Source: AFP
Hard-to-find gunpowder is hampering Europe’s race to provide hundreds of thousands of shells for Ukraine’s defense effort against Russian invaders, with solutions just beginning to emerge.
“We are all aware of the need to deal with the scarcity of certain components, especially gunpowder,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday after a gathering of Kiev’s allies in Paris.
“The dust is really what’s missing today,” he added.
The gunpowder penetrates propellant charges that launch artillery shells — like the 155mm NATO rounds used in many weapons sent to Ukraine — tens of kilometers away.
“A simple high-explosive artillery shell consists of three parts. It has a steel casing, a high-explosive main charge and a detonator,” said Johann Hoecherl, a munitions expert at the German Armed Forces University in Munich. .
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“The propellant charges are usually separate, because (gunners) will need one or two, up to six or even eight” depending on the desired range, he added.
While the propellant is still referred to as gunpowder “it’s not powder at all these days, it’s made up of rods or pellets,” Hoecherl said.
In a video on its website, German arms maker Rheinmetall shows stacked propellant cylinders filled with high-explosive pellets punching behind a shell in the breech of a cannon.
“Innovation at work”
Europe has a very small number of dust producers, said Jean-Paul Maulny, deputy director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS).
They include companies such as Eurenco, with operations in France, Belgium and Sweden, and Nitrochemie, majority owned by Rheinmetall, with facilities in Germany and Switzerland.
As many countries push to bring production back home, France “is in the process of relocating some of Eurenco’s production to Bourges” about 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Paris, Maulny said.
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“This is one of the bottlenecks for ammunition,” he added. “The top question is the amount of production.”
EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton told reporters in Paris on Friday that the bloc also faced challenges in sourcing raw materials for gunpowder.
Source: AFP
“To make powder, you need a certain kind of cotton, which comes mainly from China,” he said.
Nitrocellulose, also known as guncotton, is a key ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder.
“You will know, deliveries of this cotton from China stopped as if by accident a few months ago,” added Breton.
China and Russia have in recent years strengthened economic cooperation and diplomatic contacts, and their strategic cooperation has become closer since the invasion of Ukraine.
In Russia this week, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong said relations “are at the best period in history.”
Breton said that “the Scandinavian countries have found a substitute for Chinese cotton… the innovation works, precisely to meet the need for dust, because… we have problems today with dust capacity”.
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Companies making the substitute components for the powder will be among those selected for grants under the EU’s Act to Support Ammunition Production (ASAP) to be announced next week, Breton said.
“Much larger scale”
Breton predicted that EU efforts to boost production of artillery shells would raise the bloc’s annual production capacity to between 1.5 and 1.7 million by the end of this year.
He estimated that the corresponding amount for Russia was “just under two million”.
Source: AFP
“Everyone is putting themselves in a position to build on a much larger scale,” said IRIS expert Maulny.
“At the moment, the Ukrainians are short of shells … the Russians are not short after taking stock from the North Koreans, but it could happen in the coming months,” he added.
“No one was prepared for a high-intensity conflict where there is a huge consumption of military equipment. We haven’t seen a war like this since World War II,” Maulny said.
Source: AFP