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

> 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 d

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-06-28
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/decryptage-quadrupler-les-obus-de-155-mm-l-aveu-brutal-du-retard-industriel-de-l

## 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**.

*Quadruple 155mm shell production. That phrase has haunted me since I read it in the Post-Gazette report. It is the military-industrial equivalent of a public confession. The West built its defense capabilities on the assumption of a short, technologically dominated war. The war in Ukraine has killed that assumption.*

## 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.

*South Korea delivered more shells to Ukraine than most European countries combined. A country that itself faces the North Korean threat. There is something here that should make the great European powers blush with shame — they spent thirty years disarming themselves.*

## 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.

*Weapons production chains do not rebuild the way you buy a new office printer. These are complex industrial ecosystems with rare skills, specific raw materials, and stringent certifications. The decade of disarmament through the 1990s and 2000s is going to cost us dearly.*

## 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.

*Europe has a remarkable defense industrial capacity on paper — Rheinmetall, Nexter, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Airbus Defence. But these players operate in national silos, with incompatible standards and uncoordinated supply chains. It is a fragmented force that must become a unified industrial power. The road is long.*

## 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.

*Here is the cruel dilemma: to help Ukraine today, NATO weakens its own stockpiles. To rebuild those stockpiles takes years. During those years, the Russian threat does not pause. There is no easy good solution — only painful trade-offs.*

## 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**.

*South Korea and Israel teach us that living under a permanent threat forces you to maintain permanent war-ready capacities. It is a brutal lesson, but Europe should learn it. Because since 2022, we too are living under a permanent threat — we simply have not yet fully accepted it.*

## 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.

*Precision is a genuine military virtue. But the idea that technology can replace volume of fire in every scenario is an illusion born of thirty years of asymmetric wars against non-peer adversaries. Russia is a peer adversary. And peer adversaries require mass, not just precision.*

## 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.

*Drones are fascinating and revolutionary. But they are also vulnerable to jamming systems, bad weather, and electronic countermeasures. Heavy artillery, despite its venerable age, remains an irreplaceable component of land warfare. Drones enhance it; they do not replace it.*

## 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.

*The ultimate irony: Hegseth and Trump are pressuring Europe to rearm in order to be less dependent on the United States. If Europe genuinely does this — quadruples its shell production, develops its own industry, etc. — it will become less dependent on the United States. Which would give Washington less leverage. Trump's transactional logic ends up gnawing away at its own pressure point.*

## 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.

*The obstacles to transatlantic industrial cooperation are largely bureaucratic and protectionist. They are surmountable if the political will exists. The war in Ukraine should have created that will. If it still does not exist after four years of conflict, then our political systems are profoundly dysfunctional.*

## 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.

*I did not know, before working on this subject, that nitrocellulose was a strategic bottleneck in shell production. This is exactly the kind of technical detail that never makes headlines but genuinely determines war-fighting capacity. Real military expertise is often found in these details that politicians ignore.*

## 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**.

*Industrial sovereignty in defense matters is the most concrete form of strategic autonomy. Not speeches, not GDP percentages: factories that function, stockpiles that rebuild, supply chains secured. On that front, Europe still has a great deal of work to do.*

## 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.

*What I take away from all this decoding: the real problem is not a lack of money, nor a lack of technology. It is a lack of sustained political will. The hard decisions on defense industry are the ones governments defer because they are electorally unpopular. Zelensky does not have that luxury. We should be ashamed that we do.*

## 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.

*The battle of the 155mm shells is more than a logistics problem. It is the symptom of forty years of under-investment in Western defense industrial capabilities. We privatized the peace, outsourced production, optimized costs — and now we discover that budgetary efficiency in peacetime is paid for in strategic impotence in wartime.*

## 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

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

*The **155mm shell** is mundane and revolutionary at the same time. Mundane because this munition has existed since the First World War. Revolutionary because in **2026**, its production still determines the outcome of a conflict in **Europe**. If the West cannot quadruple production of a century-old munition, what can it hope for in domains where technological advantage is its only card? The shell battle is a test of industrial and political will that the West has not yet won.*

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Post-Gazette/AP — NATO deputy commander demands quadrupling of 155mm shells — June 26, 2026](https://www.post-gazette.com/news/world/2026/06/26/nato-summit-turkey-defense-spending/stories/202606260037)

- [NATO/Atlantic Council — Rutte: dozens of billions in defense contracts at Ankara — June 25, 2026](https://www.nato.int/en/news-and-events/events/transcripts/2026/06/25/atlantic-council-front-page-conversation-with-nato-secretary-general-mark-rutte)

- [European Parliament — Briefing on NATO Ankara summit and defense spending — June 26, 2026](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2026/789355/EPRS_BRI(2026)789355_EN.pdf)

- [Gdansk Declaration — reaffirmation of Eastern Flank defense objectives — June 25, 2026](https://regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/sveriges-internationella-overenskommelser/2026/06/joint-declaration-from-leaders-meeting-in-Gdansk/)

### Secondary sources

- [US News/Reuters — Rutte confirms major announcements at Ankara summit — June 25, 2026](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-06-25/natos-rutte-says-billions-in-new-defense-contracts-will-be-announced-at-summit)

- [The Guardian — NATO: fears over American reliability, defense pressure — June 27, 2026](https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/jun/27/nato-leaders-fear-they-can-no-longer-rely-on-us-help-if-russia-attacks-trump-eastern-europe)

- [Brookings Institution — A rebalancing NATO gathers in Ankara — June 24, 2026](https://www.brookings.edu/events/a-rebalancing-nato-gathers-in-ankara/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/decryptage-quadrupler-les-obus-de-155-mm-l-aveu-brutal-du-retard-industriel-de-l