Revealed: Europe’s production of crucial ammunition fails to meet Brussels’ promises to Ukraine – Follow the Money

Hundreds of shell casings, fresh from a heat press, are piled up next to a munitions factory in the Finnish town of Sastamala. From here they will be sent on to another plant to be filled with explosives, before travelling to frontline Ukraine or a European warehouse. 

The Finnish-Norwegian company NAMMO, the ammunition manufacturer in that town, says it has heavily invested in expanding production capacity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Colonel Mikko Myllykangas, the liaison officer between NAMMO and the Finnish army, 200 million euros will go to new machines, factories and extra personnel in Finland in the coming years. 

Other producers, such as Germany’s Rheinmetall, KNDS France and the Czech STV Group, say they too will invest hundreds of millions of euros in additional capacity.  

The EU is keen to highlight these developments, saying that it wants to shift its arms industry to a “war economy mode” in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It announced this year that it will pump 2 billion euros into the industry through two separate investment programmes.

According to Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market, the bloc must “take greater responsibility for its own security, regardless of the outcome of our allies’ elections every four years” – an apparent not-so-subtle reference to a possible second term as US president for Donald Trump, who has long criticised both the NATO alliance and US aid to Ukraine.

This investment will allow Europe to produce as many as 1.7 million artillery shells by the end of 2024, Breton’s spokesman told The Investigative Desk. It is a promise he has frequently made – but the figure doesn’t appear to be accurate.

Research by The Investigative Desk for Follow The Money, in collaboration with European partners, showed that actual production in Europe is significantly lower. This is confirmed by highly placed sources in industry and politics.

Second fiddle

At the NATO summit in Washington this week, continuing military support to Ukraine will be one of the main themes. The question of whether Europe can sustain that support without the US is central. 

Because of the high ammunition consumption in this war, increasing European production capacity will be crucial, according to the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrel. 

“After two years of a high intensity war, existing stocks are depleted and the conflict has evolved from a war of stocks to a war of production,” he said earlier this year.

Europe is currently playing second fiddle to the US in its military support for Ukraine. The EU says it has mobilised some 39 billion euros in military support for the country, while the US has allocated 50.4 billion (and the UK 8.8 billion).

In an interview with the Washington Post this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that without US support there would be “no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-millimetre artillery rounds.”

According to the US government, the US has sent more than 3 million 155-millimetre artillery shells to Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion, in addition to a million other large-calibre artillery shells. 

The Ukrainian defence ministry reported that it received half a million shells of various calibres from the EU during the same period, it told Ukrainian media partner Schemes. 

A well-informed industry insider described the EU’s projected shell production numbers for this year as fantasy. 

“There’s no such thing as a 1.7 million capacity [of artillery shells] in all of Europe combined,” the source said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. While Breton puts the number at 1.7 million, EU foreign policy head Josep Borrell says the figure is 1.4 million. 

The capacity for 2024 is in reality less than half a million, according to the source. “It’s possibly 400,000, maybe even a bit below,” the person said.

A second well-informed source, from the artillery industry in Slovakia, said the official figures were unrealistic. “Production increases across Europe are lagging behind with the current total capacity reaching a level of about 580,000 units per year,” the person said.

“There’s no such thing as a 1.7 million capacity in all of Europe combined” 

A powerpoint presentation from German producer Rheinmetall, obtained by The Investigative Desk, confirms that the capacity in Europe is actually between 400,000 and 600,000 shells. The presentation from January was intended for investors and describes the company’s future plans. According to this document, other such producers and Rheinmetall together could produce 550,000 shells in 2024. 

The Estonian Ministry of Defence estimates European capacity for 2024 at 600,000 shells, according to a strategy document on how Ukraine can win the war against Russia. 

In response to The Investigative Desk’s findings, a spokesperson for the European Commission said that its calculations were based on data from producers, factory visits, discussions with Member States and further discussions with producers. 

“We therefore stand [by] our estimation that production capacity of 1.5 to 1.7 million can be achieved under realistic operational conditions, in response to orders received,” the person said.

Estonia’s defence ministry said Russia will have produced as many as 4.5 million artillery shells by the end of 2024.

The insider who described the official EU figures as unobtainable said miscalculations would have disastrous real-world consequences.

“It’s a very bad idea to convince ourselves ‘we have three times the actual production capacity’ [and] make decisions based on that, because everything is going to look fine and dandy,” they said. “Then suddenly you find out there’s nothing coming out to the factories and you can’t supply Ukraine and you can’t supply the NATO alliance. This is really the worst situation.”

Generals and politicians have frequently warned of a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia in the coming years. 

“Then suddenly you find out there’s nothing coming out to the factories and you can’t supply Ukraine … This is really the worst situation.”

But due to limited investments in ammunition stocks as well as support provided to Ukraine, many European NATO countries are currently faced with empty warehouses. 

NATO expects member states to invest heavily in ammunition in the coming years in order to meet the so-called 30-day standard. According to this guideline, all members must have sufficient supplies and ammunition to be able to wage a high-intensity war for at least 30 days.

Consequences on the front line

“It can do anything,” Arthur, a commanding officer in the 40th artillery brigade of Ukrainian ground forces, described the capabilities of his Polish 155-millimetre howitzer on the frontlines of the Kharkiv region. 

“Absolutely any target can be hit – a bunker … a pillbox, dugouts, houses, vehicles.”

The importance of this Western weapon is enormous, Ukraine’s former defence minister Oleksii Reznikov confirmed in an interview. 

“I am convinced that the 155-millimetre calibre became the first game changer in this war for the Ukrainian troops,” he said.

In May 2022, two months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv received NATO-standard artillery guns for the first time. Before then, Ukraine had only old Soviet equipment. 

According to Reznikov, the new shells are more technologically advanced and accurate, and shoot over a longer distance than the old Soviet 152-millimetre shells, which are still used by the Russian army. 

This means that only two shells instead of 10 are now needed to hit a target, the former minister said. 

“War is about mathematics, it’s about means,” he said.

According to Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s current defence minister, Ukraine needs 200,000 artillery shells a month to repel the Russian army from its territory.

The importance of the 155-millimetre shell was evident this spring, when Ukraine faced major shortages for the second year in a row due to stalled Western aid. 

In February this year, US President Joe Biden claimed that the fall of the city of Avdiivka was due to a delay in a new US support package.  

A large part of the problem is that European governments are signalling to industry that they want increased production, but are not offering contracts to guarantee orders well into the future, military and industry sources say. 

According to the well-informed source in the industry mentioned above, there is a huge volume of contracts for the next three or four years, but it stops in the years after that. “It’s a challenge, because we’re working on investing billions, or hundreds of millions, in machinery or employing more people. … we need to have a longer horizon,” they said.

Magnus-Valdemar Saar, Estonia’s head of ammunition procurement, added that major producers had orders for 2025 until 2027, but not for the years after that. 

“When you’ve invested hundreds of millions in plants, that’s a problem,” he said.

In addition to the lack of contracts, obtaining parts is also a major obstacle to scaling up production, several manufacturers confirmed. For example, there is a major shortage of explosives.

It is not that EU member states do not want to buy ammunition. Rheinmetall this year signed a contract with the German state to produce artillery shells worth 8.5 billion euros, the largest contract in the company’s history. 

But Vice-Admiral Jan Willem Hartman, head of the command that oversees ammunition purchases for the Netherlands, said other countries should be thinking of long-term commitments to suppliers. 

“A production line is easily stopped, but it is a lot of work to restart one after years [of inaction]. A number of production lines are also outdated,” he said.

The reality of politics makes it difficult to sign long-term contracts, explained Ukraine’s former defence minister Reznikov. “I have a one-year budget planning, and defence planning is for three years,” he said.

In Ukraine itself, production facilities are also being built at secret locations. The country has agreements with two American companies and with Rheinmetall on the joint production of 155-millimetre shells in the country, according Oleksandr Kamyshyn, the Ukrainian Minister of Strategic Industries. But he said it would take at least two years before these projects start.

“We will never be able to produce as much ammunition as our armed forces need now,” he said.

The Investigative Desk is a collective of specialist investigative journalists. It funds its work through donations, grants, fellowships and honoraria. The funders have no role or substantive say in the investigations and publications.

The project was supported by the Investigative Journalism for Europe fund (IJ4EU) and the Fund for Special Journalism Projects (FBJP).