Pennsylvania Plant Ramps Up Artillery Shell Production for Ukraine War

An ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is ramping up artillery shell production for the Russian-Ukrainian war, governmental officials revealed this week.

The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant has increased production by 50 percent to meet a surging demand for weapons amid the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, which began in February 2022 when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The plant cuts and forges 2,00-pound bars of steel into 155 mm howitzer rounds. The rounds are then shipped to Iowa where they are packed with explosives and fitted with fuses. Recently, the Scranton plant and two other ammunition plants in Wilkes-Barre increased production from 24,000 rounds per month to 36,000.

The Scranton plant is currently undergoing a $400 million modernization venture, one of the biggest in plant history. Officials are about halfway through the modernization with roughly 20 different projects underway. There are currently three new production lines under development that will further increase the number of rounds produced, according to the factory's top official.

"Right now we're concentrating on 155. That's pretty much all we're concentrating on," Richard Hansen, the Army commander's representative at the plant, told new outlets on Tuesday during a tour of the factory grounds. "We're working really hard to ensure that we achieve the goal that the Pentagon has established."

Since the start of the war, the United States has sent over 3 million 155 mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, according to government records. Meanwhile, in early August, the White House announced that it was sending Ukraine an additional $125 million in weapons, including Stinger missiles, 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) ammunition and vehicles.

The 500,000-square-foot plant is owned by the U.S. government and operated by General Dynamics, a global aerospace and defense company. There are about 300 people who work at the plant, a General Dynamics spokesperson told the Associated Press (AP). The employees run the equipment that produces the shells and each round is manually inspected at each step of the process.

Meanwhile, one of the new production lines shown in Tuesday's tour has a new machine that can do the job of three workers, which helps to maximize the use of space in the plant.

"We want it go where we point it," Hansen said. "We want it to go as far as we need it to go to do its job. Lives depend on it—the lives of the gun crew, the lives of innocent civilians depend on this round doing exactly what we want it to do out in the field."

What Is the State of the Russian-Ukrainian War?

Earlier this month, Ukraine launched a surprise military operation in the Kursk region of Russia. It has been the largest incursion into Russian territory since World War II and has caused a shift in the war, which has mostly been fought within Ukrainian territory over the past two years.

While the Kursk operation has forced roughly 130,000 Russians to evacuate their homes, it is unclear to what extent the military campaign might be weakening Russia's positions in Ukraine.

Russia, meanwhile, has sent reinforcements into the Kursk region and, earlier this week, Russia fired dozens of missiles and drones across Ukraine, some of which were shot down by Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly asked the U.S. to lift restrictions on the weapons it supplies to the war-torn country so that Ukraine can fire them deep inside Russia to destroy key military infrastructure.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.

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