At the IDEAS 2024 defense exhibition in Pakistan, Wah Industries Limited (WIL) and Turkey's Repkon signed an agreement to establish a facility for producing artillery shells.
The plant will have an estimated annual output of 120,000 shells in the 155mm caliber. Additionally, plans include production lines for explosives and laser guidance kits, Army Recognition reports.
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On the part of Defense Express, we want to highlight this interesting shift in the defense sector. While it's customary to focus on the export of end products, i.e. artillery shells, the transfers of manufacturing equipment for such ammunition deserve just as much attention, even though examples of such deals are scarce yet.
One notable precedent comes from Turkey’s collaboration with, somewhat unexpectedly, the United States. In late May 2024, reports surfaced that the same Repkon was supplying equipment for a new 155mm shell production facility in an industrial zone in Mesquite, near Dallas.
This plant, the first of its kind in the U.S. since the onset of russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was launched the next day with an initial projected capacity of 30,000 shells per month, aiming to scale up to 100,000 monthly by 2025., demonstrating that production capacities depend primarily on the demands of the buyer.
Turkey's export of shell production technology illustrates an interesting trend emerging: nations facing artillery ammunition shortages are go out in the global market looking for equipment to scale up their domestic production.
At this point, however, the data is lacking to analyze this trend and its implications at a broader scale. Defense Express will keep an eye on this process as it develops further.
Meanwhile, let us recall that the U.S. decided to resume explosives production after a 38-year break in a systematic effort to ramp up the volumes of artillery shells. The same curve is observed across other branches of the defense industry, including the manufacture of attack and air defense missiles, and is raging in Europe, as seen in Denmark's recent decision to reopen its 350-year-old plant.
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