There is an explosive flaw in the plan to rearm Ukraine

From the article (archive):

Europe needs bushels of combustibles to reach its target of producing 2m shells a year by the end of 2025. Each artillery shell is crammed with 10.8kg of a high-explosive such as tnt, hmx or rdx. Additional propellant charges are also needed to hurl the rounds over tens of kilometres. Other munitions require even larger amounts: the high-explosive warhead on a Storm Shadow missile, for example, weighs around 450kg. The trouble is that explosive makers are unsure that production can be cranked up and fear that the quirks of the industry will hamper the surge that Ukraine needs to remain competitive on the battlefield.

The end of the cold war sent demand for weapons plummeting, and forced many European explosive manufacturers to scale back operations, merge or simply shut up shop. Britain, for example, closed its last explosives plant in 2008. Europe’s last major producer of tnt is located in northern Poland. Elsewhere, many government-owned facilities were either privatised or mothballed. For decades their production has been calibrated for peacetime efficiency, not industrial-scale output, notes Johann Höcherl, a Professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. As a result, there is very little slack left in the supply chain to meet surging demand.

…

Amid these difficulties, some ammunition providers are looking further afield for their explosives. Reports indicate that Indian and Japanese explosive makers are filling some of the gap. Some experts worry that explosives from abroad are of lesser quality and could therefore damage equipment. The rhetoric from European governments is bullish and it is true that some progress is being made: eu-wide annual shell production is projected to reach at least 1.4m by the end of 2024, up from around 500,000 a year ago. When he laid the first brick for eurenco’s propellant factory in Bergerac on April 11th French President Emmanuel Macron defended the performance of France’s “war economy”. The plant, he said, would open, in record time, by 2025. Yet as Russia’s summer offensive gets under way, that is not quick enough to help shell-starved Ukrainians.