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.
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 ? 🤔.
Yes I’ve seen a few episodes.
Reaper ops very interesting.