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The U.S. Army will be forced to cut its artillery production target by more than a quarter if Congress fails to pass the national security supplemental that provides military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel as well as weapons to replenish U.S. stockpiles, military officials said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Army will be forced to cut its artillery production target by more than a quarter if Congress fails to pass the national security supplemental that provides military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel as well as weapons to replenish U.S. stockpiles, military officials said on Tuesday.

“Bottom line is that short of the supplement that we will end up hitting a ceiling,” said Maj. Gen. Joe Hilbert, the Army’s director of force development, in a briefing on Tuesday. “Without the supplemental, we will cap out at about 72,000 [rounds] a month.”

A little more than $3 billion of the total $106 billion supplemental request bill—which has been debated over in Congress for nearly five months, although it passed in the Senate in mid-February—would go toward buying more 155 mm artillery shells and building new production facilities, including in California, Virginia, and Tennessee. General Dynamics is planning to open three artillery production lines in Mesquite, Texas, to provide for the growing demand.

In fighting the largest land war in Europe since World War II, Russia has expended between 12 to 17 million rounds of artillery ammunition since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago; the astronomical rates of fire have been used to dislodge entrenched defenses and spur advances on both sides.

The U.S. defense industrial base has more than doubled its output of 155 mm artillery ammunition since........

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