At the US Army factory that produces artillery shells for Ukraine

A A line of artillery shells destined for the Ukrainian battlefield twists and turns through a serpentine production line in northeastern Pennsylvania. Here, in a row of red-brick buildings where steam locomotives were repaired a century ago, teams of workers work around the clock to make sure the industrial mills, lathes and kilns don’t stop rumbling.

“Everything is very big. It’s very complex, lots of moving parts, huge amounts of heat,” says Richard Hansen, who oversees manufacturing operations at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant. “You have to constantly … keep it going. And it’s important for us to do that because we make ammunition.”

The 155mm shells, fired by howitzers several miles from their targets, are crucial to the Ukrainian military’s nearly year-long defense against the Russian invasion. Thousands of the unguided missiles are being fired every day during the conflict — a usage rate that US and Ukrainian officials compare to World War II — depleting the US Army’s existing stockpiles.

The Scranton plant was first established in 1908 by the DL&W Railroad as a repair shop for steam locomotives.

Vincent Tullo for ZEIT

The Biden administration has already given Ukraine more than a million 155mm grenades. With hundreds of kilometers of contested frontlines, the Ukrainian military relies on firing rounds from some 300 155mm howitzers to repel Russian positions. With no end in sight to the fighting, the US Army plans to increase its current production rate from about 14,000 155mm howitzer shells per month to 20,000 by this spring and up to 90,000 by 2025 and 1 this year alone $.9 billion to spend on procedures.

The Scranton facility, which is expected to produce 11,040 shells per month, is at the center of the Army’s planned industrial transformation. About 300 employees work on the 15-acre site, where massive machines cut, melt, form and refine 2,000-pound steel rods into slender, two-foot-tall projectiles. The facility is owned by the Army but operated by General Dynamics Corp.’s weapons unit. operated and currently running 24 hours a day, five days a week with a weekend shift.

Every day, trucks deliver 20-foot-long steel rods weighing 2,000 pounds to the factory. The bars are left outside, where a massive magnet lifts them into a red brick building known as the “Forge,” where robotic saws cut the bars into foot-long pieces called “bludgeons.”

In a large, empty room, billets are carried around piece by piece for four hours during the cooling process.

Vincent Tullo for ZEIT

Stepping into the store, away from the Pennsylvania winter winds, you’ll immediately feel the warmth emanating from the three massive 2,000-degree ovens. Each ingot is guided into the fire where it stays for an hour before emerging like glowing coals that come to a halt in a darkened room with robotic arms.

The metal arms grip each stick with smooth efficiency, moving it to three individual stations. Over a 90-second period, the billet is pierced, stretched, and pressed against extreme heat to a three-foot length. This happens hundreds of times every day. “Speed ​​is the key,” says Hansen, observing the process.

In the final phase, a robotic arm grabs the stick and places it over a circular door, where it is pushed neatly into an underground conveyor system called the “subway”. Each billet, still red-hot, falls onto a gravitational rolling line. “Don’t touch it,” says Hansen. “It won’t just burn your hand. It’ll take it off – bones and all.” The billets are collected by hanging claws, which carry them one at a time through a large empty space along a track for four hours. Later, each billet is inspected to ensure its shape and consistency meet specifications so it can become a projectile.

Protective covers are attached to a strap at the base of each 155 millimeter shell.

Vincent Tullo for ZEIT

The last building is a 60 foot tall warehouse the size of a city block. Outside light pours in through windows that were installed before the widespread availability of indoor lighting. A succession of machines gradually shaves 30 pounds of excess metal from the ribbed, dark gray billets until they emerge as polished shells with pointed noses. “We work with specifications in the thousandths of an inch,” says Hansen. “Essentially, we take a tube and turn it into a projectile.”

Each shell is hung on a hook where it is automatically rotated to reveal an even coat of army green paint. The entire process takes about three days, but it can take several months before the grenades are loaded onto pallets and hauled 10 hours away on a large oil rig to another facility in Iowa, where they’re filled with explosives and attached with hot-melt adhesive — effectively converted them into oversized bullets ready to be fired from a howitzer.

The Ukraine conflict has exposed serious problems at the bottom of the US defense industry, according to Mark Cancian, a retired Navy colonel who is now senior adviser to the think tank at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The Pentagon has spent the last quarter century investing in expensive, high-tech weapons. “It will be months before the increased production comes online and will not yet fully cover current artillery spending,” he writes. “Encouraging NATO countries and other close allies to provide supplies would help, and the United States has aggressively pursued those efforts.”

Finish Turnline operator looks over the conveyor system as artillery shells come down the line.

Vincent Tullo for ZEIT

Congress has strengthened. Since August alone, Scranton and its sister facility at nearby Wilkes-Barre have received more than $420 million in federal funding for a new building, additional equipment and improved automation that the Army hopes will boost production rates. The cash glut is a welcome turn of events for the Scranton Works, established in 1908 by the DL&W Railroad initially as a repair shop for steam locomotives. The Army acquired the property in 1951 at the start of the Korean War and converted the facility to manufacture artillery shells.

At the time, the US had 86 military ammunition factories as part of an industrial mobilization aimed at meeting wartime ammunition needs. Over the decades, the number of facilities has dwindled. Today, the Pentagon has only five so-called “state-owned, contractor-operated” factories, which supply the military with most conventional ammunition, propellants, and explosives. General Dynamics has increased recruitment efforts in anticipation of additional artillery orders for the Scranton plant.

Douglas Bush, an assistant secretary of the Army and the service’s chief procurement officer, said the Army may build a new 155-millimeter production line in Texas and has invested $68 million in Canada “to resist a facility’s conversion.” “. Help in the manufacture of artillery shells. “We’re sourcing and sourcing globally and a lot of that is actually flowing through now,” he told reporters Jan. 25 to make sure Ukraine has what it needs.”

write to WJ Hennigan at [email protected].