Army’s $469 million Texas shell plant still produces no projectile parts

A $469 million artillery plant in Mesquite, Texas, still had not produced a single projectile metal part meeting contract specifications by March 2026, even after opening in May 2024. The failure left the Army well short of its goal to make 100,000 155mm rounds a month by October 2025, with output running at about 36,000 rounds a month in March 2026.

The plant was built as a major new source of shell bodies, with three production lines capable of turning out 30,000 projectile metal parts a month. Instead, the Army chose to adapt older equipment built for the M107 155mm shell, a design that dates to 1958, rather than use a proven process for the newer M795 round. A Pentagon watchdog said Army officials accepted the risk of buying and adapting unproven equipment, and that decision helped set up the production failures that followed.

The Army contracting office requested a stop-work order in August 2025 while the government evaluated the bottlenecks. Some Army personnel also objected that the contract for the Mesquite facility was not opened to competition. By February 2026, Army acquisition chief Brent Ingraham told lawmakers he was “not happy” with the plant’s progress, and said the Army was still negotiating with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems over a path forward.

Without Mesquite output, the Army expected to reach only about 71,000 rounds a month by September 2026 from other projectile-body plants, leaving the service below the level needed to support combat operations. The Pentagon said its 155mm inventory had been depleted by 3.6 million rounds over four years, including more than 3 million sent to Ukraine, about 112,000 used for training and testing, and another 218,000 sold to other countries. The watchdog said failing to rebuild production could raise the risk of not meeting the operational needs of the United States, allies and partner nations in a future conflict, and General Dynamics had reached an agreement with Army customers on a path forward that includes additional company investment.