At the center of Joe Biden ‘s sleepy Pennsylvania hometown hums a 115-year-old brick factory working around the clock to turn massive heavy steel rods into 155mm artillery shells which will be fired on the frontlines in Ukraine.
The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant (SCAAP) in northeast Pennsylvania is a car factory-turned-ammunition plant and has the grimy decades of dust and patriotic graffiti to prove it.
Construction on the automotive facility began in the 1800s, finished in 1908 and operated that way until 1951 when the U.S. Army bought the plant to support its effort in the Korean War.
The manufacturing hub indeed looks straight out of the early 1900s, though its operators claim it is undergoing ‘modernization’ efforts to keep up with the Pentagon’s insatiable hunger for more rounds.
The 15-acre compound contains half a million square feet of manufacturing facilities, utilizing its hundreds of employees and countless robots to create the weapons – and the Department of Defense (DOD) is putting them to good use.
Currently, the plant is transforming red-hot steel ‘billets’ into the NATO-standard 155mm artillery shell, and the facility is contracted to produce 36,000 rounds per month, the plant’s boss Richard Hansen told DailyMail.com.
According to Hansen, the plant in Biden’s hometown has received $418 million in recent years to modernize its facility and ramp up production capacity.
And the 155mm rounds made there are fired by howitzer cannons and similar field guns.
They have a range of about 24 miles and are packed with 24 pounds of TNT, causing them to explode violently on impact.
Devastating against ground troops and armored vehicles, the 155mm are capable of sending steel shrapnel up to 160 feet in every direction.
When filled with TNT and primed, the 155mm shells weigh just over 100 pounds a piece.
The U.S. has already provided Ukraine over two million 155mm shells since Russia invaded the country in 2022.
Since then, Congress has appropriated over $175 billion for Ukraine.
But it is currently unclear how effectively the munitions are being used as Russian forces have recently broke through Ukrainian frontlines near Kharkiv – a major city from which over 11,000 residents have recently been evacuated as Putin’s military plans to push further into the region.
The Ukrainian fortifications in the area were so weak around Kharkiv that Russian forces were able to simply walk through the frontline.
Inside the SCAAP’s 155mm manufacturing process
The shells made by the SCAAP make up the lion’s share of U.S. 155mm manufacturing capacity, which is roughly 30,000 rounds per month, according to a recent report from the military news outlet Defense One.
During a tour of the plant DailyMail.com got an inside look into the facility, its production process and its military liaisons all dedicated to shoring up U.S. military manufacturing capabilities.
The production lines begins at its on-site rail yard where incoming steel rods – which can weigh up to 2,000 pounds – arrive to the plant. Entire shipments can weigh up to 200,000 pounds.
A massive industrial crane then unloads the cars and moves the rods to the steel saw, which slices the 20 foot long bars in to 15 inch billets, each weighing a whopping 115 pounds.
Once sawed, the billets are loaded by massive robot arms, which appear like animatronic robots seen at Disney parks – into several gigantic 2,000 degree furnaces.
After an hour in the hellishly-hot furnaces, the red-hot steel is removed by the robots and placed onto a conveyor belt to the next stations.
The next processes include three hydraulic presses which pierces the orange glowing metal, rounds out an interior cavity and shapes it to its final length of 30 inches.
Once the red-hot steel is shaped into its 30-inch final length, the workers begin ‘hot inspection,’ where they check the inner and outer dimensions for quality control.
These human handlers, with the help of some robotic machinery, pick up the 1,800 degree metal every five minutes or so to ensure the material is up to the Army’s specifications.
After passing the hot quality checks, the steel continues on the plant’s ‘subway’ to the next station, the cooling conveyor.
Once chilled, additional personnel perform ‘cold inspection’ where they again take the steel’s measurements to make sure they conform to manufacturing standards.
The steel that passes this quality test then gets reheated to 1,500 degrees – in just 15 seconds – before getting pressed again to form the artillery’s nose cone.
At this point the former 115 pound billets begin to take the form of the iconic artillery shell.
Once the rough steel takes its final shape, they are placed on the subway to arrive at at machines which polish and mill the tubes into shiny silver artillery.
These silver bullet-looking shells are then again checked for any cracks or deformities by human operators.
After this, a chemical treatment is sprayed onto the shiny shells to protect the munitions from degradation.
Then hooks are screwed into the nose cones which are used to hold up the shells for them to be painted their usual Army green.
This paint also helps shield the munitions from the harsh battlefield conditions.
After receiving a paint treatment from automatic electrostatically charged sprayers, the munitions are ready to be packaged on pallets.
Workers load them in rows 4×4 onto the wooden pallets that carry 16 shells per load.
These empty cartridges are then delivered to a separate facility in Iowa to be packed with explosives.
Though the rounds are dormant until primers and fuses are added to the nose cones in the battlefield.
Despite the factory’s ancient-appearing manufacturing process, the U.S. government has approved 20 modernization projects totaling $400 million to boost production of the 155mm shells, Hansen said.
The modernization efforts were approved before the Ukraine war broke out in 2022, the plant chief added.
Why the U.S. is ramping up 155mm production
The production of 155mm artillery has increased significantly in recent years.
A previous report from The Telegraph indicated that the plant only produced around 11,000 shells per month – less than a third of the 36,000 per month it is currently contracted to produce.
Still, that output is not enough to support Ukraine’s war with Russia.
In February, a Ukraine’s Defense Secretary Oleksij Reznikov said the country needs 356,000 shells per month ‘for the successful execution of battlefield tasks,’ which works out to over 11,000 155mm shells per day – a far cry from what the U.S. is able to produce, even with its ramping up production.
But production has picked up, as reports from April and March indicate the plant was contracted to make 24,000 rounds per month.
Now, as previously mentioned, the plant is contracted to produce 36,000 per month.
And U.S. military officials are aiming to turn out 100,000 rounds per month by summer 2025.
This massive expansion in manufacturing power is only possible because of supplemental funding passed by Congress in April to bolster U.S. allies in Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.
‘With the supplemental that just thankfully passed last night, we’ll be at 100,000 rounds by next summer,’ Gen. James Mingus said in April.
Still, Russia’s artillery manufacturing capabilities far exceed those of the U.S. and western allies.
The country is turning out 250,000 artillery rounds per month, or 3 million shells per year, according to senior European intelligence official who spoke with CNN.
That dwarfs the U.S. and its allies’ manufacturing capabilities, which turn out just 1.2 million per year, according to the report.
To keep up with Russia’s break-neck manufacturing pace, another $275 million funding package to support Ukraine is expected to be signed off by President Biden soon.
It is expected to be done using his Presidential Drawdown Authority, a power allowing him to authorize the transfer of weapons from U.S. stockpiles without congressional approval amid an emergency.
Much of that funding will be used to provide Ukraine additional artillery – and likely it will be spent in Biden’s hometown of Scranton.