As Much as You Ever Wanted to Know About 155mm Artillery Shell Production and More
6th July 2025
I am an engineer by training with the questionable instinct to run towards problems, especially problems that should not be problems. When I heard that the United States could not produce sufficient 155 mm artillery shells to supply Ukraine, I thought it sounded odd. I knew essentially nothing about artillery save I would not want to be on the other end of one. I was generally aware the industrial base for the defense industry had either atrophied or specialized or both, depending on your perspective. Maybe this was just over-specialization? A dependency on a single part? Maybe it is a reliance on something exotic? Surely, there must be an explanation, something that would help me understand why we are so ill-prepared. Maybe there is some new technology that could be applied? This is a record of what I learned for the benefit of a more-educated citizenry and to save time for anyone else investigating the issue.
Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.