This pissed off Poland, which cares about its current economy and was helping Ukraine. Poland isn’t planning to commit suicide by wrecking its economy to help Ukraine, and if it’s aid is only pretense to Ukraine, then Poland will just focus on protecting itself and building up its military at home and forego providing aid to Ukraine.
Why are we not thinking this way? There is a difference in helping Ukraine, and Zelensky being an asshole who can’t efficiently run an economy or war campaign and he is just wasting other nations strategic supplies. At some point, can we at least recognize that while supporting Ukraine, perhaps Zelensky isn’t the right man for the job, or more locally Biden.
The rebuke offered to Poland is inappropriate. Ukraine is a mendicant. Entreaties are what Zelenskyy should employ.
Protocol aside, what would it hurt Poland to buy up Ukrainian grain and export it to Africa and Egypt? Gdańsk has a good harbor.
This way, the hungry are fed, Ukraine has an outlet for its commodities and Poland takes a small brokerage fee for its trouble.
If the Ukraine could export its grain through Poland it would’ve been doing that last year; it can’t because the railroads can’t do it. They can haul it to the Black Sea ports, but not across the northwest border.
“….Russia’s goal in artillery barrages is to level Ukraine’s infrastructure;….”
You should read RAND perspective PE-231-A, titled ‘The Russian Way of Warfare – A Primer’ by Scott Boston and Dara Massicot:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE231.html
A bit dated (2017), but prescient. Fully explains the current Russian military doctrine of massed fires and their role in offensive and defensive operations. It hasn’t changed since Alexi Brusilov.
“One of the things I enjoy when I see that Mr. Person has generated a post about Ukraine is that Kirk is going to comment.
This one — not sure where that came from, Kirk, but entertaining and interesting to contemplate.”
Kirk should have his own blog. I learn as much from Kirk as I do from Mr. Person. And always leave disappointed when Kirk doesn’t comment.
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