- 6/17/2025
Since 2022, the US has shipped hundreds of howitzers, like the M777, to Ukraine. Only one factory makes its barrels.
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00:00It takes up to four months to shape, bend, and grind just one of these massive barrels.
00:10They're the cannons for artillery weapons like howitzers.
00:14And Waterville E. Arsenal is the only place in America that makes them.
00:20Demand for these has surged since the U.S. started shipping them to Ukraine in 2022.
00:25But the factory is over 200 years old.
00:30And some of the equipment has struggled to keep up.
00:33We're working right now with a piece of equipment that really is probably 20 years past its obsolete state.
00:39So in 2023, the U.S. announced a $1.7 billion investment to modernize Waterville E. Arsenal and boost the Army's supply of cannon tubes.
00:49If the product that leaves here isn't incorrect, there's a soldier's life that stands on a line on the other end.
00:54Fire!
00:56So how do cannon barrels get from the factory to the battlefield?
01:00And why is there only one place in America making them?
01:07Waterville E. has been making cannon barrels in upstate New York since 1889.
01:13By World War II, the U.S. had over 100 government-owned facilities making weapons.
01:18And this arsenal was producing as many as 2,500 cannons a month.
01:232,400 men work top speed in this planet.
01:26President Roosevelt also ordered other factories to pivot for making products like cars and toys to artillery shells, bombshells, and even planes.
01:36So they had to be simple.
01:37They had to be modular.
01:39They had to be something that a person not trained in weapons manufacturing would be able to do.
01:44So we had to redesign a lot of cases of rockets and artillery shells and artillery pieces themselves and tanks so that they could be built at a car factory or a dishwasher factory.
01:55Ford Motor Company got so good at building planes, its Michigan plant rolled one out every 63 minutes.
02:01By the end of the war, the U.S. had made more than 300,000 military aircraft, compared to just 139 civilian cars.
02:12After the Depression, these manufacturers didn't have a competing business because there was no other business.
02:17In the decades after World War II, demand for many of these weapons fell, so the Pentagon closed hundreds of military facilities.
02:27They didn't see another conflict like World War II coming on the horizon.
02:31When the Cold War began, the Pentagon needed new, high-tech weapons and fast.
02:37So it turned to private companies to design and produce them.
02:40That ecosystem of private innovation combined with the government acquisition process was pretty affected through the Cold War.
02:49But defense budgets fell after the Vietnam War, and many smaller companies struggled to stay in business.
02:56They weren't big enough to be able to survive on their own with the lower demand signal from the government.
03:01They consolidated with other defense companies.
03:03And so that's how we ended up with today five big defense prime companies.
03:07You know, new companies like Palantir have argued that this consolidation was a mistake because what it did was tamp down innovation.
03:15But the Army still operates 23 weapons facilities today, including America's only remaining cannon barrel producer, Waterville Leet.
03:24It's so specialized and requires such expensive manufacturing equipment.
03:28So those had to be built in arsenals.
03:30You couldn't get a commercial company or even a private company to make that kind of investment.
03:33When we visited the factory in 2024, it was using a mix of new and old machines.
03:42Cannon barrels start as steel cylinders, shipped to Waterville Leet from foundries across the U.S.
03:48They're heated in a massive 2,000 degree furnace to soften them up before they're molded into barrels.
03:54This machine, called a rotary forge, is like a blacksmith's hammer, but the size of a railroad car.
04:03It spins the steel rod while pounding it into the shape of a cannon.
04:08But the forge is long past its prime, so the arsenal is planning to replace it by 2026.
04:14It's a 50-year-old piece of equipment with tens of thousands of cannon tubes being produced since its inception in 1974.
04:22After 14 minutes, the barrel is ready.
04:26A crane lifts the tube and plops it onto a rack to cool off.
04:31They heat and cool the tubes a few more times to add strength and prevent cracks on the battlefield.
04:36That's important because each blast puts a huge amount of stress on the tube.
04:42They're attached to artillery weapons like howitzers, which fire 100-pound shells high into the air and onto targets up to 15 miles away.
04:51The shells explode on impact and send deadly shrapnel in all directions.
04:57But heating and forging the barrel tends to bend it.
05:00Like a piece of wood if you're cutting it with a saw.
05:02Even the slightest imperfection could damage the cannon or cause it to miss its target when it fires.
05:09New hydraulic presses from 2021 bend the tubes with thousands of tons of pressure until they're perfectly straight.
05:17Very challenging operation.
05:19This isn't something that you can read a book and jump right in.
05:22It takes a technician of about four to five years working with a master presser.
05:26New lathe machines, which spin the tube while trimming off extra metal, were installed in 2021.
05:34Every cut that we take, that's all pre-calculated.
05:38It's based off years of experience, over 100 years of cannon making.
05:42If you were here five years ago, you'd have seen old gray yellow machines that were from 1979.
05:51But humans still add a final touch, grinding down the tube's sharp edges so they're easier to handle.
05:58Scott Huber oversees this phase.
06:00We call it the Rolls-Royce treatment.
06:03It really puts that final finishing touch, that craftsmanship to that barrel, before it leaves water to leave.
06:09Workers use scopes and 3D scanners to inspect the barrel for imperfections.
06:14If it's got a flaw in it that causes, for example, a crack that propagates after a few rounds get shot out,
06:19you could end up with a situation where the gun barrel has a catastrophic failure and it injures the people that are operating it.
06:25And that's happened, obviously, in the past.
06:26Then they drag the tube into a booth and spray it with paint.
06:31It's specialized to withstand all different types of conditions and potential for chemical attacks or biological attacks.
06:38Obviously, we mitigate that with personal protective equipment and the ventilation filtration.
06:44Will says that within a few years, this step will be automated.
06:49Another critical safety feature, the hatch to the chamber where soldiers add the 100-pound shells,
06:55called the Breach Block.
06:57It's like a heavy metal door that seals the back of the gun before each fire,
07:02protecting soldiers from blasts stronger than 50 hand grenades going off at once.
07:07Robert Kavanaugh's team makes the Breach Block with this new device that was installed in 2021.
07:13It has a robotic arm that can make precise cuts and do the job of multiple old machines.
07:19I'm not bouncing around to five different machines in a day to do five separate operations that can be done in this one machine in half the time.
07:27Fewer setups mean fewer errors.
07:30Fewer errors lead to increased quantity and increased quality.
07:33Then, the moment of truth, a test to see if everything is working.
07:38What we're looking for is a smooth operation to make sure nothing's hanging up, nothing's jamming.
07:45We're going to go ahead and manually open the Breach, which drops the block and allows access to the bore of the tube itself.
07:52This is when the crew would insert an actual round.
07:55This is a simulated round, obviously.
07:57And then, close the block, which would be ready for firing at this point.
08:03This newer Breach Block opens and shuts automatically, making it easier to load.
08:09It was designed with researchers from the Army's on-site lab.
08:15These new machines have helped the Pentagon increase howitzer barrel production from 11 a month to 18 as of early 2025.
08:23Once the barrels are finished, they're shipped to plants owned by the company BAE Systems, one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers, where they're assembled.
08:36Some finished howitzers stay in the U.S. for training, like at the Army's Field Artillery School in Oklahoma.
08:43Handling a howitzer isn't easy, so one of the school's final tests involves loading and firing one.
08:49We all wear the ear protection, so we really can't hear.
08:59So you've got to be very, very vocal, very loud.
09:01Three hands on play.
09:02Three hands on play.
09:02One, two, three.
09:03Winners watch the lot.
09:04Sir, deflection.
09:05Three, four, six, three.
09:06Ready?
09:06Yeah, boy.
09:07Coming.
09:07One on one.
09:08Hooked up.
09:09Park.
09:12Extracting.
09:13Two, three, three, four, five, two, three, five.
09:17The rounds can range from 40, 50 pounds, all the way up to about 110 pounds.
09:23And they shoot about 88 rounds here in a span of two days, so moving that much weight is the biggest challenge that they face.
09:29You've got to be able to do that over and over and over again.
09:35Park!
09:37But some howitzers go straight into battle.
09:42For the first time in two decades, the U.S. is sending more weapons to Europe than to the Middle East.
09:48Since 2022, it's shipped more weapons to Ukraine than any other country, from its own stockpile and through private contracts.
09:56The U.S. or U.S. allies used weapons at a much greater pace than the U.S. had anticipated.
10:02Artillery is still considered the king of battle because it's mass-produced firepower.
10:10It's also a cheaper investment for long battles, averaging a few thousand dollars per fire.
10:15Than, say, a one or two million dollar guided missile.
10:18But artillery has its drawbacks.
10:22Most howitzers have to be towed by bigger vehicles, and setting them up takes time.
10:27That leaves soldiers exposed.
10:29We need a lot of technology, because people without technology don't do much.
10:34Traditionally, the strategy has been to, you know, fire from a position, and then move to another quickly, and then set up and be ready for a new fire position.
10:44Now, drones complicate that, because another way that the artillery system and its crew can be spotted is if they're on the move.
10:51Self-propelled howitzers, like the M109 Paladin, are more mobile and travel unarmored vehicles, giving crews more protection.
11:00They're more expensive and harder to maintain.
11:04But all howitzer barrels eventually break down, usually after about 1,500 shots.
11:11Facing shortages, Ukrainian troops have been piecing together parts from multiple wrecked howitzers, just to get one working.
11:18Earlier in the war, the U.S. had another strategy to get more of them to Ukraine, refurbishing older ones.
11:28Some of them were stored at Sierra Army Depot in Herlong, California, which maintains about $12 billion worth of the Army's weapons and gear.
11:38This 36,000-acre compound is more than twice the size of Manhattan.
11:43Gear arrives here weekly by rail and truck.
11:46Don Olson has been the commander's deputy at the depot since 2007.
11:51We're the holder of the old stuff, the stuff that nobody knows what to do with yet.
11:56We reissue them to units across the world.
11:58That saves the Army from having to buy it new, and that's about $200 million every year.
12:03These are old Vietnam-era armor personnel carriers, and we're retrofitting them to make them ambulances for the folks in Ukraine.
12:10Probably the highest dollar-value items are the tanks, the howitzers show.
12:16That's probably $10.5 to $11 billion.
12:19We have the M1 main battle tank for the Army.
12:22If you see any without barrels, those are probably barrels that have been reclaimed, pulled off, and sent to Ukraine in support of their efforts.
12:29Don was Waterville Arsenal's commander from 2002 to 2005, before he moved to Sierra Depot.
12:37All of the tubes that were manufactured at Waterville Arsenal when I was the commander there had my initials permanently stamped in them.
12:44They've probably been to Iraq.
12:45They've probably been to Afghanistan with U.S. units.
12:48They've then come back to the United States.
12:50They've come here, and now they're going to be refurbished, and they're going to go back over to Ukraine or go to Taiwan in support of their warfighting efforts.
12:57Stamping the initials of the factory's commander is still a tradition today.
13:02That tradition goes back always since the first time we produced canna tubes in early World War I, 1917.
13:10Automation is definitely replacing some of these operations, but there's still always going to be that little human touch at the end.
13:27So you need to be careful.
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