Is the US Military Really Out of Ammo?
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- čas přidán 28. 07. 2023
- Is the American Military REALLY low on artillery ammunition? 155mm artillery has been sent to the war in Ukraine to the tune of 1 million rounds. The military industrial complex is working at surge production capacity to innovate and keep up. Will the US Army actually run out of ammo?
President Joe Biden said the US military is low on 155mm artillery shells In July 2023 . The white house attempted to walk the statement back but Estimates do show it will take 5 years to restock the arsenal of 155mm artillery shells, 6 years for stinger missiles, and 5 years for javelin missiles. It’s like Sun Tzu Famously said, don’t get high on your own supply. Why will it take so long, can't you just throw oodles of money at the problem and fix it tomorrow? Not necessarily. However, there are conflicting reports from other military experts that say the claims of NATO ammo shortages are vastly overblown so what’s really going on here? Either way,This has actually revealed wider issues within the modern day military industrial complex. The U.S military now faces three challenges to their supply chain including; lean manufacturing techniques, access to supplies of rare earths, and advanced semiconductor chips. Lets investigate.
Written by: Chris Cappy and George Burden
Edited by: Savvy Studios
The U.S. Army discovered they need to boost production of their 155 artillery shells from the Current rate of 14,000 per month up to 85,000 shells per month by 2028. Because Estimates from earlier this year state that in 5 days the Ukrainian military likely burns through more artillery shells than the US produces in an entire month. So the DoD is increasing production 6 fold. There are 2 reasons for this. To sustain deliveries to Ukraine, while also accounting for what's called the DoD’s operational plans. OPLANs are basically contingency plans created for potential wars with countries like Russia or China. So OPLANs are a document that the US Chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff is required to create by law. It states the US needs X amount of 155mm artillery shells on the shelf just in case a war with China or North Korea breaks out.
Why will it take so long to ramp up production? Since 1953 the US Army has forged artillery shells at Scranton Army ammunition plant in Pennsylvania which has been run by General Dynamics since 2006. Then in Tennessee BAE systems employees mix together 24 lbs of explosives for the shells. That’s then poured into a shell at a factory in rural Iowa. So its not the lack of materials. The U.S. actually has enough raw materials stock piled to create the munitions, but what they lack is the heavy equipment used to make the shells. These specialized machines for artillery production are giants, the size of entire buildings. You can’t just go and buy one at your local thrift store.
#WAR #MILITARY #ARMY
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Sources:
www.csis.org/analysis/rebuild...
www.pbs.org/newshour/show/arm...
www.jmc.army.mil/Installation...
ig.ft.com/us-defence-industry/
www.airandspaceforces.com/lap...
www.defensenews.com/opinion/c...
foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/09/...
www.reuters.com/world/south-k...
www.reuters.com/article/usa-c...
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Some more thoughts: Its possible the US is “low on ammo” in the sense that they don’t have enough 155 rounds to meet contingency plans for war in pacific AND arm Ukraine. But what are those CONPLANs calling for? 1M, 2M or 3M rounds? at the same time there’s still massive stock piles . Either way though, I believe the American defense industry will find a way to innovate in the face of new challeneges but what do I know I'm just using my infantry maths. The sudden increase in demand for 155mm artillery shells after relatively little demand for decades has strained the system but that doesnt mean it can't adjust. behind the scene updates: instagram.com/cappyarmy or thoughts on twitter.com/Cappyarmy
Better get cranking on making more shells
Perhaps when politicians say "low" they are speaking relatively. Maybe we had enough for our last mission. But consider what we have low for what we are about to get into.
Means alot of jobs jobs jobs in manufacturing 🇺🇸💪 . Let's get crackin '
Scary beep around 15:30
3:50 Hey Cappy, does that AR-15 you are holding have a mid-length gas system? If so how does it shoot compared with the M4 you were issued in the Army? Thanks.
I always find it amusing when people think the US military is tapping into it's wartime reserves. Congress mandates that the US military must keep a certain amount of ammunition to be prepared for war. The only stockpile that is running out is whats avaliable to donate and sell to other countries.
We got our product aaaaand our personal stash
@@johnbarker256 That's it, but, tell that to the dough heads.
I don't think anyone believes the US is black on ammo. The question is, how long can we go if we have another sustained conflict.
That's the summary of this vid
All this does for me is scream weak link in the chain. If we the US went into war. How easily these limited production locations could be removed and suddenly this vulnerability is noticed.
The production issue for all military munitions is the fact that each part of the missile or vehicle is the length of the supply chain is being too long and not shortened like in WW2. Everything was produced in America and was able to reach coast to coast in a certain time frame that was predictable.
They were also much simpler. While I’d love to see us crank out a bomber a day like we did back then, modern weapons, vehicles, and munitions are a lot more complicated and computerized, requiring resources from all over the globe.
Apart from small arms munitions, everything is orders of magnitude more complicated and due to that more expensive now. The US cannot realistically produce all of their stuff domestically without inflating the budget 10-20% of GDP. Nobody can. Even if you assemble them in-country, someone somewhere will have produced some component.
@@duncanharrell5009 We could do that but the USA doesn't have enemies besides minor powers and terrorist groups. We're not enemies with Russia either yet; I can still sell to Russians via eBay, and Russia still sells energy to the USA.
@@duncanharrell5009 they were simpler compared to now but also cutting edge tech at the time so that wouldn’t make a major difference
@@iDreamOfWeeniethe Sherman was far from cutting edge. Its simplicity is how we were able to drown the germans with them
Keep in mind that if you have a pool of ammo that is set aside in case it is needed for a war against Russia, sending shells from that pile to Ukraine means that those shells are in fact being used for their intended use. It's just that they are being fired by Ukrainian soldiers instead of US or NATO soldiers.
That's also the mindset of Estonia and Finland. Anyone fighting Russia deserves their ammunition supplies. "One Russian tank destroyed by Ukrainian is One Russian tank Estonia does not have to deal with." Kind of 'the enemy of my brother' kind of thing.
That, and Poland, Poland's national arms build up is starting to scare Europe itself, lawls.
plus we get fresh gear
@user-nz2tt1tl2t You'll have to actually post the Secretary General's words on that, about abandoning Eastern Europe, bud. ;)
I'm Lithuanian, by the way. Though I live in America. I know Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland have been readily gearing up for war against Russia since '39.
@user-nz2tt1tl2t I farted..
More proxy wars yay
Most militaries rotate their ammunition, because a lot of them have "use by dates" and also, they are always in rotation, putting the oldest ammo in use and often that is for training purposes.
Ukraine has provided a place to not only move the older stock out, but to live test the capabilities of the equipment and weapons being used.
As well as our old equipment
I have heard this testing argument used a lot lately, we were just in 2 wars for over 20 years. The US had plenty of time to test all of this equipment. Apart from anti-Tank weapons which are not new we tested everything else.
The sheer size of the federal budget is wild when I heard expansion would take $1 billion per year and I'm like oh that's it, that's like the copy paper budget for the Pentagon.
😂😂😂
It’s ridiculous.
Money is make believe. This issue is steel, chemicals and skilled workers. Short on all them.
@@SpicyTakeand how does one obtain steel? Oh yes, money. How does one obtain skilled workers? Oh yes, money. Money, even if "on paper" is worthless. In reality it represents the transfer of goods. It just introduces a middle man between swapping one good for another
@@SpicyTake its an equivalent to the gold we have in our banks. tf you mean its make believe?😂 gtfo if thats what you think and gimme all yo money since its make believe, you wouldn't need it right?
The issue isn't lean manufacturing, it's that the capacity is scaled to the orders. The USG wasn't willing to pay Boeing, Raytheon, BAE etc to maintain idle capacity so as private industries they shut down the idle capacity. If the USG is willing to pay for idle capacity the DIB will maintain the spare capacity.
As a side bar, the Japanese learned their manufacturing processes from Dr. Edward Demming. Remarkable man. The Americans were late to the ball game, but eventually caught up. Love the content. Keep up the high standards
As I understand it, he tried to talk to US companies, but they were not interested.
Hey I remember Demming. We were taking classes on him, the process in the plant almost 3 decades ago. Dr Demming. Forgot all about that.
not really. Demming promoted statistical quality control. The Toyota system was mostly perfected by Shigeo Shingo
They didn't necessarily catch up, they rote learned it without understanding any of the nuances. America just heard "stockpile nothing" when the Japanese learned "keep as few stocks of non-critical components as necessary". This was seen during Corona when American car companies had huge parking lots of non-functional car chassis while Japanese were continuing to pump out cars. Japanese manufacturers had identified electronics and chips as "critical components" and kept huge stocks of those while American companies didn't bother stocking anything.
As a literal student of Demming and former corporate executive who flattened his forehead with American corporate misunderstanding of Demmi gs philosophy of management, I appreciate the vast difference between American manufacturing and that of Japan. @scriptedviolence nailed it (comment above mine).
“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.” - Donald Rumsfeld
Pretty sure Rummy copied that from Smedley Butler, but General Butler is a pariah in both life and death, so yeah lets credit Scumsfeld.
Translation into human speak: We need the publicity now so we don't give a damn if the Army is ready for this war.
@@TomFynn I think you will find that the literal translation of 'publicity' is 'money' .... but, I may be wrong
We went to war with the SECDEF we had not the one we wish we had.
@@SaanMigwell War is a Racket....'I was muscle for United Fruit' or something to that effect.
I think there may be another consideration here. If we over produce and store, the manufacturing plants will get converted to something else. The knowledge and machining will be lost.
Keeping the plants "slow rolling" keeps the knowledge around, and there will also be a small amount of lower cost innovation. When a "ramp up" is needed, that knowledge will be absolutely invaluable. It is easier to create any factory when there is a pattern and process already in place, than it is to create the factory, the process, the plan all from scratch.
Right that's why it was good the last Abrams factory remained opened in 2017-2018 because that entire knowledge base of tank production would have been lost by now. Best to keep a minimized industry going at a slow pace when demand is low. I would say the boosting of the artillery production is a good thing but understandable it was not needed before given the intensity of US conflicts with artillery in recent decades.
@@Knight_Kin Shame the bean counters and tax evaders in our country see otherwise. There is merit to keeping the beast going on life support when its not needed.
You are right. It is easy to increase production, but if the conflict ends, then all this additional capacity will go bankrupt. And this can lead to the collapse of entire industries.
No that not happening but understand, we as United States are not a "one trick pony" we don't rely on just one form of weaponry. We a variety of weapons when attacking any enemy making it very hard to stop us.
A high percentage of ammo plants are owned by DoD and operated under contract. DoD will have the same problem as the auto industry found during COVID; namely that the munitions use outdated technology. Raytheon has to scramble to restart decades long dismantled lines for Stingers and to a lessor degree, Javelins. (To their credit, the new Javelin launchers can also do Stingers, an improvement upon the old Stinger launcher.)
Speaking as an employee within the ‘military industrial complex’, you better believe if the government wants to boost production and can show steady demand for years, industry will respond as fast as possible. However, we are being faced with the same labor shortages that the rest of the economy is facing and that is a direct impact on the health of the supply chain and it’s ability to pivot
After 2 years of inflation they need to pay more....
Industry giants complaining about lack of labor is hilarious. I'm not pointing at you the individual in particular. Just the companies.
Labor shortage artificially created by refusal to pay appropriate wages and benefits and to an extent our degradation of education by republicans. Sad but true facts.
...and we're dealing with inflation problems that increased weapons production will only exacerbate. It adds currency to the civilian economy, uses resources, but doesn't provide any goods or services for the economy.
WW2 weapons production helped the domestic economy because we were in a deflationary depression....too many goods, not enough currency in circulation. That is definitely not our current economic situation.
It's also the rising minimum education required to train the workers. No longer is a middle school dropout sufficient to put on the line, the robots we use now need postsecondary schooling to program and maintain.
It doesn't help that companies also don't do as much OJT as they used to for their often very specific processes, instead mooching off universities, military, and competitors for the so-called "3~5 years experience" in their entry level.
Never underestimate the United States' industrial ability to ramp up when needed. Never bet against US Industry. I am a retired engineer from DuPont on the government end of contracted products production. In my area, during the 1st Gulf War, we ramped up production to over 300% in 1 month to fulfill the projected needs of the worst-case scenario. And we all know how eager our government is in spending on defense. And yes, if you throw vast amounts of money into a manufacturing issue, it will become a nonissue.
There might not be as much spare capacity in the industry now as there was during the first Gulf War. Don't forget that was at the tail end of the Cold War before all the "Peace Dividend" BS had taken hold and politicians everywhere decided that investing in defence no longer mattered so they had billions in free money to buy votes elsewhere. I get the impression that the industry is much more pared-down than it was after decades of cost-cutting and closures, and combine that with the more high tech nature of modern weapons, and it's not as rosy an outlook as it used to be.
Point well maid, but I have 1 response to ponder upon. "The Manhattan Project."@@trolleriffic
@@trollerifficHave you seen the defense budget
Thanks Infantryman! Useful stuff and well presented!
"Low on ammo" for the US actually means "We only have enough ammunition to sustain a full scale war against China, Russia, North Korea and Iran combined for 15 years."
For shells, they are only relevant against Russia and North Korea. It’s not possible for the US to use 155mm shells in a Taiwan Straight scenario. That’s a Taiwan problem to ensure they have sufficient stock.
lost korea, had to withdraw from vietnam,had to withdraw from iraq,had to withdraw from afganistan.Have you guys ever won a war , At this point i think u guys won ww2 thanks to uk and ussr.
@@amrendrasingh9619 Didn't lose Korea, South Korea exists because we won, withdrew from Vietnam because our own citizens decided it was a waste of time, not because we were losing battles, we left Iraq because we destroyed the Iraqi Army and got rid of Saddam, and we achieved our goals we set out to achieve when we went to Afghanistan. We went there to find Bin Laden. We found him after he fled Afghanistan to Pakistan. We stayed afterwards in an attempt to help the populace and rebuild, they obviously weren't interested. We definitely overstayed, but we did the job we went there to do.
The UK was crumbling, and you should really look up how much equipment, fuel, food, ammo, weapons, boots, trucks, tanks planes nd everything else we have to the USSR before we ever entered the war. The numbers of things we sent the USSR is absolutely astronomically huge. It's unfortunate. We shouldn't have given the Russians anything. Stalin himself said Russia would've been defeated without US' lend-lease. Do some research.
@@amrendrasingh9619 Iraq and Afghanistan had their militaries completely annihilated within just a few days. Large scale operations ended over a decade ago. We were not operating actual military campaigns, but literally trying to keep multiple countries from falling apart by their own hands with as little military engagements as possible. That's why soldiers were always ordered to not shoot first and to have to wait until fired upon, to prioritize minimum civilian casualties even if it means risking lives of the soldiers, which is especially difficult when fighting insurgency that uses civilians as shields.
Do you really think those middle eastern countries would've survived if we actually decided to use even just 25% of our full militaristic capability?
They knew better than to try to fight a direct 1 on 1 war with the US military they had to hide from US soldiers, kill their own people to get away and hurt our soldiers.
We didn't "lose", we said just declared they're beyond saving, time for them to fend for themselves and good riddance
@PotatoJoe69 When you can afford it, many millions of artillery rounds is good to have. We Finns, Israelis and S-Koreans too have many, many millions rounds in stockpile, and domestic production capacity. Shells, fuzes and propellant.
Finland is moving away from 122mm to wholesale 120mm mortar+155mm gun+(GMLRS)MLRS. Our DoD dont reveal numbers, but lot of 122mm what Ukrainian artillery fires today came from Finland. We have (had) mountain of ammo for 122mm guns.
Another aspect that doesn't get talked about is barrels. The M777 can fire about 2500 times before requiring a barrel replacement (yes, it varies on range, load, etc). So if you produce a million shells, you also need to be producing 400 barrels (or inserts/refurb etc). I was reading about how Putin let both Russian artillery barrel factories languish and combined with a lack of investment in producing military grade steel (which also is in demand for new tanks etc), they could run into real supply chain issues for artillery even though they can produce gobs of shells. The Russians have been tapering off the thousands upon thousands of rounds a day. They may run their barrels until they burn out, but doing so risks more damage to the entire piece. Worn barrels can lead to short rounds and massive dispersion requiring even more rounds be fired.
Or in a worse case scenario the Russian artillery piece blows up the moment the round is fired, it's not just the barrel that has a limited lifespan before full replacement is needed, things like the firing pin, breech assembly, recoil mechanism also have a finite lifespan and you sure as fuck don't want the last two failing EITHER.
I always wondered why barrel wear out is an issue against a peer adversary. If a gun can shoot 2500 shells without getting knocked out by counter battery fire, would that be normal?
Ukraine already wearing out western artillery
@@Martocciaweb shoot and scoot makes this probable. The M109 and PZG2000 can eat anything but a direct hit. So even if you get close, and the unit requires repairs, the gun should be fine.
Why are you lying ?
Love your reports. Very well prepared and very easy to listen too. Thanks for what you do.
My dad used to be the head of command of the Iowa Army Munnitions Plant. He took us to a decommissioned nuclear missle complex in a city somewhere in Iowa.
I wish more people put this much effort into informing others with as little left/right bias as possible. Keep up the great work!
Agreed
@@gaydolfshitler739so edgy don’t cut the world in half
Ryan Macbeth is very good
Sub brief is naval version is also good
Ward Carroll is air force related and is very good
@@gaydolfshitler739 ok buddy.
Impressive strength carrying all that bias around.
@@deadfriendyouforgotabout8434I like how you could not come up with any meaningful rebuttal, so you just resorted to calling him ‘edgy’.
Ahh, leftists.☕️
"It aint a party without the artey" - Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Nicely paraphrased for today’s understanding 👍
It has been really fun to watch the evolution of this channel. Really informative and interesting.
Tnx Chris great reporting and the best humor.
Countries like Brazil and a few others may really enjoy this build up. There are many countries that make basic shells and even some fairly advanced ones. Even in WW2, on the beach in Normandy, the types of shells available did affect the ability to wage war.
Things are more complicated today. I will hate to see this become a weakness. Outsourcing is a danger.
I agree. We need a way to secure the supply to a greater degree; especially rare-earth
@@khalidgagnon8753 Depending on the need, we may need to revisit the Greenland question in regards to rare earths.
Would be nice if Brazil had a president who wasn't a corrupt buddy of Putin.
@@Knight_Kin Yeah, let's swap something for Greenland
@@AnthonyOMulligan-yv9cg
May I recommend California???!!!!
Very informative and helpful context, research and facts on the topic. Thank you!
I would suggest that the public, including Cappy, does not know all of the demand levels for all types of ammunition and other expendables that might be needed in case of a more general war in Europe or in the event PRC decides to do something even more egregious than they have in recent history. Expendables get expended very fast. There were actually members of Congress who complained at the end of WW2 that we had too many Jeeps and too much ammunition on hand at the end of that war, which was won in a surprise event. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
One big difference between now and what was done in WWII is that then we had huge manufacturing plants that could be converted into wartime manufacturing. These days, we have go ask those same plants that are now in China if they can help us out.
Yes, but, since 2013 a hell of a lot of reshoring has gone on.
Norway here, thats not actually true..The vast maj.of NATOarmament is being made in other NATOcountries aswell.
In Norway alone, we produce Excalibur, every optic and sensorarray in use on EVERY NATO tank&MRAPvehicle, NLAWS, all incend.and tracerammo in use, and several radar-systems.
We invented the NASAM here, as we joined NATO in the 40'ies as one of the founding members BECAUSE of our neighnour in the north.
And now, we are NewSoviets only neigybouring country they havent invaded yet...
@carlthor91 we have nowhere near as much manufacturing capability as we did even 20 years ago. Much less than in the 40's-60's.
"The Land of the Free" is false advertising. We the PEOPLE have been enslaved by the 16th Amendment (D) after the 13th Amendment (R) freed the slaves. Current debt is paid off by future debt which really appears like a variation of a Ponzi scheme, and it takes more and more debt to sustain the economy. Debt is enslavement. If we didn't pay nearly $1.5T in interest on the debt per year we wouldn't need to be taxed so much; every taxpayer would have $10.5K in their pockets instead of sent to the IRS. CBDC and UBI will be the whips and chains to fully enslave everyone.
@@Rolf-farmedfacts-supervisorI didn’t hear about them invading Finland, or Poland? Norways the only one left eh?
We also haven't been in a conflict that really required artillery for a while. Maybe a tad in Afghanistan. Munitions do have expiration dates. We are probably sending the oldest stuff to Ukraine... which allows us to rotate newer stuff into our own logistics chains.
155 don't expire but have plastic parts that get broken over time and rusty.
But! Look at the administration we are talking about. They do everything backwards.
@@mitchellcouchman6589 Yeah, I remember when I was working in the mines, I went back into an old shaft and found some dynamite that was very old, we estimated 20 to 30 years, needless to say I did not pick it up but it did not go off when we removed it.
@@doomaster4They have an expected shelf life of around 15-25 years assuming a temperature/moisture controlled environment. This isn't to say that they're inoperable after this point but they can no longer be expected to work effectively in regards to accuracy, fusing, and effect on target so must be tested to ascertain the amount of remaining stabiliser before deployment.
@@DjDolHaus86 so 20 years of guaranteed parameters with tolerance and later deterioration
Back when I was On the Reserve side as a 19D4H on AT at Ft. McCoy WI active force found stockpiles of WW II and Later ammo and explosives 27 semi-trailer loads were shipped to the base for NG and Reserves to burn up. 1944 Bangalore torpedoes, 1943-44 50 Cal for our M2 BMG. One range we went through a 10,000 round pallet of the 50 cal from 1943. Fun times, there may still be bunker loads from Gulf War One unchecked for years.
Whoever does the graphics and video editing is/are the goat
In short: We're low on ammunition that we can give away, and we have a ridiculous amount of presumably the best of that ammo that we are not allowed to give away.
It would be, ^^^ have you met America? I know civilians that have thousands of rounds and that’s just one person. I can only imagine all the arsenals located domestically and internationally
Also finding ultra pure polysilicon for chips is extremely difficult. I work at a facility that produces it, and demand has been extremely high for the last few years.
Its literally just meting quartz and then preforming the czochralski method which has been perfected. The only holdup is equipment from asml and running the fab profitably.
@@danhobart4009yeah sure it's that simple .. I am in the industry and yiu over simplify
@@cspdx11 Oh fancy that, all three of us are part of 0.000000000001% of the population.
How have I lived in iowa my whole life and not know we were a part of the shell artillery ammo making prosses.
dude this is an incredible content and so well researched. Bravo
Great video as always! I think one of the main lessons from both Covid and the war in Ukraine is the vulnerability of the supply chain like you pointed out. I see it as a great opportunity to consolidate and bring back manufacturing to the United States.
Not under the democrats.
China is much much more susceptible to supply chain issues than the US. For the US it is an inconvenience for China it is a matter of life and death.
@@Frankie5Angels150It was the Republicans starting with Reagan that supported outsourcing all US manufacturing overseas. Those are the facts. Trump did absolutely nothing to change that, but give patronizing lip service. Those factory jobs he claims to have saved still went over seas.
Won't happen, we haven't forgotten businesses and the government letting the careers of our parents and grandparents get sent overseas. Manufacturing has a major hurdle to compete for talent already with a massive increase to the types of jobs people can take (including online stuff).
Back in the day workers had much fewer options.
@@Frankie5Angels150why? Reagan is who sent it all to china
Australia recently opened a new production facility that will put out 100'000 rounds of 155mm per year. In other words, a country with 7% of the US population has built a single 155mm factory equivalent to 60% of US production.
It's these kind of numbers that really show how badly the American MIC has been sleeping on artillery.
Our doctrine calls for air superiority, air craft with precision guided munitions and CAS will always be better.
Sorry, it's not enough for sk. When comes war zone in sk, we're going to shoot 155 mm 1 million per day.
Or that Americans prioritize other weapons systems.
@@LoveHammerMan the environment tho isn't always guaranteed to have air superiority advantage..i guess us Will make up the gap
@@ztirociplus7270 The extreme proliferation of MANPADS is definitely an issue.
However most American aircraft and munitions are able to target and fire from up to 300km away.
We could park anywhere from and F-16 to an F-35 a COUNTRY away and lob precision munitions right into an enemy trench or moving vehicle in the sky or ground.
Russia was even doing it during the initial Ukrainian counter offensive with KA-52 helicopters.
Thank you for this video. Very informative.
Thank you for the very informative commentary on the US Defense Industry. You provided a lot of detailed information that took a lot of time to research and put together in a excellent Narration. It was reassuring to know that the U S and it's Allies have the capacity to produce enough war materials to meet the demands of a Major War if and when it might happen to our own country.
That's like when I tell my wife I'm running low on range ammo. I still have tens of thousands of rounds at home for "just in case". I just am low on my "spare" ammo.
The FBI wants to know your adress
@@jonstark7106 "FBI".... Sure, you mean people who want to take my stash!
@@NOTSOSLIMJIM exactly, make good use of that "just in case" ammo
Outstanding. This, like much of your coverage, is simply and clearly, yet comprehensively, covering a difficult topic, better than large media outlets do. If you're an average infrantryman, I can't imagine what an above average one can do. Well done.
Great video, thanks 👍
Thank you very informative
I love the random beep at 15:28.
I appreciate your work and definitely appreciate you keeping the left vs right stuff out. Just pure information which is rare these days. Thank you
What does this have to do with right and left at all??
@@marsicogodofwar9280 It could since it involves Biden and the issue of support of Ukraine which is increasingly becoming polarizing.
@@marsicogodofwar9280 its a major dividing factor at the moment, as a moderate I watch with concern. Im just glad to get info with out a spin
Very informative. Thank you.
Love your videos man. Keep it up.
Cappy really couldn't say 'Russia legally join Nato' with a straight face.
That was a thought -- 30 years ago. Why do you think Germany and the rest of the EU cozzied up to Russian fossil fuel exporters, etc.?
Worst bot ever. Get better AI.
Habitual linecrosser got a short joke video summarizing this pretty well
His shorts are hilarious
Would you intercept me? I'd intercept me.
Men of culture I see
Yeah Habitual is very succinct.
Another excellent video. It's a large topic made understandable. For every stockpiled item, there needs to be a warehouse to store it in and (what Russia is weak on) personnel employed to maintain/upgrade those items. Ex: In the 70's military training still included receiving WWII C rations in the field, 30 yo food. So far Ukraine has received hand-me down weapons, in some cases old enough that even Reserve units don't want them. Many of the rocket weapons are near their expiration (or reservice) date... some near their "scrap by" date. This allows the donating countries to spend less on storage/maintenance or replace them with modern versions. An example is cluster shells provided by the US. The military can only use (or export) cluster munitions with a 1% dud bomblet rate, but has a million averaging 2% duds... apparently the ones being sent to Ukraine. The biggest portion of the US's military budget is training and equipment maintenance, so a win for both sides.
C-rations might last hundreds of years.
Great report!
Even Greece (one of the smaller NATO countries) has enough shells to supply Ukraine for a year. (Unfortunately we can't). When I was enlisted (mandatory enlistment) I went inside hollowed out mountain (we have plenty of mountains) packed to the brim with artillery shells and we have many of these places. NATO forces are low on SURPLUS and training rounds ( not the blue ones) . Strategic reserves are huge. Unfortunately most NATO countries do not have the soviet type ammunition since everyone uses the 155mm standard.
Europe in general has much more capacity to manufacture shells.
USA is used to do everything with missiles and air droped ordinance and shells take a lesser role.
I severely doubt that estimate.
Ukraine is firing off roughly 2000-3000 shells per day.
In a year, that's 700.000-1M.
I doubt that Greece actually has a stockpile of 1M 155mm artillery shells.
@@TheFrankvHoofI think they do because turkiye has much more than that.
@@TheFrankvHoofThey probably do
I actually almost took a job at the Ammo plant in Iowa. I was part of a group of 14. There were many other groups of comparable size getting hired in as well. This was summer of 2022. I still believe they're hiring like crazy. There also use to be an ammo plant outside of Joliet, IL. I believe it closed in like 93 or 94
You will be ditched and tossed aside like our grandparents when things calm down. Its not an industry that offers stability and the more time you spend in it you spend the opportunity cost of learning a skill that will keep you employed.
@@Shyhalu I never took it. I went into a weld shop. Hated it. Went back to warehousing for about a year. Now I'm gonna test my luck with the local Iron Workers
@@Shyhaluthey’re always looking for machinists and you can go anywhere with that skill
I work at the plant in Scranton LOL
The IMA reopened?
When?
Last I heard closed down and the machine’s scraped
Enjoyed your video very educational now I can sleep a little easier at night keep up the good work !
i work in the Toyota supply chain and the shortcomings of the lean manufacturing system that he’s talking about are present in our systems. it works on ideal conditions and if you face hiccups in your supply or find your demand for your product greater or lesser than your production, you run into either a shortage of parts or a backlog of parts and it’s slower getting everything out the door. in the last three years we’ve come across both, sometimes at the same time.
Worked in cnc for about 6 years, sad to say it’s probably the way it will go, a good majority of any metal comes from china that’s from basic steels to alloys, crazy the price difference making it impossible to compete with them.
China's aggressive industrial export subsidies and mercantilism have teeth. It is certainly no coincidence why they produce much larger amounts of steel per year. Just can't compete with companies who can run on negative margins which is recovered through subsidization. Tariffs are an important component but we have too many in power who just really can't help themselves but remove them. Foolish.
Capitalism babyyyy- It's not all rainbows and sunshine.
State-sponsored capitalism. Bring Chinese state subsidies and supports down to the global average level and those prices won't be quite as competitive.
@@RaveYoda China has capitalism aswell its just a touch diffrent.
Their steel is known for being sub standard, unless they have recently improved it.
15:40 "Taiwan exports 90% of semiconductors" *shows image of the PRC *
he's a little confused but he has spirit
Came here to mention the same
Pretty good explanation on Lean manufacturing. However a minor correction, lean manufacturing removes stock piles within the manufacturing process not specifically on the back end or front end. It can certainly reduce the reliance of huge stockpiles as it reduces the time to manufacturing so significantly that it allows for delivery much more efficiently or rather faster. Instead of months to build a batch of product it can be hours or days assuming that a reliable input of components are available.
Good job Chris!
About the 155 ammo I have a buddy that works for an ASP. He said “for having an ammo shortage it’s sure easy to get 155”
Cappys average math corner being a marine with crayons had me dying 🤣🤣🤣🤣 love your stuff, brother!
Ikr??
Love the OCP logo T-Shirt. Lean Manufacturing is less of the problem, more like lean volume ordering (and planning).
“Back in my day, we fought wars over OIL. LIKE REAL MEN.” 🤘🏻 🇺🇸
Like real sheep, tell the orphan children why their dad or/and mother died for a war an ocean away.
We wish we fought for oil resources. This time around we aren't even being told a lie on what we are fighting for beyond "Free Ukraine" anyone that asks "What's in it for us?" Gets called a Russian bot and censored.
@@Hybris51129 honouring the treaty signed so there wouldnt be 10 nuclear powers after the ussr's coulapse... to name one
@@Hybris51129What’s in it for us? Because if we don’t you can bet in the future American blood will be spilled
@Hybris51129 What's in it for you is an opportunity to cheaply and effectively weaken Russia that US officials before 2014 only could have wet dreams about.
why is there a random beep at 15:28
scared the crap out of me
The problem is with the way US companies are using JIT (Just In Time) manufacturing. You need about 25% to 40% of storage to make sure you can survive supply line issues. Though multiyear contracts without sudden cancelation has always been important, like the cut to F22 manufacture! This is true in private industry, too.
With rare earths we can also get them from Australia and restart our own.
Thanks for highlighting and posting your references and other sources!
@@austin3853 JIT with proper storage in the chain is just fine, but the problem is during the COVID pandemic we found out how little proper chain storage we had. Further for quite a bit, instead of using proper storage facilities companies tied up port storage in shipping containers and jammed up port facilities ... UNTIL the FTA added a fine /day for not picking up your container based on real trucking resources. Suddenly those containers were stored at intermediate drops and merchandise was damaged. JIT is good, but it is not storage free. There are actually good industry based data that specifies how much your industry needs available. Mostly ignored as a way for a CEO to cut costs, stupidly.
jit is stupid for crictial stuff like ammo
@@JPK1337 Yeah, Congress has to make sure defense munitions industries have sufficient funding to have excess capacity and research into better manufacturing. The issue is this is NOT something that private industry can handle. They will be part of it, but the country has to set the numbers and war is always wasteful.
Storage goes against the tenets of JIT, which try to reduce these to the point that upstream components consistently arrive "just in time" for processing and minimizing the "waste" of warehousing. It's the age-old tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.
@@doujinflip JIT does not obviate all storage as long as humans are involved. You have to have appropriate levels of storage to allow for slack throughout the whole chain. What you don't do is have 2x or 3x required inventory throughout the whole chain and at the end point. Simplistic understanding thinking JIT gets rid of all storage is exactly what caused such backups and failures in systems. in this case Perfection because the enemy of good enough! JIT finds the new BALANCE! That balance varies over time and each industry has different balances. Teddy bear toy factories will have a different balance depending on the time of year but if a low level of storage fails for a bit no harm. This is a bit different in car manufacturing, where if you don't have the right number of part 23, you're screwed, so you store more of those especially if they are dependent on a material that has stops and starts. JIT after storage requirements due to ramp up times is totally different for war-making product! It's a spectrum and it ALWAYS has some storage requirement!!!
Love your style man 👍💯💪🤠
Latter part of the 90’s I instructed shake and bake MOS reclass Infantry school. We had to break out the old clanky worn-out 1911’s because all available 9mm had gone to NATO for Bosnia.
The truly amazing part was that the AHA still had .45 in the inventory.
Sooo, from 1983-1993 I was senior VP of our families ISO 9000 machine shops. It was 1 of the largest production job shops in our country. We made most of the guidance systems housings. I was brought a federal weapons contract from one of my friends that worked at Teledyne. I was amazed to read in the contract, that 51% of all machined parts HAD to be farmed out to offshore machine shops. And people wonder why we don't have production in this country? It has been legislated away by are own government!!!!!
Don’t believe that for a second. I actually have seen defense contracts for myself have worked them and there is actually a domestically sourced bias. Only when there is a capability the US doesn’t have does a foreign source have priority. DFARS and FARS clauses are codified into US law and are not subject to an overactive imagination. ITAR often restricts technical data to be shared with foreign nationals. They are all available for anyone to read. Those restrictions existed then. They exist now.
Since you claim to have read the contract, you should be able to tell us all what kind of contract it was.
Wow. That's sad man.
That’s why Capi said that because we produce in all different countries but each part made in his best posible way and best factory mades our guns so good. I also think that right now supply chains are really connected to the level of even raw materials and countries right now prefer to put sactions on potatoes than wage war 😂
Absolutely correct. This country depends on everyone except it's on people. Disaster waiting to happen.
Waaaaahhhh what a baby lol
Great video. I worked in the Aerospace industry for 7+ years and think that Lean Manufacturing is the least of our (solvable) problems. When Lean Manufacturing is properly executed, it allows for rapid production and scaling of throughput (think Toyota with a popular car). But most people who talk about Lean really focus on working capital efficiency (Inventory) and cost cutting ie don’t do it properly.
To my mind, reducing the regulatory burdens (eg allowing subcontractors to use commercial cloud software without breaching ITAR rules) and changing the cost plus billing models could change delivery times and incentives quickly.
Love your identification of rare earths also. I saw lead times for some electronics components go from 6 weeks to 60 weeks. If you’re missing a $1 chip on a $10,000 board, that board is delayed. From what I saw, much more work needs to be done to understand the supply chain risks from end to end also.
Thanks again, great video.
Your recent content is downright impressive.
As a Canadian...im surprised,although pleased, that the US military would build an ammo plant in Canada...or did you mean BAE would build a plant here?
BAE is British? So that wouldn't be the US military
Yea it’s pretty cool, i wasn’t aware of that.
I don't think it's the US building a new plant in Canada, it's more of them expanding existing Canadian plants production of 155mm shells for the US Army. In a recent Bloomberg article (just Google 'US Puts $2 Billion Into Plants Making Ammo Vital to Ukraine') it mentioned that they were investing $68 mil. in Canada to for a new metal parts line for the M795 projectile. All defence ammunition manufacturing in Canada is owned by General Dynamics, so it makes more sense to expand an existing operation instead of building a new factory from scratch.
@yeshuaislord6880 BAE is, or at least was,(not sure with mergers etc) UK based but im sure they have international subsidiaries as well.
General Dynamics Canada Ordnance and Tactical System ammunition plant is in Repentigny, Quebec. The huge plant with 1,200 people there develop, test and manufacture howitzer, mortar, tank cannon and auto-cannon ammunition, as well as small arms ammunition.
Impressive level of research behind this video, and very well presented, easy to watch. Good job!
it's propaganda. It's such a cope. We are living through the USA administration, pushing China and Russia into alliance. This is so bad for the USA. Get ready for bad bad times.
Fascinating!
Not just 155 shells will be short, but EVERYTHING eventually runs out. I work in the oilfields and we talk all the time about how fuel access helps win/lose wars too. I didn't think about that much until now. War just burns through resources like crazy.
We used to fire rounds from 1960s during training in Korea in 2008. They where so old we weren't allowed to return them to the depot. If anything went wrong they would extend our field time to expend the ammo. Was also the last time we didn't use the Lima powder charge
The best presentation of rare earths I’ve heard. Most presentations don’t do their homework. Good work.
Another great video mate! Australia & the US have just signed a deal to make missiles here. Also Australia is expanding its rare earth mining. Finally when I was in the “green machine” I actually got to see the production of shells at the old government arms factory in Melbourne. I could not believe how hands on the production was! That was in the ‘90’s and there was a CAD machine making 40 mm naval rounds but that was the only tech in the place! I asked the guy running it how it worked? (It was the first time I ever saw a robotic machine working & he Said “ I don’t know mate I just push the buttons!”) anyway I thought it was pretty cool!
It’s all owned by Thales now. Anyway like I said great video mate!
From what I hear, we have a second modern shell-forging plant in Qld that will come on line shortly. Estimated peak capacity of around 100k 155mm casings per year.
@@peterwebb8732 an article I saw a couple of weeks ago indicated the Qld plant was already producing and shipping shells in low volumes to Ukraine. A video by Peter Zeihan shows us that the USA federak government is funding infrastructure development in Australia to allows us to process the raw materials such as rare earths and aluminium etc into a useable product instead of having that step done in China.
@@Ozgrade3 I’m glad to hear it. I watch Perun’s youtube channel, but couldn’t recall whether he said that the Qld facility was already online or just nearing completion.
If you’re not familiar with that channel, I recommend it, and not just for the familiar accent.
I remember reading that China has been buying all the mines, and shipping material to their country. Is that true?
@@peterwebb8732 Nuclear submarines in the AUKUS deal are just the tip of the iceberg. Uncle Sam is plowing a lot of money into RAAF Tindal airbase in northern Australia to become a B-52 base.
Great video again. Could you possibly do a video on SOCOMs new dry mini sub?
Hey great video I needed to understand the ammo situation. But it's funny wat you said about American wars over oil alot of my friends and family fought in those wars
AIRSPEED/LEAN has been practiced in the military for a very long time. Supply and distribution is what the US military does best.
That doctrine has never been tested against a real enemy before though. Sure, it works when fighting against dirt farmers and goat herders in the Middle East, but how is this doctrine going to hold up in a protracted state-on-state conventional war?
There is a similar problem with Navy ships, and merchant marine ships. In WWII we had shipyards building ships. Now very few. Also China, South Korea, and Japan are building 90 percent of merchant ships. Ours have been neglected and are out of date.
Probably because we decided to airlift everything instead over the decades, and had uninterrupted time to boat in as needed in-theatre prepositioned stockpiles.
As the "supply chain" becomes more global any disruption in any major industry or major company is going to have a major impact not only on the military but also on consumer goods. The world is becoming very small. Excellent presentation.
Impressively informative.
I was stationed in Germany during the draw down. In the early 90s. You have no clue to the amount of 155 the ammo unit I was in shipped back. And I was on 1 ammo dump, they cleaned out 3 different ammo dumps.
And more if not all the ammo. That was issued in the Gilf war was from Germany.
“One person’s efficiency is another persons vulnerability”
Also applies to Stockton Rush.
With 900billion budget USA should have some 300 milliom round of 155 ammo alone
Great job
This is nothing compared to what we can do during actual war times. This is only a casual replenishing effort, of which, doesn't even matter due to new rounds being developed.
not really. supply chain bottlenecks are very real. It is nice to see the US address some of these issues now during your so called "casual replenishing effort".
This isn't WWII where everything is 100% made in the USA. And even then, it took a few years to scale up the production to become the "arsenal of democracy"
@@josephdantes1605 well bc in ww2 the equipment destroyed in a single day takes like 60 days to be destroyed in this war
@@josephdantes1605 You make the point that is hard to disprove. However, it still goes both ways. We don't need the old ammo, but it is nice to have cheaper variants. So we're not just producing Excalibur round sand only Excalibur rounds ect of course. However, we could easily start making everything in the USA again. You seem to think that's a far-fetched reality or something lol FYI, I'm well aware of NATO and what that implies. I'm for Ukraine, I understand Geopolitics. And i understand the geopolitics of the situation my demands require.
You should watch all those California videos on on their delivery trains - people robbing them left and right, tons of goods not delivered. NY isn't any better.
You're talking about an ideal world with an ideal economy and social cohesion. We have people literally walking into grocery stores and stealing food, you can find videos of things like ice cream locked behind glass. These looters figure out trains have military grade equipment on them and they will target them like flies on shit.
@@josephdantes1605 Not everything is made in the USA these days. But most weapons are. We have the majority of the worlds weapons manufacturing.
Wait, you're telling me that purposeful short-sightedness in the name of profit has a potential to cause fundamental problems in the very security intended to protect that purposeful short-sightedness?
You’re great educator.
7:36 - "the most effective and reliable" effective yes but since production is depended on outside entities it hardly makes it reliable
Its worth noting that, while the supply chain issues are certainly a concern that the US Military needs to keep aware of… in a real big shooting war directly involving the USA, if a shortage of Stinger, Javelin, and Artillery Shells actually start to matter, something has gone terribly wrong. Those systems are basically a back-up for the unlikely situation where the USA can’t rely upon the world’s largest Air Force to maintain Air Superiority (the US Air Force).
Or the world’s second largest Air Force, the US Navy.
…I’m not sure where the US Army’s air force is ranked, but its probably pretty high. Either way, the reason why these weapons are so critical for Ukraine is the airspace is so contested, and Ukraine doesn’t have the capability to gain air superiority over Russia. If China were to spark a shooting war with the USA, the lack of reserves of those weapons systems would not be a primary concern, because of how many things would have to go wrong first before they’d become relevant.
Its important to view this concern as a warning sign for potential issues down the road. Its not an imminent threat, but it is a problem…
"…I’m not sure where the US Army’s air force is ranked"
Probably behind the US Marine Corps' air force.
Actually, the US Army has the second larges Air Force by numbers. We have over 14,000 aircraft. US Navy obviously has jets, and is considered “more powerful”. But people seem to forget we have a ton of transport aircraft, and the largest helicopter fleet on the planet.
That's so cool to see those machines work
The bigger concern is that we couldn't enter a "WW2" style of production if we had to do so tomorrow...or in the next ten years. We no longer have the manufacturing capability on tap.
Other than that, it's not a problem lol. It's a massive issue! But stockpiles are fine right now.
Wrong, many factories today are ready to be changed into an arms manufacturing facility quickly
In lean manufacturing, 'stock' is considered just as much a waste as scrapped/rejected parts.
'The lean looking wolf in the pack may be the fastest and most efficient killer, but when the food supply runs out, the lean wolf will be the first to perish'
Agreed. I'm amazed that all the interruption that covid caused failed to wake people up to the fragility of JIT and lean.
@@BaalAdvocate I always remember one from the British Army in Afghanistan when they were using JIT supply chains....
The plane carrying the soldiers body armour arrived in Kandahar 'Just In Time' to be able to take the coffin carrying a soldier who should have been wearing it back to England.
No it is not, Lean allows for stock. It's only against hoarding.
@@yoyojoseph it allows for stock to cover things like kanbans, true, but contingency is classed as waste, even if it has a 100% chance of sale (barring acts of God)
It’s crazy that all these locations are simply public information.
In a serious situation this is gonna bite us in the ass
Enemies can find out about highly classified sites too
It's also deterrence, both for adversaries and for corruption.
Tkans for you info that you are putting out there, dont you think others know this.
Edward Deming really led the way with LEAN (post-WW2) and Japan adopted it when the US would not. Deming changed the quality level of US munitions in WW2. I saw the effect of this development & process control tech the first time in 1973/4 when a LEAN-developed Honda Elsinore 125cc bike was put on the track at Carlsbad Motocross track. It completely dominated all makes and most classes and changed the world. Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki were just a year or two behind with their Euro-killing machines (no real American threats at the time). I then went on to focus on LEAN/Six Sigma process development for HP (LEAN: developing new processes; Six Sigma: diagnosing and repairing Legacy processes, generally speaking). I saw it change manufacturing, driving quality in and error out of the manufacturing process rather than inspecting for it at the end of mfg.
I think the host may be speaking to "JIT" or just in time manufacturing--a component of LEAN-- which drives highly scheduled but limited and timely deliveries across the supply chain. This is why all US stores have just 9 meals (or 3 days) of food on the shelf for a specific population level in specified area around each store. And another reason to have a healthy food supply of one's own.
Yay for Edward Deming. He was way ahead of his time.
Thanks for talking about the flaws of lean manufacturing. Ive work in industrial manufacturing for 15 years and people only talk about the positives, and only plan for every variable to be perfect and that thought process should have collapse in late 2019.
Lean manufacturing isn't responsible for government decisions to keep inadequate inventories or limited manufacturing capacity.
Lean is horrible for stocking parts in the armed forces. Whoever thought bringing lean to the Air Force should get demining duty in Ukraine...naked with a sledge hammer. Wars are fought from stocks on hand and require serious front loading.
@DonChartier i work in the civil market, and it's quite horrible if everything isn't going perfectly. It's literally designed to maximize efficiency if only everything is working perfectly. Guess what the real world isn't perfect, the supply chain isn't perfect, and the current status quo is fragile af.
Keeping insufficient finished goods or spare parts isn't "Lean Manufacturing."
@@Nealetony Your company is doing it wrong. You don't *assume* perfection, you work hard to create the conditions (high equipment availability, precision machining, low setup times, supply reliability) so that you can run lean. Lots of companies have made the mistake of chopping inventories and calling it "lean." It's not.
America: Hi China we need 100 billion artillery shells
China: what for !?
Artirrery
@@xthee_0nly_1x11That is racist, and it's in bad taste. From a white male in Texas.
I supported three Army Ammunition plants during the 1980's that made 155mm shells. One in particular had only one of its four production lines working. The plant also made everything needed for a functional 155 projectile. I also saw the 500,000th shell (DPICM) at one plant sometime around 1986 with many more produced since that date. These shells were stored in a vast array of bunkers at the three sites. After the Gulf war Dick Cheney said these plants are too innefficient to operate because they are not operating at full capacity and closed them sometime in 1991, an Army Times article was written on the subject. Since DPICM shells are limited to two ranges in the US few have been expended for training so a large stockpile still exists. Secretary Cheney was big on privitizing our industrial base. I cant say he was wrong but it doesnt leave much room for slack. DPICM was is the preferred warfighting munition, way more effective than HE.
Can you explain a little in the difference?
@albertslyx3149 DPICM contains 144 submunitions that can penatrate a tank. It is dispensed 20 feet over the target for optimum distribution. A 94 pound HE round contains tnt and general explodes on contact with half the effect directed into the ground leaving only half it's power to go outward to cause casualties.
I worked at Norris in the mid 80's. Who did you work for?
@@FlyingGuy USACorpsofEngineers
We had a plant shut down near us in 2019, supposedly. Not sure what they made. But last year, they started cleaning up the place and a lot more traffic started going through there again after 3 years of almost nothing.
Thank you for looking into this aspect of military logistics that for most people, is unglamorous. However, good logistics is a key to winning wars. Many in military logistics go unrecognized.
I gotta say, ever since you shifted to have more professional and more thought out videos I have enjoyed EVERY single one.
Something that struck me. You mentioned the US pulling from stockpiles in South Korea and Israel, but wouldn’t these two locations be one of the last to be tapped due to their proximity to potential conflicts?
I’m not sure about Israel, but the reason why the USA is pulling from South Korean artillery shell stockpiles is because their defense industry is loaded up in that regard. They make one of the most popular self-propelled guns in the world, and have invested massive amounts to their shell manufacturing capacity. Basically, we’re not pulling from them because they *have* a lot of shells, we’re pulling from them because they can quickly *make* a lot of shells.
If i had to guess, it's likely because they were the older munitions made a few decades ago. Seems to me all the old stockpiles are depleted, so going forward it'll have to be newer and maybe even brand new shells which will present a challenge if the US is to maintain it's own war capacity stockpile.
those 2 countries are quite the powerhouses. I doubt anyone is invading those countries anytime soon.
@@13thmistral that isn’t why the US has stockpiles in foreign countries even though it could be part of the equation. Generally, it is to place the supply’s “in theater” where short notice operations may take place until wartime (long term) supply lines can be established.
South Korea has less to worry about. The Cold War might as well have never ended if you look at ammunition production, because North Korea is still on their border, whereas NATO stopped being prepared for a Cold War gone hot scenario and sold "surplus" shells.
They're still producing like it's 1980, much to the envy of many countries now.