More than 460 artillery shells are produced in the US every day, most of which go to Ukraine. Journalists from The New York Times received permission from the Pentagon to visit the US Defense Ministry's munitions manufacturing plants: in Scranton, Pennsylvania, cases are made, and in Middletown, Iowa, they are filled with explosives and packed for shipment.
The Scranton factory began making ammunition cases as early as the 1950s during the Korean War. There, 10-meter long steel beams are cut, heated to more than 1000 degrees Celsius and, thanks to robotic technology, remelted into a billet. "Forty shells at a time are packed into trays and fed into a long furnace for a four-hour heat treatment process that shatters the steel into small, deadly pieces when the shell explodes," the article reads.
After being cooled, lathed and painted in Scranton, the shells are shipped to Iowa, where "blank blanks are turned into weapons." There, the ammunition is filled with the explosive substance IMX-101 - it is forbidden to shoot in one of the rooms, because any electronics, due to its static electricity, can cause the detonation of explosive substances in the air.
After that, "X-rays detect any voids inside the projectiles that might interfere with their combat performance. This is one of the final checks on the quality of the weapon."
The production of these shells at both factories takes several weeks, the report says .
Journalists of the publication describe a thorough process of inspections at many stages, after which the shells will be tested. "Pallets of 24 rounds are picked up by a crane and moved to a nearby facility where cars on two railroad tracks await them. Some of the rounds will be sent to Yuma, Arizona, where they will be fitted with detonators and tested on howitzers. If they pass the test, the rest of the batch in tens of thousands of shells produced that month will be approved for use and certified for combat operations. Most will go to Ukraine."
The NYT writes that the Pentagon plans to increase production at these facilities to 90,000 per month in two years.
We will remind, on February 3, the administration of President Joe Biden announced additional security assistance to Ukraine in the total amount of almost 2.2 billion dollars. The announced package includes critical air defense assets, armored infantry vehicles and other equipment, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, artillery ammunition, conventional missiles and long-range missiles for the previously provided HIMARS.
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