A plant still under construction in Mesquite, Texas, will soon turn out 30,000 artillery shells each month, roughly doubling current U.S. output.

In a warehouse off Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in an industrial area outside Dallas, the future of American military ammunition production is coming online.

Here, in the Pentagon’s first new major arms plant built since Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkish workers in orange hard hats are busy unpacking wood crates stenciled with the name Repkon, a defense company based in Istanbul, and assembling computer-controlled robots and lathes.

The factory will soon turn out about 30,000 steel shells every month for the 155-millimeter howitzers that have become crucial to Kyiv’s war effort.

. . .

To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. Factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., together make about 36,000 shells per month. The new General Dynamics facility in Mesquite, Texas, will make 30,000 each month once it reaches its full capacity.

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  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    Good question tbh. Large scale work tends to be done by contractors in a lot of places due to ridiculous hiring processes for federal employment (by the time people get a federal job offer they’ve already accepted a job elsewhere and have been working there for months)

    It’s easier to hire from the pool of umpteen-tens-of-thousands of people getting out of the military that still have clearance (if needed) for contractor jobs.