Western arms makers are scrambling to buy up or expand factory space to fill in for, particularly,\u00a0Chinese<\/a>\u00a0explosive chemical imports. But one is choosing to reconsider the standard chemistry of modern gunpowder.<\/p>\n “The whole industry is going through this disruption period,” said Steve Cardew, director of business development and strategy for BAE Systems, in an interview with the Kyiv Independent. “That then provides the catalyst to really look at new technologies.”<\/p>\n BAE Systems is the U.K.\u2019s largest ammunition maker and one of the biggest in Europe. Its U.S. affiliate is likely the largest supplier of “energetics,” the raw materials for explosives and propellants, that remains geographically within NATO.<\/p>\n Like all of its competitors, BAE is hastening to fill the demand that Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has created for armaments both in Ukraine and elsewhere. Its U.K. branch is, however, unique in banking on a new chemical process that moves away from a key import entirely \u2014 and may well be the template for Ukraine to make more explosives of its own.<\/p>\n Wartime reshoring<\/strong><\/p>\n NATO is patching up its supply chain to compete with Russia and China. BAE in particular is trying to make the energetics in the U.K. itself, where the last such plant \u2014 for TNT \u2014 closed in 2008.<\/p>\n “Historically, ammunition has been a cyclical business,” said Cardew. “Conflict happens, we build capacity \u2014 that capacity takes time to build, it’s very expensive to sustain \u2014 and then we go through relative periods of peace and stability, and questions are asked in terms of: Why do we need such big real estate?”<\/p>\n Western militaries largely downshifted from heavy artillery after the end of the Cold War. General ammunition production waned as the War on Terror subsided, particularly after the U.S.\u2019s pullout from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Western arms makers like BAE have jump-started artillery factories since Russia invaded Ukraine, kickstarting what Cardew termed “a need for continual supply to make sure that the Russian advance into Ukraine doesn’t get any worse.”<\/p>\n But the revamping of, especially, high-caliber ammunition production quickly exposed a glaring oversight further up the supply chain. Most modern propellants that drive munitions ranging from 9 to 155 millimeters are based on nitrocellulose, most of which the West was buying from China. Nitrocellulose itself derives from cotton linter, of which the primary producer is, likewise, China.<\/p>\n “The cheapest way of doing it was relying on supply chains that were not in the U.K.,” Cardew said. “The fundamental bit is the thing that feeds nitrocellulose, the cotton linter \u2013 that’s a really scarce material, there are only a few places that you can buy it from.”<\/p>\n BAE Systems\u2019 U.S. affiliate runs the Radford Ammunition Plant in Virginia on behalf of the U.S. military, which owns the plant.<\/p>\n “Our approach is to reduce that down, to duplicate, so that you have many, many nodes operating continuously \u2014 that means each one is easier and cheaper to build, and needs less space around it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n The largest producer of military-grade nitrocellulose left inside of geographical NATO, Radford is itself an example of the shoddy condition of the alliance\u2019s supply chain, playing host to\u00a0constant<\/a>\u00a0chemical<\/a>\u00a0spillages and\u00a0losses<\/a>, accidental\u00a0explosions<\/a>, and delayed\u00a0launches<\/a>.<\/p>\n But blow-ups are the nature of the nitrocellulose business. Like much heavy manufacturing, China took it on because it boasts looser environmental controls and a lower risk of public outrage when factories explode, in addition to cheaper labor costs.<\/p>\n Today, weapons firms are\u00a0buying up<\/a>\u00a0existing\u00a0nitrocellulose<\/a>\u00a0factories throughout Europe, either abandoned or used for non-military purposes like paint and lacquer that demand lower purities than ammunition. This is faster than building new plants de novo in part because European countries are hesitant to license them when their environmental impact takes decades to clean up.<\/p>\n Alternative energetics<\/strong><\/p>\n The other major BAE Systems facility in the U.S. is the Holston Ammunition Plant in Tennessee, which is one of NATO\u2019s last producers of another major explosive, RDX, also known as hexogen. A core ingredient in plastic explosives like C4, RDX is typically paired with other chemicals to slow its explosive power, particularly if it\u2019s going to be propelling ammunition.<\/p>\n For decades, arms chemists have floated various methods for turning RDX into a propellant of the type that can send a 155mm shell flying. With China selling nitrocellulose cheap, Western producers did not explore those compounds industrially. But RDX in particular has a long history of filling in gaps.<\/p>\n The U.K. military was the first nation to work out how to stabilize hexogen into usable explosives, which came in handy at the outset of the Second World War. Between the Nazi takeover of Poland and France in 1939 and the entry of the USSR and the U.S. in 1941, the U.K. was effectively alone in fighting Germany. Wracked with U-boat attacks on shipping, the U.K. depended on homemade RDX, which periodically goes by the name Royal Demolition eXplosive.<\/p>\n Once the U.S. joined the war effort, it set up RDX production en masse at the Holston facility, which, per\u00a0one account<\/a>, was producing around 340 tons of the explosive per day at its peak.<\/p>\n Cardew noted that the BAE\u2019s bet today is not to build another British Holston. The new plan is a schema of smaller “nodes” that are easier to bring on and offline and more resilient in the face of accidents, or even attack from a foreign power.<\/p>\n “Factories that generate explosives are large enterprises \u2014 hundreds, thousands of acres,” \u00a0Cardew said, handling bulk shipments of explosives at once.<\/p>\n “Our approach is to reduce that down, to duplicate, so that you have many, many nodes operating continuously \u2014 that means each one is easier and cheaper to build, and needs less space around it.”<\/p>\n Specifically, the new plan entails shipping containers re-outfitted to make RDX in undisclosed locations throughout the U.K. Cardew noted the need for a \u201cdistributed network\u201d for resilient production.<\/p>\n “One big explosive facility in the U.K. or indeed anywhere is clearly a risk because of a variety of reasons. If you have 10 and they are geographically dispersed, it is a much better position to be in,” Cardew said.<\/p>\n These are indeed likely lessons for Ukraine, whose weapons makers are beset by Russian air attacks on major manufacturing facilities. When asked about the application of BAE\u2019s new methods inside Ukraine, Cardew said, “clearly, there will be conversations at some point, probably around what the U.K. wishes to do and how it wishes to share that technology.”<\/p>\n Hexogeneration<\/strong><\/p>\n BAE is looking to go even further up the supply chain to make more of the core chemicals needed to make RDX.<\/p>\n RDX is also known as hexogen, and primarily derives from hexamine, which in turn comes from a fairly simple combination of ammonia and formaldehyde \u2014 two chemicals that are themselves byproducts of universal organic processes like excretion and decomposition.<\/p>\n Indeed, there is a great deal of overlap among the families of fertilizers and explosives. It was 2,750 tons of the fertilizer ammonium nitrate that\u00a0blew up<\/a>\u00a0the port of Beirut in 2020.<\/p>\n Hexamine is itself a less potent flammable, historically used for things like fuel tablets for cooking included in military field kits. Blended with nitric acid, hexamine turns into the more explosive hexogen.<\/p>\n BAE is considering synthesizing more of the precursor chemicals, especially hexamine. “We don’t do that today, but we are looking at how we would do it,\u201d said Cardew. “I can’t say too much about that, but that is a next step for us.”<\/p>\n A lingering question in Ukraine is whether Western producers will continue their respective rearmaments. In the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine, would BAE and its competitors go back to their pre-2022 business plans?<\/p>\n “Defense, munitions \u2014 it\u2019s all an insurance policy, isn\u2019t it?” Cardew said. “How much you pay for your personal insurance depends on your circumstances, your view of the context that you operate in \u2014 so that could play out, but I don’t think we’ll see that happening in the next five to ten years.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2162395924-1024x653.jpg\")
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