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The US ramp-up is looking real solid at least!

It’s gone well relative to plans, but the flip side is that North Korea’s also sent shells, and that was announced after both the EU and US ramp-up. That offsets a big chunk of that.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-concerned-over-arms-transfers-and-military-cooperation-between-north-korea-and-russia/

North Korea believed to have made at least 10 arms transfers to Russia since August, delivering a million rounds of artillery.

https://apnews.com/article/us-army-ukraine-russia-ammunition-war-75a9ca2e3be09578c65f1198ba5b72e5

The Army is spending about $1.5 billion to ramp up production of 155 mm rounds from 14,000 a month before Russia invaded Ukraine…

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/10/06/us-army-awards-15b-to-boost-global-production-of-artillery-rounds/

Army officials have recently stated that 155mm artillery munition production will increase to 28,000 per month in October, which is double what the Army was producing at the start of the year.

I don’t know what we produced over 2023 in total, but we’ve only about doubled production this year. Even if we had that production rate average over the entire year, which we didn’t, that’d only be an additional 168,000 shells produced over the course of a year relative to pre-war production.

The plan is to build roughly 60,000 a month in FY24, reaching 80,000 by FY25. By FY26, the plan is to build 100,000 a month.

So if North Korea’s sent 1M rounds – and I see articles saying “over 1M” too, and assuming that those are 152mm – that’s six years of US pre-war production. 1.3 years of production at the 2024 production rate. .83 years of production at expected 2026 production rate. And that assumes that all US output goes to Ukraine; there’s going to be at least some use for training and such.

EDIT: A quick Google doesn’t turn up anyone saying what caliber of artillery the North Korean shells in question are. Makes a big difference whether that’s most/all 122mm or 152mm, though.

EDIT2: All the public stuff is just based on volume, so while we don’t know the split, I’m guessing that the 1M number is based more on at least a substantial quantity of 122mm.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/it-sure-seems-like-north-korea-gave-russia-500000-artillery-shells-to-use-in-ukraine/ar-AA1jyg7L

The White House previously stated that 1,000 containers were transferred between September 7 and October 1. Since then, additional shipments from North Korean have been spotted, and a “well-informed source” informed Tatarigami that the total (by the end of October) has reached 2,000 containers.

Frontelligence’s most conservative model calculated 2,000 containers, which would have resulted in 502,000 shells delivered. Other models that vary the mix of shells and train car capacity, however, arrived at 678,000 shells (25% 122-millimeter shells) and 804,000 shells (a 50/50 split of 122- and 152-millimter shells) delivered. Tatarigami notes that the figures are consistent with an Estonian intelligence estimate that 1,000 containers could carry 300,000-350,000 shells (600,000-750,000 shells for 2,000 containers).