Zero Shells for $533 Million

Turkey’s Expanding Stake in America’s Munitions Base

On Aug. 12, ProPublica documented what the Pentagon’s inspector general had already confirmed in July: a Texas plant built to mass-produce 155mm artillery shells has never delivered a single usable shell. The production equipment (factory lines) at its heart came from Turkey. The Istanbul firm that supplied it has since collected a $435 million no-bid contract and a dominant stake in key aspects of America’s munitions production ecosystem.

In late 2022, General Dynamics pitched the Army on production lines from “Repkon,” a Turkish metal-forming company that had never held a Pentagon contract and had never used its signature “flow-forming” process to make the projectile the Army urgently needed. Repkon marketed itself as a turnkey single supplier: one vendor, one point of accountability, and a guaranteed production/delivery schedule.

Army officials then learned the line on offer had been designed for an older shell made from different steel, and that the machines had never formed the alloy the M795 requires. When the Army asked to inspect Repkon’s active lines abroad, the company refused, citing customer privacy. Washington decided to purchase three lines anyway, without ever requiring a demonstration that one actually worked.

What arrived at the Mesquite plant malfunctioned in nearly every way a factory can. The flow-forming machine meant to stretch steel precisely instead cracked it beyond repair. The presses required regular sledgehammer pounding to run at all, and still botched the shaping of nearly every shell. Robot arms soaked in lubricant caught fire repeatedly while moving steel blocks heated to 1,800 degrees; one blaze melted a robot’s cables. The same arms swung loose, smashed into computer-controlled machines, bent doors and dropped steel five feet to the floor. A machine meant to give shells smooth noses mangled them into swirls which workers likened to soft-serve! When parts on Repkon machines deformed, a worker found they were made with Chinese steel, potentially at odds with federal specialty-metals rules, even though the Army says it has no evidence of a violation. At the May 2024 ribbon-cutting ceremony, the shells on display had been brought in from elsewhere, and one was plastic.

Repkon’s conduct on site worsened the existing manufacturing problem. Its technicians were secretive about the flow-forming machines and refused to share passwords needed to run critical equipment. American workers were startled to see machines moving on their own, operated remotely from Turkey, and eventually opted to tear out the hardware to sever the link. General Dynamics assigned a minder to shadow the Repkon team. The Army says it found no evidence of sabotage or espionage, and Mesquite is at least as much a General Dynamics management failure as a Repkon one. But a foreign supplier retaining remote control of a US munitions line and withholding credentials from its customer should be seen as a supply-chain problem irrespective of intent.

The delivery shortfall is a major shortfall when one considers the Army’s need for increased artillery ammunition production capacity. Washington’s ambassador to Turkey had projected in February 2024 that approximately 30 percent of all American 155mm rounds would come from these Texas lines (some 30,000 projectiles a month). As of March 2026, the plant had produced none that met contract specifications. General Dynamics blew eight deadlines and missed two first article tests and the Army halted two of three lines in August 2025. As of early 2026, the service now sits near 36,000 rounds a month despite its original goal of producing 100,000-round per month by October 2025, and most of the Repkon equipment is being ripped out and replaced with conventional machinery.

None of this dampened Ankara’s enthusiasm. Turkish state media praised Repkon’s American expansion as Turkish industry shoring up a struggling US arms base, and the Presidency of Defense Industries, Turkey’s state procurement authority, handed the company an export achievement award in 2024. That November, as the American lines failed, Repkon signed a contract to build Pakistan a 155mm line rated at 120,000 rounds a year.

Instead of exercising caution, Washington responded by buying more. The same month, the Army awarded Repkon USA a sole-source contract worth up to $435 million for America’s first domestic TNT plant since the 1980s. In spring 2025, the subsidiary acquired General Dynamics’ Garland, Texas operation, the only domestic source of MK-80 series bomb bodies. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) cleared the deal, handing one foreign-owned firm a chokepoint, as the Heritage Foundation warned. In March 2026, days after being named prime contractor on an emergency munitions sale to Israel, Repkon USA rebranded as Paligen Technologies, which insists it and Repkon are wholly separate companies.

Turkey’s defense sector does not operate at arm’s length from the state. The agency that praised Repkon is the one Washington sanctioned under CAATSA in 2020 for buying Russia’s S-400. In September 2025, Commerce added Turkish firms to the Entity List for diverting priority goods to Russia. Additionally, Treasury also designated Turkish charities financing Hamas in March and an Istanbul exchange moving Hamas money in July. When Turkish opposition MPs asked whether Ankara had approved the Garland purchase, the government did not respond. On July 7, President Trump announced he intended to lift CAATSA sanctions on Turkey entirely.

Congress should respond concretely by requiring the Army to disclose every contract held by Repkon, Repkon USA, and Paligen, plus the CFIUS record for Garland and any mitigation terms. The U.S. must also ban sole-source contract awards to foreign-controlled entities absent a certified first article test. Furthermore, Washington should consider funding a second domestic source for MK-80 series bomb bodies, and adopt annual reporting requirements on Turkish defense-industrial and dual-use cooperation with Russia and China.

Ankara has spent a decade insisting it can shore up Western industrial capacity. In Mesquite, it was handed the chance and delivered nothing — then was rewarded with a monopoly and a no-bid contract. Rebuilding the arsenal is a national priority. Outsourcing its chokepoints to Turkey is not resilience, but the creation of dependencies with better branding.

Sinan Ciddi is a senior fellow and director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).