NATO chief Mark Rutte said on Thursday that the alliance is closing the gap with Russia’s advantage in ammunition manufacturing.
“We are already turning the tide on ammunition,” Rutte said at a defense industry forum in Bucharest, Romania. “Until recently, Russia was producing more ammunition than all NATO allies put together. But not anymore.”
The secretary-general’s comments were a rare positive note for the alliance in its assessment of the balance of power between Europe and Russia. Rutte and his predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, have warned for years that NATO is desperately behind Russia in ammunition production.
It’s unclear whether Rutte intended to suggest that the alliance had already achieved parity — or if it was close to achieving parity — with Russia in ammunition manufacturing.
Just five months ago, Rutte said the Kremlin was making four times as much ammunition as NATO, despite the alliance fielding a combined economy that’s 25 times as large as Russia’s.
A NATO official told Business Insider in an email that they could not disclose estimates for Russia or the alliance’s production capacity.
“But what we can say is that Allies are in a much better place than even just a few months ago, and the capacity to produce what’s needed, at speed, continues to improve,” they wrote.
European production of 155mm artillery shells has increased by sixfold in the last two years, they added.
In his Thursday speech, Rutte said that NATO is now producing more ammunition “than we have done in decades.” However, he also spoke of new factories as works in progress.
“Across the alliance, we are now opening dozens of new production lines and expanding existing ones,” he said.
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A key concern for NATO has been stocks of 155mm artillery shells, which European nations are funneling toward Ukraine as the war drags into an extended conflict of attrition.
To replenish their inventories, NATO countries such as Poland, Germany, and the UK have invested heavily in local industries to rapidly scale up shell production, with over a dozen factories opened in Europe in the last two years.
But ramping up shell manufacturing can take months, if not years, with some companies estimating that they can only meet demand by 2026 or later. The US military, for example, had hoped to produce 100,000 shells a month by October but has now pushed that goal back to mid-2026.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian estimates say Russia produced about 3.8 million artillery shells in 2024 alone, or roughly 310,000 shells a month.
Making artillery ammo isn’t just about building factories. The 155mm shell relies on supply lines for steel, fuzes, propellant, and energetics.
Propellant, which drives an artillery shell out of its launcher, has often been a major chokepoint for ammo production because it relies on a compound called nitrocellulose that’s now in short supply.
Another vital component is the explosive material within the shell, such as regular TNT and its higher-performance counterpart, RDX. Several countries and companies have been building TNT plants to reduce Western reliance on the Asian market.
November 7, 2025: This story was updated to reflect comment from NATO’s press team.
