For subscribers wondering why the newsletter did not come out yesterday, it is because the last 36 hours were consumed with election activities. As many of you know I ran for reelection on my town council (up here in New England that’s called a “Representative Town Meeting,” a distillation of the original mechanism of government where every citizen was invited to vote on important town matters, which is not practical when the population is nearly 30,000). And I won! As of yesterday, while we wait for the absentee ballots to be cast, I was the top vote-getter by percentage for my town.

This vindicates my approach to campaigning — going door to door in person — and probably indicates some fatigue with Republicans at a local level, for reasons I can’t say I really understand. The Republicans have had our RTM solidly for years and the town is competently run — we hoped to pick up a few seats, but nobody expected us to go from a 12-18 minority to a 16-14 majority.

It also vindicates my interest in local matters, and localism as a solution to state- and national-level problems. Today’s piece checks in on a problem that we’ve talked about in the past: a very slow buildup of manufacturing capacity for ammunition critical to the waging of modern war.

THE BIG STORY

155mm Artillery Ammo Production during WWII

We made a lot very quickly. It won’t be that easy this time around.

Nearly two months ago the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante, divulged two interesting pieces of information in a story covered by Reuters.

The first was that the U.S. had been able to nearly double the monthly production of 155mm artillery ammunition from 14,400 in February 2022 to 28,000 in September 2023.

Second, the U.S. had a target of 100,000 per month, which it hoped to achieve by 2025. Earlier in 2023, the target was 90,000 per month by 2025 according to The New York Times.

Some context, first. It took 19 months to almost double existing production, and it’s not entirely clear how that was accomplished. Presumably, much of this involved expanding on existing capacity — paying existing laborers to work more shifts, and switching on machines that had lain dormant.

The longer-term contracts that the DoD signed with contractors seem likely to include provisions for hiring additional workers, and creating new production lines. Those contractors, including General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, IMT Defense, and Northrup Grumman (as well as subcontractors of the same), are the only ones capable of organizing and hiring the necessary labor, and building the facilities necessary to quadruple ammunition output by 2025.

This begs a number of questions, some of which have been posed in previous newsletters, such as: how did our production capacity fall so far behind what was needed for modern war? Why are we having such difficulty ramping back up quickly? What’s the solution?

Curious as to what a “near peer war” looked like, I dug around online and was fortunate enough to stumble across this declassified publication dedicated to quantifying and accounting for production during WWII. Folks I just read the introduction and section dedicated to monthly production of artillery ordnance, but it was eye opening, and a great resource for people interested in seeing what a big war looks like — what a country’s industry firing on all pistons can do.

But before I jump into the numbers, a quick and important note: the 155mm howitzer did not play the same role during WWII as it does in the modern military — the 105mm howitzer played a much greater role than it does today, as did other lighter caliber artillery guns, and there were other, heavier caliber artillery platforms in use during WWII, so it isn’t a strict apples-to-apples comparison. We’re also assuming that there’s some correlation between production and consumption. There’s still some utility in looking.

So — and one can look at the chart I created (or the source document for a deeper dive) — the biggest takeaway to me is that there was relatively little 155mm ammo production prior to WWII’s arrival on U.S. shores but once the U.S. became involved, production absolutely blew up. Average monthly production of 155mm artillery ammo in 1941 was 49,000 across all ammunition types; in 1942 the average monthly production was 295,417 per month, or nearly what the U.S. produces in a year at present, trying as hard as it can. In one month, May of 1942, the U.S. made 567,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammo. Wild!

The pace falls off quite a bit in 1943, is almost absent in 1944, and doesn’t rebound in any systemic way until 1945; the majority of all 155mm ammo produced during and for WWII is made in that first year (1942) that the U.S. enters the war. This is fascinating! Why does the production model look this way? I couldn’t say, but my suspicion is that ammunition manufacturing capacity was taken up by other needs — bombs, aircraft ammunition, tank ammunition — into which the military was diversifying. A comparison of production with WWI would probably give further credence to that hypothesis.

Look at that jump, too; some production in 1941 after very little in 1940, followed by a year of what must have been round-the-clock and full-time employment across a number of factories. 1942, the year of not sleeping if you were a 155mm ammo line worker.

And as we know from recent reporting in The New York Times, 155mm ammo production (and 105mm production) isn’t easy or straightforward — its a lot more complex than “make a bigger 5.56 or 7.62 bullet.” It requires specialized facilities, and workers who have a fair bit of training (more than one would think).

Partly as a result of that need for specialization and facilities dedicated to a certain type of production, industry hates cycles that look like the one in the chart above: throw everyone at a problem for a year, and then make very little afterwards. Investors (at least, contemporary investors) like projecting needs and producing just enough of a thing to fill those needs, sustainably, over a period of years or in some rare cases decades. A year of frantic work is not how they prefer to do business.

All that notwithstanding, what is the total number of 155mm rounds produced for WWI, in which we fought between the very end of 1941 and 1945? 5,307,000, or over 1,300,000 per year (over exactly 50 months, an average of 106,140 rounds of 155mm ammo per month — 50 months being the time frame measured). That matches up pretty nicely with the desired production the U.S. is hoping to make by 2025 — and seems to be happening in a way that’s a lot less dramatic than whatever happened between 1941 and 1942.

One hopes that the ammunition will only be needed to replenish our stockpiles!

TOP READS IN MONEY & FINANCE

There’s a bond type that’s becoming increasingly popular, offered by BlackRock and Invesco.

Meanwhile the problem with government debt isn’t what people think — it’s systemic. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, tell me, and we’ll write a column about what this story means.

Hard not to read this and think at some point we’ll have engineered the perfect revolution. Do businesses not understand how much people hate this sort of thing?

Firms are pulling billions of dollars worth of investments out from China as sanctions, restrictions, and incentives elsewhere begin to take their toll.

TOP READS IN THE MILITARY & FOR VETERANS

Big news for big militaries — especially those in the U.S. and Europe.

Congress is asking questions about dilapidated or unsuitable military barracks across the U.S. The answer — more money’s needed — isn’t making people happy.

An Air Force plan to move TAC-P personnel away from Army bases has Army leadership worried about the hit to unit readiness. Army, in this case, is right.

Department of VA did the right thing and suspended debt collection from veterans — many of whom were low-income vets — whose pensions were overpaid through no fault of their own.

1 in 8 military families used food banks during the pandemic. Food insecurity among military families and veterans is insane.

TOP READS AROUND THE WORLD

Israel’s IDF enters Gaza city as fighting intensifies. Most veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan know what it means to fight in a town or a city — not good.

Big moves at Bumble, as the dating app industry tries to grow up.

Bill Gates looking to invest in a Cobalt mining operation in the Democratic People’s Republic of the Congo. Would be a big improvement over what goes on there now, which is some of the most horrible stuff on earth.

Russia is gaming the system meant to sanction it for oil, in a blow to those hoping to hobble its war machine.

Any time I want to get really mad I take a look at a WSJ story about hospital or drug prices. Gets the blood boiling every time.

HUMOR

The poverty rate is increasing faster than the nation can build prisons, writes The Onion.