ASAP aims to ramp-up of ammunition production capacity across Europe and with this, help Member States refill their stocks and deliver ammunition to Ukraine by anticipating bottlenecks and shortages in the defence supply chains.
The programme has currently identified projects with a budget in excess of €500 million to stimulate the production of ammunition in the following areas:
- Explosives with a project portfolio budget of about €124 million;
- Powder with a project portfolio budget of about €248 million;
- Shells with a project portfolio budget of about €90 million;
- Missiles with a project portfolio budget of about €50 million;
- Testing and reconditioning certification of about €2 million.
ASAP in detail
ASAP is a direct response to the European Council’s call in March 2023 to urgently deliver ammunition, and missiles if requested, to Ukraine and to help Member States refill their stocks by introducing targeted measures.
Aimed at enabling ramp-up of ammunition production capacity across Europe, ASAP constitutes the track 3 (industrial part) of the so-called three-track approach of the ammunition plan agreed by the Council.
This Regulation aims at strengthening the responsiveness and ability of the Union defence industry to ensure the timely supply of ammunition and missiles in Europe.
Providing financial support to produce more and faster
The regulation includes measures to support the industrial reinforcement throughout the supply chains of ammunition and missiles in the EU. Financial support will be provided in the form of grants to various types of actions contributing to the efforts of the European defence industry to increase their production capacities and tackle identified bottlenecks.
What's new?
The European Commission has completed the evaluation and selected 31 potential projects with a total funding of €500 million under the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) to assist European industry in increasing its ammunition production and readiness.
The selected projects cover five areas: explosives, powder, shells, missiles; and testing and reconditioning certification.
While grant agreements with the selected applicants are expected to be signed in May 2024 you can find the results on the link below.
The objectives of the ASAP instrument are to support EU’s defence industry to ramp up its manufacturing capacities to match increased demand for ammunition and missiles; secure supply and availability of critical inputs such as raw materials and components; facilitate access to finance for EU defence companies and mobilise private funding and address bottlenecks in production to enable faster delivery rates.
The ASAP Work Programme targets key bottlenecks identified in the ammunition supply chains: explosives, propelling powder, and shells, and supports the missiles production ramp-up. It also addresses the obsolescence, testing, or reconditioning certification of relevant defence products.
Accordingly, the ASAP Work Programme is structured along 5 calls for proposals on the following topics:
- Explosives
- Powder
- Shells
- Missiles
- Testing and Reconditioning certification
The structure of the ASAP Work Programme is supported by information which was gathered through:
- Research and analysis within the Defence Joint Procurement Task Force;
- Information collected during Commissioner Breton's visits to key manufacturers in EU Member States;
- Bilateral exchanges with industrial stakeholders.
Both instruments, ASAP and EDIRPA, are complementary initiatives, on the supply and demand side respectively.
EDIRPA aims at incentivising Member States to commonly procure urgently needed defence capabilities and products. Therefore, it will support cooperation of at least three Member States for the common procurement of most critical and urgent defence products from the EU's Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB), hence contributing to its competitiveness and its adaptation to the current context.
The objective of ASAP is to support and accelerate the immediate ramp-up of production capacity of ammunition and missiles in the EU. It will therefore directly support producers of these defence products, as well as their supply chains.
While half a billion euro is coming from the EU budget, the underlying co-financing principle means that these funds will leverage additional funding from industry bringing total investment in the whole supply chain to around €1,4 billion.
Furthermore, project proposals submitted under and ranked above a predefined quality threshold but not funded by ASAP due to budgetary constraints will be awarded the Seal of Excellence certificate which is a quality label first introduced during Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation framework programme (2014-2020). With this label, the Commission recognises the value of project proposals and encourages other funding organisations to take advantage of the high-quality proposals.
The funding should also be seen in the context of individual Member States’ own contributions to Ukraine and in support of their respective defence industries.
To avoid potential delays to industrial actions contributing to ensure the effective supply and timely availability of ammunitions and missiles, ASAP provides for a retroactivity clause so that actions having begun after 20 March 2023 may be eligible for EU support. All projects will be completed within a maximum of 36 months. However, some projects are already able to deliver results now, and significant improvement will be observed already by the end of 2024.
ASAP will address bottlenecks throughout the supply chains of ammunition and missiles in the EU and Norway, by supporting industry to rapidly adjust to new market trends and reduce dependencies.
On 18 October 2023, the Commission adopted the Work Programme foreseen in the Regulation on supporting Ammunition Production (ASAP). This work programme covers the period 2023-2025 by which time all ASAP funded projects will have been completed.
On 5 March, the Commission adopted a proposal for the new defence industry programme (EDIP), which also included actions in support of ramping-up ammunition production.
ASAP is a direct response to the Council's call to urgently deliver ammunition, and missiles if requested, to Ukraine and to help Member States replenish their stocks by introducing targeted measures.
Aimed at enabling ramp-up of ammunition production capacity across Europe, ASAP constitutes the track 3 (industrial part) of the so-called three-track approach of the ammunition plan agreed by the Council.
The three tracks are closely interlinked. For Member States to be able to use their ammunition in stock to support Ukraine (track 1) and subsequently replenish them with new orders (track 2), there needs to be enough confidence that the EU artillery ammunition and missiles producers can match the demand (track 3) in a timely manner.