Germany has overtaken the United States in conventional ammunition production capacity, Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger has claimed, as the company revealed the scale of its production surge since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Papperger told reporters, according to reporting by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, that Rheinmetall had increased artillery shell output from around 70,000 rounds annually to 1.1 million, while medium-calibre ammunition production had risen from 800,000 to four million rounds per year.

Military truck production had grown from 600 to 4,500 units annually. The claims about surpassing US capacity are Papperger’s own and have not been independently verified.

The expansion has been driven by sustained demand from Ukraine and European governments rushing to rebuild stockpiles, and has been accompanied by rapid workforce growth. Rheinmetall received 350,000 job applications in 2025, of which 250,000 came from within Germany, a significant shift for an industry that Papperger acknowledged had previously struggled to attract candidates.

The company currently employs 44,000 people and expects that figure to reach 70,000 by 2030, with a further 210,000 potentially employed across its supply chains.

Central to the production surge is the Unterlüß facility in Lower Saxony, which opened in August 2025 and is intended to produce up to 350,000 artillery shells annually at full capacity, making it one of the largest ammunition plants in Europe. Rheinmetall has also established new facilities in Hungary, Romania, Lithuania and Ukraine, and acquired Spanish manufacturer Expal Munitions as part of an aggressive continental expansion. Papperger has said he does not expect the sharp rise in sales and orders to slow before 2034 at the earliest, with the company projecting turnover of €14 to €15 billion in 2026, representing growth of around 40 per cent.

Rheinmetall’s expansion also carries implications for Germany’s wider industrial economy. Papperger predicted that defence production could replace around a third of jobs in Germany’s automotive industry, which is currently facing significant cuts, noting that 4,500 of the company’s 11,500 German suppliers also work with car manufacturers.