During the IDEAS 2024 defense exhibition held in Pakistan, the local defense company Wah Industries Limited (WIL) and the Turkish defense firm Repkon signed a contract to establish a shell manufacturing plant, which will have a projected capacity of 120,000 155mm shells per year.
Additionally, plans are in place to set up production lines for explosives and laser guidance kits for shells, as reported by the Army Recognition portal.
In this story from Defense Express, we want to highlight a few key points. It is common to focus on various aspects related to the export of artillery shells, which is logical, especially given the rate of ammunition use in the full-scale war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
However, it is now also important to consider another aspect—the export of equipment for the production of 155mm shells, which is intriguing and significant in itself, even if there are currently not many examples to illustrate this.
Up to this point, there has been an interesting case where Turkey exported its equipment for setting up new production of 155mm shells, specifically regarding the United States, however strange that may sound.
In one of our publications in May 2024, we mentioned that the Turks are assisting the U.S. in constructing a plant capable of producing 30,000 shells per month. This story pertains to the "Mesquite" plant in the industrial zone near Dallas, which is set to be the first plant in the U.S. built since the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and for which the aforementioned defense company Repkon is supplying the equipment.
In this case, it is indeed true that at the initial stage of operation, this plant is expected to produce 30,000 155mm shells per month, and by 2025, it should ramp up to a capacity of 100,000 shells per month. This leads to the conclusion that in both examples mentioned above regarding equipment supplies for shell production from Turkey, the projected capacity is primarily determined by the wishes of the customer.
The trend of interested countries beginning to purchase equipment for their own artillery ammunition production is particularly noteworthy. However, it will be essential to monitor how this trend develops further.