We make the projectiles, we make the cases; but sadly the UK no longer makes the primers or propellant. Not a sound decision, but as usual, it saved money. As long as our allies are with us we are ok and propellant comes from Belgium, Israel and the USA to name a few.
Yep they closed ROF Bishopton years ago. Incredibly short sighted.... Countries like Belgium, Norway and Portugal do it themselves, but BAE and the MoD managed to mess it up....
The Swedish Armed Forced did something even worse about 15 years ago, they built a single warehouse site for ALL equipment except vehicles and ammunition. Everything was supposed to be ordered and delivered out to the regiments by the lowest bidder. That system is now reverted back to a decentralized system but that someone even got the initial idea is mind boggling
I'm almost certain that the military would have a better protected way to produce Ammo as bullets are relatively simple to make it would only take a small workshop to produce a large amount it's probably just left inactive during peacetime and only used when needed
This was a great video I served 14 years and had no idea how all the rounds I fired where made. Every solider, airman, sailor should be shown this video. 👍🇬🇧
The precision of the moving line, placing the brass cup exactly under each stage of the forming press, is amazing. For me, it's not about the product in the video, it's the machines.
Half a kilo less is insane. Imagine if similar savings can be found in uniform, ballistic protection and such. That's what the infantryman needs on the ground: less weight and more ammo. There's only so far smart tech, drones and such can get you before you need to get dirty and put rounds down range.
it's good but with more advanced technoogy they could eliminate far more weight than that by using plastic, they managed it on big guns where the entire case explodes away... they'll only get it so light by shaving away more metal and using better alloys etc
If weight is saved on the individual rounds, the soldiers will just start carrying more ammo. It's good that they can carry more but the overall weight of a soldier will keep ballooning as it has done for 250 years
So about 10 years ago, my job was designing and integrating kit for the British Infantry. We saved a few kgs within our scope of supply but as soon as the weight was removed, the lads grabbed more ammo.
@@meme4one is that a bad thing? More ammo means the infantryman can stay in the fight for longer and has higher chances of survival. Usually first team to run out of rounds is killed or captured.
I was lucky enough to win a factory tour with a group of people to go to the Norma factory in Sweden earlier this year and if you have the interest for shooting or hunting it is such an awesome experience. I loved every second and would love to go back someday
A million rounds per day, in a factory that's working under capacity. Besides, how much would another factory cost to build, fit with highly specialized machines, then needlessly produce rounds?
@@shootmcrunfast I think the point Joseph is making is that it's a strategic blunder to have a single point of failure. What if, say, an enemy operative walked in and wrecked a few critical machines or one cruise missile landed on it?
True, the UK should build more factories in secret in case the enemies target it. But I'm sure the UK leaders are competent enough to do that, right? Right?
My mother was inspector number 9 at the salt lake ordinance Depot in Utah during world war II she told me many stories about things that happened during that time she also had seven brothers overseas during world war II she never let a bad bullet get by her ever
The Americans behind the scenes were the force multipliers. It was a finely greased machine. And it didn’t just happen. Individual skill levels were incredible. And all are greatly appreciated.
S&R right to keep and to bear arms you made it so most of the people that went to that were worth already skilled in the use of firearms another us is still got the most armed people in the world with an average of 2 and 1/2 guns per person
Ive been to the Norma factory twice, the process is basically the same. What surprised me the most is the machine that takes pictures and measures the casings and rejects bad ones. The speed it happens at, it is absolutely astonishing.
I watched this wondering what my grandfather would have made of it if he was still with us. He was chief inspector of armaments for Royal Ordnance at the end of WW2, first at Woolwich then Enfield, before he retired in the sixties. My Dad once told me that he came home from work having overseen dumping thousands of tonnes of non-conforming rounds in the Irish Sea. What he would have given for the failure rates they can achieve today. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, after retirement he couldn't stand the sight of anything to do with guns or armaments. That's probably why I went into healthcare engineering.
I heard of a operation we're Irish fisherman would acquire large amounts of ammunition from the British military but I wasn't sure how that could be possible.
@@mikejohnson5900 He died in 1980 when I was 11, so I never really had an opportunity to talk to him about his work. I just remember that he went ballistic once when he saw me playing with a toy gun. My Dad, who would have been eight or nine at the time, did once recall that he sneaked a look in his briefcase towards the end of the war and saw a pistol in there. Whatever he did, security must have been an issue.
Interesting. Way back in the mid '60's I worked for Imperial Metal Industries (IMI) in Witton, Birmingham. They made all the Army's rounds back then. The Witton site is long gone and for all I know so is IMI. I wonder how many rounds I fired during my service were made there. They even had a range where blokes would come and test fire some from batches for QC.
@@chaplin577 erm.. not that I can confirm to during the war, but in Birmingham the major companies were IMI as mentioned, Imperial Chemical Industries who made various explosives and Stuff, Lucas who made vehicle electronics. I also know that Spitfires, tanks and small arms were made here chap though I can't tell you what the companies who made them were. I'm not a native, I just ended up here at the end of my service because my wife comes from here.
🤣 😂 🤣 sold and destroyed our industries. Never to return. The uk is just too expensive to make anything. Not competitive. Then the generations of skill fade. The majority cant even change a car wheel let alone work and build machinary and high tech kit. In the victorian era a child had to know how to read a micrometer to get a job on the railway. Today kids/adults cant do that or program a computer.
Need to be self sufficient buying in from third parties is dodgy. I was in BAOR in late 60’s and on annual classification we found problems with 7.62 ammo, it either did not fire or in the case of belted L7 belts we had multiple stoppages, turned out the MoD had purchased a mega batch from Pakistan at a low price. If used in real combat it would have been a real problem. Low price equaled low quality.🤦♂️
Pakistani 9mm was also legendarily bad... Mind you its not always low price. The Army had a lot of US made .50 cal ammo that was terrible at the start of the Herrick operations in Afg. Once replaced with RG stuff it was ok.
There should be constant quality control of procured equipment. Someone let us down. Even Amazon has to keep safety testing the same products because the manufacturers are constantly nibbling at quality of materials even when design and published specs do not change. It's also all very well to outsource buying to abroad but if a superpower battle broke out the transport of such goods would be very difficult. It would seem a good portion of the wests military is held and designed to hold back a superpower war but its strategic logistics planning seems to assume we will always be fighting far away wars with small powers that cannot hit our supply lines, production and storage facilities.
@Philip Smith Remember my Dad saying it was one of the reasons people said a wet camo jacket would stop a round from Hi-Power or Sterling SMG...huge amounts of hangfires if I remember correctly.
I'm not convinced that weight is the typically limiting factor for pallet capacity or that a helo/truck/whatever can necessarily carry any more rounds just because it is lighter. The case dimensions are fixed, so volume can't really adjust and ammo cans are packed by unit or volume, not by weight. Likewise, while it will reduce the burden on the foot soldier, it doesn't necessarily mean they have room to carry another magazine.
And has probably taken so many lives just in the factory itself. 80 years of munitions production has surely resulted in more than a few workplace accidents.
It's not just the product but the deal the offer that gives benefits to clients and secures a purpose for peoples skills creating and delivering the product to the customer. That is business 101...
If you look at 5:52 you'll see that the case requires a berdan primer (two non centered flashholes) and not the US standard boxer primer (single centered flash hole.) Typically the boxer primed spent cases are easier to recycle, but the UK is probably not worried about re using military brass since there is probably little commercial demand for it.
I believe after exercises the military dies have to collect a certain percentage of used casings (can't remember the number). Think they just get melted down though and reforged.
@Will he heck as like look up videos concerning "reloading berdan primer." The boxer primers other militaries use such as the us can be sold, hand loaded, and used again with no smelting.
The UK polices up as much spent brass as humanly possibly and a great deal of it is reloaded. RG ball comes in two flavours. Cardboard boxes of 20 rounds that have been reloaded - used for gallery ranges, you can tell its reloaded as it has pronounced case anealmentat the shoulder and neck. Ball for use on operations or on field firing ranges such as Sennybridge is brand new, comes in bandoliers of chargers for speed loading mags and has the usual mix of one in five tracer. Ball. Blank. It all gets collected if possible or you would kill the environment. The sheer physical mass of brass used is phenomenal, you have to see it first hand to understand the sacks and sacks of empties that are policed up after a battalion sized exercise. Now take that and repeat it weekly.
I have reloaded all my amunicion for years and they are tuned to each rifle. Far more accurate and a bit of extra oomph behind them.Mass produced amunicion just can't get that. 3 rounds in a 3 inch pattern at 400 + yards. I love my 338 lapua.
The machinery in that new building had to be tested. That means that they needed inert material with EXACTLY the same physical properties as the various propellants. Yes, there are multiple options on propellants, as some shapes of granule burn faster than others.
The narrator and one of the guides were wearing their earplugs wrong. Those 3M plugs should be rolled up as tight as possible, and inserted deep into the ear canal, not left hanging mostly outside the ear.
@@squidwardo7074 its a better idea strategically to spread it out. More expensive, yes, but potentially going to save you a war, hense why there are multiple sites.
The real takeaway here is that the calibers its produces are also produced elsewhere. So while a million rounds a day sounds like a lot = it really isn't. During the WOT the US military at one point was expending over a billion rounds a year - so much so that it was forced to purchase additional ammo from other nations as it expanded its own production capacity at Lake City. Now the US is moving towards a "unique" caliber which requires it to literally build a new production facility to manufacture it - while the rifle that fires it will similarly lack commonality of critical parts. So they also will be faced with a single source supply paradigm which may work in peacetime = but which can prove itself problematic in the event of war. Modern warfare sees massive expenditures of ammunition. The more places you can source what you use - the better.
I love the way they're making stuff that kills people but they've got a keen eye on doing it in an environmentally friendly way. That's to be commended.
We have multiple factories that supply ammunition for the US military. Lake City being the largest and in constant operation for the longest. Other smaller factories for military use that can be placed into operation. And many civilian ammunition manufacturers that also contract with federal gov to manufacture ammo for the military. Winchester makes 9mm and 12 guage ammo and sometimes is asked to make 5.56. The 2020 corona virus has substantially driven up costs. Not sure the exchange rate but in 2019 a box of 50 rounds of 9x19 mm could be purchased for about 11 US dollars and 20 round box of 5.56 for about 7 US dollars. Today 9mm is close to 20 or more depending on if its for range or self defense use and 5.56 about 15 dollars
As an Air gunner...i think BAE systems should put their engineering expertise into making airgun slugs...(this is a growing industry & one BAE COULD PROFIT FROM)
A guy who used to work there told me they don't make primers anymore because an explosion happened years ago and a worker lost his legs. So it was a safety based decision.
Hopefully we have other off site production areas that are just as capable. One ship blocks a canal and the world stops, one fire stops bullet production, what happens to the conflict ?
5:52 I love the irony of the MOD using Berdan (US designed) primers for British made rounds and the US using Boxer (British designed) primers for US made rounds.
The guy doing the on screen visuals must have had an extra cup of coffee that day. Never have I seen small bits of metal getting cleaned turn into an action movie.
Quality control,of these rounds is astonishing. I had a friend whose life was saved by a dud round aimed at him by a Viet Cong soldier. He unloaded the (by then dead) soldier’s rifle, and found a round in the chamber with a firing pin indent.
He owes his life to crappy Russian or Chinese made steel cased ammo... although admittedly it has gotten better since the 70's. Just can't buy it cheap anymore.
We have to pick them all up when finished on a firing exercise or range, blank or live rounds. They then get sent back and recycled to save the MOD some money
@@tomsoki5738 They get sold back to BAE at current brass scrap value, massively bad deal. They get re cast not re-loaded. Money sink. Same with the copper and lead from berms behind the tagets, except they have to pay huge sums for that. Another bad deal.
Can’t see it happens if we take note of history the US rejected the British .280 in the 1950’s and bullied NATO to adopt .308 (7.62mm) then went solo on the .223 (5.56mm) The 6.8 is .227, all looks like back to the future 🤷🏻♂️
I call BS on the "weight" savings intent. It's not about saving the soldier or transport, it's about MONEY, the cost of brass, improving the bottom line.
It depends on who's financing the development of a new ammunition type. If it's a government contract, then weight savings could be the primary motivating factor. But BAE would certainly use weight savings as a key selling point in order to generate interest for any future buyer of said new ammunition if it was developed as an internal project. Major companies aren't motivated by one single point when it comes to projects like that - even if money is often an outsized motivator.
Good question Tom, not something I ever thought about and I must have picked up many hundreds. "I have no live rounds or empty cases in my possession Sir!"
@@jimfrodsham7938 we nearly always got reloads for range practice, you could see on the case where the heat had changed the colour from brass to a bluey purple, we hardly ever got pristine new rounds.
Had ROF Bishopton Stayed open the result is that the UK-made 5.56x45 would have a Cordite propellant like the Indian 5.56x45 ammo due to India still having the Cordite Factory in the Chennai Region
@@davericketts9101thanks for the spell check , and if you think our arms industry isnt in decline just because 1 video on a mostly foreign owned company who dont even make the whole bullet !
@@paulmccormick It's just a weird statement without qualifying, as the video didn't talk or show anything that would indicate the fall of the arms industry in Britain.
@@chroma6947 have you seen the UK its you get the cops call on your for just talking about firearms.... civilian ownership of firearms not to mention what kinds is in the toilet.. when civilians can't own something that industry lacks ambition and drive to make more of it being guns
If anything has been proven by the war in Ukraine, it’s that you can never have too much ammo. Everyone should be stockpiling more ammo, running at half capacity is foolish
There IS a stockpile. You DO need spare capacity, for when you start to need more than the million rounds per day. The 1.000.000 rounds exceed the Brittish requirements I think. Probably some export numers in there as well, making more domestic capacity available when required. 1.000.000 are 13 soldiers a day 365 a year shooting 200 rounds.
@@willberry6434 we can double to 2 million a day if necessary, and there are multiple of these factories. In a time of need, NATO can easily fly in ammunition.
Well I ope it consistently performs better than some of the 9mm stuff we had in the 80's. I believe it was bought from India or Pakistan. Rounds that lacked enough the power to lock the bolt of the Sterling open were common
In the 1960’s the US had 5 major ammo plants supplying their armed forces, by the end of the century, just one. In 2003 they had to order additional ammunition from this site and Israel. I suspect the UK is far from unique in having one major plant like this. Other than that, maybe a better title for this might have been ‘Brassed Up’.
@@grahambuckerfield4640 After the Falkland war the UK government went hands to panic stations to get 7.62 and 9mm as war reserve the bought tons of the stuff from India. When In Belize a few years later it was released for general use and we had a batch of 9mm for pistol practice, I swear it was filled with curry powder so rounds went of with a viscous kick other just managed to crawl out of the barrel and drop about 6 feet away even had the rim of a case split so that the pistol would not reload it was like having a spacer in the breach. were we glad to see the back of it as there was no consistence.
Depends on how much ammo it can produce. I read somewhere that the US Army Lake City Ammo Plant can produce over 1 billion rounds of small arms ammo a year. Of course, the USA also has private gun ownership, so other companies can produce a lot more. I also read some accounts that the US Government gave Ukraine over 100 million rounds of ammo since the war started. Wars use a lot of ammo.
@@willw8011 Radway Green can produce over 700 million rounds a year....and the British Army is 1/6th size of the US Army.... In practice if they went to 24hr, 7 days a week they could exceed that.
The .308 Winchester is a very viable and efficient chambering. Able to rival the 30/06 Springfield with 150 grain projectiles. In a short action platform.
Fantastic, a single point of failure is all that stands between national defense capabilities, and throwing stones at the enemy. Which genius came up with that one? Some things are more important than economies of scale.
And not a single round made for British civilians. Your government doesn't consider you Brits competent enough to handle "dangerous weapons". On a different note, I wonder if the UK is going to consider switching to the US's new 6.8x51 rounds for their service rifles? It will be really interesting to see what becomes of 6.8 among other NATO countries over the next few years.
some people prefer it cos they don't have to worry about the school shootings and our police don't have to walk around with weapons in some ways to, i mean besides being able to hunt some animals (of which England is not a land of plenty like the USA), i mean what would we do with them? i could shoot cans i guess.... in the US i might like to shoot me some hogs, so it's different i think people don't really care much here
We have civilian firearm ownership here you melon, you just need a license. And rounds made in the UK are used by British shooters, but that's only the very expensive competition ammo, most comes from Eastern Europe. And i hope to god we don't adopt 6.8mm it's an awful round, not going with polymer cases will bite the US in the arse, you yanks never choose the right ammo, 5.56 and 7.62 were the worst of the ones available for trials at the time of choosing.
Scaling up one factory is not the issue. Opening a fresh new factory is the really hard part. Given what is recently happening, this company is likely looking at opening a second factory in Germany or Poland.
There is no problem with one site manufacturing British army ammunition, the technology is so mature that production can be ramped up anywhere in the UK very quickly.
We make the projectiles, we make the cases; but sadly the UK no longer makes the primers or propellant. Not a sound decision, but as usual, it saved money. As long as our allies are with us we are ok and propellant comes from Belgium, Israel and the USA to name a few.
Yep they closed ROF Bishopton years ago. Incredibly short sighted....
Countries like Belgium, Norway and Portugal do it themselves, but BAE and the MoD managed to mess it up....
Typical British logic- if you cut off your legs, it’s cheaper because you don’t have to eat as much.
How to lose before you start. Be the best.
Israel has no allies only interests 🇮🇱
Aye, idiotic lack of strategic thinking like everything for the last 30 years in the West.
The Swedish Armed Forced did something even worse about 15 years ago, they built a single warehouse site for ALL equipment except vehicles and ammunition. Everything was supposed to be ordered and delivered out to the regiments by the lowest bidder. That system is now reverted back to a decentralized system but that someone even got the initial idea is mind boggling
It always comes down to the "bean counters."
I'm almost certain that the military would have a better protected way to produce Ammo as bullets are relatively simple to make it would only take a small workshop to produce a large amount it's probably just left inactive during peacetime and only used when needed
Saving money ......
vänta va??
What could go wrong?!?
This was a great video I served 14 years and had no idea how all the rounds I fired where made. Every solider, airman, sailor should be shown this video. 👍🇬🇧
Just as the manufacturers have no idea how the bullets are used...
As British do you miss shooting guns?
@@JohnDoe-zb5sm we still have guns mate just far fewer of them. You have to get a license after undergoing a test
And if you don't want to be on the receiving end of one of those rounds, never ask a Scot if he's from England.
@@harlequin2614 well your missing 90% of firearms, semi auto centerfire rifles, Sub guns, launchers
The precision of the moving line, placing the brass cup exactly under each stage of the forming press, is amazing. For me, it's not about the product in the video, it's the machines.
Gears and stepper motors me boy
Ofc its about the machines ..its even the title. Nothing exciting about cartridges which have been used for over 100 years lol
Half a kilo less is insane. Imagine if similar savings can be found in uniform, ballistic protection and such. That's what the infantryman needs on the ground: less weight and more ammo. There's only so far smart tech, drones and such can get you before you need to get dirty and put rounds down range.
it's good but with more advanced technoogy they could eliminate far more weight than that by using plastic, they managed it on big guns where the entire case explodes away... they'll only get it so light by shaving away more metal and using better alloys etc
If weight is saved on the individual rounds, the soldiers will just start carrying more ammo. It's good that they can carry more but the overall weight of a soldier will keep ballooning as it has done for 250 years
So about 10 years ago, my job was designing and integrating kit for the British Infantry. We saved a few kgs within our scope of supply but as soon as the weight was removed, the lads grabbed more ammo.
@Goat Dehydrate it? :))
@@meme4one is that a bad thing? More ammo means the infantryman can stay in the fight for longer and has higher chances of survival. Usually first team to run out of rounds is killed or captured.
Thank you BAE and everyone that works for them.. You're greatly appreciated.
I was lucky enough to win a factory tour with a group of people to go to the Norma factory in Sweden earlier this year and if you have the interest for shooting or hunting it is such an awesome experience. I loved every second and would love to go back someday
How did you win that?
@@joshuacarvalho5405 A competition they had a few years ago to celebrate that the pandemic restrictions started to go away.
One factory supplying the UK Armed forces? Well, that sounds like a sensible idea.
A million rounds per day, in a factory that's working under capacity.
Besides, how much would another factory cost to build, fit with highly specialized machines, then needlessly produce rounds?
@@shootmcrunfast I think the point Joseph is making is that it's a strategic blunder to have a single point of failure. What if, say, an enemy operative walked in and wrecked a few critical machines or one cruise missile landed on it?
True, the UK should build more factories in secret in case the enemies target it. But I'm sure the UK leaders are competent enough to do that, right? Right?
I wonder how it plays on the mind working at the Russian's #1 Nuclear target?
Maybe they do have another factory but just don’t want to let you know about it on RUclips
This needs to be a one-hour documentary, with lots of slow-motion footage of the machines producing the rounds!
@petenztube: Not likely. Neither the owners nor the UK government want too much process information leaking out to competitors or to foreign powers.
Are you Russian or Chineses XD?
@@Davinator11 What a terrible thing to suggest, comrade! 🙂
Sounds like your brain is in slow motion.
@@Davinator11 they're busy making shitest cheapest ammo money can buy
My mother was inspector number 9 at the salt lake ordinance Depot in Utah during world war II she told me many stories about things that happened during that time she also had seven brothers overseas during world war II she never let a bad bullet get by her ever
Thank you for your mother’s service and your seven uncles.
The Americans behind the scenes were the force multipliers. It was a finely greased machine. And it didn’t just happen. Individual skill levels were incredible. And all are greatly appreciated.
S&R right to keep and to bear arms you made it so most of the people that went to that were worth already skilled in the use of firearms another us is still got the most armed people in the world with an average of 2 and 1/2 guns per person
Ive been to the Norma factory twice, the process is basically the same.
What surprised me the most is the machine that takes pictures and measures the casings and rejects bad ones. The speed it happens at, it is absolutely astonishing.
In what country is Norma made? I've seen it for sale a bit more over the past few years.
Norma is USA
God I hate Norma. I can't tell you how many decapping pins I've broken trying to reload Norma cases.
Do you know what machine/manufacturer they use for this?
I mean the machine measuring the casings? @shafferhead
This is such a brilliant channel, understanding how our defensive industry and systems work is something everyone should know. Great job 👍
I watched this wondering what my grandfather would have made of it if he was still with us. He was chief inspector of armaments for Royal Ordnance at the end of WW2, first at Woolwich then Enfield, before he retired in the sixties. My Dad once told me that he came home from work having overseen dumping thousands of tonnes of non-conforming rounds in the Irish Sea. What he would have given for the failure rates they can achieve today. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, after retirement he couldn't stand the sight of anything to do with guns or armaments. That's probably why I went into healthcare engineering.
I heard of a operation we're Irish fisherman would acquire large amounts of ammunition from the British military but I wasn't sure how that could be possible.
That's amazing! I bet your grandfather had some stories to tell!
@@mikejohnson5900 He died in 1980 when I was 11, so I never really had an opportunity to talk to him about his work. I just remember that he went ballistic once when he saw me playing with a toy gun. My Dad, who would have been eight or nine at the time, did once recall that he sneaked a look in his briefcase towards the end of the war and saw a pistol in there. Whatever he did, security must have been an issue.
Do you know where they dumped them in the sea, Brass is worth a pretty penny these days
@@nicevideomancanada Treasure hunt, awesome. I have some experience with scuba diving.
Imagine the fun you could have at the local shooting range, if you had a day's output of that factory as a gift.
Have shot a lot of RG 7.62mm in my time! Excellent rounds. Great factory tour.
Interesting. Way back in the mid '60's I worked for Imperial Metal Industries (IMI) in Witton, Birmingham. They made all the Army's rounds back then. The Witton site is long gone and for all I know so is IMI. I wonder how many rounds I fired during my service were made there. They even had a range where blokes would come and test fire some from batches for QC.
Interesting - I tried to investigate a late relatives work in Birmingham during the war and came up blank. Any other ex-companies you can name?
@@chaplin577 erm.. not that I can confirm to during the war, but in Birmingham the major companies were IMI as mentioned, Imperial Chemical Industries who made various explosives and Stuff, Lucas who made vehicle electronics. I also know that Spitfires, tanks and small arms were made here chap though I can't tell you what the companies who made them were. I'm not a native, I just ended up here at the end of my service because my wife comes from here.
@@chaplin577 Is the pun intended "blank" as in dummybullet 🥸
@@chaplin577 I can't resist it...... 'came up blank', they probably weren't making ammunition then.
@@chaplin577 BSA...Birmingham Small Arms......same company who made our motorbikes.
Great film. We should make every piece of military equipment we can in the UK.
Look at a lot weapons we can reverse engineer....
🤣 😂 🤣 sold and destroyed our industries. Never to return. The uk is just too expensive to make anything. Not competitive. Then the generations of skill fade. The majority cant even change a car wheel let alone work and build machinary and high tech kit. In the victorian era a child had to know how to read a micrometer to get a job on the railway. Today kids/adults cant do that or program a computer.
@@derf9465, ‘just too expensive to make anything’; where is this factory, Mars?
@@johnnunn8688 I think he's trying to tell us we charge too much for our labour
@@curtisevans8413 To be fair he ain’t too far off. British labour is highly competitive.
A 7 minute video that showed absolutely nothing about how the rounds were produced
except machines going click click click.
Need to be self sufficient buying in from third parties is dodgy. I was in BAOR in late 60’s and on annual classification we found problems with 7.62 ammo, it either did not fire or in the case of belted L7 belts we had multiple stoppages, turned out the MoD had purchased a mega batch from Pakistan at a low price. If used in real combat it would have been a real problem. Low price equaled low quality.🤦♂️
Pakistani 9mm was also legendarily bad...
Mind you its not always low price. The Army had a lot of US made .50 cal ammo that was terrible at the start of the Herrick operations in Afg. Once replaced with RG stuff it was ok.
There should be constant quality control of procured equipment. Someone let us down. Even Amazon has to keep safety testing the same products because the manufacturers are constantly nibbling at quality of materials even when design and published specs do not change. It's also all very well to outsource buying to abroad but if a superpower battle broke out the transport of such goods would be very difficult. It would seem a good portion of the wests military is held and designed to hold back a superpower war but its strategic logistics planning seems to assume we will always be fighting far away wars with small powers that cannot hit our supply lines, production and storage facilities.
That ammo had a stoppage named after it. The 'Indian round'
@Philip Smith Remember my Dad saying it was one of the reasons people said a wet camo jacket would stop a round from Hi-Power or Sterling SMG...huge amounts of hangfires if I remember correctly.
You might not get what you pay for, but you certainly don't get quality if you don't pay for it.
We need more of this. A lot more.
10000 extra round per pellet load is massive the edge it will give for every supply run would add up over time intems of firepower downnrage.
I'm not convinced that weight is the typically limiting factor for pallet capacity or that a helo/truck/whatever can necessarily carry any more rounds just because it is lighter. The case dimensions are fixed, so volume can't really adjust and ammo cans are packed by unit or volume, not by weight. Likewise, while it will reduce the burden on the foot soldier, it doesn't necessarily mean they have room to carry another magazine.
This factory hold so many people's lives
the British army does not shoot unless provoked. Moral of the story; don't step too far out of line...
And has probably taken so many lives just in the factory itself. 80 years of munitions production has surely resulted in more than a few workplace accidents.
Now do one about the factory where the make the ammo boxes!
I think you might want to split up production to different sites - having all production on one site makes it vulnerable
True
If the UK starts coming under fire again there are more pressing issues
👍👍
Why didn’t they think about that? 🤦♂️
I agree 100%. Just go review the US baby formula fiasco!
It's not just the product but the deal the offer that gives benefits to clients and secures a purpose for peoples skills creating and delivering the product to the customer. That is business 101...
If you look at 5:52 you'll see that the case requires a berdan primer (two non centered flashholes) and not the US standard boxer primer (single centered flash hole.) Typically the boxer primed spent cases are easier to recycle, but the UK is probably not worried about re using military brass since there is probably little commercial demand for it.
Good catch.
Crazy thing is Berdan primers were designed by an American, and the Boxer primers were designed by an Englishman.
I believe after exercises the military dies have to collect a certain percentage of used casings (can't remember the number). Think they just get melted down though and reforged.
@Will he heck as like look up videos concerning "reloading berdan primer." The boxer primers other militaries use such as the us can be sold, hand loaded, and used again with no smelting.
The UK polices up as much spent brass as humanly possibly and a great deal of it is reloaded. RG ball comes in two flavours. Cardboard boxes of 20 rounds that have been reloaded - used for gallery ranges, you can tell its reloaded as it has pronounced case anealmentat the shoulder and neck. Ball for use on operations or on field firing ranges such as Sennybridge is brand new, comes in bandoliers of chargers for speed loading mags and has the usual mix of one in five tracer. Ball. Blank. It all gets collected if possible or you would kill the environment. The sheer physical mass of brass used is phenomenal, you have to see it first hand to understand the sacks and sacks of empties that are policed up after a battalion sized exercise. Now take that and repeat it weekly.
Right lads brass picking.
I have reloaded all my amunicion for years and they are tuned to each rifle. Far more accurate and a bit of extra oomph behind them.Mass produced amunicion just can't get that. 3 rounds in a 3 inch pattern at 400 + yards. I love my 338 lapua.
The machinery in that new building had to be tested. That means that they needed inert material with EXACTLY the same physical properties as the various propellants. Yes, there are multiple options on propellants, as some shapes of granule burn faster than others.
Some propellants have retarding agents in to control the burn speed
Ah, that explains why I can't get a cheap ammo box to store my seeds.
we pay 30$ in oz for that size show getting silk screen labelled
The narrator and one of the guides were wearing their earplugs wrong. Those 3M plugs should be rolled up as tight as possible, and inserted deep into the ear canal, not left hanging mostly outside the ear.
Let's not forget this amazing technology and the professional people who are proud of there product. Let's hope you are never the target down range.
But considering the marksmanship of the average pongo. That is the main reason why they need to make and be able to carry lots of rounds.
What could go wrong with having all your ammunition being produced in one building. It’s not like it’s a likely target for any potential enemy.
there are multiple sites, and ammunition can be easily flown in if necessary
Its better in the long run just having it in one place than moving it 5 times by truck every time you go to a new step
@@squidwardo7074 its a better idea strategically to spread it out. More expensive, yes, but potentially going to save you a war, hense why there are multiple sites.
The factory must grow
Very well vetted spokesperson there. I'm impressed.
Its.... beautiful. It's almost enough to get a DS to cry
End user here. They work.
Serious ASMR hearing bullet casing hitting metal 😍
The real takeaway here is that the calibers its produces are also produced elsewhere. So while a million rounds a day sounds like a lot = it really isn't. During the WOT the US military at one point was expending over a billion rounds a year - so much so that it was forced to purchase additional ammo from other nations as it expanded its own production capacity at Lake City.
Now the US is moving towards a "unique" caliber which requires it to literally build a new production facility to manufacture it - while the rifle that fires it will similarly lack commonality of critical parts. So they also will be faced with a single source supply paradigm which may work in peacetime = but which can prove itself problematic in the event of war. Modern warfare sees massive expenditures of ammunition. The more places you can source what you use - the better.
I have thousands of 5.56mm rounds from RG from the early 2000s when It was available as surplus. all in those nice brown cans.
“You don’t make cans of coke” Yet the manufacturing process shares a lot with manufacturing coke cans.
Tracing cartridges... big brother at it again.
I love the way they're making stuff that kills people but they've got a keen eye on doing it in an environmentally friendly way. That's to be commended.
Blood makes the grass grow
*Laughs in Genghis Khan*
depends, It could also save lives. But yes, most humans are corrput in the brain
@@PipMane Kaput*?
Yes I agree. Very smart and considered of them. Kill the bad guy save the environment.
Very odd coming from a country where just about all fire arms and ammo has been banned, and the penalty for having any is severe.
For context a Gimpy could (theoretically) chew through a million rounds quicker than they are produced at that rate.
@Jazzmaster Jay why I added the theoretically.
Freedom, one round at a time.
[08/31/22] There will always be a need for instruments of war so long as there are people that just cannot be reasoned with.
In USA we used Tobe able to follow channels that explained ammo manufacture and reloading techniques.
What a job. Amazing.
Looks like any other factory job to be honest.
We have multiple factories that supply ammunition for the US military. Lake City being the largest and in constant operation for the longest. Other smaller factories for military use that can be placed into operation. And many civilian ammunition manufacturers that also contract with federal gov to manufacture ammo for the military. Winchester makes 9mm and 12 guage ammo and sometimes is asked to make 5.56. The 2020 corona virus has substantially driven up costs. Not sure the exchange rate but in 2019 a box of 50 rounds of 9x19 mm could be purchased for about 11 US dollars and 20 round box of 5.56 for about 7 US dollars. Today 9mm is close to 20 or more depending on if its for range or self defense use and 5.56 about 15 dollars
Bro what.......your telling me.....you can get a box of 5.56 for 15 bucks in the states....
BRO HERE IN NZ 5.56 IS LIKE 1.50 A ROUND😭😭😭😭
@@4doorsmorewhores298 damn thats sad
As an Air gunner...i think BAE systems should put their engineering expertise into making airgun slugs...(this is a growing industry & one BAE COULD PROFIT FROM)
Wonder if they will suffer from the lead ban🧐
Looks pretty much the same as when I went for an interview there around 2000
Wow, I live down the road from that factory, I knew it was a munition's factory but nothing more :O
They made 20mm rounds for the Hispano aircraft gun in ww2 as used in the Mosquito
Munitions factory.
you better keep up the good job, guys! best from Greenland!
I have no live rounds or empty cases on my person sir
A guy who used to work there told me they don't make primers anymore because an explosion happened years ago and a worker lost his legs. So it was a safety based decision.
Hopefully we have other off site production areas that are just as capable. One ship blocks a canal and the world stops, one fire stops bullet production, what happens to the conflict ?
Surrender.
@@Phil_AKA_ThundyUK " Never. Never. Never ! "
@@Phil_AKA_ThundyUK Nae Surrender.
ER... we buy from another country, just as the US did when they used up all of their ammo in Afghanistan.
Thanks for the video, Enjoyed. later from The Republic of Texas, usa.
"loadsa money!!!! 💸"
5:52 I love the irony of the MOD using Berdan (US designed) primers for British made rounds and the US using Boxer (British designed) primers for US made rounds.
I would love to have just a few M80 spec Ball with appropriate head stamp for my ammo collection. Yes its a thing.
I've got about 3,000 rounds
The guy doing the on screen visuals must have had an extra cup of coffee that day. Never have I seen small bits of metal getting cleaned turn into an action movie.
Fun Fact : That Bar Code is really a QR code.
fun fact part 2: if you scan the QR code, it says " Hello :) "
Quality control,of these rounds is astonishing. I had a friend whose life was saved by a dud round aimed at him by a Viet Cong soldier. He unloaded the (by then dead) soldier’s rifle, and found a round in the chamber with a firing pin indent.
He owes his life to crappy Russian or Chinese made steel cased ammo... although admittedly it has gotten better since the 70's. Just can't buy it cheap anymore.
Wow that’s amazing, lucky guy
I expect the Russians don't have this type of Quality Control!!! 😁
They're still using old corrosive ammo lol
@@MrDK0010 I still wouldn't recommend standing in front of one of their weapons..with or without a ballistic vest.
Why pay for quality control when you can have a super yacht or two instead?
@@MrDK0010 and its still the best in the world
like the uk assault rifles total garbage
The QR code @6:13 says "Hello :)" which I thought was funny.
As a professional brass-chicken myself what I want to know is what they do with all the discharged casings we've gathered over the years.
We have to pick them all up when finished on a firing exercise or range, blank or live rounds. They then get sent back and recycled to save the MOD some money
@@tomsoki5738 They get sold back to BAE at current brass scrap value, massively bad deal. They get re cast not re-loaded. Money sink. Same with the copper and lead from berms behind the tagets, except they have to pay huge sums for that. Another bad deal.
@@tomsoki5738 Only the army cadets pick it up.
@@denvernugg1151 Army too
@@tomsoki5738 thanks hun
Impressive technology!
The U.S army is " moving up " to the newer 6.8 x 51mm cartridge , does the British army intend to follow suit ?
Yes
Can’t see it happens if we take note of history the US rejected the British .280 in the 1950’s and bullied NATO to adopt .308 (7.62mm) then went solo on the .223 (5.56mm) The 6.8 is .227, all looks like back to the future 🤷🏻♂️
no-one has said anything... i imagine we observe the experiment, you can still argue until the results are in 7.62 is still avilable if required
No-one knows.
But if its proprietary just to SIG, with large licensing costs then the answer will be no, and quite rightly so.
Yes, the British army will follow suit
Amazing engineers .
I call BS on the "weight" savings intent. It's not about saving the soldier or transport, it's about MONEY, the cost of brass, improving the bottom line.
It depends on who's financing the development of a new ammunition type. If it's a government contract, then weight savings could be the primary motivating factor. But BAE would certainly use weight savings as a key selling point in order to generate interest for any future buyer of said new ammunition if it was developed as an internal project.
Major companies aren't motivated by one single point when it comes to projects like that - even if money is often an outsized motivator.
You got to pump it up, don't you know pump it up.
So what happens to all the brass picked up by soldiers at the end of exercise or ranges. Melted down and re-used?
Good question Tom, not something I ever thought about and I must have picked up many hundreds. "I have no live rounds or empty cases in my possession Sir!"
@@jimfrodsham7938 we nearly always got reloads for range practice, you could see on the case where the heat had changed the colour from brass to a bluey purple, we hardly ever got pristine new rounds.
@@mebymyself2816 oh right, I can't say I ever noticed or even looked for that.
Nearly all brass is recycled, smelted down etc. Some 5.56/.223 rounds are fire once throw away Some are composite Some brass
Had ROF Bishopton Stayed open the result is that the UK-made 5.56x45 would have a Cordite propellant like the Indian 5.56x45 ammo due to India still having the Cordite Factory in the Chennai Region
We have not used Cordite in small arms since .303..
A 'smart' factory creating ammunition? Welcome to Skynet 😅😖
Just one piece of the puzzle.. musk is building Optimus prime.. ai is already here. More than we know
You get a discount on ammo if you work there is my only question lol
its sad how far the british arms industry has fallen ! we need investment upgrading and overhauling to meet a peer adversary.
@@davericketts9101thanks for the spell check , and if you think our arms industry isnt in decline just because 1 video on a mostly foreign owned company who dont even make the whole bullet !
@@paulmccormick It's just a weird statement without qualifying, as the video didn't talk or show anything that would indicate the fall of the arms industry in Britain.
@Goat Civilian market definitely has fallen in the 17/1800s we made the best quality guns now we only have a few keeping tradition alive
@@chroma6947 have you seen the UK its you get the cops call on your for just talking about firearms.... civilian ownership of firearms not to mention what kinds is in the toilet.. when civilians can't own something that industry lacks ambition and drive to make more of it being guns
Just like lord of war
Mammon
If anything has been proven by the war in Ukraine, it’s that you can never have too much ammo. Everyone should be stockpiling more ammo, running at half capacity is foolish
There IS a stockpile. You DO need spare capacity, for when you start to need more than the million rounds per day. The 1.000.000 rounds exceed the Brittish requirements I think. Probably some export numers in there as well, making more domestic capacity available when required. 1.000.000 are 13 soldiers a day 365 a year shooting 200 rounds.
we are stockpiling mate, you think we shoot 1,000,000 rounds on ranges each day?
@@joshuahicks4574 I’m just saying you always need more ammo then you think you need.
@@willberry6434 we can double to 2 million a day if necessary, and there are multiple of these factories. In a time of need, NATO can easily fly in ammunition.
@@willberry6434 I'm sure the MoD have a good idea of how much ammo they need, don't worry....
Well I ope it consistently performs better than some of the 9mm stuff we had in the 80's. I believe it was bought from India or Pakistan. Rounds that lacked enough the power to lock the bolt of the Sterling open were common
Cool. Every UK citizen should be allowed to carry to deter terrorists.
It’s so important to get this right so when people are killing people, they do it right…
Just one factory? My god we're done.
What makes you say that?
In the 1960’s the US had 5 major ammo plants supplying their armed forces, by the end of the century, just one.
In 2003 they had to order additional ammunition from this site and Israel.
I suspect the UK is far from unique in having one major plant like this.
Other than that, maybe a better title for this might have been ‘Brassed Up’.
@@grahambuckerfield4640 After the Falkland war the UK government went hands to panic stations to get 7.62 and 9mm as war reserve the bought tons of the stuff from India.
When In Belize a few years later it was released for general use and we had a batch of 9mm for pistol practice, I swear it was filled with curry powder so rounds went of with a viscous kick other just managed to crawl out of the barrel and drop about 6 feet away even had the rim of a case split so that the pistol would not reload it was like having a spacer in the breach. were we glad to see the back of it as there was no consistence.
Depends on how much ammo it can produce.
I read somewhere that the US Army Lake City Ammo Plant can produce over 1 billion rounds of small arms ammo a year.
Of course, the USA also has private gun ownership, so other companies can produce a lot more.
I also read some accounts that the US Government gave Ukraine over 100 million rounds of ammo since the war started. Wars use a lot of ammo.
@@willw8011 Radway Green can produce over 700 million rounds a year....and the British Army is 1/6th size of the US Army....
In practice if they went to 24hr, 7 days a week they could exceed that.
The .308 Winchester is a very viable and efficient chambering. Able to rival the 30/06 Springfield with 150 grain projectiles. In a short action platform.
So the lesson I'm taking is one well aimed cruise missile and 365 million rounds of ammo a year go dark?
NATO countries have dozens of such factories. It's an alliance.
there are multiple factories, and i can confirm, via experience on this site, we are perfectly safe from threat
@@bobbydazzler6990 The reply isn't what I'm talking about, it's the effect.
So little employees. Goes to show you how much manufacturing has automated.
All that ammo in one factory, prime target for the enemy. Britain out of straight away, outrageous forethought
Who targeting it? All ammo is one factory… multiple factories
multiple factories, and as soon as its produced its shipped off, doesn't sit around in the factory.
Fantastic, a single point of failure is all that stands between national defense capabilities, and throwing stones at the enemy. Which genius came up with that one? Some things are more important than economies of scale.
And we publicise our warehouses that keep all our stores in one location too
May the soul of all that have died from bullets rest in Perfect PEACE 😢
And not a single round made for British civilians. Your government doesn't consider you Brits competent enough to handle "dangerous weapons". On a different note, I wonder if the UK is going to consider switching to the US's new 6.8x51 rounds for their service rifles? It will be really interesting to see what becomes of 6.8 among other NATO countries over the next few years.
Well the british public don't want fire arms so your points invalid. And the new A2 for the l128A1 is changing to 6.8.
some people prefer it cos they don't have to worry about the school shootings and our police don't have to walk around with weapons
in some ways to, i mean besides being able to hunt some animals (of which England is not a land of plenty like the USA), i mean what would we do with them? i could shoot cans i guess.... in the US i might like to shoot me some hogs, so it's different i think people don't really care much here
America is a prime example of how much, much more dangerous a society is with legalised guns. Don't start preaching here pal.
We have civilian firearm ownership here you melon, you just need a license. And rounds made in the UK are used by British shooters, but that's only the very expensive competition ammo, most comes from Eastern Europe. And i hope to god we don't adopt 6.8mm it's an awful round, not going with polymer cases will bite the US in the arse, you yanks never choose the right ammo, 5.56 and 7.62 were the worst of the ones available for trials at the time of choosing.
Except you're wrong, you can own 556mm rifles in the UK.
And 7.62mm
Oh good, it's a SMART factory.
Cool to see how that stuff is made. It's surprising to see him walk around that place without safety glasses.
And a hairnet lol
@@Violentpitsa5501 What protection does a hairnet offer?
Scaling up one factory is not the issue. Opening a fresh new factory is the really hard part. Given what is recently happening, this company is likely looking at opening a second factory in Germany or Poland.
Serializing them gives me a bad feeling.
Wars aren't won on the battlefield. They are won in factories by countries that have the production capacity.
I wish they would sell in the UK for different calibres, for licence holders, instead of us paying for expensive foreign ammo.
For anyone curious, the QR code says "hello :)"
I thought it said "hasta la vista, baby"... :)
WOOW, at 6:13 the QR code just says "Hello :)"
There is no problem with one site manufacturing British army ammunition, the technology is so mature that production can be ramped up anywhere in the UK very quickly.
I bought a bunch of British Radway Green M855 5.56 and that was good ammo.
5 inch group.
That better be like 300 yards open sights.