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History repeats itself: there was the "Shell Crisis of 1915", now there appears to be a "Shell Crisis of 2023"

The fact that this man got sponsored by a war game, while talking about an ongoing war is just nuts

I worked for 10 years of green field infrastructure construction in mainland Europe. I have never been on a site where we didn't find at least one unexploded shell from WWII. Just so you understand how common is this.

As a former artillery man... this was fascinating. Knew very little of the maintenance and logistics information.

Another thing with the Excalibur: The first shell fired is the most important one. When the first shell lands on the enemy they tend to run away and hide. Therefore you want to score a direct hit with the first shell but that is highly unlikely with an unguided shell. You need to fire several shell to tune the gun to hit the intended target but then the target has already taken cover. With an Excalibur the enemy does not have time to run away

The fact that even with all the advanced tech deployed in the Ukraine front it all boils down to trench warfare and artillery shelling, just like the 1910's is pretty interesting.

Very good information, except one thing, you can replace a M777A2 barrel on the battlefield. I did one at FOB Kushmond in Afghanistan with a wrecker crane. Tube weight is only 3500 or so lbs. About the weight of a mid size car. The tube was deliver via Chinook (cargo bay). And we did the whole swap out in the field within a few hours. It is also much easier logistically to move a tube than a whole howitzer. Can have it delivered in one day, whole howitzer takes 3 days to move from base to base on average out to combat bases. I was a 91F, weapons/artillery mechanic in the Army. Deployed to Afghanistan in 2010-2011. Loving the channel btw!

This was very well explained and the research staff did well to track down and take the regular person through the entire subject and storyline. Bravo.

20k shots fired with one Barrel. Thats what I call german engineering.

It takes much longer to build something than it takes to destroy it.

All guess work about the Russian shell production. The latest I heard was that Russia produces somewhere between 5 to 8 million new shells a year, but actually nobody in the west knows the actual Russian capacity, and Russia has been expanding it's weapons and ammunition production massively. Buying shells abroad is a possibility, but I seriously doubt that it's a necessity to keep Russia in the fight.

Improving the barrel life can be achieved by installing zirconia spiral groove liners, spraying teflon lubricants onto the shells as they are loaded or spraying it into the barrel as its being loaded, graphite can work in a similar way, water cooling the barrel to keep the metal cooler during sustained operating can also help. TEL or tetraethylelead once added to leaded gasoline can also be used as a barrel lubricant as the deposited soft lead acts as a sacrificial bore liner to reduce scrubbing losses as the shells are shoved down the barrel. A barrel liner made of chromium cobalt nickel copper alloy can also be used to refurb the old barrels.

The NATO country's plans all seem to revolve around gaining air superiority (or near superiority) allowing the use of precision, air launched missiles and bombs. They have all gotten away from planning and stockpiling for the possibility of heavily contested air space not allowing this, requiring the use of high amounts of artillery fire instead. Like the Spanish Civil War I think the Russo-Ukraine War is giving us a peak into what near-peer fighting will be like this century. If we can learn the right lessons.

I love how you sneak your bias into the videos

Finland can and have been producing 155mm artillery cells since the beginning of the Ukraine war and before. There are many factories like legendary Lapua ammunition factory. Currently it's been owned by Norwegian Nammo, but it's as Finnish factory as it can be. Probably reason for ownership has been ability to get into Nato markets before Finland was in Nato.

A forging line for making 155mm shell costs around 12million Euro and takes around 18~24 months for building and installation. This cost does not including the ancillary parts of the line including turning, hot stepping, billet cutting or furnace heating. This is just for the shell body. Not including filling, fuses etc. This time frame is an accelerated time frame and does not assume you are dealing with a typical government department or with German machine tool companies which can EASILY add 2 plus years to the time frame and still not get anywhere. This may or may not be from personal experience.

To be fair WWII artillery was a lot less accurate than modern ones so they needed considerably more shells to fire for the same effect, so it’s not surprising that there are far less in stockpiles and being produced today. And from what I’ve seen which may not be accurate another thing that seems to be using up a lot of unguided shells is that both sides seem to be just hammering the trench lines on both sides like it’s WW 1 all over again. That continual harassment fire has to use up a lot of ordnance.

Thank you so much for adding metric units as text ❤

Dang. Kudos for giving such a thorough picture. I never would've thought how dangerous the aftermath could be. What with scattered explosives still being a danger when the war ends. . .

A figure that ought to be included are the estimated number of artillery shell that get destroyed when ammunition storage depots get blown up

To be fair to the manufacturers, the "barrel lifespan" is against the rated accuracy, so at 4500 rnds it will start drifting and need repair, but hit up to 15k rnds before failure becomes a risk... that said I wanna spin up an ammunition plant and even cheap ammo will make BANK

The stat of how much artilairy is being produced and used sounds like it was business creating demand so they can increase pricing...

Barrel wear is also critically affected by rate of fire which translates to heat within the barrel, particularly on bearing surfaces (the lands of the rifling) and, most critically, in the chamber. Heat reduces the durability of the metal. Got it too hot and you reduce the temper and wear out whatever lining might have been added, if any. Reduction in the rate of fire, thus allowing the barrel to remain cooler, greatly extends the life of a barrel. That's why there were water jackets on WWI machine guns, to keep the barrel cool during extended fire. If you always fire from a cold barrel, you get get multiples of the expected life (maybe 10x), but in combat that is useless since it puts you at like six rounds per hour. Also, IIRC, "shoot and scoot" is 3-5 rounds rapid at the same target, not just one round.

I've always wondered about this. If WW3 did kick off but in a non nuclear way, both sides would run out of ammunition pretty quickly. I mean, Ukraine is just 1 country fighting for its existence and its bleeding the west dry of ammunition. If Nato, china and USA decided to join in, there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. Same with Aircraft and missiles, during WW2 planes were produced in their tens of thousands, right now in the UK we have 26 F35's. Not exactly an armada.

Barrels are inspected with a bore scope and the chambers have a gauge that lets them be measured. This is done on "Effective Round" count. That is based on some rounds or charges are harder than others. The checks are time consuming but if done correctly will limit changing major repairs. A simple barrel change is not a big deal, the recoil devices is where things get tricky.

"Rhein Metall" has got to be the most badass name for an artillery shell company.

bro estimated the counter artillery duo's percentage by the amount of footage posted online

Most likely the Russo have jammed GPS in the battle space area meaning the Excalibur is useless, since it doesn’t have guidance systems on board like infrared imaging tracking and targeting.

New Warpath update; they'll include limited ammunition supplies.

To be straight: It is absolutely possible to produce 500.000 shells per month within a time frame of 6 months. The problem is ONLY the political will to do so. There is sufficient floor space available in every country. The utilities can be updated. The manufacturers know exactly how many presses, furnaces, robots, lathes and other equipment they would need for this. All this can be bought, delivered and installed within 6 months. If wanted.

Great info ! Now I understand the artillery shortage much better.

EFC stands for Equivalent Full Charge. There have been some rounds that haven’t been EFC=1. So that factor needs to be calculated. But take a Bradley, Training rounds are both ballistically matched to service rounds and have an EFC equal to 1. So 1000-A940 rounds are tracked as 1000 rounds EFC. I had to track this stuff back on Active Duty. We transitioned from old gun cards to tracking online like tanks.

Great video! Maybe do another about mortar shells and other munitions used in the war

who ever did this report is a great person! It is filled with the type of information that I would enjoy in a report many numbers and facts no BS.

Good explanation 👏

Same old story. My father participated in the Louisiana maneuvers before WWII as a bomber pilot and calculated the bomb stockpile of US would last 2 weeks at the consumption rate they used. Got information in national newspaper, did not endear him with superiors.

It seems that the similarities to WW2 are more identical than ever. Production and logistics combined with superior technology leads to victory…after grueling attrition.

This is surprisingly accurate and relevant. Thank you.

The precision guidance add-on for dumb rounds is impressive and changes much of the medium range strategies, no?

The USA is also providing precision guidance kit or PGK which is basically a smart GPS fuse to turn a normal 155mm shell into a gyided munition. Its $13,000 with a CEP of 30meters so lot better than unguided, if more expensive, but waaay cheeper (and less accurate) than Excalibur.

To your last minute comment on unexploded shells. In germany we are used to evacuations of streets for defusal of old WWII bombs. Especialy in Hamburg it happens at least once a year. They're still frequently found on construction sites.

I am surprised how those missiles that ten months ago you said were almost exhausted in Russia, in addition to the lack of precision, continue to hit so well on targets throughout Ukraine and not only on the frontlines... I think it's time for "Not What You Think" to think about it again and try to explain the miracle...

The USSR produced millions of shells, tens of thousands of armored vehicles all in anticipation to fight NATO and the West, in the end they ended up using those weapons to fight their own people (Ukraine was also in USSR).

I really appreciate you putting the "no injuries" warning on the video of the howitzer blowing up. Im sure it was mostly so you don't get demonetized, but personally I really don't want to see footage of people dying

👏👏👏👍🏼 Thank You for addressing the gun barrel replacement. Some only think of the munitions needed.

This was extremely informative and interesting honestly. Without propaganda from any side. Just raw data and analysis. Pretty rare these days. Thumbs up.

It still worries me that they fixed shell crisis of 1915 by ramping up production to the point where British could fire 800,000 shells/week, but struggle to produce 300,000/month these days, with all the automation.

It actually blew my mind when you said that within 150 feet of the impact of the 155 mm shell “M975” is considered lethal n you will most likely die.. and injuries from as far as 400 feet away. Like that is a BIG Impact and explosion

Man’s is like best ever teacher school😊

SAAB ceo talked about this yesterday, they have ramped up production for Nlaw and at4 from 1000 units per year to 4000 this year. But European countries don't want to invest in new production lines and factories don't want to produce without and order, if there was an agreement between them that EU and UK would buy 100 000 of shells the coming years scaling up production wouldn't be an issue.

Loving your longer videos

You can't compare current munitions production with WW2 production. WW2 was an existential threat that caused the US to prioritize war production over economic production

Love your videos man

I flippin' love this channel!

Can you imagine the amount of economic activity, oil, metal, machining tools, cutter bits, wiring, chemicals & other inputs needed to supply the entire global military industrial complex //

500 to 3000 USD per 155mm shell, 168.000 shells per month after production ramp-up in the West. So we are talking about a minimum of 84 Million USD each month for the tube artillery munitions alone! One Excalibur shell comes at 100.000 USD, greetings from USS Zumwalt I guess. That war is some Keynesian cash trap.

Look up the WWI figures. The Ukraine requirement of 600,000 per month is well less than WWI production levels. Scale production takes 4 things. 1)transport link- rail, barge, seaport 2) the factory building 3) the machine tools 4) training the workforce. In the US, the bottleneck is the tooling. For example, Haas Automation produces about 700 units per year (as of 2014). I'd estimate, given unlimited funding, about 3 year to ramp up the machine tool manufacture to like 20,000 per year. About 3 to 6 for the other steps (1,2,4 above). The base requirement is about 40 million shells per year, continuously. The peacetime need is just enough to train the artillerymen, 0 to like 20,000, per year. [artillery doesn't need much live fire, accuracy of fire is mostly what suffers without live fire]. Note that the daily unit of fire for a 155mm cannon was 150 shells, per WWII field manual 8. [1943?]. This could be greatly exceeded. Scale production of gun cotton (smokeless gunpowder), shell fuzzes, and cannon primers, is also required, but takes rather less money and time to set up. QC is a major issue, as is safe handlining and shipping of kilo tons of high explosives. This all can be done: we have done it before.

The amount both sides are firing is staggering

I'd love to hear some ideas for a solution. Sourcing, production, management, logistics, etc.

As always, really appreciate your balance, tone, and approach to every topic. Cheers!

Good time to be an arms manufacturer.

0:45 what that means is the production volumes in peacetime do not marry up w/wartime requirements.

Worked on Howitzers in the Marines, sure you can keep using a barrel if it doesn’t crack, but definitely you will lose so much accuracy that it is not an effective weapon after a couple thousand shells

My memories of being in an artillery battery for 2 years of National Service: 1. The "dong dong dong" sound of ramming iron pickets with monkey rams, to up the camo net 2. Bloody f**king hot jungle 3. Standing on the trail leg and upping the camo net over the gun 4. Carrying the 155mm dummy round 5. Downloading and uploading stores (sliding pipes, iron pickets, etc) to and from tonner 6. Bloody f**king hot jungle 7. Did I mention the bloody f**king hot jungle?

Ukraine is also using 105mm shells, 122mm and 152mm shells in addition to the 155mm shells. It also received some advanced rounds like SMArt 155 and Bonus that are effective against tanks etc. In addition to Excalibur also a number of Vulcano guided rounds got delivered to Ukraine.

13:07 either that was not excalibur round but excalibur S, or it was perfectly timed for demonstration purpose...as excalibour does not fire on moving targets,as it is gps guided...only good for stationary targets... excalibur S is afaik still testing unlike Russian variant that is laser guieded and can hit moving and stationary targets

Great how many before the tubes need replacing and how long does it take needs to be pulled out of action to rear

But if they started shooting at that rate, the barrels will be requiring replacement constantly. this would mean more cannons required also.

Do they use forging for higher compression ratios?

Nice video. Only thing I would consider is the upcoming flying artillery discipline of drones, besides other applications. Its likely to make a serious impact in the dynamics of artillery warfare, as seperate type of artillery.

The problem is uncertainty. WW1 was in a stalemate for years and rather suddenly the allies broke through. That can theoretically happen at any time and companies do want to invest in production only for demand to dry up. Governments take on that risk and cost. The shells are pretty stable but tech and war could pass them by nonetheless.

American : we fought with technology, stealth and presicion Also America : supply the front line with good ol' artillery

Thank you for a very informative video!

Which part of the shell is actually flying in the air ? It this the end that they screw (at 0:55) The whole thing ? Or something in between ?

Apparently artillery is still the king of the battlefield

Blows my mind (no pun intended) at the cost of some of this Individual Single Rounds… it’s far above the Average Annual Income for most people living in the US (let alone the rest of the World) 😵‍💫

Good info, Well presented

5:42 Don't you mean Rheinmetall? Is the voice AI by any chance? Because it's used in SO many different things.

If you can't beat high volumes of unguided shells, I know a few Battleships laying around that were good at that kind of thing. ;)

I do wonder if the US has also been sending Ukraine M1156 Precision guidance kits. These have been in service since 2015 and had excellent results when tested in Afghanistan. All reports (except the official test results) suggest that while not quite as accurate as Excalibur shells with a M1156 fuse reliably hit with a 5m CEP. It is essentially just a modified fuse with control surfaces so it can be fitted to pretty much any standard 155mm shell. It also costs (last reported cost) $13,541 per kit and is made in much larger quantities than Excalibur. Long term these seem like the most viable guided artillery solution to aid Ukraine and shore up US guided munitions stockpiles

Seems like I read of semi accurate artillery shells that were only semi expensive. I thought these would be fairly common by now. Haven't heard about them since the one article I read previously. Semi accurate artillery would cut down on the numbers needed.

I was a Marine 2131, Artillery Maintenance, aka: Gun Doc for the Rock Island Arsenal M-198A Howitzer back in the 90’s. Ukraine is firing a staggering amount of 155 in my opinion. Ukraine is firing 110,000 155mm a month, and says it could fire over 500,000 per month if they were available, between a bunch of cannons of course, not sure how many guns they have on the line. Anyway, as part of my job, me and my fellow leatherneck 2131 used a borescope on our six M-198’s. A long aluminum Multi section tube you had to put together and slide on these tube guide roller thingys, forgot the actual name of each piece, but you assembled this long tube that was like a colonoscopy for a Howitzer gun tube. Had mirrors and a light an all that. We were looking for rifle fouling, wear and tear in the tube. I’ve never seen it done but I know a gun tube could be “shot out” from firing too much. Screw up the inside of the bore. But, it’s not just the bore that is an issue. The recoil mechanism needed a lot of “in the field” attention back when I was in. Maybe the M777 recoil mechanism is very good, but the M-198’s recoil mechanism was aging in the 90’s, had a good amount of issues. Issues like a hanging gun, where a gun fires, recoils to the rear, but fails to move back forward again, or fails to go back into battery. On the flip side of that coin, sometimes you’d fire the gun, it would recoil to the rear, and then it would Slam back into battery so hard that it lifted the trail spades out of the ground. Was constantly messing with the nitrogen pressures in the M45 recoil mechanism in the M-198 howitzer. 11:40 BAE Systems says the 777 can fire 2500 rounds before barrel replacement, looks like Ukraine put that number to the test.

3:10 modern sniper time travels back to historically inaccurate ww2 to fire not just the bullet, but also the casing, into the enemy encampment. Mobile game related things never fail to make me laugh.

A lot of defense contractors are making really good money selling ammos!

Mind boggling that we have to learn about this topic. 😢

Great video, loads of valuable data points and statistics that are extremely interesting. Thanks for that 👍🏻

Very informative, logistics win wars.

please do units and tactics, the tank doctrine of countries navil ship cross sections (all the rooms and how it all works) evaluation of types of ships flag ship vs capital ship, battleship vs dreadnought air craft carrier strike group formations exsamples, better for squads to be 2 teams of 5 or 3 teams of 3, and probably the esayest, better to keep troops well feed or starved like an animal

18:04 Robots will accelerate unexploded ordinance clearing. I would not worry about it. (I work and did a Phd program with a heavy machine vision component).

You have to consider with them searching out already the diamonds and gold and oil . The sulfer mines needed that they'd be there too and it'd be up to them wither or not they got shells . They can make as many as they wanted if it were for Israel.

Russia is lowering their artillery fires but are increasing their drone use. I don’t think they’re running out, just found other methods

Guided vs unguided shell use, beyond availability, is primarily down to what you're shooting and it's importance. If you're trying to disrupt a troop movement, many unguided shells makes more sense. You get better general coverage over a wide area for a fraction of the cost. Same argument for using cluster munitions(ignoring all the valid arguments against their use). If you're trying to hit armour, strategic vehicles or other specific battlefield assets, then you use guided shells where available, with the value of the target determining which ones get prioritized for the expensive and rare rounds. Like if they're trying to shoot Putin or a general, they get the expensive rounds, compared to Sergeant Ivan and the adjacent squad beside him who get the "close enough for the effect we want" rounds...

thanks. very clear

As unlikely yet perfect catch-phrases go, "not what you think" is right up there with "out onto a tray" :)

A lot of recent footage shows Ukraine using HIMARS against small artillery guns because they can't get the smaller pieces in range without being destroyed. That is an expensive use of rockets against old small guns.

Damn, just shows artillery is really the king of battles. It doesnt get enough credit how many casualties artillery causes

during ww1 both sides combined produced around 1.5 000 000 000 shells, in the period between 1914 and 1918 true those shells were no doubt less complex, but they also didn't have the tech we do today, just manpower

17:00 cluster shell not major cause for civilian losses after war because: 1. war need to win first. 2. the longer the war lasts, the greater the losses, and if cluster shells can shorten the war - the less casualties be. 3. compared to land mines (russiand seeded with mines insane area) unexploded cluster munitions just nothing.

You can't compare the WW2 era to today WW2 was a total war where the entire economy of the US was re-tooled for war production Today we rely of stockpiling where low production accumulates over time when wars aren't happening, with flexibility to increase production if a hot war breaks out. That's what's happening now, the stockpiles are emptying and the US is ramping up production to war time levels. Also buying all the Soviet era munitions on the market is as much about keeping them out of Russian hands as it is about supply Ukraine