The rearguard of the war in Ukraine is in a city in the United States

northeast of Pennsylvaniajust over two hours from new Yorkjump up Scrantonone of those post-industrial towns in America that had its heyday during the days of coal mining and iron production until they were somewhat forgotten in the prolixity of the suburb. That has changed in recent months. Its largest factory, the Army Munitions Factory, which operates in an extraordinary 115-year-old manufacturing building and where some of the country’s first steam locomotives were built, has returned to its peak of production of war and became one of the most important rear centers of the war in Ukraine.

Here they are made from 155mm artillery shell until those he throws away Himars multiple systemhow much damage this is causing to the Russian forces invading Ukraine. The Pentagon has already delivered more than a million munitions to the Ukrainians. But it’s not enough. They consume more than 6,000 a day. This caused production to triple, the most significant acceleration since the Korean War. And the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant It works like it hasn’t for decades.

NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, expressed concern this week about the lack of ammunition facing the Ukrainian army as Russia has already launched a long-awaited offensive in the east of the country on the first anniversary of the orderly large-scale invasion by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022. “The reality is that we have already seen the start of the Russian offensive… sending in thousands and thousands more troops,” Stoltenberg said. “It is clear that we are in the logistics race. Key abilities like ammo. . . they must reach Ukraine before Russia can take the initiative on the battlefield”. And he clarified: “A war of attrition becomes a battle of logistics. Yes, we have a challenge. Yes, we have a problem. . . but we have a strategy to deal with it”.

“The war in Ukraine is consuming a huge amount of ammunition and depleting Allied arsenals. The current rate of ammunition spending in Ukraine is several times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under pressure,” Stoltenberg said.

The ammunition shortage in Ukraine is “acute”according to a senior Western intelligence official who spoke with the FinancialTimes. And he added that the speed of Western supplies would be decisive for the outcome of the Russian attempt to regain the initiative in the war. That’s what they know in Scranton, where the 300 specialized operators they’re trying to keep production running at maximum power. You can see it in the videos that the Pentagon released to the press. 155mm shells, in various stages of completion, seem to be crammed into almost every available space. Fired from a self-propelled howitzer, the latest projectile model –the M795 – has a range of over 22 kilometers and is loaded with almost 12 kilos of TNT. Although substantial improvements have been made to explosives over the years, the metallic projectile itself, which resembles a quart Coke bottle with a warhead cone, hasn’t changed much in decades.

The process of making a helmet from these projectiles takes about three days.. Steel bars 20 feet long are cut with a robotic saw into 14-inch cylinders that weigh about 110 pounds. They are then heated for an hour in a gas oven until they come out, bright orange-red, at a temperature of 2000 degrees. In the next process, they are heated and cooled twice more to be cast, shaped, smoothed, painted, and packaged for shipment to another factory in Iowa, where they are filled with explosives.

It’s a time-consuming and labor-intensive process with little margin for error: a flaw of just a few millimeters could render a projectile useless in a life-and-death situation on the spot. battle. Although the Scranton plant is being upgraded in anticipation of the recent increase in production, most machines are decades old and much of the work is done by hand. The contract with the contractor General Dynamics, which manages the logistics of the factory, was to produce only 11,040 shells per month. Within a few months, he had to expand this production six times. The plant operates 24 hours a day, five days a week. They are studying how to add the other two days and return to an organization like when the trains were made there and they worked with three permanent teams.

Russian forces, led by mercenaries and ex-convicts from the Wagner Groupkeep fighting in what has already become the longest and bloodiest battle of this war for control of the city of Bahkmut, in the Donbass region, the richest in Ukraine. For now, the Ukrainians are holding the defenses despite suicide raids by Russian commandos recruited from the prisons. But commanders on the ground are asking for more ammunition because they can’t keep up with the supplies they have. “We shoot and shoot and the Russians keep coming because they are drugged and if they turn around they are shot by their own officers. They ask us to reserve bullets and cannon loads, but we cannot not “said one of the officers to the Kyiv Post.

Still, Ukraine is in a better position than it was in the middle of last year, when its military warned it was running out of ammunition as it struggled to contain a Russian offensive in the east. . At the time, Ukrainian forces still relied heavily on Soviet-era artillery and weapons systems. As the Western Allies stepped up their military support, providing howitzers and precision missiles that struck deep behind enemy lines, the Ukrainians halted Russian advances and went on the offensive in the northeast and south. But the intensity of artillery exchanges forces commanders to make difficult decisions about how best to use the reserves at their disposal. On Tuesday, the United States Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austinsaid Western countries were pushing for tactical training was provided that could reduce Ukraine’s reliance on artillery fire.

An analysis of Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from Washington, points out that the amount of ammunition that the Ukrainian forces use each month throughout the 960 kilometers of the front line it is impossible to replenish at the rate at which they are spent. “It would force other nations to continue supplying large quantities of artillery shells, or force Ukraine to reduce their use,” the document said. The greatest concern centers on the 155 millimeter projectiles which are already disappearing from American and European arsenals..

Russia, according to Western military analysts, is also depleted of its arsenal of conventional weapons. Moscow has dramatically increased its military spending, but it’s also already running out of ammunition and not enough with what its few allies like. Iran and North Korea. “Russia has used three quarters of its modern surface-to-surface missiles in Ukraine, and stocks of older equipment will take time to be ready for the battlefield”according to the CSIS report.

This is the reality, and the pressure is on places as far from the battlefield as the old factory in Scranton, where Ukraine’s future is in dispute.

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