Germany's Rheinmetall, the continent's largest defence manufacturer, has declared it is capable of immediately scaling up ammunition deliveries to Ukraine to levels that could materially shift the balance on the eastern front — but only if Western governments unlock the financial commitments necessary to activate existing production capacity.
The company's chief executive, Armin Papperger, told reporters that Rheinmetall's expanded facilities across Germany, Lithuania, and Romania can now produce shells at a rate that would meet Ukraine's stated battlefield requirements — provided purchase orders are confirmed. The bottleneck, he stressed, is political and financial, not industrial.
"We have the capacity. We have the workers. We have the production lines running," Papperger said. "What we need are governments to write the contracts. The ammunition exists — it simply needs to be paid for and delivered."
To understand today's headlines, we must look at yesterday's decisions. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Western defence industries were woefully unprepared for the scale of consumption that modern artillery warfare demands. Ukraine has fired, and Russia has fired, shells at rates not seen since the Second World War. Western stockpiles, calibrated for deterrence rather than sustained conflict, were rapidly exhausted.
In response, Rheinmetall and other European arms firms have spent the past three years in a frenzied expansion. Rheinmetall alone has invested more than €2 billion in new and expanded facilities, including a joint venture artillery shell plant in Ukraine itself — a plant that company officials note continues operating despite Russian air strikes.
The company now claims annual 155mm shell production capacity of approximately 700,000 rounds, a figure that could climb to 1.1 million by 2026 if existing orders justify the final tranche of investment. By comparison, the entire NATO alliance produced roughly 300,000 such shells annually as recently as 2022.
The declaration comes at a moment of acute uncertainty over Ukraine's ammunition pipeline. The incoming Trump administration has signalled a reduction in direct US military support, placing additional pressure on European nations to bridge the gap. Several EU member states have pledged to meet the shortfall, but translating political commitments into signed contracts has proven chronically slow.
A senior European defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Euromaidanpress that bureaucratic procurement timelines — often spanning 12 to 18 months from initial authorisation to delivery — remain the most significant impediment. "The industrial capacity is no longer the constraint," the official said. "Government decision-making speed is."
The Czech-led initiative to procure approximately 800,000 shells from non-Western producers has partially offset the deficit, but Ukrainian commanders have repeatedly stated they require a consistent and predictable supply of NATO-standard ammunition, particularly 155mm rounds compatible with Western-supplied howitzers.
Papperger's intervention appears designed to apply pressure on European governments ahead of critical NATO planning meetings this month. Rheinmetall has been unusually outspoken by the standards of the defence industry — a reflection, analysts suggest, of both the CEO's personal conviction about the security stakes involved and the commercial reality that investor confidence in the company's expansion is partly contingent on visible governmental follow-through.
For Ukraine, the promise of available ammunition that cannot be accessed due to funding gaps represents one of the conflict's most bitter ironies. As Russia continues to draw on its own vast stockpiles and accelerated production, the differential in shell delivery rates translates directly to battlefield outcomes — in lives, in territory, and in morale.
