On Friday, the US military announced the allocation of up to one billion dollars to increase the production of 155 mm artillery shells, which are used in large quantities in Ukraine.
The army said in a statement that two companies, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems and American Ordnance LLC, will compete to win the $993.7 million contract to produce between 12,000 and 20,000 additional missiles per month, according to AFP.
The announcement comes after the US military awarded a $522 million contract to two other companies to produce the same munitions in a deal funded by the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
Since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, about a year ago, Ukrainian and Russian forces have exchanged massive amounts of artillery shells at each other.
Last November, a US official said that Russian forces fired about 20,000 artillery shells per day.
As for Ukraine, the rate ranged from 4 to 7 thousand shells per day, more than the capacity of the Western coalition to produce to maintain this pace.
The firepower of the two parties later declined with the onset of winter, and they faced a shortage of ammunition and their tendency to preserve their stocks.
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