The defense industry of Great Britain is increasing weapon production to replenish the stockpiles of the British military and to help Ukraine.

Ben Wallace, Minister of Defense of the United Kingdom, voiced this in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.

Specifically, this regards increasing artillery shell production.

When asked whether Britain had the commercial capacity to continue to provide Ukraine with weapons such as artillery shells, Wallace replied:

“We have laid contracts … We’ve started to already now receive some deliveries of that for our own restocking and also some of it to Ukraine.”

Wallace believes that Britain has every opportunity to help Ukraine, but it is necessary to continue supplying weapons.

“Britain has begun to “warm up” its production lines to replace weapons sent to Ukraine and increase production of artillery shells to try to help Kyiv push back Russian forces,” Reuters reported.

According to Wallace, the shells could be produced quite quickly, but “the main thing is that we place orders, and we started placing those orders in the last 10 months, and it started to “warm up” the production lines.”

“Absolutely part of the effort this year is sustainability – how can we, the international community, stimulate supply chains, how can we stimulate our own supply chains for our own equipment, and that’s been one of the changes,” he said.

Previously, The Telegraph reported that senior UK defense industry officials are discussing cooperation plans with Ukrainian arms manufacturers.

According to the media, British defense enterprise executives are negotiating the organization of joint ventures to manufacture weapons and vehicles. Other European defense companies are also in talks with the Ukrainian defense industry.

Previously, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, stated that his country will be the first to provide Ukraine with long-range weapons.