In Schwanenstadt, a 33-strong team manufactures hand grenades and 40-millimeter ammunition. We found out how this works and why the production of ammunition is one of the most reputable branches of industry during a site inspection at Rheinmetall WM ARGES.
Johann Stögermüller knows the company like no other: 31 years ago, he started out as a designer and developer – today, as Managing Director, he runs the company and shows us around the halls in Schwanenstadt, Upper Austria, with visible pride. He is greeted happily by the employees, Stögermüller smiles. “I look after my people. If they are happy, then the company is running smoothly. Then you have few problems and, on balance, the best economic successes,” he says. In Rheinmetall’s “Your Voice” employee surveys, Stögermüller is pleased to say that his location is always among the leaders. This attitude of the Managing Director is probably one of the reasons why the small company with just 33 employees is so successful.
Just a moment! Small company? That depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, Rheinmetall WM ARGES – the short version – has always been a small company in terms of manpower. On the other hand, as a subsidiary of Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH, the company is one of the larger armaments groups in Europe – with more than 31,000 employees and a turnover in the billions. “In terms of personnel, we make up around one per thousand of the entire group,” laughs Stögermüller.
The company at the Schwanenstadt site has been around since 1952, but the current parent company Rheinmetall used to be a competitor – until the German group saved ARGES, “Armaturen GesmbH”, as it was formerly known, from insolvency in 2005 and bought the competitor. “There were times when someone called us back then to order a tap,” laughs Stögermüller. “Our former owner didn’t want people to recognize what we produce by our name. Hence the ‘code name’, which Rheinmetall also kept in the company name because we had long since made a good name for ourselves as a hand grenade manufacturer at the time of the takeover.”
When the company was taken over in 2005, there were even fewer employees than today, namely just ten, says Stögermüller. Ten – that is the number of employees working in production today. So few? How does that work for a company that manufactures ammunition in large numbers? “We can be so lean in production because we have all the individual parts delivered to us. We then assemble them ourselves.” And the second reason: most of the work is done by precision machines, some of which cost up to a million euros. The employees, almost all of whom are women (“They seem to really appreciate the regular working hours and the good wages we pay”), feed the machines. “We rely on semi-automated and sometimes even fully automated production to avoid human error. In this way, certain quality criteria are also checked by the machine during production,” explains the Managing Director.
“Modern western ammunition is very safe and cannot be ignited by transportation stress or accidents. You can drop them, throw them into a fire, drive over them, nothing will happen.
"Johann Stögermüller, Managing Director of Rheinmetall WM ARGES
Surprise when visiting the production facility: the machines in question are not located in huge factory halls, as we would have expected at the beginning. Instead, production is divided into several smaller buildings located in a wooded area. The entire company site is 20 hectares in size, including storage facilities for 30 tons of ammunition and its own firing range for testing and development. It seems almost idyllic here in the countryside. When we visit, it is raining and the air is fresh and clear. We only smell gunpowder when the Managing Director demonstrates to us in the “drop bunker” what an ARGES hand grenade sounds like when it explodes. The drop bunker consists of four concrete walls and is open at the top. In normal operation, it is used to test hand grenades – or even just their centerpiece, the detonator, using a microphone and time measurement.
Rheinmetall WM ARGES GmbH not only manufactures hand grenades, but also 40-millimeter ammunition. To be precise: 40-millimeter low-velocity grenades for the grenade launcher attachment on the assault rifle – with different effects. “And in addition to the finished ammunition, we also produce individual components such as hand grenade fuses and test devices,” adds the Managing Director.
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But let’s start at the beginning: We want to know how the entire planning and production process works. Is a certain quantity produced first and then sold to different customers? Not at all. The company only produces to order. Around 100 different variations can be produced – depending on what the customer wants: with or without splitters, with different ignition systems, in different sizes and colors. “Today, there is a customized hand grenade for almost every mission,” explains Stögermüller. A concrete example: some customers want the classic hand grenade with ring and pin. Others order grenades with the new BSafe fuse head, which has been on the market for five years.
The difference: If you have pulled the ring once in the classic game and don’t want to throw the hand grenade after all, you have to manage to maneuver the pin back in precisely. This can be a challenge, especially in a stressful situation or with shaky hands. The BSafe fuse head, on the other hand, can be easily cocked and uncocked at the touch of a button.
But who orders these grenades? RWM ARGES’ customers are ministries of defense and interior ministries all over the world. The customer base comprises around 15 to 20 different countries each year. “For example, we supply almost every special police unit in Europe,” says Stögermüller proudly. And the Austrian Armed Forces – but only for the last ten years or so. Before that, the red-white-red armed forces did not yet have the attachment for the assault rifle for which ARGES produces the ammunition.
The first step from the tender to the end product is product development, which takes place entirely at the site in Upper Austria. This is followed by the search for suppliers. Suppliers are needed because Rheinmetall WM ARGES does not manufacture the individual components itself. This is not always ideal, as there is currently a shortage of explosives in Europe – delivery times are sometimes two to three years. This makes it all the more important to have a large, international pool of suppliers, explains Stögermüller.
In the run-up to and during development, the ammunition produced must withstand the most complex tests. The customer determines what these tests are. For example, there are transport simulations in which the goods are subjected to the respective vibration profiles of trucks, tracked vehicles, helicopters and ships. The grenades are fictitiously transported from the ammunition bunker in Upper Austria to Afghanistan to test whether the vibrations affect the precision mechanics in the detonator.
Another test frequently requested by customers is the alternating temperature test. For 28 days, the temperature fluctuates between minus 54 and plus 72 degrees Celsius, including 95 percent humidity. “Ammunition that can withstand this is really good ammunition. It can be used in the jungle, in Alaska and everywhere else. That’s how you recognize quality – and in this respect we are definitely at the top worldwide. That is the reason why we are well represented on the market with our ammunition, even though there are many cheap producers from other countries,” says Stögermüller proudly. Once the entire production process is complete, the final test is carried out in the presence of the customer with randomly drawn ammunition on the company’s own shooting range.
The arms industry is a dirty business, it is said time and again. It supports wars and kills people. Johann Stögermüller sees it differently. “We are one of the most reputable industries there is,” he says. Austria is a neutral country. Rheinmetall WM ARGES only supplies its goods to customers who are permitted by Austrian legislation and who are approved after thorough examination by various ministries. “We don’t cheat our ammunition past the law via other countries either. We always need an ‘end-use certificate’ from the end customer. No company in Austria can afford to violate these rules,” explains Stögermüller.
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The fact is that grenades are intended for combat. However, to ensure that as few innocent people as possible are harmed in the event of war, it is a very important criterion in the production of modern ammunition that the civilian population is not endangered by unexploded ordnance. “Unexploded ordnance, which may explode weeks, months or years after the battle, is a great danger to people. We have therefore built a self-destruct mechanism into our products. This means that they explode on their own twelve seconds after being dropped and therefore never become dangerous unexploded bombs,” says Stögermüller. It is therefore to be hoped – not only from an economic point of view – that many countries will continue to opt for ammunition from RWM ARGES in the future.
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