Europe must step up to a war footing, says leading ammunition group chief

Morten Brandtzæg

Europe must step up to a war footing and prioritise the defence industry’s access to critical machinery and electricity as the conflict in Ukraine looks set to drag on, according to the head of one of the region’s biggest arms producers.

Morten Brandtzæg, chief executive of ammunition producer Nammo, which is part-owned by the Norwegian and Finnish governments, told the Financial Times that more than two years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, politicians and societies were still in peacetime mode even though large parts of the defence industry were producing “like it is a war”.

Companies have been under intense pressure to increase output of ammunition, missiles and other weapons to replenish national stockpiles that have been depleted in the west’s support of Ukraine. Despite financial support from both Brussels and national governments to help with the unprecedented investments needed, the industry was still facing problems accessing critical production equipment as well as electricity, said Brandtzæg.

“The demand for certain things from the defence industry is a demand for war production,” he told the Financial Times in an interview.

Nammo’s plans to expand its largest factory were halted last year because a new data centre for TikTok was using up all the spare power capacity in the area. In the absence of legislation, said Brandtzaeg, the issue was not yet “100 per cent resolved”.

“It can’t be so that we lose the war because we store too many cat videos,” he added.

Europe should consider legislation similar to the Defense Production Act in the US, which gives the president the powers to compel companies to prioritise government contracts over private ones, said Brandtzæg.

“Should there be some kind of legislation that in certain times of crisis European defence producers have first access to production equipment to buy that? That is done by law in the US but not regulated in Europe,” he said, adding “that is an area where we can improve”.

The industry was sometimes “number nine in the queue to buy production equipment and all the other guys are buying for commercial use” Brandtzæg said.

Nammo is set to receive more than €300mn in support from both national governments such as Norway and Finland, and the EU, equivalent to how much it would invest in a decade during peacetime. It is also investing about €150mn of its own money annually.

Western governments have warned in recent months that Russia is only a few years away from being able to attack a Nato country, in large part because of how much more ammunition Moscow is producing a year compared with Europe.

Brandtzæg said that Europe needed to go further. “In my view, we must step up more. We must step up faster. We have a good process started but we must continue to run faster. We are in an industrial war of capacity,” he added.

Nammo is one of Europe’s biggest ammunition producers, making everything from the biggest artillery shells to those used in tanks, fighter jets, and guns. Alongside Roxel, owned equally by missile maker MBDA and France’s Safran, it is one of just two European manufacturers of “rocket motors”, propulsion systems for rockets and missiles.

Ukraine’s demand for missiles has sparked concern about a potential shortage of rocket motors. US defence group RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, warned last year that capacity constraints at rocket motor producer Aerojet Rocketdyne were hampering American production. Consolidation in the industry has left just two in the US — Aerojet, which was bought by L3 Harris last year — and Northrop Grumman.

Brandtzæg said Nammo was in talks with the Pentagon about becoming the third supplier of rocket motors in the US to help “strengthen the industrial base in the western world”.

Nammo was also talking to the large contractors about how it can help, although the company, he added, was keen to remain an independent supplier of rocket motors.