U.S. Army awards $581M to build new artillery explosive plant

The U.S. Army has awarded a $581 million contract to build a new plant to manufacture IMX-104, the explosive used to fill 155 mm artillery shells and mortar rounds, as the service works to close a production gap that has slowed its ammunition buildup.

Nitradyn LLC of Tampa, Florida, will design, construct and commission the facility under the firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is managing the award, with work expected to be complete by August 9, 2030. The Army has not disclosed where the new plant will be built.

The Army first sought a contractor for this exact capability in May 2025, when it issued a notice seeking a company to design, build and run a government-owned plant capable of producing 10 million to 13 million pounds of IMX-104 a year, either at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, or another U.S. location. That target would roughly double or triple the roughly 5 million pounds a year the Holston plant had been producing before the push to expand capacity began.

IMX-104 is a melt-castable explosive that the Army developed to replace TNT in artillery and mortar rounds. It delivers similar destructive force but is far more resistant to detonating accidentally from gunfire, fragments, fire or other unintended impacts, a property the Army calls insensitive munitions technology. The explosive has been used in 81 mm mortar rounds since 2015 and has since been adopted more broadly as the Army phases out older TNT-based fills.

Explosives supply has been one of the central bottlenecks in the Army’s push to raise 155 mm artillery shell production to 100,000 rounds a month, a goal driven by the pace of ammunition consumption in Ukraine’s war with Russia. Each 155 mm shell requires about 22 pounds of explosive filler, meaning that target output would require roughly 26.4 million pounds of energetics a month across all suppliers. A Pentagon inspector general report published in July 2026 found the Army was still producing only about 36,000 rounds a month as of that spring, well short of the 100,000-round goal originally targeted for October 2025, with metal parts production identified as the primary constraint rather than explosives alone. The U.S. has leaned on allies including Poland, India and Australia to help cover explosives shortfalls, since the country lacked any domestic TNT production as of last year.