The Netherlands allocates €87 million for ammunition for Ukraine: how many shells is it?

Defense Express writes about this.

The Dutch government has officially announced the next tranche of arms aid to Ukraine. According to this tranche, 87 million euros will be used to purchase artillery shells, 25 million euros will go to the International Fund for Ukraine (IFU) to purchase equipment, and another 10 million euros will be used to strengthen cyber defense, the article notes.

As for the Netherlands' assistance, the allocation of €87 million for ammunition is a significant contribution, as the Netherlands had previously allocated €130 million for this purpose. In total, the Dutch government has allocated €2 billion to support Ukraine in 2024.

“To understand the scale of the assistance, it is necessary to translate the money into the ammunition itself, for example, 155-mm shells. If we take the latest known purchase from the EU, at the end of January this year, NATO, through its own procurement agency (NATO Support and Procurement Agency - NSPA), contracted more than 220,000 shells for $1.2 billion. That is, approximately 5,500 dollars for one 155-mm ammunition, or at the current exchange rate, 5,000 euros,” the article reads.

Thus, 17,400 155-mm rounds can be purchased for 87 million euros at this price tag. At the same time, the mention of the 2021 price for the same projectile of about €1,500, which would allow the same amount of money to buy 58,000 155-mm munitions, is now just a phantom pain.

Also, there are no signs that ammunition may start to become cheaper rapidly, as currently, the arms manufacturers are only at the stage of expanding production capacity.

Defense Express gives an example that in Europe, Rheinmetall is actively engaged in this, having acquired the powerful Spanish manufacturer Expal back in 2022, announced plans to build a gunpowder production facility in Romania and an explosives production facility in Hungary. And now it is going further and has announced the creation of a new ammunition production facility in Germany.