The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has declined to disclose details on recent orders and production figures for key ammunition types, citing national security concerns.
A series of parliamentary questions submitted by Conservative MP James Cartlidge sought clarity on whether new orders for 155mm artillery shells or other munitions had been placed since July 2024, and how many rounds had been manufactured in the UK over the past 18 months.
However, Minister of State for Defence Maria Eagle responded in each case that “this information is being withheld for the purpose of safeguarding national security.”
The refusal to release specific figures comes amid a wider effort by NATO allies to scale up ammunition production, particularly in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The UK has committed significant military aid to Ukraine, including artillery shells and small arms ammunition, and ensuring domestic industry can meet both current operational needs and long-term requirements remains a key focus for defence planners.
While the MoD’s decision reflects standard security protocols around sensitive defence procurement data, it also highlights the increasing importance of industrial capacity in sustaining the UK’s defence commitments.
Seems like a stupid question for any MP to expect to ask in public.
What’s an asshole, anything else you want to share that the Russians James?
Agree. It’s an arse type of question. What was he thinking?
Obviously wasn’t thinking or in fact is too daft to realise that question can never be answered in public.
UK ammunition production needs to be geared up for war scale production, that’s a fact. MOD can provide industry with the certainty it needs to ramp up production
Why should this number be kept quiet? It wouldn’t not be difficult for the likes of Russia and china to get the information as there would be a lot of low paid workers open to corruption and/or easy to spy on shipment volumes in and out of the factories. Considering the spy network of both these counties (only ones where knowledge means anything, as smaller nations it’s not ammo numbers that will decide anything) it’s not possibly they don’t have a solid view on the data, just like the MOD has a solid view on russian and Chinese supply lines. The only people in the dark are the tax payer, meaning we don’t know how prepared our armed forces are.
Is the question really about the ramp up that started under his watch? In effect has it come to fruition or has the plan now gone further.
Yes, so it seems.
The batting away any answer at all is not good enough.
This is something that shouldn’t be made public. But sadly can bet numbers far to low 😲
Off topic, but has anyone seen the new series of channel 4’s “Top Gun: Inside the RAF”?
First episode of new series has a bit on the operation to shoot down the Iranian drones and missiles fired at Israel. I know we deployed extra aircraft to Cyprus to support the effort, but the programme suggested only two Typhoons were involved and they shot down 3 drones using ASRAAM. Apparently they expended all their ASRAAMs which I suspect means at least one missed, as it’s unlikey each was carrying less than 2.
Not sure why they didn’t use AMRAAMS. Too expensive, or ineffective? And if they knew they could only use ASRAAMS in advance, why didn’t they go into theatre with more?
Not much can be gleaned from this info, but we are used to working with scraps in this field!
Don’t think an AMRAAM would be massively useful against a plywood Shahed drone, nor worth the expenditure.
I wonder if they tried the Old Skool way with their Cannons too ? 🤔.
But neither is an ASRAAM worth it, is it? I suppose if you had to choose then the ASRAAM is probably cheaper.
It would be a little concerning if all that was required to counter one of the West’s main air-to-air missles was to make your aircraft out of wood.
Yes I’ve seen a few episodes.
Reaper ops very interesting.
Interesting that almost the exact same text has been previously posted under a different nome de plume?
I posted this in a different thread a few weeks ago but it got no traction (I know we’re all frustrated by the current commenting system), so posted it again her because I’m genuinely interested. But I’m pretty sure it was under the same name. I think I have accidentally posted under a different name once or twice, as the saved on my phone are different to my laptop browser, and it’s just a free text field.
AMRAAMS would be too expensive, but unfortunately ASRAAM’s are too.
As with a lot of military deployments, it was more about the press stories than providing anything meaniful. Would guess 2 was chosen due to it being the number an A330 can refuel at the same time and min missiles carried to max deployment time. Fighter jets really aren’t the best resource to use against this type of target, naval or land based air defence would be far more useful due to how long they can stay on station. Would guess missile choice was to do with using up old stock against a low to zero threat target against UK interests.
Interesting take, makes a lot of sense now you mention it. So maybe they only fired 3 because they only had 3 that were near the end of their shelf life? Or do you reckon they fired 4 and 1 missed?
They might have kept one in reserve on case needed. Don’t really want a news story of unarmed RAF jets getting chased off by Iranian air force.
Either that or one could have failed to fire or as you say missed. We will never know.
This imo is not good enough in answer to a question from the Shadow Minister for Defence Procurement.
They even refused any response whatsoever to:
“James Cartlidge: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether any new orders have been placed as part of the Next Generation Munitions Solution agreement since 5 July 2024.”.
That’s too Sir Humphrey for near wartime. A confidential briefing could have been offered.
I find it very odd which stuff seems to be kept operationally secret, whereas other seemingly similar or even more important information is freely available. They have been talking about production numbers and the output of new ammo factories etc for a long time, but suddenly it’s all hush hush. Get the distinct feeling that something has gone wrong, which they don’t want to admit.
Highly likely. They are often happy to announce number of purchases of missiles etc or say nlaw. Either something has gone wrong or the money hasn’t actually been released to increase capacity and just failed promises.
National security is often used for an excuse to questions on many things, like data protection is done in our private lives, 9/10 having nothing to do with data protection.
If you only knew the truth.