DECODING: Quadrupling 155mm Shells: The Brutal Admission of the West's Industrial Lag

DECODING: Quadrupling 155mm Shells: The Brutal Admission of the West's Industrial Lag

Introduction: Artillery, the Merciless Mirror of Real Capabilities

A mundane munition that reveals everything

The 155mm artillery shell is a cylindrical steel piece roughly forty centimeters long, filled with explosive, fired by Western heavy howitzers. It is not a spectacular high-technology weapon. It is a basic munition, a century old, whose fundamental design has changed little since the First World War. And yet it is precisely this unspectacular shell that is now laying bare the depth of the West's industrial lag. Calling for a quadrupling of production of this fundamental munition — as NATO's deputy supreme commander demanded ahead of the Ankara summit — is publicly admitting that Western arsenals are in a state of alarming under-capacity.

The number is brutal in its honesty: quadruple. Not increase by 20%, not double. Quadruple. This means current production represents only a quarter of what NATO needs to sustain a prolonged war in Europe while maintaining its own stockpiles. According to the Post-Gazette of June 26, 2026, the Alliance's deputy commander wants the Ankara summit of July 7–8 to drive this industrial transformation. It is an extraordinary admission from a military organization that had until now maintained a facade of confidence.

The war in Ukraine as a merciless stress test

The war in Ukraine has functioned as a brutal stress test of the Western defense industrial base. The modern military doctrines of NATO armies — built around precision, stealth, and short-duration operations — did not anticipate a positional war consuming munition volumes worthy of the Second World War. Planners were thinking in thousands of shells per day; the Ukrainian reality is measured in tens of thousands.

Kyiv fired up to 60,000 to 90,000 shells per month at peak periods during its most intense phases — and even that rate fell below stated needs. Russia, with its vast factories inherited from Soviet-era planning, sustained higher rates of fire. This industrial asymmetry directly influenced the conflict's dynamics. The West was confronted with reality: its factories are not sized for a conventional war of attrition in Europe.

The Arithmetic of Wartime Consumption

The figures behind Ukrainian consumption

To understand the scale of the challenge, you need to grasp the order of magnitude of 155mm shell consumption in wartime. Since 2022, Ukraine has received tens of millions of shells of all calibers from its Western partners. The United States delivered hundreds of thousands of 155mm shells, as did dozens of European countries. Despite this, Ukrainian forces regularly reported shortages that forced them to ration their fire or delay offensive operations for lack of ammunition.

These shortages had direct operational consequences. Defensive positions became harder to hold. Counter-attacks had to be abandoned. Tactical opportunities were missed for lack of supporting artillery. Ukrainian generals did not hide their frustration with allies who promised but did not deliver enough, fast enough. This field reality is the most powerful argument for the quadrupling demanded by NATO.

Current production and its structural limits

European production of 155mm shells before 2022 was in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 units per year across the entire continent. The United States was producing roughly 14,000 shells per month before announcing expansion targets. These figures, adequate for exercises and deterrence stockpiles in peacetime, are ridiculously insufficient against the needs of a war like the one unfolding in Ukraine.

Since 2022, scale-up efforts have been made. The United States was targeting 100,000 shells per month by the 2025 horizon. Countries like South Korea, which has a highly developed arms industry, bridged part of the gap by delivering hundreds of thousands of shells. But the quadrupling target means that even these increased efforts are still well short of what is needed. The mountain to climb remains immense.

Why Western Factories Are Not Keeping Up

Thirty years of a peace dividend, now coming due

The short answer to why the industrial lag exists is simple: thirty years of disarmament. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Western governments systematically reduced their defense budgets, closed munitions factories, and optimized ammunition stockpiles to cut costs. The concept of the "peace dividend" was seductive: since the Soviet threat had vanished, why maintain a costly wartime industrial base?

Those decisions had their logic at the time. They produced a situation where the Western defense industry was restructured around a "just-in-time" model suited to limited conflicts, not industrial-scale warfare. Production lines were cut, subcontractor suppliers left the sector, and specialized workers aged and retired without being replaced. Rebuilding this capacity cannot be done in a few months, even with massive orders and unlimited funding.

The bottlenecks in the production chain

Quadrupling 155mm shell production runs into precise material constraints. The propellant charge — the explosive that propels the shell out of the barrel — depends on a handful of specialized suppliers whose production capacity is limited. Nitrocellulose, an essential component of that propellant, is produced in insufficient quantities. TNT and other explosive charges require complex chemical facilities that cannot be improvised.

The forges capable of producing high-strength steel shell casings are few and are already operating at full capacity. Lead times for raw materials — certain special alloys, certain explosives — run to several months, sometimes more than a year. Even if all the funding were available tomorrow, quadrupling production would take several years, not several weeks. This is the industrial reality that politicians sometimes discover with undisguised alarm.

Industrial Responses Underway

The United States: Army Surge Production

The American military has been running a massive munitions production expansion program since 2022. Facilities like the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania and General Dynamics Ordnance received large multi-year contracts to increase capacity. The US Army's 155mm production line was targeting a fivefold increase in three years — from 14,000 to potentially 70,000 shells per month.

These efforts are real and significant. But they run into exactly the bottlenecks described above: insufficient propellant, a shortage of skilled labor, and long equipment delivery timelines. Schedules frequently slipped. The ambitious targets announced in 2022 and 2023 were partially met, but not on schedule. The gap between stated needs and actual production remains significant.

Europe in disarray

In Europe, the industrial response is even more fragmented. Every country has its own defense industrial base, its own manufacturers, its own standards and certifications. France relies on Nexter and Eurenco. Germany on Rheinmetall. Norway on Nammo. Poland on PGZ. All these players have accelerated their production, but in an uncoordinated manner, without the industrial alignment that would enable economies of scale and supply chain optimization.

The European Union tried to correct this coordination failure with programs like ASAP (Act in Support of Ammunition Production) and EDIRPA (European Defence Industry Reinforcement through common Procurement Act). These initiatives are heading in the right direction, but their implementation remains slow and their short-term impact limited. European defense industrial governance remains fragmented — a structural problem that Hegseth's pressure and the Ukrainian war have not yet been sufficient to fix.

Rheinmetall: The Giant Trying to Fill the Gap

The German company at the heart of the European effort

Rheinmetall, the German armaments giant, has become one of the most important companies in European defense since 2022. Its order book has exploded, its market capitalization has multiplied several times over, and its CEO Armin Papperger has become a central figure in discussions on European rearmament. The company produces armored vehicles, cannons, munitions, and a full range of military equipment.

For 155mm shells, Rheinmetall has invested heavily in expanding its capabilities. The company announced the construction of a new munitions factory in Germany, co-production agreements with Ukraine, and partnerships with defense manufacturers across several European countries. These investments are encouraging, but they take time to yield results. New factories take years to become operational.

The investments announced for Ankara

Secretary General Rutte announced that dozens of billions in new defense contracts would be formalized at the Ankara summit. A significant portion of these contracts is expected to concern munitions production, including 155mm shells. These announcements matter, but the central question is not the value of the contracts: it is their implementation timeline. Contracts signed in July 2026 will not produce shells before 2027, 2028, or even later.

The Ukrainian emergency is happening now, not in two or three years. This is the fundamental paradox of the situation: the industrial investments needed to meet current demands will produce effects that materialize too late for the ongoing conflict. Short-term support for Ukraine must therefore draw on existing NATO army stockpiles — which depletes them and creates a vicious circle between supporting Kyiv and preserving the Alliance's own defensive capabilities.

South Korea and Israel: Lessons from Active War Industries

Seoul, the West's unexpected supplier

South Korea has become one of the most important suppliers of munitions to Europe since the start of the Ukrainian war. Its defense industry — maintained at high readiness because of the permanent North Korean threat — possesses production capacities that Europe long abandoned. Seoul delivered hundreds of thousands of shells of various calibers, first through a political workaround (by selling to the United States, which re-transferred to Ukraine), and increasingly directly to European countries.

This unexpected partnership reveals an embarrassing truth: a country that has lived for seventy years under a real military threat maintains its wartime industrial capacities at a level that a Europe at peace judged unnecessary. South Korea did not have the luxury of the peace dividend. And today, its factories, its stockpiles, and its industrial expertise have become strategic resources for the West.

Israel and production under pressure

Israel, accustomed to operating in a state of permanent war, offers another industrial lesson. The Israeli defense industry — Rafael, Elbit Systems, IAI — has developed a rapid and adaptable production capacity, capable of quickly shifting from peacetime to wartime output. This industrial flexibility, acquired by necessity, is exactly what Western European defense industries lack — accustomed as they are to long planning cycles and slow production changes.

NATO and its members must learn from these examples, not to copy industrial architectures suited to different geographical and political contexts, but to adopt the principles of flexibility, permanent readiness, and adequate buffer stocks. These are the principles that thirty years of peace dividend eroded across Europe.

Precision-Guided Munitions: Solution or False Friend?

The temptation of going all-precision

A frequently offered answer to the munitions volume problem is to compensate through precision: use high-technology guided munitions that strike with centimeter accuracy, reducing raw consumption. The Excalibur guided shell, JDAM bombs, and HIMARS missiles represent this school of thought. A single guided shell can replace dozens of unguided ones for certain missions.

This logic is correct for specific precision missions: neutralizing a command position, destroying a bridge, eliminating an air defense system. It is insufficient for mass fire support, enemy fire suppression, or the destruction of layered defenses that require high volumes of fire. The war in Ukraine demonstrated that both types of munitions are necessary — and that a shortage of unguided rounds cannot be compensated by guided munitions alone.

The prohibitive cost of precision munitions at scale

A single Excalibur guided shell costs roughly $100,000, compared to a few hundred dollars for a standard 155mm shell. Even if guided munitions are ten times more effective than unguided ones for certain missions, the economics do not always favor them when it comes to sustaining mass fire support. Ukrainian forces used guided munitions selectively, reserving them for high-value targets, and continued to depend massively on conventional munitions for the bulk of operations.

Moreover, high-technology munitions have their own production constraints: their electronic components, guidance systems, and manufacturing processes are even more complex and difficult to scale up than conventional shells. A program to quadruple 155mm shell output is a challenge; a program to quadruple Excalibur production would be an even greater one.

Drones: Complement or Substitute?

The drone warfare revolution

The war in Ukraine saw the spectacular emergence of combat drones as significant force multipliers. FPV (First Person View) drones, built for a few hundred dollars, have destroyed tanks, armored vehicles, and defensive positions that would have required dozens of missiles or shells to neutralize. This technological revolution is genuinely changing the nature of war.

Do drones reduce the need for 155mm shells? Partially, for certain missions. An FPV drone can neutralize an enemy tank that artillery crews would have spent hours locating and engaging. But drones do not replace artillery for long-range fire suppression, for fire support in nighttime operations or bad weather, for marking minefields, or for destroying fortified defenses.

Drone-artillery integration as new doctrine

Ukrainian forces developed a sophisticated integration of drones and artillery: drones serve as advanced observation systems, guiding artillery fire toward targets that crews cannot directly see. This synergy multiplies the effectiveness of every shell fired, reducing the volume needed to achieve the same effect. It is a major doctrinal evolution that NATO armies are absorbing in real time by observing the Ukrainian conflict.

But even with this optimized integration, the need for heavy artillery remains fundamental. The Ukrainian lesson is not "replace shells with drones." It is "combine both intelligently to maximize effectiveness." Which still requires having 155mm shell stockpiles in sufficient quantities — bringing us inexorably back to the production quadrupling problem.

The Political Implications of Industrial Lag

NATO's credibility at stake

NATO's inability to produce sufficient munitions to support Ukraine has political implications that go well beyond the Ukrainian context. It raises fundamental questions about the Alliance's commitments and credibility. If NATO cannot supply an allied army in a conflict of this scale, how can its members be convinced it could defend them in the event of aggression against their own territory?

This question sits at the heart of the anxieties of Eastern Flank countries. They want NATO to be not only politically resolved but militarily capable. An Ankara summit that merely announces spending targets without tackling concrete industrial bottlenecks would answer only part of the problem.

Hegseth, the 5% demand, and industrial reality

The Hegseth review of American presence in Europe and the 5% GDP demand must be read through the lens of industrial capacity. The United States does not only want Europeans to spend more — it wants allies capable of producing, stockpiling, and deploying real military capabilities. Money is a means, not an end. If Europeans spend 5% of GDP by massively buying American weapons, that is good for the American defense industry but does not build autonomous European capability.

Washington's implicit demand is that Europeans develop a defense industrial base capable of sustaining their own forces in a conflict, without depending on American supply chains that would be saturated by the priorities of America's own national defense. The quadrupling of 155mm shell production in Europe is a key element of this vision.

Strategic Alternatives: Pre-Positioned Stockpiles

Pre-positioning as an immediate solution

While industrial capabilities develop, NATO is placing increasing emphasis on pre-positioning munition and equipment stocks in the most geographically exposed areas. The idea is straightforward: have large reserves directly available in potential theaters of conflict, reducing supply times during the critical first weeks of a conflict to their minimum.

This strategy is expensive — stockpiling munitions requires significant investment in infrastructure, security, and maintenance — but it can be implemented immediately with current production capabilities. It does not solve the underlying problem of insufficient production volume, but it buys time and reduces short-term vulnerability. Eastern Flank countries — notably Poland and the Baltic States — have been the most active in building these forward stocks.

Transatlantic industrial cooperation

A more structural solution lies in improved transatlantic industrial cooperation. Production sharing mechanisms — American factories using European components, European companies producing under American license, joint research and development programs for future generations of munitions — could optimize the use of existing industrial capacities on both sides of the Atlantic.

These mechanisms already exist partially, but they are held back by considerations of intellectual property protection, arms export regulations, and national preferences for "made at home" procurement. The Ankara summit is an opportunity to overcome some of these obstacles — if the political will matches the strategic stakes.

Propellant Powder: The Weakest Link

Nitrocellulose and smokeless powders: the critical dependency

One of the least visible but most critical bottlenecks in 155mm shell production involves propellants — the powders that burn in the combustion chamber to propel the shell. Nitrocellulose and the smokeless powders derived from it require specialized chemical plants, using dangerous manufacturing processes subject to very strict regulations.

The number of plants capable of producing these propellants at industrial scale is limited across the West. A handful of major sites in the United States, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden account for most of the production. These sites have been operating close to maximum capacity since 2022. Expanding them requires substantial investment in complex chemical infrastructure, with construction and certification timelines measured in years.

The geopolitics of chemical precursors

Certain chemical precursors needed for propellant manufacturing come from countries that are not stable Western allies. The dependency on Asian or Middle Eastern suppliers for strategic components in the munitions production chain is a vulnerability often overlooked in rearmament discussions.

Diversifying and securing these supply chains is a long-term undertaking that goes beyond simple budget investment. It requires political decisions about the location of strategic chemical industries, choices about relocating certain productions out of geopolitically dependent zones, and investment in research on substitutes for problematic raw materials. This is another dimension of Western industrial lag that the Ankara summit must address.

Five-Year Prospects: Can We Really Quadruple?

Realistic scale-up scenarios

Assuming rapid political decisions, massive funding, and effective industrial coordination, what is the realistic timeline for quadrupling 155mm shell production? Industrial experts generally converge on a horizon of 4 to 7 years for a transformation this deep. The first years would be devoted to ordering production equipment, building new factories, training personnel, and securing supply chains.

This timeline is incompatible with Ukraine's immediate needs, but it is essential for NATO's long-term defensive capacity. The short-term urgency must not crowd out the long-term investment. Both time horizons must be addressed simultaneously with different responses: transfers from existing stockpiles for the immediate term, industrial development for the future.

The risks of increased dependence on Asia

Faced with urgency, the temptation is strong to compensate for insufficient Western industrial capacity through massive purchases in Asia — notably in South Korea, Japan, and potentially India. These purchases are useful in the short term, but they create a new strategic dependency. If the geopolitical situation in the Asia-Pacific deteriorates — which Chinese military exercises around Taiwan make possible — these suppliers could reduce or halt their deliveries to cover their own needs.

The central lesson is one of industrial sovereignty: Western democracies must be able to produce the munitions they need on their own territory, with their own resources. This is a strategic imperative that the war in Ukraine has made undeniable, and which the Ankara summit must translate into concrete industrial commitments — not merely spending targets expressed as a percentage of GDP.

Ankara's Announcements: Promises or Commitments?

What the summit must produce in concrete terms

For the Ankara summit to mark a genuine turning point in NATO's defense industrial capacity, its conclusions must go well beyond statements of principle on GDP percentages. It would require concrete figures on industrial investments, precise timelines for production ramp-up, industrial coordination mechanisms among allies, and guarantees on securing supply chains for critical raw materials.

The "dozens of billions" in defense contracts announced by Rutte before the summit are a first positive signal. But their value depends on their precise content: if they include multi-year munitions production contracts with volume guarantees, that is meaningful. If they consist primarily of long-lead-time equipment orders, their impact on immediate capabilities will be limited.

The truth that no politician wants to say

The uncomfortable truth that few Western politicians want to tell their voters is that serious rearmament is expensive, takes time, and involves sacrifice. Budgetary sacrifice first — defense spending at 3, 4, 5% of GDP means less social spending, fewer tax cuts, fewer major domestic projects. Industrial sacrifice too — munitions factories in residential areas, chemical facilities that disrupt communities, hazardous material transports that worry people.

The war in Ukraine has shown the price of refusing to make these sacrifices in time. Zelensky is today paying the price of decisions that Western democracies deferred for decades. The quadrupling of 155mm shell production is not merely an industrial objective: it is a question of political responsibility toward allies who are resisting at the cost of blood.

Technology Transfers: A Race Against Moscow

The urgency of transfers to Ukraine and their industrial consequences

Every 155mm shell delivered to Ukraine is a double-edged decision for NATO armies. On one hand, these deliveries are militarily indispensable: they allow Ukrainian forces to maintain a sufficient rate of fire to hold the front. On the other, they deplete the stocks of European and American armies at a rate that leaves military planners deeply concerned. The dilemma is real: support Ukraine today at the price of one's own vulnerability tomorrow.

The Biden administration had already authorized massive transfers of 155mm shells from US Army stockpiles. The Trump administration continued, out of military pragmatism, even if the political rhetoric was less enthusiastic. But the stockpiles are draining. South Korea provided hundreds of thousands of shells through trilateral agreements involving the United States — a stopgap solution that reveals the Western industrial incapacity to produce fast enough. The quadrupling demanded by General Stringer at Ankara is a direct response to this reality.

Rebuilding stockpiles: an unavoidable budgetary priority

Replenishing the 155mm shell stockpiles drawn down for Ukraine represents a colossal industrial and financial challenge. Estimates vary, but several analyses converge on a figure of several tens of billions of euros to bring European stockpiles back to acceptable safety levels. This cost is in addition to the programs for acquiring new weapons systems, air defense, and cybersecurity that European governments launched since 2022.

The logic of stockpile reconstitution argues directly in favor of the ambitious budget targets promoted by Hegseth and Rutte. Without the necessary financial resources, European armies will remain dependent on American and South Korean transfers to maintain their deterrence capacity. That dependency is something Moscow monitors closely. Every gap in Western stockpiles is strategic intelligence that Russian services exploit in calculating the balance of forces.

Conclusion: The 155mm Shell as a Civilization Test

What the word "quadruple" reveals

The 155mm shell is a brutal and honest metric of a civilization's real capacity to defend its values. Not the speeches in parliamentary chambers, not the declarations of diplomatic summits, not the carefully formatted defense plans. The number of shells a civilization is able to produce and deliver to its allies under enemy fire. On that test, the West has fallen short of its ambitions since 2022. The quadrupling demand made ahead of the Ankara summit is the public reckoning with that failure.

It is not too late to correct course. The industrial capabilities exist, the funding can be mobilized, the political will can be summoned. But this requires honesty — toward voters, toward allies, toward oneself — about what collective defense truly means in terms of sacrifice and lasting commitment.

The admission that must become an action plan

The quadrupling demand is an admission. It must become an action plan. The Ankara summit is the moment when this admission transforms — or does not — into operational commitments. If NATO leaders leave Turkey with declarations but without binding industrial timelines, without dedicated financing mechanisms for munitions production, without supply chain coordination, the admission will have been made in vain.

Zelensky has been waiting for shells since 2022. He is still waiting. The democratic nations that invoke freedom and solidarity among allies have a moral and strategic obligation to finally meet that need — not with promises, but with steel, powder, and actual deliveries.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My biases and my position on this subject

I am a strong advocate of support for Ukraine and Western rearmament. This position certainly influences my analysis of the industrial lag: I present it as a moral and strategic failure, which is how I see it. An analyst who gave more weight to arguments about budget constraints and social priorities might nuance this judgment. I acknowledge that tension in my text.

On technical aspects — production figures, industrial bottlenecks, chemical compositions of propellants — I have done my best to be accurate, but I am not an engineer or a defense industry specialist. My numbers are based on public sources and may lack precision on certain technical details. I accept that.

What I do not know

I do not know exactly what will be decided at the Ankara summit. I do not know the precise contents of the contracts that will be signed or their terms. I have no access to classified data on the actual state of NATO munitions stockpiles. The figures I use on shell production come from open sources and may not fully reflect the industrial reality of the countries concerned.

I am convinced of the necessity of rearmament, but I acknowledge that there are legitimate questions about prioritizing public spending and the trade-offs between military investment and other social needs. These questions deserve a serious democratic debate that my article does not claim to close.

Sources

Primary sources

Post-Gazette/AP — NATO deputy commander demands quadrupling of 155mm shells — June 26, 2026

NATO/Atlantic Council — Rutte: dozens of billions in defense contracts at Ankara — June 25, 2026

European Parliament — Briefing on NATO Ankara summit and defense spending — June 26, 2026

Gdansk Declaration — reaffirmation of Eastern Flank defense objectives — June 25, 2026

Secondary sources

US News/Reuters — Rutte confirms major announcements at Ankara summit — June 25, 2026

The Guardian — NATO: fears over American reliability, defense pressure — June 27, 2026

Brookings Institution — A rebalancing NATO gathers in Ankara — June 24, 2026