Fiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing

https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artillery-factory-failed?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature General Dynamics opened a Texas factory to churn out artillery shells for Ukraine, but the machines kept breaking. Robot arms smashed into things. Hunks of metal crashed to the floor. There was even a real-life dumpster fire. How do you take a tired, but timeless, subject — outsize defense spending — and find what makes it surprising and propulsive? That’s the kind of question that editors like me spend a lot of time thinking about as we work with reporters to shape their stories. Nick Varchaver, ProPublica Senior Editor The answer, in a single word: details. And today’s story by ProPublica reporter Jesse Coburn has details that’ll stay with you: huge robot arms erupting in flames. Workers beating giant, malfunctioning machines with sledgehammers. An actual dumpster fire. Coburn’s investigation reveals how U.S. taxpayers sent a half-billion dollars to the defense behemoth General Dynamics to make much-needed 155 mm artillery shells for Ukraine. But the company did not deliver even one. In fact, Coburn learned, the artillery shells were cracked by the very (much-hyped) machinery that was trying to make them. His reporting shows that what became a chain of disasters didn’t happen just by chance; it happened because of human decisions. And in an era in which the Pentagon is clamping down on reporters’ access, finding the people responsible and understanding what went wrong took many months of making calls and knocking on doors — some slammed in Coburn’s face by corporate and Army officials alike. Still, he managed to get deep inside the process. The story is an industrial comedy of errors at a moment when the U.S. defense budget has soared to a record $1 trillion and the Trump administration hopes to amp that up to $1.5 trillion next fiscal year. The Army told ProPublica that it exercises “rigorous oversight,” and “Where vendors fail to meet contract specifications” — it cited the General Dynamics artillery factory — ”we are evaluating contract performance, seeking recoupment of funds, and pivoting resources.” The company has said it “met or exceeded requirements” for the project and told ProPublica its reporting “fundamentally mischaracterizes the circumstances.” Maybe the subject of defense spending falls into a domain of stories you know you should read but don’t actually want to. But I’m here to tell you: You don’t know where this story is going. And it’s all in the details.