ISSUE 024  ·  MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION
The ammunition target everyone tracks is rounds per month. Behind each round sits a propellant charge, and behind nearly every gun propellant sits nitrocellulose: cellulose from cotton linters or wood pulp, converted by nitration in mixed nitric and sulfuric acid.
Single-base propellant is nitrocellulose with stabilizers. Double-base adds nitroglycerin. Triple-base adds nitroglycerin and nitroguanidine. The military buys its grades to a specification, MIL-DTL-244, which sets each grade by nitrogen content.
Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Virginia is the sole North American source for nitrocellulose, the plant’s Operations Division chief said in a January 2009 Army article. In November 2025 the Army ordered 6.4 million pounds of sheeted cotton linters for the plant from its operator, BAE Systems Ordnance Systems, at $20,348,798, according to the U.S. Department of War contract announcement.
6.4 million lb
Sheeted cotton linters ordered in November 2025 for nitrocellulose production at Radford
U.S. Department of War contract announcement, November 2025
PLATE  ·  Cordite production at HM Factory Gretna, 1916
In 1914 Britain’s only government cordite factory was the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey, in Essex. The government estimated six million shells were needed in the first half of 1915; only two million were delivered, the U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History magazine reported in December 2024.
Cordite needed acid plant, nitration houses and separated danger buildings, and at Gretna those were built from bare ground. Parliament established the Ministry of Munitions in June 1915, with David Lloyd George as minister.
Construction at Gretna, on the border between England and Scotland, began in November 1915, and the first propellant was produced in August 1916, the European Route of Industrial Heritage records. The production flow ran 14.5 kilometers, from Dornock in Scotland to storage depots at Longtown in England. At its peak the factory made 800 tons of cordite a week, blended from nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose.
PLATE  ·  Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Radford, Virginia
Radford Army Ammunition Plant sits in a bend of the New River. It was formally dedicated as Radford Ordnance Works on March 14, 1941, the Library of Virginia records. Hurricane Helene flooded the site on September 27, 2024, and the river crested at 31 feet the following day, a plant spokesperson told the Virginia Mercury in November 2024.
On February 28, 2025, an explosion was confined to a 20-foot by 15-foot bay inside one production building, WSET reported in March 2025. The production areas involved were placed in a safety stand-down while the rest of the plant kept operating, the station reported. A December 2025 Army notice says the plant’s acid system is sized for up to 28 million pounds of nitrocellulose a year and must also serve a planned nitroglycerin plant, NG-3. Nitroglycerin is still made there on a single nitrator more than 30 years old, a January 2026 Army notice says.
The Army Contracting Command at Rock Island issued Draft RFP #3 for operating the plant on July 10, 2026. The current operating contract runs through December 31, 2026, BAE Systems announced in 2022. The plant’s acid, nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin steps sit at this one site, on one river, under that contract.
800 tons per week
Peak cordite output at HM Factory Gretna, per the European Route of Industrial Heritage
28 million lb
Maximum annual nitrocellulose demand Radford’s acid system is sized for, per a December 2025 U.S. Army notice
Dec. 31, 2026
End of the current Radford operating contract, per a July 2022 BAE Systems announcement
 
Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence.
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