In a rushed and exempted contracting process, the U.S. Army hired General Dynamics to produce artillery shells at a new factory near Dallas, Texas. The project, which involved a Turkish subcontractor with minimal vetting, received $533 million in taxpayer funding but failed to produce a single usable artillery shell, according to an investigation by ProPublica.

Former workers described hazardous conditions during the summer of 2024, including robots frequently catching fire as they handled steel blocks heated to 1,800 degrees. Giant press machines required constant manual pounding with sledgehammers yet still failed to shape shells correctly. Quantel White, a former employee, said, “We really didn’t have any standardized practice. It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night.” Workers also reported acrid smoke and extreme heat inside the factory.

One former Army official supervising the project called it “an absolute setback” and said the Army should have pursued recovering funds from General Dynamics. Despite the failure and halted production lines, the General Dynamics unit involved has since received contract awards totaling $2.5 billion.

The Army responded in a detailed statement to ProPublica, asserting it will recover funding through unspecified discounts on future production orders. The statement emphasized rigorous oversight to ensure investments deliver capability and noted ongoing evaluations of contract performance and efforts to recoup funds where vendors fail to meet specifications.

General Dynamics maintains a strong hold on producing metal bodies for the standard 155 mm American artillery shell. A former Army official noted that the company is the exclusive provider of several critical components.

It remains unclear whether the Turkish equipment used was compatible with the steel required for the newer 155 mm shell model, as it had never successfully produced this type, according to former General Dynamics and Army officials.

Sources