NATO urges common standards for artillery ammunition

NATO is pushing its members to agree on a single standard for artillery ammunition to boost production of urgently needed 155mm shells.

Reuters reported on this.

The introduction of a single standard should reduce the cost of ammunition, the price of which has risen sharply since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Admiral Rob Bauer, Head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military committee, called on member countries to stop protecting national arms makers.

He compared the business models of such manufacturers to those of companies producing printers.

“The manufacturer will not get rich because of the printers that they make, but because of the ink. If you make an artillery round that only fits in the gun that you make, then you force the users to buy your ammunition,” Bauer said.

According to Bauer, the price of one artillery shell has gone up to €8,000 from €2,000.

While there is a NATO standard for artillery ammunition, its implementation is voluntary, and a lack of adherence by various countries has led to fragmentation of the market and hampered the flow of supplies.

Bauer said 14 NATO nations reserved the right to deviate from the standard.

He attributed the backsliding on standardization to a defense market that has shrunk drastically since the Cold War, when NATO countries spent 3%-6% of GDP on the military.

“The number of buyers went down, the amount of money went down, and so everybody was protecting their own industry,” the admiral noted, saying that during the Cold War” everybody was getting a piece of the pie”.

However, referring to significantly increased defense spending in previous years, Bauer said he was convinced that for the next 15 years there was enough money to be earned for the industry.

Bauer said now was the right time to break the cycle and make a new push for standardization, also with a view to other areas such as transportation and medical supplies.

“If I look at the position of the soldier on the battlefield, they want interchangeability because they want to have a box of 155 millimeter artillery rounds,” he said.

Militarnyi has repeatedly reported on the trend of increasing production of 155-mm shells in Europe and the United States.

For example, production is increasing significantly in Spain, France, and the United States.