IN Brief:
- Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger says Germany has overtaken the US in conventional ammunition production capacity.
- Rheinmetall’s artillery shell output has reportedly risen from around 70,000 to 1.1 million rounds annually.
- The statement places energetics, labour, supplier conversion, and automotive-sector overlap at the centre of Europe’s rearmament debate.
Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger has said Germany has overtaken the United States in conventional ammunition production capacity, after a rapid expansion of Rheinmetall’s output since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The statement has not been independently verified, but the production figures attached to it underline the scale of Europe’s ammunition reset. Rheinmetall’s artillery shell output has reportedly increased from around 70,000 rounds annually to 1.1 million, while medium-calibre ammunition production has risen from 800,000 to four million rounds per year.
Military truck production has also climbed from 600 to 4,500 units annually. Rheinmetall now expects turnover of €14 billion to €15 billion in 2026, equal to growth of around 40%, and Papperger does not expect the rise in orders and sales to slow before 2034 at the earliest.
The workforce picture is changing as quickly as the order book. Rheinmetall received 350,000 job applications in 2025, including 250,000 from within Germany. The company employs 44,000 people and expects to reach 70,000 by 2030, with a further 210,000 jobs potentially supported across its supply chains.
Ammunition output and industrial conversion
The statement about Germany overtaking the US is partly a story about ammunition capacity, and partly a story about industrial conversion. Papperger has said defence production could replace around a third of the jobs lost in Germany’s automotive sector, with 4,500 of Rheinmetall’s 11,500 German suppliers also working for car manufacturers.
That overlap gives Germany a potential advantage in machining, metals, automation, quality control, and high-volume supplier management. It does not automatically solve the hardest ammunition bottlenecks. Artillery production depends on shell bodies, explosives filling, propellant, primers, fuzes, inspection, packaging, storage, and transport all expanding in sequence.
Energetics remain the most difficult part of the chain. Propellant and explosives production require specialist facilities, hazardous-materials handling, environmental approvals, trained staff, and strict process control. A country can scale machining faster than it can rebuild a mature energetic-materials base.
The Unterlüß facility in Lower Saxony is central to Rheinmetall’s surge and is intended to produce up to 350,000 artillery shells annually at full rate. New facilities in Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, and Ukraine, alongside the acquisition of Expal Munitions in Spain, give the company a wider European footprint.
Papperger’s statement should therefore be read as a marker of Germany’s industrial trajectory rather than a settled comparison of national capacity. Rheinmetall has turned ammunition from a background procurement line into a strategic manufacturing business, and Europe’s ability to sustain high-intensity operations will depend on how quickly that wider supply chain can match the headline numbers.
