Hundreds are working 24 hours a day to keep the pipeline of ordnance flowing as Ukraine fights back against Russian invaders
batch of artillery rounds destined for the Ukrainian battlefield twists and turns its way down a serpentine production line in northeastern Pennsylvania. Here, inside a series of red brick buildings where steam locomotives were repaired a century ago, teams of workers toil around the clock to ensure the industrial grinders, lathes and furnaces don’t stop rumbling.
The Scranton plant, which is contracted to crank out 11,040 shells per month, finds itself at the center of the Army’s planned industrial transformation. Roughly 300 employees work across the 15-acre complex, where hulking machinery cuts, melts, reshapes and refines 2,000-pound steel rods into sleek, two-foot-tall projectiles. The plant is owned by the Army but is operated by General Dynamics Corp.’s ordnance unit and currently runs 24 hours a day, five days a week with a weekend shift.
The metal arms snatch each billet with smooth efficiency and move them to three individual stations. Over a 90-second period, the billet is pierced, stretched, and pressed into three-foot lengths against extreme heat. This happens hundreds of times each day. “Speed is key,” Hansen says, watching the process.
Each shell is hung on a hook where it’s automatically rotated to receive an even coat of Army green paint. The entire process takes about three days, but it could take several months before the shells are loaded onto pallets, driven 10 hours away on a big rig to another plant in Iowa, where they’re filled with explosives and affixed with fusing—effectively converting them into oversized bullets, ready to be fired from a howitzer.
Congress has stepped up. Since August, alone, Scranton and its sister-facility in nearby Wilkes-Barre have received more than $420 million in federal funding for a new building, additional equipment and improved automation that the Army hopes will boost production rates. The flood of money is a welcome turn for the Scranton plant, which was first constructed in 1908 by the DL&W Railroad as a steam locomotive repair shop.
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