EU weapon production stalls: Ukraine left waiting for artillery shells
The European Union failed to fulfill its commitment to Ukraine and did not deliver one million artillery shells by March 2024. "The Economist" writes about the European arms production bottleneck that emerged after the Cold War and came to light recently following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The British Weekly points out that the bottleneck in European ammunition production is insufficient explosives. The problem, which became apparent due to arms supplies to Ukraine, arose after the Cold War when European manufacturers of these materials started to scale back operations and shut down factories.
"The Economist" points out that the last large plant producing TNT is located in Poland. It refers to Nitro-Chem.
Prof. Johann Höcherl from the Bundeswehr University noted that for decades, production was adapted to peacetime needs, not to industrial-scale production
Three to four years to build an explosives factory
To accelerate the production process, the European Union granted $725 million CAD (rounded from 500 million euros) in funding in March. The majority, or 3/4 of this amount, approximately 580 million CAD, is expected to go to explosives manufacturers - writes "Rz."
As The Economist pointed out, The industry doubts it can increase its capacities as quickly as Brussels would like. Building an explosives factory from scratch takes three to seven years.
Deliveries from countries such as Japan and India are expected to help fill the gaps in the European market.
