I always wonder about these production numbers in the military. The US has a large military complex and Germany is an industrial power and North Korea is a small military autocracy suffering from raw material shortages, but Googling around I see[0]:
> The expert also said that the North’s annual production estimate of 2 million 152-millimeter artillery shells is premised on peacetime manufacturing rates.
But here Germany is the largest ammunition producer and they're making 1.1 million (presumably both are per-year rates).
This link[1] says the US makes 672k/year (I'm annualizing their per-month number) so definitely Germany is making more than the US.
I get the impression a lot of these things need some contextualization. Are the rates per month or per year, is production dispatchable, do some countries have stockpiles or refurbish shells? Because just looking at raw numbers here results in strange results like North Korea being way larger than Germany at this.
The US doesn't use that much artillery as a matter of tactics. A significant portion of their capacity exists to support other countries.
Artillery is suited for combat with clear lines of confrontation. US doctrine actively tilts the battlefield so that these lines don't form, which plays to their strengths.
USA has a very advantageous geo position of oceans on two sides. So it's really hard for an enemy to show up with a ground army and continuous supply lines (like Russia). And US makes the military strategy to prevent that by all costs.
Ukraine is an excellent reminder that trench warfare sucks and is a manpower and resource drain for both sides. One guy in a fighter jet is probably 1000000x more effective than a guy in a trench. One guided munition has the capability to decapitate an entire government.
We are also protected on both sides by an ocean. If Canada and Mexico were hostile powers then we would be investing more in artillery shells and less in fighter jets.
Germany and North Korea are accessible by land to hostile powers, so their situation is very different.
> One guy in a fighter jet is probably 1000000x more effective than a guy in a trench
A guy in a trench with a $25,000 electro-optical/thermal MANPAD can now snipe a $100+ million dollar 5th gen stealth fighter flying low and fast.
To decapitate a government you'd just need a roughly $500 drone you can make at home and some homemade explosives. Bonus points if you harden it from electronic attack and use INS and optical terrain recognition for navigation and image analysis for final targeting.
Basically a 13 year old with an afternoon and some time in the library.
Maybe the article is counting the “medium-caliber ammunition” as well; Germany seems to have boosted that quite significantly.
> medium-caliber ammunition from 800,000 to 4,000,000, and artillery shells from 70,000 to 1,100,000
Of course it isn’t really obvious that this would be an apples-to-apples comparison (I suspect it isn’t). Then again it isn’t obvious that a NK artillery shell is an apples-to-apples comparison to a German one (I’d hope the German ones are a bit more modern).
Context is needed but I suspect the full context is complicated—the US doesn’t shoot as many artillery shells just because of the way we do war, so it isn’t obvious that in-context this is a meaningful metric anyway.
The US spends much of its defense budget on building expensive high-tech toys and maintaining 11 carrier strike groups, because it's military priorities are, in decreasing priority:
* Making sure everyone loses a MAD nuclear war
* Maintaining undisputed naval dominance in five oceans.
* Bombing people on its imperial adventures all around the world.
* Offering security and protection in exchange for military and economic and political obeisance from its vassals and client states. [1]
North Korea spends much of theirs on artillery shells, because it's military priorities are, in decreasing priority:
* Make themselves unattackable due to its small nuclear arsenal.
* Make themselves unprofitable to attack, due to holding a conventional-artillery Sword of Damocles over South Korea's cities.
* Being able to resist a ground invasion along a clearly-defined border.
It doesn't maintain more than a mothball air force, and a rag-tag brown-water navy, because both will be blown out of the sky, or the water within days of a shooting war breaking out.
It turns out that air forces and navies are very expensive to operate. Artillery, not so much, any asshole with a basic understanding of a lathe and undergrad chemistry knowledge could conceivably run a munitions plant.
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[1] The promise of security and protection turns out to have been written on tissue paper, because it can't even defend its own assets in a shooting war with a bankrupt regional power.
Imagine if we were paying these people to improve the lives of US citizens and infrastructure instead of murder innocent people and cause massive ecological damage! Jesse Ventura had a very cool idea that the US should use its military to clean the world's oceans as reparations to the planet. Say what you will about him, but that is genuinely outside of the box thinking that can pull us out of our war culture death spiral.
> any asshole with a basic understanding of a lathe and undergrad chemistry knowledge could conceivably run a munitions plant
This makes artillery production fundamentally, physically different from nuclear bombs/subs/carriers or fighter jets too. The supply chain is highly distributive. You can choose to have thousands of distributed small factories each churning out artillery shells. They're pretty damn simple, and the materials and machinery input isn't very sophisticated. Contrast with the complexity of a modern aircraft carrier, submarine, fighter jet, or a nuclear weapon. That supply chain is far more vulnerable. So not only is it a lot cheaper, it's also a hell of a lot more durable.
German industry is changing a lot loosing against China, so they have been moving to war related stuff for the past years. Personally, I know a bunch of people who were offered get transferred from VW to a military drone company.
On one side I understand that manufacturing a lot of weapons could be somehow a protection for the future, but also Germany provides a lot of ammunition to Israel that is killing thousands of innocents in Gaza and Lebanon. Germany is friend of Israel despite many people disliking it in Germany (they are still waving Israeli flags in many official places).
Also, weapons will lead to more weapons, more violence and more war, specially if you have investors behind willing to see their shares going up...
In the US and Germany, economists say that war and defense companies have to pay a "social stigma premium" since average people don't really like to work there given equal wages. The premium is a revealed preference: even people who wouldn't articulate a moral objection are implicitly expressing one through their labor market behavior.
So if you look at how they behave, it seems that many people agree.
I work for a non-defense government employer and my working conditions are so much better than my friends and relatives who did the same job in defense.
I have never gotten searched, neither my car nor my person, at work. I don't need elaborate and heavily monitored setups to work remotely. I didn't have to take a polygraph or answer detailed questions about my past to get or keep my job.
Also, my employer can hire people who actively use cannabis and people without citizenship which expands the labor pool substantially. My workplace does not have a 30 minute line for security when I arrive.
Not all those things apply to every defense but many do and I would want a premium if I had to deal with them. Also the customer for defense goods is not very sensitive to price but is often extremely sensitive to quality and/or timeline.
If your neighbor decides not to, the only way for you to stay away from the war is to have weapons to kill them before they get to you...
(Of course, the best solution to an aggressive neighbor is to have so many weapons that they know they would die if they attacked, so they don't even try.)
It only starts to be a problem is when your government starts using those weapons in wars of aggression. Among Western democracies, only the US comes to mind...
> It only starts to be a problem is when your government starts using those weapons in wars of aggression. Among Western democracies, only the US comes to mind...
Israel (which Germany is providing weapons to) does nothing but attack its neighbors. A good portion of the imperialist aggression coming from the US is also done on Israel's behalf. Germany is certainly complicit in this.
We killed millions in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think you can call it peaceful, more that "the west" exported its violence outside the borders of Europe and the US.
You won’t get electric tanks for the same reason you won’t get electric planes: energy density and supply chains.
An Abrams has a multi-fuel jet turbine that’ll take diesel, gas, and jet fuel; all of which are easy to transport and store in bulk, in any environment, compared to needing to generate and store the same quantity of energy.
The closest tanks will come any time soon is a diesel-electric hybrid, for noise and electric load purposes (EW, lasers, etc).
Because those are very capital intensive and don’t skew towards germanys existing competitive advantage in diesel engines and high precision heavy engineering. Same reason most places don’t try to compete, it’s cost prohibitive to do so.
It is upsetting that you get downvoted. I think people in the US are thinking that a war is impossible or something, and looking for a stereotypical response.
Instead, for an eastern and central European countries, a war is the real threat. The chance to lose a war with Russia backed by China is very real.
And the reason it is real is the loss of protection from the US. It is no longer guaranteed that the US will participate once Russia invades, and that makes the invasion itself almost inevitable.
Participation of the US is important only because it has a massive stockpile of WMD. It is obvious for everyone that US is not prepared for a modern war on the ground against a real power.
Prosperity and economic growth doesn't really matter when you are threatened with losing the massive war with causalities calculated in millions.
You first want to secure and guarantee peace for the future, and then you think about economy, competition and so forth.
And massively increasing weapons production is the way to avoid the big war.
Presumably because those markets are difficult to break into whereas Germany can sell defense equipment to allied countries pretty easily (they don’t need to compete with China because Germany’s allies largely don’t want to be dependent on China militarily for geopolitical reasons).
we're currently (indirectly) engaged in the largest land war since WW II in Europe so weapons do matter. But also the second part of that sentence isn't true, the former East German States, Saxony in particular have been building out a pretty strong microelectronics industry. See: https://silicon-saxony.de/en/
Russia uses different ammo calibers and designs than Western / NATO armies. Small arms, machine guns, mortar and artillery sizes, etc.
US is the only one in NATO fielding any 6.8mm battle rifles to line infantry, but Russia and China both have equivalent calibers and rifles under development.
The actual risks of modern day Germany going on a hegemonic rampage across Europe are extremely low. Their interests these days are much more aligned with maintaining proper democratic institutions, the EU, and being a voice for the free non-russia-aligned world.
Yeah, the US, which doesn't even want to put boots on the ground regarding Iran, will totally start invading nuclear powers in Europe any time now. Totally.
The US political system is inherently unstable. It has a strong god-king executive branch of government, and only uses first-past-the-post voting, which results in truly insane election results, and little to no need for cross-party coalition building.
Germany has a partially proportionate-representation multi-party strong-parliament system. While some fringe lunatics can definitely win an election, they are incredibly unlikely to sweep it.
I view World War 2 as Nazis harnessing discontent in Germany to motivate Germans to fight a war. So, the main risk I see is discontent building up again. What about people who can't have a good future because of the industrial decline of Germany?
It's a dumb joke considering Germany has been one of the most peaceful countries in decades. And the people making the jokes are often citizens of a country actively engaged in wars.
Gearmany's pacifism is just like its green energy transition hypocrytical and ineffective. Their Energiewende was to shutdown nuclear to bring back coal. Their Zeitenwend amounted to bankrolling Putin's war machine via the Norstream pipelines at the expense of the very same countries they tried to anhiliate in WW2. So yeah, I think I can crack a joke.
You haven't seen the drone videos where they drop artillery shells from drones? Or the vast webs of fiber optic cables strewn across crater filled Ukrainian farmland from the necessitated by the massive amount of drone jamming and crowding of RF channels?
Artillery is still queen of the battlefield regardless of what highlight reels from r/CombatFootage would have you believe.
> the drone videos where they drop artillery shells from drones
No, Ukraine does not drop artillery shells from drones. They typically drop VOG-17/25 grenade launcher rounds or RGD-5/F-1 fragmentation grenades, neither of which are considered artillery shells.
> the vast webs of fiber optic cables strewn across crater filled Ukrainian farmland
That's massive evidence for using drones over artillery. Why do we see fields covered with thousands of fiber optic wires, instead of fields covered with thousands of artillery craters like WWII? It's very clear what's happening.
I'd have a look at the latest Ukraine military procurement data. Over 50% of Ukraine's military procurement budget is going into drones. Only 15% is going into artillery and ammunition. That's a clear signal of which technology is more effective.
We can also look at statements by Ukrainian military officials, currently 95%(!!) of Russian casualties are caused by drones.
> Artillery is still queen of the battlefield
That was true in 2023, but we are now in 2026, and drones are clearly superior.
> Only 15% is going into artillery and ammunition.
That simply reflects, in part, the cost differential. It's difficult to find the most recent data, but as of mid 2025 and, AFAICT, still today, Ukraine and Russia were still exchanging 10,000+ shells everyday. Moreover, Russia fires 5 shells for every 1 Ukrainian shell. It used to be 10:1. It's a huge reason Ukraine can't break through Russian lines, and during offenses hold off Russian advances. Ukraine still has major supply issues with shells, and that's also likely one reason for their emphasis on drones. It's certainly the reason Germany and others are still pursuing increased artillery production.
Ceteris paribus, the marginal effectiveness of deploying more drones may be superior to more artillery, but that's against the backdrop of existing artillery usage. If Ukraine switched to only drones, they'd lose the war in weeks if not days.
155mm artillery (the type of ammunition discussed in the article) has a maximum effective range of 30km. This means the artillery gun and ammunition can only operate within 30km of the front line.
The FPV drone "kill zone", which used to be several km from the front line when the war started, has recently pushed to ~15–25 km. Some FPV drone strikes are now reaching 50-100km(!) past the front line. This means that artillery must operate at the edge of its effective range, and soon, will be completely enveloped by drones. I predict this will happen by early 2027.
Once the kill zone crosses 30km, artillery will be effectively unusable. Artillery needs a constant source of ammunition, and if this ammunition cannot reach the front, artillery is useless. Ukraine understands this, and that's why they're investing in drones over technology like artillery.
Ukraine is still investing in artillery plants, and it's why several other NATO countries are building more capacity as we speak (for their own and Ukraine's use). Artillery isn't any more obsolete than bullets, it's just not sexy, and at the margins isn't as strategically important.
You can't win a war without controlling ground. It's why the US lost the Iran War, and Vietnam before it, despite having an unfettered ability to pummel forces from the air. To control ground, artillery is essential. Not sufficient, but absolutely necessary.
Artillery is only viable on Ukraine's side because Russia is too incompetent to manufacture long-range (30-50km) FPV strike drones at scale. Currently only Ukraine has pushed the "kill zone" to the 15-25km mark. Russia is behind. But this situation will not last, drone technology will improve on all sides, China will innovate on drone range and Russia will buy those drones. The drone "kill zone" will surpass the range of artillery for all sides.
The same pre war consensus also thought that war with Russia was unthinkable, it is Russia that focused on artillery tactics so the two assumptions went hand in hand.
It’s my opinion that artillery is out of date and by the end of the Ukraine war they will be even more out of date. It’s hard to make artillery more cost effective than it already is yet still many more opportunities to increase drone effectiveness.
This is more of a doctrine issue. Ukraine was given mountains of artillery by western nations, so naturally they were going to use it. But artillery has lower RoI than drones, drones are cheaper, more accurate, more versatile, and have longer range. It makes the most sense to heavily invest in the better technology drones, not artillery. If we look at what Ukraine spends its military budget on, >50% of its military spending goes towards drones. Only 15% is going towards artillery & ammunition.
We can also look at present wars to view where the trend is going. I'd estimate that during the latest conflict between Israel/Iran/US + gulf states, approximately zero artillery shells were fired*.
During a hypothetical US/China/Taiwan + Korean/Japan conflict, I'd expect this number to be similar.
It's going to be both, and it's because of physics.
At this moment, the best way to put kinetic energy into an enemy is sticking some quantity of explosive on them.
You have a few ways of going about this. Two we consider today: 1) a chemical charge launches a block of explosive ballistically at a closing range of mach 2-5, 2) a complex assembly of plastic/rare earths/silicon/PCBAs flies over to the enemy at somewhere around "fast bicycle" or "leisurely highway" speeds.
By weight, 1 is cheaper, and all you lose is the explosive. 2 is more accurate, but that whole flying assembly is a loss.
Now, when you do something cute like take one little chunk of electronics and stick it on your block of explosive, and then orbit your doodad at a nice safe distance so it beams a homing dot on the target - your ballistic explosive sees the dot and steers toward it. See what I'm getting at? Cheap as 1, accurate as 2.
This is a really, really winning combo when you can pull it off, but lately, UAS ops has gotten a universe more difficult with the dirty dirty EW and now with all sorts of countermeasures.
Even better reason for our little flying widgets to keep their frickin' distance. Even if they get swatted down, they can cue in shot after shot after shot, with much more bang.
Traditionally artillery shells (155mm as discussed in the article) have a maximum effective range of 30km. That means that the artillery vehicle can only function within 30km of the front line.
Drones have dramatically changed this equation. The current drone "kill zone", which used to be several km from the front line, is now 15-25km deep, and Ukraine is pushing this to 50-100km. That means artillery cannot operate without being targeted by FPV drones. It is also becoming logistically difficult to supply the large number of artillery shells needed without getting struck.
Once the kill-zone reaches 30km, which it will by 2027, artillery will be completely useless.
But artillery only has a short range, less than 50-60km. Ukraina is bombing trucks with FPV drones at that range now.
So you'd need serious anti-drone capabilities to get the artillery close enough, and good luck if you have it sitting around deployed for any lenghth of time.
Sure, but when they're moving they're not shooting, so those few shells better count.
Both shooting and moving is very detrimental to staying hidden. And with FPV drones moving doesn't do you much good unless you move out of drone range, which as mentioned is or very nearly is 2x the effective range of such artillery systems.
The attack drones don't have to be big, just big enough to score a mobility kill and the artillery is pretty much f'd in the a...
It’s rare for military technology to completely “move on” to other things. Typically, the new just gets added to the old. So, yea, drones are new, but drones don’t cause artillery to become completely obsolete, in the same way that aerial bombs didn’t cause artillery to become obsolete. You’ll end up spending on both.
Ukraine has essentially moved-on from artillery to drones, just last month (March 2026) drones caused 96% of Russian casualties. Artillery and small arms fire accounted for the rest.
Also, artillery has a maximum effective range of ~30km. Ukraine's drone kill-zone is 20km and with newer drones pushing to 50-100km. By next year it won't even possible to bring artillery and a large number of shells into the frontlines without being targeted.
Of the confirmed casualties. Much easier to give kill numbers if you have video evidence from a drone. Doesn't mean that artillery strikes are any less lethal even though they don't give such clear confirmation pictures.
This isn't correct at all. Artillery strikes are near-universally drone assisted, meaning there is a surveillance drone recording the strike and calling the exact target coordinates.
Any casualties from artillery strikes would be recorded by drone, and added to the total casualty statistics.
Artillery and drones do different things. An artillery shell costs ~$2k and provides a much bigger bang (and faster speed, totally non-jammable) than a $2k drone (a shahed is ~$20k and much more intercept-able). Drones are 100% useful, but so is artillery.
Germany (currently) isn't even in the top 5 for military drone manufacturing.
The ranking of number of military drones produced per year goes Ukraine (millions), China (millions), Russia (hundreds of thousands), Iran (hundreds of thousands), then the US (tens of thousands), followed by Turkey and Israel (mid-thousands).
German manufacturing is in the low thousands per year. This is a major national security issue, Germany is currently behind many other nations in this technology.
From less than a day ago -
Germany Overtakes US in Ammunition Production Capacity
141 points, 163 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944924
I always wonder about these production numbers in the military. The US has a large military complex and Germany is an industrial power and North Korea is a small military autocracy suffering from raw material shortages, but Googling around I see[0]:
> The expert also said that the North’s annual production estimate of 2 million 152-millimeter artillery shells is premised on peacetime manufacturing rates.
But here Germany is the largest ammunition producer and they're making 1.1 million (presumably both are per-year rates).
This link[1] says the US makes 672k/year (I'm annualizing their per-month number) so definitely Germany is making more than the US.
I get the impression a lot of these things need some contextualization. Are the rates per month or per year, is production dispatchable, do some countries have stockpiles or refurbish shells? Because just looking at raw numbers here results in strange results like North Korea being way larger than Germany at this.
0: https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2023-11-06/nationa...
1: https://breakingdefense.com/2026/02/army-official-not-happy-...
The US doesn't use that much artillery as a matter of tactics. A significant portion of their capacity exists to support other countries.
Artillery is suited for combat with clear lines of confrontation. US doctrine actively tilts the battlefield so that these lines don't form, which plays to their strengths.
And US rely a lot on naval power.
USA has a very advantageous geo position of oceans on two sides. So it's really hard for an enemy to show up with a ground army and continuous supply lines (like Russia). And US makes the military strategy to prevent that by all costs.
The us doesn't use artillery because it doesn't conduct large scale combat operations. Artillery is still very much the King of Battle in lsco
Ukraine is an excellent reminder that trench warfare sucks and is a manpower and resource drain for both sides. One guy in a fighter jet is probably 1000000x more effective than a guy in a trench. One guided munition has the capability to decapitate an entire government.
We are also protected on both sides by an ocean. If Canada and Mexico were hostile powers then we would be investing more in artillery shells and less in fighter jets.
Germany and North Korea are accessible by land to hostile powers, so their situation is very different.
Unless it's the government of Iran, apparently.
Are you referring to the new government Iran that took over after their leadership has been removed?
They're likely referring to the government that controls Hormuz straight.
> One guy in a fighter jet is probably 1000000x more effective than a guy in a trench
A guy in a trench with a $25,000 electro-optical/thermal MANPAD can now snipe a $100+ million dollar 5th gen stealth fighter flying low and fast.
To decapitate a government you'd just need a roughly $500 drone you can make at home and some homemade explosives. Bonus points if you harden it from electronic attack and use INS and optical terrain recognition for navigation and image analysis for final targeting.
Basically a 13 year old with an afternoon and some time in the library.
It's a weird time.
Maybe the article is counting the “medium-caliber ammunition” as well; Germany seems to have boosted that quite significantly.
> medium-caliber ammunition from 800,000 to 4,000,000, and artillery shells from 70,000 to 1,100,000
Of course it isn’t really obvious that this would be an apples-to-apples comparison (I suspect it isn’t). Then again it isn’t obvious that a NK artillery shell is an apples-to-apples comparison to a German one (I’d hope the German ones are a bit more modern).
Context is needed but I suspect the full context is complicated—the US doesn’t shoot as many artillery shells just because of the way we do war, so it isn’t obvious that in-context this is a meaningful metric anyway.
Parent comment says explicitly about 152mm, that's the main caliber in NK and Russia.
In general, it's ok to compare main calibers (152mm or 155mm), as other calibers are usually produced in roughly the same proportions.
The US (and Europe) have been under investing in shell production since the end of the cold war.
North Korea is a dictatorship, which one of its main deterrents is to shell soul to oblivion.
The US spends much of its defense budget on building expensive high-tech toys and maintaining 11 carrier strike groups, because it's military priorities are, in decreasing priority:
* Making sure everyone loses a MAD nuclear war
* Maintaining undisputed naval dominance in five oceans.
* Bombing people on its imperial adventures all around the world.
* Offering security and protection in exchange for military and economic and political obeisance from its vassals and client states. [1]
North Korea spends much of theirs on artillery shells, because it's military priorities are, in decreasing priority:
* Make themselves unattackable due to its small nuclear arsenal.
* Make themselves unprofitable to attack, due to holding a conventional-artillery Sword of Damocles over South Korea's cities.
* Being able to resist a ground invasion along a clearly-defined border.
It doesn't maintain more than a mothball air force, and a rag-tag brown-water navy, because both will be blown out of the sky, or the water within days of a shooting war breaking out.
It turns out that air forces and navies are very expensive to operate. Artillery, not so much, any asshole with a basic understanding of a lathe and undergrad chemistry knowledge could conceivably run a munitions plant.
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[1] The promise of security and protection turns out to have been written on tissue paper, because it can't even defend its own assets in a shooting war with a bankrupt regional power.
The US spends most of its defense budget on:
* training, civilian salaries (where most veterans find jobs)
* maintenance of existing "toys" (aka money injected into local manufacturing, cleaning, painting, etc)
* Enlisted pay, benefits, housing
Then we get to procurement and R&D (which is just guaranteeing a job to people who finish college)
The whole active navy and world policing is just a side benefit.
https://www.pgpf.org/article/budget-explainer-national-defen...
Imagine if we were paying these people to improve the lives of US citizens and infrastructure instead of murder innocent people and cause massive ecological damage! Jesse Ventura had a very cool idea that the US should use its military to clean the world's oceans as reparations to the planet. Say what you will about him, but that is genuinely outside of the box thinking that can pull us out of our war culture death spiral.
Undisputed naval dominance in five oceans minus Hormuz straight.
> any asshole with a basic understanding of a lathe and undergrad chemistry knowledge could conceivably run a munitions plant
This makes artillery production fundamentally, physically different from nuclear bombs/subs/carriers or fighter jets too. The supply chain is highly distributive. You can choose to have thousands of distributed small factories each churning out artillery shells. They're pretty damn simple, and the materials and machinery input isn't very sophisticated. Contrast with the complexity of a modern aircraft carrier, submarine, fighter jet, or a nuclear weapon. That supply chain is far more vulnerable. So not only is it a lot cheaper, it's also a hell of a lot more durable.
German industry is changing a lot loosing against China, so they have been moving to war related stuff for the past years. Personally, I know a bunch of people who were offered get transferred from VW to a military drone company.
On one side I understand that manufacturing a lot of weapons could be somehow a protection for the future, but also Germany provides a lot of ammunition to Israel that is killing thousands of innocents in Gaza and Lebanon. Germany is friend of Israel despite many people disliking it in Germany (they are still waving Israeli flags in many official places).
Also, weapons will lead to more weapons, more violence and more war, specially if you have investors behind willing to see their shares going up...
In the US and Germany, economists say that war and defense companies have to pay a "social stigma premium" since average people don't really like to work there given equal wages. The premium is a revealed preference: even people who wouldn't articulate a moral objection are implicitly expressing one through their labor market behavior.
So if you look at how they behave, it seems that many people agree.
I work for a non-defense government employer and my working conditions are so much better than my friends and relatives who did the same job in defense.
I have never gotten searched, neither my car nor my person, at work. I don't need elaborate and heavily monitored setups to work remotely. I didn't have to take a polygraph or answer detailed questions about my past to get or keep my job.
Also, my employer can hire people who actively use cannabis and people without citizenship which expands the labor pool substantially. My workplace does not have a 30 minute line for security when I arrive.
Not all those things apply to every defense but many do and I would want a premium if I had to deal with them. Also the customer for defense goods is not very sensitive to price but is often extremely sensitive to quality and/or timeline.
Most people give a crap until it affects them personally. Then the extra effort nullifies their give a crap.
Not saying this as a negative. It's just how most people work. We all have excuses and reasons for why, in our special circumstances, it's okay.
People are inherently more selfish than we tend to want to believe. Just how we are.
This is a crazy world. Everyone should stay away from war
If your neighbor decides not to, the only way for you to stay away from the war is to have weapons to kill them before they get to you...
(Of course, the best solution to an aggressive neighbor is to have so many weapons that they know they would die if they attacked, so they don't even try.)
It only starts to be a problem is when your government starts using those weapons in wars of aggression. Among Western democracies, only the US comes to mind...
> It only starts to be a problem is when your government starts using those weapons in wars of aggression. Among Western democracies, only the US comes to mind...
Israel (which Germany is providing weapons to) does nothing but attack its neighbors. A good portion of the imperialist aggression coming from the US is also done on Israel's behalf. Germany is certainly complicit in this.
Unfortunately that's the default state of the world. The comparatively peaceful post WW2 period was the weird thing.
We killed millions in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think you can call it peaceful, more that "the west" exported its violence outside the borders of Europe and the US.
Good luck staying away from war when someone else decides to attack you.
Even nitrocellulose for ammunition is produced in Xinjiang. So still depends on China.
I find it puzzling why they won't pivot to industries that actually matter like making competition to Micron or Samsung and manufacture RAM at scale.
Amping up military production is basically a reaction to certain countries electing maniacal pedos as presidents instead of jailing them.
Precision manufacturing has been Germany’s thing for a while, but semiconductors is a completely different skill set.
Making a car and tank has way more in common than making a car and a CPU.
And you won't get electric tanks for many decades. Where else could you hawk ICE at a premium without environmental regulations?
You won’t get electric tanks for the same reason you won’t get electric planes: energy density and supply chains.
An Abrams has a multi-fuel jet turbine that’ll take diesel, gas, and jet fuel; all of which are easy to transport and store in bulk, in any environment, compared to needing to generate and store the same quantity of energy.
The closest tanks will come any time soon is a diesel-electric hybrid, for noise and electric load purposes (EW, lasers, etc).
Because those are very capital intensive and don’t skew towards germanys existing competitive advantage in diesel engines and high precision heavy engineering. Same reason most places don’t try to compete, it’s cost prohibitive to do so.
If we are going to look outside the country for blame, China and Russia are right there.
Not being able to trust US protection as much as in the past is evidently a terrible state of affairs, but this isn't the root of the problem.
When Russia is knocking at your door, weapons do matter.
Even moreso than cellphones.
It is upsetting that you get downvoted. I think people in the US are thinking that a war is impossible or something, and looking for a stereotypical response.
Instead, for an eastern and central European countries, a war is the real threat. The chance to lose a war with Russia backed by China is very real.
And the reason it is real is the loss of protection from the US. It is no longer guaranteed that the US will participate once Russia invades, and that makes the invasion itself almost inevitable.
Participation of the US is important only because it has a massive stockpile of WMD. It is obvious for everyone that US is not prepared for a modern war on the ground against a real power.
Prosperity and economic growth doesn't really matter when you are threatened with losing the massive war with causalities calculated in millions.
You first want to secure and guarantee peace for the future, and then you think about economy, competition and so forth.
And massively increasing weapons production is the way to avoid the big war.
Presumably because those markets are difficult to break into whereas Germany can sell defense equipment to allied countries pretty easily (they don’t need to compete with China because Germany’s allies largely don’t want to be dependent on China militarily for geopolitical reasons).
Because Russia is waging open war with one of Germany's allies, and has been preparing for war against the Baltic states.
It's not like Germany is far away either. The Western edge of Ukraine is, in some places, closer to Berlin than the Western edge of Germany.
we're currently (indirectly) engaged in the largest land war since WW II in Europe so weapons do matter. But also the second part of that sentence isn't true, the former East German States, Saxony in particular have been building out a pretty strong microelectronics industry. See: https://silicon-saxony.de/en/
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It also probably helps since Russia is now sanctioned that Germany is basically filling in the huge void right ?
Russia uses different ammo calibers and designs than Western / NATO armies. Small arms, machine guns, mortar and artillery sizes, etc.
US is the only one in NATO fielding any 6.8mm battle rifles to line infantry, but Russia and China both have equivalent calibers and rifles under development.
This article needed more bullet points. /joke
I took a look and realized it was a Ukrainian website. They’ve been addled by the bombs—spouting such utterly disruptive, shit-stirring nonsense.
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What could possibly go wrong by waking up the Europeans war talents?
The only country that really worries me, is the country of Germany.
The actual risks of modern day Germany going on a hegemonic rampage across Europe are extremely low. Their interests these days are much more aligned with maintaining proper democratic institutions, the EU, and being a voice for the free non-russia-aligned world.
And Israel. Don't forget, Merkel and Scholz both said the protection of Israel is Germany's reason to exist (Staatsräson).
Have you looked at the rise of Germany's right-wing politics recently? AfD with 18.8% in Baden-Württemberg (west Germany, relatively rich).
All of which was also true for the US... right up until it wasn't.
Yeah, the US, which doesn't even want to put boots on the ground regarding Iran, will totally start invading nuclear powers in Europe any time now. Totally.
The US political system is inherently unstable. It has a strong god-king executive branch of government, and only uses first-past-the-post voting, which results in truly insane election results, and little to no need for cross-party coalition building.
Germany has a partially proportionate-representation multi-party strong-parliament system. While some fringe lunatics can definitely win an election, they are incredibly unlikely to sweep it.
I view World War 2 as Nazis harnessing discontent in Germany to motivate Germans to fight a war. So, the main risk I see is discontent building up again. What about people who can't have a good future because of the industrial decline of Germany?
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As a Pole: it was bad before they stepped up. I am happy to see Germany becoming a stronger force in the region.
Maybe your thoughts will change if they invade you again a few elections later
I live in Germany. My roommate is Polish. I have friends who are Polish. Poles are infinitely more afraid of the Russians.
Depends on how far away the Russian invasion was.
Not sure why you are voted down. Came here to make the same joke.
It's a dumb joke considering Germany has been one of the most peaceful countries in decades. And the people making the jokes are often citizens of a country actively engaged in wars.
Gearmany's pacifism is just like its green energy transition hypocrytical and ineffective. Their Energiewende was to shutdown nuclear to bring back coal. Their Zeitenwend amounted to bankrolling Putin's war machine via the Norstream pipelines at the expense of the very same countries they tried to anhiliate in WW2. So yeah, I think I can crack a joke.
Because we're not here for Reddit jokes.
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You haven't seen the drone videos where they drop artillery shells from drones? Or the vast webs of fiber optic cables strewn across crater filled Ukrainian farmland from the necessitated by the massive amount of drone jamming and crowding of RF channels?
Artillery is still queen of the battlefield regardless of what highlight reels from r/CombatFootage would have you believe.
> the drone videos where they drop artillery shells from drones
No, Ukraine does not drop artillery shells from drones. They typically drop VOG-17/25 grenade launcher rounds or RGD-5/F-1 fragmentation grenades, neither of which are considered artillery shells.
> the vast webs of fiber optic cables strewn across crater filled Ukrainian farmland
That's massive evidence for using drones over artillery. Why do we see fields covered with thousands of fiber optic wires, instead of fields covered with thousands of artillery craters like WWII? It's very clear what's happening.
I'd have a look at the latest Ukraine military procurement data. Over 50% of Ukraine's military procurement budget is going into drones. Only 15% is going into artillery and ammunition. That's a clear signal of which technology is more effective.
We can also look at statements by Ukrainian military officials, currently 95%(!!) of Russian casualties are caused by drones.
> Artillery is still queen of the battlefield
That was true in 2023, but we are now in 2026, and drones are clearly superior.
> Only 15% is going into artillery and ammunition.
That simply reflects, in part, the cost differential. It's difficult to find the most recent data, but as of mid 2025 and, AFAICT, still today, Ukraine and Russia were still exchanging 10,000+ shells every day. Moreover, Russia fires 5 shells for every 1 Ukrainian shell. It used to be 10:1. It's a huge reason Ukraine can't break through Russian lines, and during offenses hold off Russian advances. Ukraine still has major supply issues with shells, and that's also likely one reason for their emphasis on drones. It's certainly the reason Germany and others are still pursuing increased artillery production.
Ceteris paribus, the marginal effectiveness of deploying more drones may be superior to more artillery, but that's against the backdrop of existing artillery usage. If Ukraine switched to only drones, they'd lose the war in weeks if not days.
155mm artillery (the type of ammunition discussed in the article) has a maximum effective range of 30km. This means the artillery gun and ammunition can only operate within 30km of the front line.
The FPV drone "kill zone", which used to be several km from the front line when the war started, has recently pushed to ~15–25 km. Some FPV drone strikes are now reaching 50-100km(!) past the front line. This means that artillery must operate at the edge of its effective range, and soon, will be completely enveloped by drones. I predict this will happen by early 2027.
Once the kill zone crosses 30km, artillery will be effectively unusable. Artillery needs a constant source of ammunition, and if this ammunition cannot reach the front, artillery is useless. Ukraine understands this, and that's why they're investing in drones over technology like artillery.
Germany, meanwhile ...
Ukraine is still investing in artillery plants, and it's why several other NATO countries are building more capacity as we speak (for their own and Ukraine's use). Artillery isn't any more obsolete than bullets, it's just not sexy, and at the margins isn't as strategically important.
You can't win a war without controlling ground. It's why the US lost the Iran War, and Vietnam before it, despite having an unfettered ability to pummel forces from the air. To control ground, artillery is essential. Not sufficient, but absolutely necessary.
Artillery is only viable on Ukraine's side because Russia is too incompetent to manufacture long-range (30-50km) FPV strike drones at scale. Currently only Ukraine has pushed the "kill zone" to the 15-25km mark. Russia is behind. But this situation will not last, drone technology will improve on all sides, China will innovate on drone range and Russia will buy those drones. The drone "kill zone" will surpass the range of artillery for all sides.
This is happening in a few years.
You need both. See Ukraine needing mountains of artillery despite the pre war consensus being that the artillery era is over
The drones make the news but can’t be the only weapon you bring
The same pre war consensus also thought that war with Russia was unthinkable, it is Russia that focused on artillery tactics so the two assumptions went hand in hand.
It’s my opinion that artillery is out of date and by the end of the Ukraine war they will be even more out of date. It’s hard to make artillery more cost effective than it already is yet still many more opportunities to increase drone effectiveness.
Artillery is just one piece in the puzzle and it has its place, with drone spotting. You can't jam a shell.
But once your artillery positions can't be protected from drones then its game over for sure.
This is more of a doctrine issue. Ukraine was given mountains of artillery by western nations, so naturally they were going to use it. But artillery has lower RoI than drones, drones are cheaper, more accurate, more versatile, and have longer range. It makes the most sense to heavily invest in the better technology drones, not artillery. If we look at what Ukraine spends its military budget on, >50% of its military spending goes towards drones. Only 15% is going towards artillery & ammunition.
We can also look at present wars to view where the trend is going. I'd estimate that during the latest conflict between Israel/Iran/US + gulf states, approximately zero artillery shells were fired*.
During a hypothetical US/China/Taiwan + Korean/Japan conflict, I'd expect this number to be similar.
*excluding rocket artillery such as HIMARS
It's going to be both, and it's because of physics.
At this moment, the best way to put kinetic energy into an enemy is sticking some quantity of explosive on them.
You have a few ways of going about this. Two we consider today: 1) a chemical charge launches a block of explosive ballistically at a closing range of mach 2-5, 2) a complex assembly of plastic/rare earths/silicon/PCBAs flies over to the enemy at somewhere around "fast bicycle" or "leisurely highway" speeds.
By weight, 1 is cheaper, and all you lose is the explosive. 2 is more accurate, but that whole flying assembly is a loss.
Now, when you do something cute like take one little chunk of electronics and stick it on your block of explosive, and then orbit your doodad at a nice safe distance so it beams a homing dot on the target - your ballistic explosive sees the dot and steers toward it. See what I'm getting at? Cheap as 1, accurate as 2.
This is a really, really winning combo when you can pull it off, but lately, UAS ops has gotten a universe more difficult with the dirty dirty EW and now with all sorts of countermeasures.
Even better reason for our little flying widgets to keep their frickin' distance. Even if they get swatted down, they can cue in shot after shot after shot, with much more bang.
Traditionally artillery shells (155mm as discussed in the article) have a maximum effective range of 30km. That means that the artillery vehicle can only function within 30km of the front line.
Drones have dramatically changed this equation. The current drone "kill zone", which used to be several km from the front line, is now 15-25km deep, and Ukraine is pushing this to 50-100km. That means artillery cannot operate without being targeted by FPV drones. It is also becoming logistically difficult to supply the large number of artillery shells needed without getting struck.
Once the kill-zone reaches 30km, which it will by 2027, artillery will be completely useless.
But artillery only has a short range, less than 50-60km. Ukraina is bombing trucks with FPV drones at that range now.
So you'd need serious anti-drone capabilities to get the artillery close enough, and good luck if you have it sitting around deployed for any lenghth of time.
Modern artillery doesn't sit in fixed emplacements. It fires a few shells, and then moves. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_artillery_system
Sure, but when they're moving they're not shooting, so those few shells better count.
Both shooting and moving is very detrimental to staying hidden. And with FPV drones moving doesn't do you much good unless you move out of drone range, which as mentioned is or very nearly is 2x the effective range of such artillery systems.
The attack drones don't have to be big, just big enough to score a mobility kill and the artillery is pretty much f'd in the a...
It’s rare for military technology to completely “move on” to other things. Typically, the new just gets added to the old. So, yea, drones are new, but drones don’t cause artillery to become completely obsolete, in the same way that aerial bombs didn’t cause artillery to become obsolete. You’ll end up spending on both.
Ukraine has essentially moved-on from artillery to drones, just last month (March 2026) drones caused 96% of Russian casualties. Artillery and small arms fire accounted for the rest.
Also, artillery has a maximum effective range of ~30km. Ukraine's drone kill-zone is 20km and with newer drones pushing to 50-100km. By next year it won't even possible to bring artillery and a large number of shells into the frontlines without being targeted.
Of the confirmed casualties. Much easier to give kill numbers if you have video evidence from a drone. Doesn't mean that artillery strikes are any less lethal even though they don't give such clear confirmation pictures.
This isn't correct at all. Artillery strikes are near-universally drone assisted, meaning there is a surveillance drone recording the strike and calling the exact target coordinates.
Any casualties from artillery strikes would be recorded by drone, and added to the total casualty statistics.
Germany is manufacturing artillery shells because Ukraine specifically needs them and has been suffering shell starvation for years.
Ukraine's massive use of them has drained the stocks of the European powers, from my understanding.
So, no, the answer is unfortunately they need to do both. Though after the war I suspect Ukraine will take the lead on drone development.
Drones will still fire ammunition presumably?
Are they just producing ammunition types that aren't suitable for drone weaponry or something?
Not this kind, drones don't fire 155mm artillery shells.
Artillery has a relatively short range of ~30km, while modern drones are reaching hundreds of km.
Artillery and drones do different things. An artillery shell costs ~$2k and provides a much bigger bang (and faster speed, totally non-jammable) than a $2k drone (a shahed is ~$20k and much more intercept-able). Drones are 100% useful, but so is artillery.
Drones don't use these types of munitions.
I'm sorry but you're trying to sound insightful without knowing anything about German drone production.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/14/ukraine-strikes-dro...
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-germany-drone-production/337...
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/02/26/once-re...
https://defencematters.eu/germany-ukraine-drone-factory/
Germany (currently) isn't even in the top 5 for military drone manufacturing.
The ranking of number of military drones produced per year goes Ukraine (millions), China (millions), Russia (hundreds of thousands), Iran (hundreds of thousands), then the US (tens of thousands), followed by Turkey and Israel (mid-thousands).
German manufacturing is in the low thousands per year. This is a major national security issue, Germany is currently behind many other nations in this technology.
Attack Germany, see what happens.
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More than Russia? I kind of doubt it.
That was my thought as well. Before the war Russia was a a (the?) major source for 7.62 ammunition in the USA.