corroborated:
A Texas factory cost nearly $500 million but has produced zero artillery shells
A "high-risk" plan to use old machines to produce modern M795 artillery shells backfired, an Inspector General report found.
The Army spent almost half-a-billion dollars on a Texas ammunition factory to restock the military’s supply of 155 mm artillery shells, but the facility has yet to produce a single round in two years, a Pentagon watchdog found. The facility, in Mesquite, Texas, was brought online in 2024 after rounds of rapid-fire contracting to speed up the Army’s efforts to replenish artillery shells sent to Ukraine and cover increased training needs for U.S. forces.
The Texas factory was supposed to be producing 30,000 155 mm shells each month by October 2025, according to a Department of Defense Inspector General’s report. But by this March, it had yet to deliver any and the IG report said it did not expect to deliver any before September.
“The Army’s expenditure of $469 million to establish the Mesquite facility could have been used to address other Army or [Department of Defense] priorities,” the report said.
The report did not name the factory or the contractor, but the description of the facility matches a contract awarded to General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems that opened in May 2024. The report also said the unnamed contractor was the long-time operator of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania, which General Dynamics has run since 2006.
The Mesquite factory, the IG said, tried to start a “high-risk” production line using older machines used in previous artillery production lines. Army officials in the office in charge of the contract did not return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
The Army spent almost half-a-billion dollars on a Texas ammunition factory to restock the military’s supply of 155 mm artillery shells, but the facility has yet to produce a single round in two years, a Pentagon watchdog found. The facility, in Mesquite, Texas, was brought online in 2024 after rounds of rapid-fire contracting to speed up the Army’s efforts to replenish artillery shells sent to Ukraine and cover increased training needs for U.S. forces.
The Texas factory was supposed to be producing 30,000 155 mm shells each month by October 2025, according to a Department of Defense Inspector General’s report. But by this March, it had yet to deliver any and the IG report said it did not expect to deliver any before September.
“The Army’s expenditure of $469 million to establish the Mesquite facility could have been used to address other Army or [Department of Defense] priorities,” the report said.
The report did not name the factory or the contractor, but the description of the facility matches a contract awarded to General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems that opened in May 2024. The report also said the unnamed contractor was the long-time operator of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania, which General Dynamics has run since 2006.
The Mesquite factory, the IG said, tried to start a “high-risk” production line using older machines used in previous artillery production lines. Army officials in the office in charge of the contract did not return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
An Army official told Congress in February that General Dynamics’ Mesquite-based factory had yet to produce a single shell in nearly two years of operation. Brent Ingraham, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Sustainment, and Technology — a position widely referred to as the Army’s “acquisitions czar” — told Congress in February the plant was not meeting goals.
“I’m not happy with where we are at Mesquite,” Ingraham said in a hearing with lawmakers, according to Breaking Defense, as he laid out essentially the same missed deadlines and poor performance the IG reported Monday.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-ammo-factory-zero-shells/