While Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy was in the UK for the European Political Community summit, hosted by the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a series of important bilateral meetings have been held including also the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov.

Crucially, meetings have been held with representatives from UK Export Finance, BAE Systems, Thales UK, MBDA, KBR and Babcock, British firms that deliver invaluable support to Ukraine’s war effort. New contracts for equipment support have been announced by both BAE Systems and Babcock International Group, and the MOD has quietly announced that the forging of heavy calibre barrels in the UK will resume. The capability to forge and produce large calibre barrels was allowed to lapse over the past couple of decades, leaving the UK dependent on import, essentially from Germany.

The MOD did not particularly advertise this key development, only saying in the press release “this week, the MOD agreed to regenerate the UK’s ability to produce forgings for gun barrels, working in partnership with Sheffield Forgemasters, supporting the repair and overhaul of Ukrainian vehicles; this is the first step towards UK sovereign barrel production”.

The initial focus will be on the forging of barrels for the AS90 155/39 self-propelled howitzer and for the L119 Light Gun in 105 mm calibre (note: Ukraine has been supplied not with the L118 British variant but the American L119. Specifically, the guns supplied are understood to be ex-Australian L119 that BAE had bought back from Sydney while supplying M777s). It is to be assumed that the capability will then play a role in sustaining the 120/55 smoothbore cannon of CHALLENGER 3 and the 155/52 howitzer of the BOXER RCH155 which is to replace AS90 under the Mobile Fires Platform project.

Sheffield Forgemasters is a global leader in metallurgy which plays a particularly strategic role in complex forging and welding and steel works for nuclear power applications, nuclear reactors and nuclear submarines. It is because of these key capabilities that it was wholly nationalised by the previous UK administration, in 2021, and became an arm’s length body wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence. Since then, the company has seen investments for £400 million in further capabilities and in improved flood defences for its plants. Sheffield Forgemasters currently has the capacity for pouring the largest single casting (570 tonnes) in Europe and a new open die forge, the largest in the UK, is in build, along with a new machining facility which will contain multiple versions of the world’s largest, most advanced, five-axis vertical turning lathes.

The freshly installed new British Secretary of State for Defence John Healey, the Chief of Defence Nuclear at UK Ministry of Defence, Maddy McTernan and Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles visited the facility on Saturday 13, mere days after the general election in the UK, due to its key role in the AUKUS enterprise.

The new project to regenerate barrel forging in the UK is probably one of several new measures and contracts, largely still unannounced, contained in the “Ammunition Strategy” that was being prepared by the MOD and the previous government. While the early general election means that this key policy paper will probably not be published as a standalone document but will feed into the new Labour-led Strategic Defence Review which is due to report in the first half of next year, a number of other projects and contracts might start emerging over the coming weeks and months. This follows the expansion of BAE System’s ammunition factories in Washington and Glascoed to “grow 8-fold” the capability production of 155 mm shells.

The production capability for barrels is a particularly critical factor in sustaining the artillery fight in Ukraine and is a problem that both Kiev and Moscow face and will increasingly be limited by. While the focus so far in the public debate has centred on the production of shells, the availability of barrels might yet prove to be an even greater factor in determining which side will have the upper hand in the use of artillery in the near future.

It is not a case that back in June, General Dynamics European Land System - Santa Bárbara Sistemas (GDELS-SBS) had itself announced the reactivation of its manufacturing capabilities of large calibre gun barrels in Spain.