WWIII will be fought with drones, not artillery. They should invest part of this money into becoming the leader in drone manufacturing, not this.
Since it's Germany, the money for this manufacturing ramp-up was probably allocated around 2023-2024, when older artillery was needed and before drone superiority was obvious. So maybe this is the expected outcome. If the money was allocated today, we might see it distributed differently.
Both China and the US have moved on to drones. China has purchased 1 million kamikaze strike drones to hit targets across Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan [0]; and the US is trying to invest $55 billion into drone procurement [1].
[0] https://www.warquants.com/p/one-million-suicide-drones-with-...
Are they just producing ammunition types that aren't suitable for drone weaponry or something?
Artillery has a relatively short range of ~30km, while modern drones are reaching hundreds of km.
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.
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...
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.
The drones make the news but can’t be the only weapon you bring
It’s my opinion that artillery is out of date and by the end of the Ukraine war they will be even more out of date.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.
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
Artillery is still queen of the battlefield regardless of what highlight reels from r/CombatFootage would have you believe.
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 filled with thousands of fiber optic wires, instead of fields littered 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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-...
North Korea is a dictatorship, which one of its main deterrents is to shell soul to oblivion.
> 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.
* 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.
---
[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.
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.
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...
Amping up military production is basically a reaction to certain countries electing maniacal pedos as presidents instead of jailing them.
Making a car and tank has way more in common than making a car and a CPU.
Even moreso than cellphones.
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.
(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...
So if you look at how they behave, it seems that many people agree.
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.
thunderbong•1h ago
Germany Overtakes US in Ammunition Production Capacity
141 points, 163 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944924