My grandma was a shell inspector in Arkansas during the Korean War. She won a bunch of prizes at the factory haha. In her dementia she blended stories from the armory and working at Burlington coat factory. Red lint was getting into the Shells and she "Shut everything down!"
Watched a video from during the first world war where they were producing shells here in Canada, pretty amazing its still basically the same just some automation now
Tolerances and quality control also have advanced quite a lot over the last century. There's also new metallurgical techniques and fuze types. While superficially similar, we have actually made leaps and bounds since the days of the horse drawn field gun firing mechanical time fuzed shrapnel shells.
I would love to see the CANZUK nations work a lot more closely. Having a single military force. And combined military industrial complex. It would definitely put us at the top table.
We could build robotic factories if we were committed to it. Of course it won't phase out humans overall. We however haven't needed to but I am sure in a peer to peer war time situation it will happen. I wonder what type of changes would be neccessary for things like aircraft and other high tech gadgets that require very well trained people to create though. I wonder if we have efforts for example a tank - would we make a model that is easier to produce but not as effective? Cut some corners here or there to be JUST good enough to be acceptable but saving materials and such. Say ammo that isn't machine to 1,847,973,087 inch. I hear the military is looking at it's manufacturing base because of how quickly both sides in the war are burning things. We have consolidated many things to just a few large companies from what I understand. I also read the AF has a problem with lack of pilots and during total war situation it will get worse.
not really my bro. Arty is the same, tanks are the same, but they have started putting chips into these shells to direct them better, and make them turn and stuff. Arty with chips costs several times normal arty
Back during the war my grandfather and my very young dad worked at Murry Gin Company in Dallas, Texas. They built and repaired cotton gins. The shop had a foundry and a shell shop where they cast shells for the war. We had a lamp made from one of these shells for the longest time.
✔️😉 This is the perfect opportunity to tell the history of how gin came to be..... Historically, the cotton gins produced by the traditional manufacturers were of such impeccable quality, that they rarely required repair or maintenance. Like the Maytag repair man in the TV commercials, the cotton gin repairmen hardly ever got a repair call! As a result, many cotton gin companies almost went out of business ..... It was at that moment of greatest diversity, that cotton gin manufacturers developed an entirely new distillation oriented product that would keep them in business! They even named this new product after their old product, ie. they called it "gin". If you visit any cotton gin museums, you'll see many of the old 1800's steam powered cotton gins, like the "Tanqueray model 3", the "Bombay Sapphire Cottonmaster 3000", the "Beefeater Quick-Clean XL", and the "Gordons Extra Dry Cotton Gin". 😁👍
@@HighlanderNorth1 I know that you are being facetious but I did learn that they had two types of "gin saws." The gin saws looked just like it sounds with teeth on a giant saw wheel that turned against a series of stats. The saws pulled cotton fiber past the slats but left the seeds. One type of saw pulled short fibers for spinning yard and the other type pulled long fibers for use it tires or rope.
@@JR-bj3uf Yeah, I can't imagine how difficult and time consuming it must've been to manually separate agricultural quantities of cotton fibers from it's seeds. Although I lived in Lenoir county NC til I was 12, I only saw live cotton plants on maybe 2-3 occasions. For some reason, they didn't grow cotton in either the area of eastern NC where we lived, or in the "Piedmont Triad" region of NC where the rest of our family lived(High Point, Greensboro, Winston Salem). We did have a LOT of tobacco & soybean fields though. So for me, it was actually a special thing to see a mature cotton field. In those rare instances where we drove somewhere cotton _was_ grown, I'd ask my parents to stop the car so I could grab a little of it. I remember trying to remove the seeds from a small portion of it. It wasn't easy.
@@HighlanderNorth1 Here in Texas cotton was king. It was a cash crop. When my parents were little everyone hoed cotton and you could make real money picking cotton but you had to be fast and you had to pick clean. The gin would reject bags with too much trash (bowels and sticks.) The field across from my house is owned by Ronny Lumpkin (a farmer in our area) and he puts in a planting of cotton every three years or so. The process if very different It is combined at harvest and the cotton is compacted into bails and slid onto the back of flat bed trucks. It is pretty cool to see a ripe field of cotton bowels.
@@JR-bj3uf It always amazed me that the material you use to make clothes grows on a small plant. It always seemed odd how pretty much every other plant crop rots and decomposes away, but fresh cotton will last hundreds of years in a drawer.
@@waliza001 That must have changed , there is a great video on this channel " inside the factory that makes the Army`s rifle rounds " from 3 months ago from BAE`s factory in CHESHIRE , they also stated they fill the bullets with the propellant in house . Well worth a watch . Regards
1. Steel bars arrive and are annealed 2. They are then machined hollow at one end 3 Final shape machining with the shells now hollow and pointed 4.The triggering and guidance components are added 5.Arming devices are added 6 Final inspection . painting and marking 7 Shipping to all US weapon Depots I worked for the DOD for 24 yrs this is standard military weapon production and the cycle that makes it in US factories
@@SA-xf1eb the base Bar of annealed Steel gets hollowed out inside so it can be packed with C4 and necessary electronics then the outside gets machined into a tapered shell that is then packed inside and sealed for final electronics assembly . Steel bars are never stamped they are always machined to within .1000 of an inch circumference so they fly straight .
A friend owns a factory that machines parts for military use. He onetime inquired on why they requested a part be manufactured the way it was. Their reply was because it kills more people that way. Wow brutal
@@Google_Does_Evil_Now lol he couldn’t elaborate on what the part was. They are not allowed to talk too much about things they do for military contracts.
It’s beautiful and we need to build more of these industries now when Europe is about to be a collective military superpower and to sustain Ukraine until russia will lose the war and Putin and his Nazi regime are send to Haag and then straight to hell. We have a new Hitler (Putler) in Europe that we need to eliminate.
@@alexm566 oh yeah, that’s right. The danger of making and handling those chemicals in the first place, then loading shells in an assembly line process. There must have been many accidents that were kept secret.
@@Withnail1969 The Allies produced around 790 million shells and the Central Powers 680 million shells in WWI. The vast majority of that was produced from 1916 onwards. At peak each side were producing over 10 million a month, though not tens of million per month.
No, Glascoed is unlikely to allow a film crew, at least not in the Danger Area - it's actually quite an old fashioned factory in the main, but at least it provides many well-paid jobs and hopefully has a future now the NGMS contract has started.
Thanks for the video. In 1967 I went to work at Chamberlain Corp. in Scranton Pa. the plant made 155, 175 MM shells along with 8 inch shells. In 1969 I found myself in South Vietnam firing 105mm shells from a self propelled howitzer. The plant I was at was working 2 shifts each day sometimes working Saturdays producing 2000 shells per size & shift, not sure how many 8 inch were manufactured. The plant had 2,000 employees when I was there working the 2nd shift.
My grandfather who had an older brother who produced these films during the second war to end all wars.. always made a point to state The thought that half of what you see and none of what you hear when you're on either side makes any sort of usable sense..
There are dummy manufacturing factories all over the US that can switch to munitions in less than 24hrs. Idk why that was so cool to learn as a child, but it's one of those factoids that has stuck with me. My parents worked at one for a time in the 70s.
Sorry - but none of those exist today. The US defense industries have adapted themselves to produce at peacetime consumption rates with little extra capacity (excess capacity costs money and the US government refuses to subsidize 'idle' capacities are defense companies. (Mostly because of all the people who would automatically assume that this is the result of corruption instead of prudent planning.)
Not anymore. Everything is consolidated into a few companies. And, we started to wind down operations from 2 long wars. Even in the 2021-22 budget, the US was halving 155mm shell quantities.
In the US there are 9 JMC factories. (Crane, Holston, Iowa, Lake City, Pine Bluff, Quad City, Radford, and Scranton) Of those: only two(Iowa Army Ammunition plant and Scranton Army Ammunition Plant) produce 155mm shells. Milan Army Ammunition plant was another but it shut down in 2019. The pandemic did stall its decommissioning so it may be possible to reactivate if needed. Besides that General Dynamics and IMT also have some private plants but that's another 1-2 155mm lines each company and a minor part of total capacity. Prior to 2005 capacity was greater as Lone Star Army Ammunition plant was still operating but even then its not that impressive. Thing is shell manufacturing is highly automated work using CNC machines and requiring extreme precision. It costs tens of millions just to get the tooling for a new line and that sort of hardware can come with half a decade lead time for ordering. Labor costs mean you cant just go 1940s and open manual production lines anymore even assuming you could somehow find enough qualified machinists. This week even the Army announced a plan to increase 155mm shell production from 14,000 a month in 2022 to 20,000 in 2023 (likely by adding a third shift at existing plants) and then 40,000 by 2025 which means they plan to open a few new lines. It would take a massive investment to reach much beyond that and with South Korea, Japan, and most NATO countries also moving to double capacity. As such unless we get in a hot war with Russia or China we likely will not see much more increase stateside. TL:DR: The munitions infrastructure of the US is highly optimized for peacetime production and lacks the tooling to expand rapidly. Old plants were decommissioned and could not keep pace with modern production lines even if you could somehow reactivate them.
Interesting but it would be nice ti know the production capacity if the factory and supply chain. eg, if we order 100,000 155mm shells tomorrow for Ukraine when would the first be delivered and when the last?
it shouldn't concern you, or anyone else asking these things under youtube videos, it is a need to know sort of thing, and shouldn't be general knowledge, what we would like to know if the capacity is enough, and hopefully the answer is - yes
@@dsfs17987 $64,000 question is what is enough? And just how upscale for war can be done in what time scale as most wars have shown weapons and ammunition supply is always a factor as makeing stuff is often far harder and more involved than most people realise.
I thought Washington was in the District of Columbia USA. Turns out it is the ancestral home of George Washington in England. Interesting to see how the shells are produced.
Er no George Washington 's parents came from P****** , Essex ( l forgets the name !) but it's further south in England ,near London ! Going further back his Grand Parents or Great Great parents would come from this Washington mentioned here or within 10 miles of the place !
@@letsgobrandon987 Those are only unguided artillery shells. They are basically large bullets filled with some suitable explosive charges and attached to fuses. There are no guidance systems nor new unknown manufacturing secrets.
It 60 seconds per shell, but you'll note it has multiple processes. At least 4 or 5 from the video, but probably more, given the what the final product looked like. So it takes 60s for one to go through it all, but you have 5 going through at any one time, and so its more like 5 in 60s, even if it takes one 60s.
So 10,000 shells a year is great in peace time, but can you scale that up extremely quickly should war break out and you burn through a years worth of production in a matter of weeks or months? The high tech forging machines and robots, and CNC machines are really great, but take quite a while to order if you needed to expand capacity fast. I hope there is a warehouse somewhere with duplicates in mothballs should they be needed quickly.
@@liveuser8527 Maybe true, as I don't know the USA manufacturing capacity in peace time, but the USA is not the only one making these shells for NATO. Many of the NATO countries have factories to make these standard sizes.
@@littlewingpsc27 yes but what you don't seem to understand and what you haven't factored in is that humans are evolved monkes.. Zelensky is an evolved monke and he p00ps from his but+hole
Wait till the new future solider outfit is ready. They throw the 155mm shells with there exoskeleton hands, 105mm get kicked 20 miles away and for the mortar they thrust the hips and the suit does the rest.
We made shell components in the middle east conflict to supplement the main suppliers, because they could not keep up with the supply needs of the MOD at the time. It is amazing that it would only take an issue at the factory by an aggressor to completely stop production. Has the MOD got a fall back plan in place with other companies to step in if this factory is brought to a standstill?
I find it so ironic that the factory that produces munitions in the UK is in the ancestral home of the military commander who fought against the British to establish the United States. Really cool to see the process though especially as someone who is really fascinated with blacksmithing as well as guns.
Surprising amount of human interaction during production. Would have thought making millions of a thing would make it worth fully-automating the production of said item.
He said they make 10s of thousands per year, sounds like much, but really isn't in terms of mass production. That is roughly 100 or so per day, within a normal 8 hour shift, that leaves about 5 minutes per shell, per worker. Actual numbers might be slightly different but in the range of minutes per shell, so less automation seems perfectly adequate. Just five to six workers per station would have 20-30 minutes working time on each shell.
@@seniorslaphead8336 it seems you may have missed the part were they talking to the third generation of BRITISH worker that had been working there for 20 years. From what i could see this was a British based company employing British people (and paying taxes to Britain) to produce products for use by British forces on behalf of Britain and it's allies.
Figures provided by MoD estimate BAE will annually produce approximately 70 million rounds of small-arms ammunition, 100,000 large-caliber rounds, 40,000 medium-caliber shells and 75,000 mortar rounds.
@korma9732 no they don't lol. go look it up. they haven't even been able to reach the 100,000 per month goal. according to the dod they were producing 30,000 per month at the beginning of 2024 and hope to be producing 100,000 per month in 2025
Great work & fabulous history. However, the machine tools to make the items are not British - I saw German and Korean manufacturers there. Ramping up production could be difficult if you don’t know how to make the machine tools yourself, which is a key difference today compared with 1914 or 1939.
Doosan lathes, South Korean and Fanuc Robots which are Japanese. The majority of the electronics in the Doosan lathes are probably all Fanuc parts made in Japan too. We do have the capacity to do a lot of repairs to those machines here in the UK, motor rebuilds, servo drive repairs down to a board level etc but we are heavily dependant on parts being imported to do that. In the case of a full blown conflict it would most likely end up in a WW2 style situation with other machine shops that have similar equipment converting over to war time production, in the case of a CNC lathe of the right capacity that could be done in a matter of hours, the forging process, maybe not so easy.
It’s cos the tories think war is just like a domestic issue. If it doesn’t affect them they don’t care until a missile crashes into parliament and burns their suits.
At the moment it's quicker to buy them in right now. If you required it, you could conscript the entire workforce into defence manufacturing. You would be able to spit out a great variety and number of tools once the onerous impositions of having to buy in your own tooling were eliminated. Once said tools and jigs were created, you could order multiply your productivity by an order of 3 to 5, depending on the material in question. With competent leadership, and the ability to severely punish those who stood in the way of productivity, in 15 months you could get munitions manufacture up to say an even billion per year out of a country like australia. Or at very least, I know I could. The game winning move would be making sure you had the hardware capable of delivering those munitions to the correct targets, in a relatively short period of time. I think the ability to upscale manufacturing is going to be critical to dealing with new low-cost loitering munitions. I'm not convinced that the laser weapons so far demonstrated by the British are deterrent enough for China.
From this quick video there seems to be far too little automation and far too much hands on work. This plant should be able to increase production ten fold or more with ease if required and automation is the key to this.
automation is also prone to failure (at the same time not) but understand me right!, in the end knowledge in the brain cant be replaced, in war time this also matters. It might be the reason why the factory is not fully automated. Employees are also probably deep in the workers union which balances what the company can or cant do.
@@Uvisir I think that a lot of it has to do with the peacetime thinking that we have had in the UK for almost 80 years. These attitudes must change in the UK and all of Europe. We have to assume that the US is going to take a backseat in the defence of Europe and every country needs to spend a LOT more than 2% of GDP per annum or face terrible consequences. Slava Ukraine. 🇺🇦🇬🇧
Interesting topic, but i'd like a 40 minute documentary about it, not a brief glance. A full start-to-finish process to understand why its taking so damn long to make them.
This is fantastic in an old-world sense - like watching a 1960's Jaguar Factory.... but what is needed today is something more like the ability of a multi-acre Tesla Gigafactory to churn iterations and volumes rapidly - and at redundant locations.
In peacetime volume is not needed for the UK armed forces, they have been so hollowed out there isn't the equipment or manpower to require more than thousands of shells a year. Given that we are now sending sheels to ukraine, extra shifts and extra capacity are a must.
Let us not forget the tremendous manufacturing capacity of the United States and the UK. Early in the seventies I worked for the Bureau of Reclamation at the Denver Federal Center whose primary purpose during WWI & WWII was the manufacturing of ammunition. The floor of the Bureau’s building had copper impregnated concrete as an aide in grounding. Millions upon millions of various caliber munitions were manufactured there every month! In time of need the manufacturing capacity of ammunition is staggering!
Every proxy way since Viet Nam makes you double the pay in war weapon factories I put two kids through college with overtime pay from Iraq and Afghanistan
The Russian Munitions Factories are now churning out Artillery Shells at a rate of over 3Millon Shells a year. This factory in the North East of England "produces 10's of 1000's of shells per year" Current daily usage of Shells by Ukraine is about 4,000 per day. Russia fires at least 20,000 shells per day.
Trust me Russian factories are "gulags" and they are not run well. There have been ammunition blown up because they store on the side of road. A lot of ammo ends up in "Black Market" so you see illegal Russian ammo in Syria, Iran, or even in Ukraine.
But we no longer make artillery propellant in the UK...BAE closed ROF Bishopton in 1998 after the MoD gave the order to a South African firm... So we can make the shells, we can fill them with explosive...but we can't make the propellant to fire them anymore...or the barrels for large calibre weapons, that shut down 4 years ago as well... BAE and MoD working as a destructive team...same as usual...
Fascinating and disappointing at the same time. (The kid in me:) Wow explosive shells, let's have a look...!!! huh, far less exciting than I expected, (Grown up me:) but satisfyingly interesting to watch the mechanical engineering process. Don't ask me what I was expecting😆😆😆
Probably something similar to Bugs Bunny where the shells roll on a conveyor belt and some guy with a mallet hits the tip of each one before they are packaged.
Did this kind of mfg in the 80' s six years & 1 day. Handled tons of steel & aluminum components. I'd gladly go back with a CNC certification, heat-treat, or just material handling
It must be so disheartening to put all that time and expertise into building such expensive shells for your customer to destroy them the first chance they get. 🤔
So basically you can only produce 1440 on a 24 hr shift pattern of the larger shells a day 5256000 a year ……isn’t enough in a conflict situation really is it .
I think it’s totally bonkers to announce where these are made on UA-cam especially the way the world is at the moment, why not just say a factory in the U.K. instead of telling the world where something as important as this where the location is. The government once said loose lips sinks ships!
Anybody with basic abillity can look most of this stuff up web or not. Understand the idea of loose lips and all that but you also need to be real about things.
@@jon1801 Chop all the billions wasted by the NHS on things like "equality & diversity" and we might have a health service that works. Remember the Nightingale hospitals? the London one had 800 beds and treated 54 patients before it was closed. The cost? about £2 million per patient.
Only tens of thousands a year - I see huge expansion prospects for this factory. I'm sure that even a 50 fold increase would find enthusiastic buyers for all they could make. And the West needs to ramp up its training rates and supply Ukraine as well as replace its stockpiles - so the market will be buoyant for a decade.
normal arty hasn't changed too much other than making sure the shells are more precise and the amount of power behind it is more precise for better targeting. The big changes are in the computers that can program the shell as it goes up the tube and the gps that can guide the shell. Thats expensive artillery bro
A groove is lathed, a tight sleeve with a copper injection hole, then they slightly lathe along the whole shel so its even all the way along and at its correct caliber, the copper is at the shells thickest point to engage the rifling in the barrel.....a little after the clip starts, you can see a guy lifting a shell with chains, and u can see the groove before the copper ring is in it...
If I'm ever given three wishes that place will be out of business because bombs will never be needed again. God bless our armed forces around the world.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
It is nice to see something still being made in Britain.
Something, anything
Curry and questionable political decisions?
@@heathmurphy3735 I couldnt Imagine a world without curry and rice. The Eastern Bangers and Mash - glad good curry is in the UK!
@@madeanaccounttospillthebor9568 Curry was created by Britain, of course it's available in the UK.
Lots of things are still made in the UK, it's just you don't know much about engineering so it's off your radar.
My grandma was a shell inspector in Arkansas during the Korean War. She won a bunch of prizes at the factory haha. In her dementia she blended stories from the armory and working at Burlington coat factory. Red lint was getting into the Shells and she "Shut everything down!"
Ah, QC. The most important job in a machine shop. I'm glad she still takes her job seriously and my thanks for her service.
Watched a video from during the first world war where they were producing shells here in Canada, pretty amazing its still basically the same just some automation now
Tolerances and quality control also have advanced quite a lot over the last century. There's also new metallurgical techniques and fuze types. While superficially similar, we have actually made leaps and bounds since the days of the horse drawn field gun firing mechanical time fuzed shrapnel shells.
I would love to see the CANZUK nations work a lot more closely. Having a single military force. And combined military industrial complex. It would definitely put us at the top table.
try finding the ww2 black white video about stocktaking at the end of war scrap yar. how they accounted for winding down of manufacture
We could build robotic factories if we were committed to it. Of course it won't phase out humans overall.
We however haven't needed to but I am sure in a peer to peer war time situation it will happen.
I wonder what type of changes would be neccessary for things like aircraft and other high tech gadgets that require very well trained people to create though. I wonder if we have efforts for example a tank - would we make a model that is easier to produce but not as effective? Cut some corners here or there to be JUST good enough to be acceptable but saving materials and such. Say ammo that isn't machine to 1,847,973,087 inch.
I hear the military is looking at it's manufacturing base because of how quickly both sides in the war are burning things. We have consolidated many things to just a few large companies from what I understand.
I also read the AF has a problem with lack of pilots and during total war situation it will get worse.
not really my bro. Arty is the same, tanks are the same, but they have started putting chips into these shells to direct them better, and make them turn and stuff. Arty with chips costs several times normal arty
Back during the war my grandfather and my very young dad worked at Murry Gin Company in Dallas, Texas. They built and repaired cotton gins. The shop had a foundry and a shell shop where they cast shells for the war. We had a lamp made from one of these shells for the longest time.
✔️😉 This is the perfect opportunity to tell the history of how gin came to be..... Historically, the cotton gins produced by the traditional manufacturers were of such impeccable quality, that they rarely required repair or maintenance. Like the Maytag repair man in the TV commercials, the cotton gin repairmen hardly ever got a repair call! As a result, many cotton gin companies almost went out of business .....
It was at that moment of greatest diversity, that cotton gin manufacturers developed an entirely new distillation oriented product that would keep them in business! They even named this new product after their old product, ie. they called it "gin". If you visit any cotton gin museums, you'll see many of the old 1800's steam powered cotton gins, like the "Tanqueray model 3", the "Bombay Sapphire Cottonmaster 3000", the "Beefeater Quick-Clean XL", and the "Gordons Extra Dry Cotton Gin". 😁👍
@@HighlanderNorth1 I know that you are being facetious but I did learn that they had two types of "gin saws." The gin saws looked just like it sounds with teeth on a giant saw wheel that turned against a series of stats. The saws pulled cotton fiber past the slats but left the seeds. One type of saw pulled short fibers for spinning yard and the other type pulled long fibers for use it tires or rope.
@@JR-bj3uf
Yeah, I can't imagine how difficult and time consuming it must've been to manually separate agricultural quantities of cotton fibers from it's seeds. Although I lived in Lenoir county NC til I was 12, I only saw live cotton plants on maybe 2-3 occasions. For some reason, they didn't grow cotton in either the area of eastern NC where we lived, or in the "Piedmont Triad" region of NC where the rest of our family lived(High Point, Greensboro, Winston Salem). We did have a LOT of tobacco & soybean fields though.
So for me, it was actually a special thing to see a mature cotton field. In those rare instances where we drove somewhere cotton _was_ grown, I'd ask my parents to stop the car so I could grab a little of it. I remember trying to remove the seeds from a small portion of it. It wasn't easy.
@@HighlanderNorth1 Here in Texas cotton was king. It was a cash crop. When my parents were little everyone hoed cotton and you could make real money picking cotton but you had to be fast and you had to pick clean. The gin would reject bags with too much trash (bowels and sticks.)
The field across from my house is owned by Ronny Lumpkin (a farmer in our area) and he puts in a planting of cotton every three years or so. The process if very different It is combined at harvest and the cotton is compacted into bails and slid onto the back of flat bed trucks. It is pretty cool to see a ripe field of cotton bowels.
@@JR-bj3uf
It always amazed me that the material you use to make clothes grows on a small plant. It always seemed odd how pretty much every other plant crop rots and decomposes away, but fresh cotton will last hundreds of years in a drawer.
Didnt even realise like most people i would expect that we made our own shells and bullets which was another video i saw a while back , great to see .
I knew we made our own rifle ammunition, Radway Green, 5.56mm best 5.56mm round out there, at one time anyway, not sure about now.
I used to make High Explosive for BAE in SOMERSET until they shut it down. It was going during the Second World War.
@@steveh100 ammunition yes but no powder
@waliza001 what? Just the bullet and case but no powder...
@@waliza001 That must have changed , there is a great video on this channel " inside the factory that makes the Army`s rifle rounds " from 3 months ago from BAE`s factory in CHESHIRE , they also stated they fill the bullets with the propellant in house . Well worth a watch . Regards
Fascinating. I'd love to see a much longer video of the same process from start to finish...
Nice try Putin, we're not sharing our production process
Same. Very interesting
1. Steel bars arrive and are annealed
2. They are then machined hollow at one end
3 Final shape machining with the shells now hollow and pointed
4.The triggering and guidance components are added
5.Arming devices are added
6 Final inspection . painting and marking
7 Shipping to all US weapon Depots
I worked for the DOD for 24 yrs this is standard military weapon production and the cycle that makes it in US factories
@@BigDsGaming2022 Why are they machined hollow instead of stamping them to rough form? I get the final machining but not machining to form. Thanks.
@@SA-xf1eb the base Bar of annealed Steel gets hollowed out inside so it can be packed with C4 and necessary electronics then the outside gets machined into a tapered shell that is then packed inside and sealed for final electronics assembly . Steel bars are never stamped they are always machined to within .1000 of an inch circumference so they fly straight .
A friend owns a factory that machines parts for military use. He onetime inquired on why they requested a part be manufactured the way it was. Their reply was because it kills more people that way. Wow brutal
Was it bullets and they wanted them made of metal not paper?
I'm joking. But.
@@Google_Does_Evil_Now lol he couldn’t elaborate on what the part was. They are not allowed to talk too much about things they do for military contracts.
War is all about brutality.
This is like a wolf being shocked that sheep die when they eat them.
Good for him... sounds like dollar signs to me
Really interesting. Thanks to you all for the splendid work you do
It’s beautiful and we need to build more of these industries now when Europe is about to be a collective military superpower and to sustain Ukraine until russia will lose the war and Putin and his Nazi regime are send to Haag and then straight to hell. We have a new Hitler (Putler) in Europe that we need to eliminate.
“Splendid”
Great video. Thank you. God Bless Britain.
happy to see documentaries like this starting to pop up again
Hard to imagine that industry during WW I were able to manufacture 10’s of millions of shells per month on each side.
Including many chemical filled ones.
@@alexm566 oh yeah, that’s right. The danger of making and handling those chemicals in the first place, then loading shells in an assembly line process. There must have been many accidents that were kept secret.
with higher tolerances it was much easier to do on a large scale with lower skilled labour able to fill huge factories with workers
@@Withnail1969 The Allies produced around 790 million shells and the Central Powers 680 million shells in WWI. The vast majority of that was produced from 1916 onwards. At peak each side were producing over 10 million a month, though not tens of million per month.
Give us a follow up video from the Welsh factory please 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Thats the Glascoed filling factory...not sure they allow cameras in there...its a very hazadous process.
No, Glascoed is unlikely to allow a film crew, at least not in the Danger Area - it's actually quite an old fashioned factory in the main, but at least it provides many well-paid jobs and hopefully has a future now the NGMS contract has started.
Amazing work 👏
We used to make 81mm cast iron mortar shell casings @ Wm Lee in Dronfield. thousands a week during Afghan ops.
If they can make 155mm size castings the US Government wants to hear from them...
Wm Lee are still the supplier of cast 81mm mortar bodies to BAE.
Thanks for the video. In 1967 I went to work at Chamberlain Corp. in Scranton Pa. the plant made 155, 175 MM shells along with 8 inch shells. In 1969 I found myself in South Vietnam firing 105mm shells from a self propelled howitzer. The plant I was at was working 2 shifts each day sometimes working Saturdays producing 2000 shells per size & shift, not sure how many 8 inch were manufactured. The plant had 2,000 employees when I was there working the 2nd shift.
So in 1967 the lant did per day 4000 shells, and now they do 11000 per month of 155 shells (or 550 per working day).
I worked at Chamberlain Mfg New Bedford, MA location in the forge room in the 80's. I remember 105 and 155.
@Miroslaw Karas I'd guess they were possibly made with looser tolerances with simpler shells. They were in a prolonged war too so 🤷♂️ my guess
My grandfather who had an older brother who produced these films during the second war to end all wars.. always made a point to state The thought that half of what you see and none of what you hear when you're on either side makes any sort of usable sense..
There are dummy manufacturing factories all over the US that can switch to munitions in less than 24hrs. Idk why that was so cool to learn as a child, but it's one of those factoids that has stuck with me. My parents worked at one for a time in the 70s.
In my country, there was a large farming equipment factory, that could be switched to making Tanks.
Can you name one?
Sorry - but none of those exist today. The US defense industries have adapted themselves to produce at peacetime consumption rates with little extra capacity (excess capacity costs money and the US government refuses to subsidize 'idle' capacities are defense companies. (Mostly because of all the people who would automatically assume that this is the result of corruption instead of prudent planning.)
Not anymore. Everything is consolidated into a few companies. And, we started to wind down operations from 2 long wars.
Even in the 2021-22 budget, the US was halving 155mm shell quantities.
In the US there are 9 JMC factories. (Crane, Holston, Iowa, Lake City, Pine Bluff, Quad City, Radford, and Scranton) Of those: only two(Iowa Army Ammunition plant and Scranton Army Ammunition Plant) produce 155mm shells.
Milan Army Ammunition plant was another but it shut down in 2019. The pandemic did stall its decommissioning so it may be possible to reactivate if needed.
Besides that General Dynamics and IMT also have some private plants but that's another 1-2 155mm lines each company and a minor part of total capacity.
Prior to 2005 capacity was greater as Lone Star Army Ammunition plant was still operating but even then its not that impressive.
Thing is shell manufacturing is highly automated work using CNC machines and requiring extreme precision. It costs tens of millions just to get the tooling for a new line and that sort of hardware can come with half a decade lead time for ordering. Labor costs mean you cant just go 1940s and open manual production lines anymore even assuming you could somehow find enough qualified machinists.
This week even the Army announced a plan to increase 155mm shell production from 14,000 a month in 2022 to 20,000 in 2023 (likely by adding a third shift at existing plants) and then 40,000 by 2025 which means they plan to open a few new lines. It would take a massive investment to reach much beyond that and with South Korea, Japan, and most NATO countries also moving to double capacity. As such unless we get in a hot war with Russia or China we likely will not see much more increase stateside.
TL:DR: The munitions infrastructure of the US is highly optimized for peacetime production and lacks the tooling to expand rapidly. Old plants were decommissioned and could not keep pace with modern production lines even if you could somehow reactivate them.
Had no clue there was so much "hands on" in the artillery shell production...
The annual production of this factory would last about a week in the Ukraine. Best sharpen you're tools lads.
Not a week, about 12 weeks I estimate.
@@Britlurker And not all shells fired are 155mm or 105mm..
* your
great that we still manufacture our own ammunition and sell it around the world. great seeing how they made.
Interesting but it would be nice ti know the production capacity if the factory and supply chain. eg, if we order 100,000 155mm shells tomorrow for Ukraine when would the first be delivered and when the last?
Also how have they scaled up operations since the war started and what do they hope to produce a every week.
That’s all classified, the military doesn’t want anyone to know how many shells we can make
it shouldn't concern you, or anyone else asking these things under youtube videos, it is a need to know sort of thing, and shouldn't be general knowledge, what we would like to know if the capacity is enough, and hopefully the answer is - yes
They probably produce per year what Ukrainians shoot in maximum 10-14 days.
@@dsfs17987 $64,000 question is what is enough? And just how upscale for war can be done in what time scale as most wars have shown weapons and ammunition supply is always a factor as makeing stuff is often far harder and more involved than most people realise.
I thought Washington was in the District of Columbia USA. Turns out it is the ancestral home of George Washington in England. Interesting to see how the shells are produced.
Well also a state in the US
You need to learn some history lad😂 washy isn’t exactly a small town with no history
Er no George Washington 's parents came from P****** , Essex ( l forgets the name !) but it's further south in England ,near London ! Going further back his Grand Parents or Great Great parents would come from this Washington mentioned here or within 10 miles of the place !
@@adamatch9624 l passed through it on a train once l wasn't very impressed !! lt was delayed 3 - 4 hours ! Due to local oiks vandalism !
@@Sam_Green____4114 oils?
Wow a BAE systems site that they haven't shut down....yet!!!!
I'm suprised this hasn't been sold off yet.
it should be running 24/7 right now
the government should really be subsidizing the construction of additional plants, in exchange for a stake in the company and price capped quota's.
Thats great would love to see the filling of munitions and making the fuses.
That is private information. They don't even show this process in bullet making in BAE.
Seriously? You want an unguided tour of Area 51 too?
@@letsgobrandon987 Yes!
@@letsgobrandon987
Those are only unguided artillery shells. They are basically large bullets filled with some suitable explosive charges and attached to fuses. There are no guidance systems nor new unknown manufacturing secrets.
Consumables. The best type of business to be in.
The 60 seconds per shell throughput of the casting machine seems like a really long time for a mass production process.
It 60 seconds per shell, but you'll note it has multiple processes. At least 4 or 5 from the video, but probably more, given the what the final product looked like.
So it takes 60s for one to go through it all, but you have 5 going through at any one time, and so its more like 5 in 60s, even if it takes one 60s.
Its a forging machine not a casting machine.
It's not "one five five caliber". It's 155mm. Caliber and mm are completely different measuring systems and are not interchangeable.
So 10,000 shells a year is great in peace time, but can you scale that up extremely quickly should war break out and you burn through a years worth of production in a matter of weeks or months? The high tech forging machines and robots, and CNC machines are really great, but take quite a while to order if you needed to expand capacity fast. I hope there is a warehouse somewhere with duplicates in mothballs should they be needed quickly.
Ukraine uses 5,000 a day..usa can only produce 15,000 a month
@@liveuser8527 Maybe true, as I don't know the USA manufacturing capacity in peace time, but the USA is not the only one making these shells for NATO. Many of the NATO countries have factories to make these standard sizes.
In wartime you would utilise factories that have the same machinery that produce other items. CNC's especially are used in all manner of industries.
That's just one factory. There's more. And it's not 10k but tens of thousands.
@@littlewingpsc27 yes but what you don't seem to understand and what you haven't factored in is that humans are evolved monkes.. Zelensky is an evolved monke and he p00ps from his but+hole
I like that they are made in Washington.
The heros that keep us safe pay them properly!
As long as there is more than one human on earth, the threat of war will always be with us. Conflict was hardwired into our brain.
Glad they are made in Britain, now we just need to buy more artillery pieces for the army so we can use more!
Wait till the new future solider outfit is ready. They throw the 155mm shells with there exoskeleton hands, 105mm get kicked 20 miles away and for the mortar they thrust the hips and the suit does the rest.
We made shell components in the middle east conflict to supplement the main suppliers, because they could not keep up with the supply needs of the MOD at the time.
It is amazing that it would only take an issue at the factory by an aggressor to completely stop production. Has the MOD got a fall back plan in place with other companies to step in if this factory is brought to a standstill?
Buckle up guys, we expect you to make 10x more shells soon.
I find it so ironic that the factory that produces munitions in the UK is in the ancestral home of the military commander who fought against the British to establish the United States. Really cool to see the process though especially as someone who is really fascinated with blacksmithing as well as guns.
Surprising amount of human interaction during production.
Would have thought making millions of a thing would make it worth fully-automating the production of said item.
UK isn't it... we don't invest in productivity, just import cheap labour instead.
He said they make 10s of thousands per year, sounds like much, but really isn't in terms of mass production.
That is roughly 100 or so per day, within a normal 8 hour shift, that leaves about 5 minutes per shell, per worker.
Actual numbers might be slightly different but in the range of minutes per shell, so less automation seems perfectly adequate.
Just five to six workers per station would have 20-30 minutes working time on each shell.
@@seniorslaphead8336 it seems you may have missed the part were they talking to the third generation of BRITISH worker that had been working there for 20 years. From what i could see this was a British based company employing British people (and paying taxes to Britain) to produce products for use by British forces on behalf of Britain and it's allies.
@@happychappy2b252 Well of course that's who they would talk to 🙄
@@seniorslaphead8336 you realise there is a minimum wage?
Thank you, I always wondered who and how they were made and your factory is very professional and clean ,tks again keep up the great work.
Figures provided by MoD estimate BAE will annually produce approximately 70 million rounds of small-arms ammunition, 100,000 large-caliber rounds, 40,000 medium-caliber shells and 75,000 mortar rounds.
So this whole factory only produces enough small arms audition to keep San Antonio Texas supplied for all of about 3 months 😂
so it produces in a year as many artillery shells as russia fire's in a week
@korma9732 no they don't lol. go look it up. they haven't even been able to reach the 100,000 per month goal. according to the dod they were producing 30,000 per month at the beginning of 2024 and hope to be producing 100,000 per month in 2025
@korma9732 shells maybe. artillery shells no
@korma9732 give me the source your referencing. im referencing the department of defense
What is also interesting is how fast the shells can be produced compared to 100 years ago.
lol
They can be made fast. Thats a small factory.
Fast for a small manufacturing base but only a fraction of what was produced during major conflicts.
If they withhold the bacon and egg butties they’ll soon double that output
As an American, it’s refreshing to see a little piece of England that’s still English.
1:26:
WD-40... somethings are just universal.
Great work & fabulous history. However, the machine tools to make the items are not British - I saw German and Korean manufacturers there. Ramping up production could be difficult if you don’t know how to make the machine tools yourself, which is a key difference today compared with 1914 or 1939.
important remarks indeed
Doosan lathes, South Korean and Fanuc Robots which are Japanese. The majority of the electronics in the Doosan lathes are probably all Fanuc parts made in Japan too.
We do have the capacity to do a lot of repairs to those machines here in the UK, motor rebuilds, servo drive repairs down to a board level etc but we are heavily dependant on parts being imported to do that.
In the case of a full blown conflict it would most likely end up in a WW2 style situation with other machine shops that have similar equipment converting over to war time production, in the case of a CNC lathe of the right capacity that could be done in a matter of hours, the forging process, maybe not so easy.
Schuler forging machine 🇩🇪 very $$$ but also state of the art technology
It’s cos the tories think war is just like a domestic issue. If it doesn’t affect them they don’t care until a missile crashes into parliament and burns their suits.
At the moment it's quicker to buy them in right now. If you required it, you could conscript the entire workforce into defence manufacturing. You would be able to spit out a great variety and number of tools once the onerous impositions of having to buy in your own tooling were eliminated. Once said tools and jigs were created, you could order multiply your productivity by an order of 3 to 5, depending on the material in question. With competent leadership, and the ability to severely punish those who stood in the way of productivity, in 15 months you could get munitions manufacture up to say an even billion per year out of a country like australia. Or at very least, I know I could. The game winning move would be making sure you had the hardware capable of delivering those munitions to the correct targets, in a relatively short period of time. I think the ability to upscale manufacturing is going to be critical to dealing with new low-cost loitering munitions. I'm not convinced that the laser weapons so far demonstrated by the British are deterrent enough for China.
That big claw taking the molten block of metal was pretty neat.
From this quick video there seems to be far too little automation and far too much hands on work. This plant should be able to increase production ten fold or more with ease if required and automation is the key to this.
automation is also prone to failure (at the same time not) but understand me right!, in the end knowledge in the brain cant be replaced, in war time this also matters. It might be the reason why the factory is not fully automated. Employees are also probably deep in the workers union which balances what the company can or cant do.
@@Uvisir I think that a lot of it has to do with the peacetime thinking that we have had in the UK for almost 80 years. These attitudes must change in the UK and all of Europe. We have to assume that the US is going to take a backseat in the defence of Europe and every country needs to spend a LOT more than 2% of GDP per annum or face terrible consequences.
Slava Ukraine. 🇺🇦🇬🇧
Very interesting to see how this things are made, how some peace of metal are becamkng a shell.
So important to keep these skills alive and well in NATO countries 👏
Not for long
Interesting topic, but i'd like a 40 minute documentary about it, not a brief glance. A full start-to-finish process to understand why its taking so damn long to make them.
Washington UK, just to clarify for the global audience.
It is in US Boeing is located in Seattle Washington. I used to work for them .
@@BigDsGaming2022nope, this is Washington in England.
@@terrytumble162 I stand corrected
@@BigDsGaming2022 Washington, Tyne and Wear, is literally where George Washington’s family comes from.
@@georgemorley1029 mine is from Wessex
Awesome work great Britain
This is fantastic in an old-world sense - like watching a 1960's Jaguar Factory.... but what is needed today is something more like the ability of a multi-acre Tesla Gigafactory to churn iterations and volumes rapidly - and at redundant locations.
In peacetime volume is not needed for the UK armed forces, they have been so hollowed out there isn't the equipment or manpower to require more than thousands of shells a year. Given that we are now sending sheels to ukraine, extra shifts and extra capacity are a must.
Let us not forget the tremendous manufacturing capacity of the United States and the UK. Early in the seventies I worked for the Bureau of Reclamation at the Denver Federal Center whose primary purpose during WWI & WWII was the manufacturing of ammunition. The floor of the Bureau’s building had copper impregnated concrete as an aide in grounding. Millions upon millions of various caliber munitions were manufactured there every month! In time of need the manufacturing capacity of ammunition is staggering!
Nope, you’re living in the past. The US can’t manufacture those quantities anymore…it’s not 1940’s
@@dexlab7539it absolutely can it just doesn’t need to isiot
Interesting video I'd like to watch a more thorough breakdown of the shell making process.
why? lolz
Seems very high tech for something that’s just going to be blown to pieces lol
can you post the ingredients list please? not a very good recipe if there is no ingredients list :(
Steel brass and high explosives
Take a kilogram of boom, boil for about an hour....
And now with the merchant of death back in business, sales are gonna hit the roof!!!
Bet there's plenty of overtime going at the factory these days
Every proxy way since Viet Nam makes you double the pay in war weapon factories I put two kids through college with overtime pay from Iraq and Afghanistan
tons
The Russian Munitions Factories are now churning out Artillery Shells at a rate of over 3Millon Shells a year.
This factory in the North East of England "produces 10's of 1000's of shells per year"
Current daily usage of Shells by Ukraine is about 4,000 per day.
Russia fires at least 20,000 shells per day.
Trust me Russian factories are "gulags" and they are not run well. There have been ammunition blown up because they store on the side of road. A lot of ammo ends up in "Black Market" so you see illegal Russian ammo in Syria, Iran, or even in Ukraine.
All our shells still made Britain companies like our 5.56 homemade
But we no longer make artillery propellant in the UK...BAE closed ROF Bishopton in 1998 after the MoD gave the order to a South African firm...
So we can make the shells, we can fill them with explosive...but we can't make the propellant to fire them anymore...or the barrels for large calibre weapons, that shut down 4 years ago as well...
BAE and MoD working as a destructive team...same as usual...
@@dogsnads5634 you can’t blame bea
Keep up boys we as many as possible!!
Fascinating and disappointing at the same time.
(The kid in me:) Wow explosive shells, let's have a look...!!! huh, far less exciting than I expected,
(Grown up me:) but satisfyingly interesting to watch the mechanical engineering process.
Don't ask me what I was expecting😆😆😆
Probably something similar to Bugs Bunny where the shells roll on a conveyor belt and some guy with a mallet hits the tip of each one before they are packaged.
Need to step up production!!
At the rate they appear to get used, we need to speed up a bit... 👍🏻😀🇬🇧
Whoa. Tim Cook at 3:11 😂
Dozens of manhours per shell to produce, ten seconds to destroy (nine of which are ballistic flight)!
They hardly ever shoot 6 km... try 40 secs
@@Walterwaltraud This factory also makes 105mm - shorter range, shorter flight time.
@@Britlurker True, but we saw 155mm iirc from watching the video a month ago.
Did this kind of mfg in the 80' s six years & 1 day. Handled tons of steel & aluminum components. I'd gladly go back with a CNC certification, heat-treat, or just material handling
Was disappointed when they said Washington … then realised it’s in the UK lol
Washington is just south of Newcastle.
Washington State US that is where Boeing is located
@@BigDsGaming2022this is BAE not Boeing. The video is about UK production not US. Stop commenting on every post about US production.
@@MichaelBH5 you are right notice the stock price ? Only $40 USD pretty low don't you think ? You need to buy some shares
@@David-tm4yj well more west of Sunderland.
Good to see business is picking up.
It must be so disheartening to put all that time and expertise into building such expensive shells for your customer to destroy them the first chance they get. 🤔
Absolutely not. That’s exactly what they’re meant for. Do chefs get depressed when people eat their meals?
you're not getting that kind of job if you think about stuff like that.
@@georgemorley1029 It was a joke. I am clearly not ready to make a career out of comedy... 😳
I liked & Subscribed...as of today.
Thank you for your time🇺🇸
Hope they are working around the clock to send these to Ukraine!
I bet those workers have some really cool door stops at home.
So basically you can only produce 1440 on a 24 hr shift pattern of the larger shells a day 5256000 a year ……isn’t enough in a conflict situation really is it .
You have to scratch a zero, plus downtime that's half a million per year if things run smoothly.
Well we're not in a conflict, so you're comment is irrelevant, we stockpile while not at war, not hard to understand
It is only one factory we have hundreds of ammo factories in the US like duh they only have one . LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLOL
@@BigDsGaming2022 We don't need so many bc we don't shoot our own children. Not so LOL now, huh?
@@BigDsGaming2022 yep but most of it you use for killing each other…fool
Thanks for sharing, interesting
I think it’s totally bonkers to announce where these are made on UA-cam especially the way the world is at the moment, why not just say a factory in the U.K. instead of telling the world where something as important as this where the location is. The government once said loose lips sinks ships!
Anybody with basic abillity can look most of this stuff up web or not. Understand the idea of loose lips and all that but you also need to be real about things.
no secret here in the US there are 100's of factories that make ammo and the pay is good too over $ 20 an hour
Lol, my dog could probably find out where these are made. It's not a secret.
Do you honestly think there's a single intel service in the world who doesn't know this yet?
In Forces News we trust
How nice. A product that shreds a human body in the most horrible way is proudly presented as a success.
we make wars for profits human lives to the MIC's are oil that powers the war machine
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If it’s a tyrant body being shredded, that is indeed a success.
@@tobucksy Unfortunately, recent history shows us it isn't.
Paid Sergei or just badly naive?
Honestly, I want to work in this environment.
High speed, automated killing devices, the pinnacle of human endeavor.
"Freedom" isn't "Free".
And 7 million waiting for healthcare. Says it all eh?
Ain't we great.
These devices have paid for your good life
@@jon1801 Chop all the billions wasted by the NHS on things like "equality & diversity" and we might have a health service that works. Remember the Nightingale hospitals? the London one had 800 beds and treated 54 patients before it was closed. The cost? about £2 million per patient.
Please make a video showing how they're made next time
Only tens of thousands a year - I see huge expansion prospects for this factory. I'm sure that even a 50 fold increase would find enthusiastic buyers for all they could make. And the West needs to ramp up its training rates and supply Ukraine as well as replace its stockpiles - so the market will be buoyant for a decade.
Great! I hope they can increase capacity.
Wow amazing
I'd like to see a video on small arms ammunition production.
Watch the movie "Lord of War".
"Tens of thousands per year"
holy smokes those are really low numbers...
You all must be proud
Very interesting, I'd love to see how they did all this 100 years ago before the robots and modern machinery.
normal arty hasn't changed too much other than making sure the shells are more precise and the amount of power behind it is more precise for better targeting. The big changes are in the computers that can program the shell as it goes up the tube and the gps that can guide the shell. Thats expensive artillery bro
I looked up Washington England on Google Earth and it looks nice there it’s in the Northeast of England.
That factory needs to be AUTOMATED....and comes into the 21st century.
Did you miss the robots and CNC?
Hand inspection is still required for shells before filling..
How does the copper band of the shells be installed on the shell?
A groove is lathed, a tight sleeve with a copper injection hole, then they slightly lathe along the whole shel so its even all the way along and at its correct caliber, the copper is at the shells thickest point to engage the rifling in the barrel.....a little after the clip starts, you can see a guy lifting a shell with chains, and u can see the groove before the copper ring is in it...
Need 20 more of these to keep up with demand.
If the government starts borrowing the money needed to do that, the economy would collapse.
10's of thousands produced per year... in a war 10,000 will be used per day. This does not bode well.
Just wait until 3D printed American "Air Breathing" (no oxidizer) 155mm shells hit the battlefield at double the range with GPS & smart guidance.
ما أوصلنا إلى ما نحن فيه الا طلب السلامة والدعة والعيش الرغد وزهدنا في: لولا المشقة لساد الناس كلهم...فالجود يفقر والإقدام قتال
Wow a factory established in 2011 is 11 years old in late 2022, who would have thought. With those math skills no wonder he is a manager.
??????
Nice work but production needs to be upscaled
Big respect from the USA! Friendship and cooperation forever
Better up plus the security around all these places in all relevant locations.
If I'm ever given three wishes that place will be out of business because bombs will never be needed again. God bless our armed forces around the world.
Right on time for 666k subs.