Europe’s production of artillery ammunition is set to double this year or next as the region’s defense contractors overcome an initial struggle to ramp up output to help Ukraine’s war effort and boost the continent’s supplies. “We see that European industrial capacities have gone up, so this is a positive trend,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told us. With Ukraine and Russia burning through ammunition in a war of attrition, the EU has sought to rapidly increase output of 155mm artillery shells, both to maintain supplies to the government in Kyiv and replenish its own stocks. But years of limited military spending left Europe’s defense industry ill-equipped to quickly expand production after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.