Intelligence for critical industry.

The bottleneck has moved. Shell-body and assembly capacity is scaling fast — Europe’s largest new plant went from ground-break to opening in 15 months. The constraint is now high-explosive fill, propellant, and the loading, assembly and packing capacity that turns components into certified rounds. A warehouse of inert bodies is not firepower.

The TNT window is real and dated. Europe’s dominant TNT producer has committed 18,000 tonnes to the US market across 2027–2029 — exactly the years allied intelligence services identify as the period in which Russia could reconstitute the capability to threaten NATO.

The finding survives any stockpile assumption. We derive Europe’s requirement three independent ways. Even the most conservative floor — roughly 30 million rounds — absorbs about 18 years of Europe’s generously-estimated RDX output. Readers do not have to accept our strategic insurance tiers for the conclusion to hold.

Demand survives a ceasefire. The structural deficits — energetics and LAP — persist under treaty-anchored NATO capability targets and contracted replenishment. The downside case is modelled, not waved away.

Bodies are abundant globally, scarce inside Europe. European lines are scaling fast but remain committed to national programmes, while the US — targeting 100,000 rounds a month and producing about 40,000 — absorbs its own output. Western filling capacity outgrows local body supply through at least 2028.

The India corridor is proven, not theoretical. Tens of millions of dollars of empty casings have already shipped to European buyers, at forge-direct prices one-third to one-half of European body cost. The buy-empty, fill-in-Europe model is operating today.

Freight is a staircase, not a curve. Mainline carriers bucket even inert bodies as military cargo, pushing the trade onto voyage-priced multipurpose tonnage: roughly $145 per body at pilot lots falling to roughly $58 at full 50-container parcels on the same sailing. The operator who aggregates demand to fill parcels captures a per-body advantage larger than most forge-to-forge price differences.

Second-tier supply bases are one qualification away. ASEAN, Türkiye and Latin American foundries have the metallurgy; what they lack is NATO-standard qualification and batch proof. Whoever builds that bridge first owns it.

Nitrocellulose feedstock is the acute dependency. More than 70% of the cotton linters behind military nitrocellulose come from China, which restricted exports in 2024. Military demand of around 20,000 tonnes a year faces a shortfall estimated at up to 10,000 tonnes, and no mitigation closes the gap before about 2030.

Nitroguanidine is a one-company Western market. A single German producer supplies the West; the US Department of Defense has committed $150m to build it an American plant — official money pricing a single-source risk. The insensitive-munitions transition increases this exposure.

The acid backbone is the cheapest insurance nobody is buying. Every nitration step rides on nitric and sulphuric acid from a European fertiliser industry that has been shedding capacity for a decade. Co-located acid supply and recovery is a small-capex, high-leverage gap.

Precursor positions are mispriced. Tens of millions of capex can gate hundreds of thousands of rounds a year. Governments have started paying for this insurance; private capital largely has not.