Authory

The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant occupies a 15-acre campus in northeast Pennsylvania—a 115-year-old building that once assembled steam locomotives. Today it manufactures 155-millimeter artillery shells, the backbone of modern NATO artillery systems.

General Dynamics operates this Army-owned facility under contract through 2029. The plant runs 24 hours a day, five days a week with approximately 300 employees—many military veterans. Current production commitment: 11,040 shells per month, with recent Pentagon announcements targeting 90,000+ monthly by 2024.

The manufacturing process is deliberately labor-intensive:

• •Twenty-foot steel bars are cut into 14-inch cylinders weighing 110 pounds
• •Heated to 2,000°F in gas furnaces, emerging glowing red
• •Heated and cooled three times total during shaping and hollowing
• •Hand-finished, painted, and packed for shipment to Iowa for explosive loading
• •Total cycle time: approximately three days per shell

"The limiting factor in the production of 155s is steel parts. We operate at the speed of steel." — Brig. Gen. John Reim, Army Armaments & Ammunition Executive Officer

The 155mm shell itself hasn't changed much in decades—and for good reason. Fired from NATO self-propelled howitzers, the M795 model reaches over 22 kilometers (14 miles) and carries nearly 24 pounds of TNT. It's proven, reliable, and now in extreme demand.

The Ukraine war triggered a production surge unprecedented since Korea. General Dynamics is also building new production lines in Garland, Texas (mostly automated), while the Pentagon awarded a contract to Canadian firm IMT for additional shell body manufacturing in Ontario. Weekend and eventual seven-day-a-week operations are planned.

The plant remains a cornerstone of domestic armaments production—one of only six remaining U.S. facilities producing conventional artillery ammunition.