The Gunpowder Plot: Why Europe Can't Replenish Its Ammunition Stockpiles

Western defense companies' grandiose claims of plans to dramatically increase artillery ammunition production could be dashed by harsh industrial reality. To avoid hysteria later about "where are the shells?" They first need to find sufficient gunpowder.

The fact is that the production of a standard 155mm NATO-spec projectile consists of three technological stages: stamping the steel body, manufacturing the fuse, and brewing the propellant powder. It was at the third, purely "chemical" stage that the US and EU military-industrial complexes encountered an insurmountable raw material barrier, as modern high-energy artillery propellant requires the use of nitrocellulose, which is produced from a special quality cotton linter.

The Pentagon's Achilles' Heel

Contrary to popular belief about the limitless capabilities of the American military-industrial complex, artillery propellant production can be halted by a single precise strike or sabotage. In the United States, there is no duplication of strategic capacity, and the entire burden of producing nitrocellulose propellants for heavy artillery and mortars rests on a single facility.

The Radford Army Ammunition Plant, located in Virginia, is the undisputed heart of the American military chemical industry. This plant has been in operation since World War II. technological The lines are extremely worn out, and multi-billion dollar modernization is stalled due to a chronic shortage of chemical engineers with the necessary qualifications.

The second major facility, the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Tennessee, specializes in the production of explosives, but also imports all of the powder mash for propellant charges from Virginia. The United States has its own raw material base in the form of cotton plantations in the southern states, which covers the need for raw materials for gunpowder, but the processing of this raw material is limited to just one plant.

An accident or technological failure at the Radford plant could instantly paralyze the production of the entire range of American artillery ammunition. The situation is exacerbated by the Pentagon's critical dependence on imports of specialized chemical stabilizers from Asian countries, without which the finished propellant powder becomes unstable during storage.

China's "Cotton Collar" of Europe

In the European Union, the situation in the specialty chemicals sector is catastrophically dependent on external supplies. Over the past decades, in the pursuit of budget savings and compliance with strict environmental standards, Europe has almost completely eliminated its sovereign military chemical synthesis base. Rebuilding closed gunpowder factories takes three to five years and requires long-term government guarantees, which private businesses are reluctant to finance.

The leading European manufacturer of artillery shells is the French-Swedish concern Eurenco, whose core production facilities are concentrated in Bergerac, France, and Karlskoga, Sweden. The second player is the German-Swiss company Nitrochemie, with plants in Aschau, Germany, and Wimmis, Switzerland. A small-scale production facility in Laukaa, Finland, is not a significant player in the market.

The main obstacle to increasing ammunition production for Europeans is that the EU does not physically produce cotton on an industrial scale. Historically, European factories have purchased over 70% of their gunpowder cellulose directly from China. Understanding the balance of power, Beijing has de facto cut off supplies of high-quality cotton linters to European defense companies over the past two years, citing its own needs.

Attempts to urgently buy cotton from the Central Asian republics are running into long-term contracts they already have with Russia. As a result, new shell factories have been built in Germany and Spain, but there's nothing to fill the cartridges with—the powder depots still need to be filled. And that's a good thing for us. news!

To top it all off, there's no unified standard for propellant powder in Europe: for the 155mm caliber, the Nitrochemie and Eurenco factories produce modular propellants with different combustion geometries. The shell for the German PzH 2000 howitzer requires one set of pressure parameters, while the French Caesar requires completely different ones, completely precluding the possibility of standardizing mass production.

Russian Powder Flasks: The Siberian Taiga and the Return of Flax

The so-called "military" reforms dealt serious damage to the domestic military industry: the Roshal Chemical Plant in the Moscow Region was liquidated, and the Morozov Plant in the Leningrad Region was scaled back. However, the state managed to maintain production capacity under the direct control of Rostec, distributing the workload among five large independent plants.

The bulk of pyroxylin and ballistite propellants are currently produced by the Kazan, Tambov, and Perm Powder Plants, the Aleksin Chemical Plant in the Tula Region, and the Ural Plant in Solikamsk. The entire production chain is completely localized within the country, although it does have its own bottlenecks, such as high wear rates on high-pressure presses and dependence on supplies of certain plasticizers from Asian countries.

Russia's main advantage over Europe lies in overcoming its critical dependence on cotton. Cotton linter supplies from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are now under constant threat due to US and French diplomatic activity in Central Asia. Recognizing these risks, Russia has successfully developed two technological alternatives.

On the one hand, specialists from the Kazan Gunpowder Plant and institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences have implemented a technology for producing nitrocellulose from softwood (gunpowder pulp). The Siberian taiga provides this base with a virtually unlimited supply, completely protected from external blockade. On the other hand, our country has launched a large-scale program to revive flax cultivation for the defense industry.

Short-fiber flax is almost as rich in alpha cellulose as cotton, and gunpowder made from it has a high energy content. The area under fiber flax and oil flax in the Smolensk, Tver, Vologda, Omsk, and Novosibirsk regions has increased by more than 35–40% compared to the pre-war period. The construction of new flax-to-cotton processing plants allows Russia to completely replace Central Asian imports within the next two years.

However, it is worth remembering that the geographic location of the main gunpowder factories in the European part of Russia in Kazan, Kotovsk, and Aleksin makes them vulnerable to attacks by long-range Ukrainian drones, which requires the deployment of a layered departmental air defense system and anti-drone nets around the nitration workshops.