Free Republic

The United Kingdom’s lone munitions filing factory exploded on Wednesday, just two days after a fire erupted at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania.As The Gateway Pundit previously reported on April 15th, the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant (SCAAP), the United States’ primary producer of 155mm artillery shell bodies, caught fire.Just two days later, on April 17th, a section of the United Kingdom’s lone munition factory exploded after a single shell went off inside the factory.The explosion occurred at the BAE Systems munitions factory in Glascoed, Wales.BAE Systems is the biggest defense contractor in Europe and the 7th largest...

With the war in Ukraine entering its second year — and the U.S. continuing to provide the embattled country with military aid in the form of rockets, guns and ammunition — the Pentagon is stepping up production of critically-needed supplies. Cancian said Ukraine's use of artillery shells far outstrips the Pentagon's capacity to make them. Precision-fired munitions for the long-range HIMARS system are another need, so Lockheed Martin is gearing up to turn out one new rocket every 10 minutes at its plant in Arkansas. And with the U.S. struggling to keep Ukraine supplied in its fight against a decrepit...

<p>December 5, 2002 -- U.N. weapons inspectors found mustard gas yesterday inside Iraqi artillery shells at a military complex north of Baghdad.</p> <p>The inspectors had already known the gas and shells were stored at the Muthanna military site but hadn't yet been destroyed when the previous inspection team left Iraq in 1998.</p>

UN experts are to destroy four plastic containers filled with mustard gas registered by previous UN disarmament inspectors and recently found north of Baghdad. Spokesman Hiro Ueki said chemical experts had visited the Al-Muthanna military site today to prepare for the destruction of the containers. Ten 155 millimetre artillery shells will also be destroyed. "The destruction process will begin tomorrow and is expected to (take) four to five days to complete," he said.

FORMER chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said that a shell containing sarin nerve gas used in an attack in Iraq was most likely a stray weapon possibly from the first Gulf War. Blix said today that the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year. The US-led coalition used that claim to justify the invasion even though UN inspectors failed to make any significant finds before the war. The former Swedish foreign minister said the 155-mm shell used to attack a US military...